Applying certain Marxist categories of analysis to the study of American history, the central thesis of this outstanding book is that the main peculiarity of American historical development was the almost direct transition from a colonial to an imperialist economy. Expertly dealing with such topics as: * the American Revolution and the Civil War against the background of the European bourgeois revolutions * the influence of the Western land tenure system on the process of capital accumulation* the passage from plantation slavery to sharecropping in the South and its legacy of racism* the transition to imperialism towards the end of the nineteenth century* the rise of the labour movement and the main American socialist organizations up to the end of the First World War. A valuable resource for postgraduate students and researchers of business studies and American studies, Gaido's text will undoubtedly find a place on the bookshelves of many.