SCAS News - 9 February, 2015

New Book by Former SCAS Fellow Max Edling

The University of Chicago Press recently published A Hercules in the Cradel: War, Money, and
the American State, 1783-1867 (2014), written by former SCAS Fellow Max M. Edling. Since 2012,
Edling is Lecturer in North American History (1500-1865) at King's College London. His research
focus is on the American founding, the formation of the America state and early American public
finance. Max Edling was in residence at the Collegium in the spring of 2000.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
"Two and a half centuries after the American Revolution the United States stands as one of the
greatest powers on earth and the undoubted leader of the western hemisphere. This stupendous
evolution was far from a foregone conclusion at independence. The conquest of the North American
continent required violence, suffering, and bloodshed. It also required the creation of a national
government strong enough to go to war against, and acquire territory from, its North American rivals.

In A Hercules in the Cradle, Max M. Edling argues that the federal government’s abilities to tax and to
borrow money, developed in the early years of the republic, were critical to the young nation’s ability
to wage war and expand its territory. He traces the growth of this capacity from the time of the founding
to the aftermath of the Civil War, including the funding of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. Edling
maintains that the Founding Fathers clearly understood the connection between public finance and power:
a well-managed public debt was a key part of every modern state. Creating a debt would always be a delicate
and contentious matter in the American context, however, and statesmen of all persuasions tried to pay down
the national debt in times of peace. A Hercules in the Cradle explores the origin and evolution of American
public finance and shows how the nation’s rise to great-power status in the nineteenth century rested on its
ability to go into debt."

Read more about Max M. Edling
Read more about the book