The American Cloud
12th March 2021
he American cloud is the product of a national makeover that started in 1791 with Alexander Hamilton’s American School of economics — a developmental vision of strong national institutions and protectionist policies designed to shelter a young, industrialising nation from British dominance. Hamilton’s vision was diametrically opposed to Thomas Jefferson’s competing vision based on small-town, small-scale agrarian economics. Indeed, the story of America is, in many ways, the story of how Hamilton’s vision came to prevail over Jefferson’s.
By the early 19th century, Hamilton’s ideas had crystallised into two complementary doctrines, both known as the ‘American system’. The first was senator Henry Clay’s economic doctrine, based on protectionist tariffs, a national bank, and ongoing internal infrastructure improvements. The second was the technological doctrine of precision manufacturing based on interchangeable parts, which emerged around Springfield and Harpers Ferry national armouries. Together, the two systems would catalyse the emergence of an industrial back end in the country’s heartland, and the establishment of a consumer middle class on the urbanising coasts. But it would take another century, and the development of the internet, for the American cloud to retreat almost entirely from view.