Lessons from the Past: The Panic of 1893

• Author(s): Silva, Edgardo Medeiros
• Date: 2013
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/10060
• Origin: Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa
• Subject(s): American Autobiography; Gold Standard; Gold-bugs; Silver Standard; Panic of 1893
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

Does financial bankruptcy on a national level imply failure on a personal plane? To what extent does national financial meltdown undermine individual identity and consciousness? Can personal loss of identity and confidence be transposed onto the national level? And what about one’s self-worth, does it become a “valueless currency” as well? I wish to examine in this paper the Panic of 1893 through the eyes of Henry Adams (1838-1918), one of the most insightful observers of the American political scene in the second half of the nineteenth century. Adams’s non-fiction works are particularly illuminating in the context of the postbellum industrialization of the United States and of the development of financial capitalism in the latter part of the nineteenth century. His jeremiadical discourse on the subject of the 1893 financial meltdown of the U.S. economy and on the impact of financial bankruptcy on individuals and nations, provide us with plenty of food for thought these days. The author in question evidences misgivings in his works about the hegemonic impact of capitalism on the lives of both individuals and nations, criticizing the drive for economic supremacy and territorial expansion pursued by the United States at the time. What lessons can we draw from Adams’s personal narrative (and from the past, for that matter) to understand our current financial and political woes is a question which will hold centre stage in this paper.