Why the Rush?
An Institutional Economic Analysis of Homesteading and the Settlement of the West
Will be published approx. on 31. December 2025
Book
Hardback
390 pages
978-1-009-68458-3 (ISBN)
Description
Establishing economic property rights is a ubiquitous human activity that is key to the creation of wealth. Why the Rush? combines economic and historical analysis to argue that the institution of homesteading, as established in the US through the Homestead Act of 1862, was a method to establish meaningful, economic property rights on the American frontier. It explains how homesteading rushed millions of people into specific areas, established a meaningful sovereignty without the use of military force and became the means by which the US Thwarted military and legal challenges. Using fine-grained data, along with a detailed theoretical analysis and exhaustive institutional content, this book makes a serious contribution to the study of economic property rights and institutions providing the definitive analysis of the economics of homesteading and its role in American economic history.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises; 15 Maps; 20 Line drawings, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
694 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-009-68458-3 (9781009684583)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Douglas W. Allen | Bryan Leonard
Why the Rush?
An Institutional Economic Analysis of Homesteading and the Settlement of the West
Book
approx. 12/2025
Cambridge University Press
€47.30
Not yet published
Persons
Douglas W. Allen is a Burnaby Mountain Professor in the Department of Economics at Simon Fraser University. He has over 100 academic publications and three books: The Nature of the Farm (with Dean Lueck, 2002); The Institutional Revolution (2012, Douglass North Book Prize); and Economic Analysis of Property Rights (with Yoram Barzel, 2023). He has won SFU's Silver Medal for Academic Excellence and three university teaching awards.
Content
1. Introduction; Part I. Homesteading Fundamentals: 2. Homesteading basics; 3. The theory of homestead land grants; Part II. Three Periods of Homesteading: 4. Homesteading, the civil war, and the south: 1862-1871; 5. Railroads and early homesteading: 1862-1890; 6. Late homesteading and tribal land dispossession: 1890-1934; Part III. Homesteading Special Cases: 7. The Oklahoma land rushes; 8. Homesteading in Canada; Part IV. Homesteading and the Long Run: 9. Homesteading and modern land development; 10. Cultural and political dimensions of homesteading; 11. Conclusion.