The history of internal improvements in the United
States exposes perennial questions of American political development. It asks
us to examine complex interdependences, to explore relationships between State
and economy, to discern interactions between constitutional structures and
constitutional change, to uncover tensions between path-dependency and
institutional development, and to elucidate exchanges between politics and political
economy. To illuminate these intersecting dynamics, this study examines the prodigious
period of infrastructural expansion stimulated by subnational government
promotion of internal improvements in the early 19th century United
States. It explores the political, economic, and societal processes by which
people, voters, public officials, and corporations first construct, and then
reconstruct systems of public finance, public administration, and political economy,
and examines their long-run impacts on the constitutions, institutions, and
structures of American government.
