Newell, Margaret Ellen 1962-

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NEWELL, Margaret Ellen 1962-

PERSONAL:

Born 1962. Education: Brown University, A.B. (Spanish); University of Virginia, M.A., Ph.D. (early American history).

ADDRESSES:

Office—Ohio State University, Department of History, 265 Dulles Hall, 230 West 17th Ave., Columbus, OH 43210; fax: 614-292-2282. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Historian and educator. Ohio State University, Columbus, associate professor of history.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Named Outstanding Faculty Member, Sphinx and Mortar Board Senior Class Honoraries, Ohio State University, 1999.

WRITINGS:

From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1998.

Author of numerous articles and essays; contributor to Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England, edited by Peter Temin, Harvard University Press, 2000, and Colonial America, edited by Daniel Vickers, 2001.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

"The Drove of Adam's Degenerate Seed": Indian Slavery in New England, for Cornell University Press.

SIDELIGHTS:

A specialist in colonial and revolutionary America as well as Native American and economic history, Margaret Ellen Newell is the author of From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England. Newell's book posits that economic self-interest on the part of New Englanders was as much an inspiration for the Revolutionary War as was political determination and the idea of a constitutional government. As Jonathan M. Chu put it in a review for the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, "Newell argues that on the eve of the Revolution, the economy of colonial New England was sufficiently strong to place it on a collision course with that of Britain."

A focal point of Newell's thesis is that Puritanism in the American colonies "led to a culture promoting specific incentives for material profit," according to Chu. "Puritanism's regulatory impulses produced a moral framework that gave rise to dramatic commercial change." This in turn led to the development of a "promotional state," as Chu noted, and the resulting debates over "paper money and the Land Bank in the mid-eighteenth century." Stephen C. Messer, writing in History, also commented that "Newell focuses on the crucial role of paper currency" in developing her theory of the origins of the Revolution. The critic also wrote that Newell's book "makes several significant scholarly contributions," and he concluded that From Dependency to Independence "is an excellent study because of its interpretative framework and its conclusions; it deserves serious and sustained consideration." Similarly, James S. Leamon, writing in Historian, commended the author for developing her argument with "conviction and consistency," further noting that Newell "bases her work on an exhaustive collection of primary sources."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Historian, summer, 2001, James S. Leamon, review of From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England, p. 841.

History, summer, 1999, Stephen C. Messer, review of From Dependency to Independence, p. 157.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, summer, 2000, Jonathan M. Chu, "An Independent Means: The American Revolution and the Rise of a National Economy," p. 63.