Anti-Monopoly and Democracy in the Political Economy of the United States from the War of Independence to Big Tech

Richard John

Professor of History and Communications, Journalism School

Award: $10,000

John’s project is the first archivally based history of anti-monopoly thought and practice in the United States from the Wars of Independence (1776-1815) to the 1940s. John has been working on this topic for several years, and will now bring together his major findings in a public-facing monograph. Like his last monograph on the telegraph and the telephone, it is John’s intention to publish it as a book in the trade division of major academic press and it is his hope that this monograph, like his previous two monographs, as well as his many essays, will help shape the public debate on economic regulation, political economy, and the main contours of U. S. cultural and institutional history.