Dr. Calvo and his book, “The Emergence of Capitalism in Early America,” at the press table at the American Historical Association Conference in New York City in January 2020.
Dr. Christopher Calvo: The Mind Behind “The Emergence Of Capitalism In Early America”
The synopsis of history teacher Dr. Christopher Calvo’s book is essentially a history of economic thought between the years 1776 and 1861, from the American Independence to the American Civil War. It describes what American economic thinkers, public intellectuals, and participants in economic discourse said about the American economy’s transition into a full-fledged capitalist economy. The book challenges a traditional understanding that Americans have always adopted, with a liberal free-trade prop-capitalist economic mentality.
This is Calvo’s first book. He did have a couple of shorter articles that have been published. The inspiration came from a major professor and friend at FIU, who started talking to Calvo about turning his dissertation into a book six or seven years ago.
“He kept suggesting that I do it, and finally I came to my senses,” recounted Calvo. “There was a lot of work over the summertime and a lot of late nights working, that’s for sure.” He ended up adding around 150 pages to the original dissertation, and concentrated on writing the book for two years.
“I would say that writing a historical monograph is very difficult to be a spontaneous writer, you kind of have to have some things planned out,” said Calvo. “I had another professor at FIU that over the years I developed a positive relationship with, and he was very encouraging about writing the book.”
Originally, Calvo wanted to base the book on a popular text in the history of economic thought, The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner.
“As far as other inspirations, when I submitted my book to the press, they accepted it at first, then sent it to an anonymous reviewer,” said Calvo. “One of whom offered a lot of feedback, in a lot of different places where I could improve. When the book was published, I found out the anonymous reader was a professor called Brian Schoen at Ohio State.”
The Emergence of Capitalism in Early America is now available at the University Press of Florida. One of his recent interviews about the book can also be found here on the Economic History Association website.