In the past several decades there has been a significant increase in our knowledge of the economic history of the United States. This has come about in part because of the development in economic history, most particularly with the emergence of the statistical and analytical contributions of the new economic history, and in part because of related developments in social, labor, and political history that have important implications for the understanding of economic change. The Cambridge Economic History of the United States has been designed to take full account of new knowledge in the subject, while at the same time offering a comprehensive survey of the history of economic activity and economic change in the United States, and in those regions whose economies have at certain times been closely allied to that of the United States: Canada and the Caribbean.