John J. McCusker | Professor

John J. McCusker is the Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professor of American History and Professor of Economics at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. Born and raised in upstate New York, he did graduate work at the University of Rochester, where he studied with 1993 Nobel Laureate in Economic Science, Prof. Robert W. Fogel; at University College of the University of London, where he worked as a graduate research student with the support of Prof. Harry C. Allen, Commonwealth Fund Professor of American History; and at the University of Pittsburgh, where Prof. Carter Goodrich, Mellon Professor of Economics and History, directed his doctoral dissertation. He earned the degree Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 1970. Before moving to Texas in 1992, he taught for twenty-four years at the University of Maryland. At Trinity University he offers classes in the general history of the United States, United States economic and business history, and the history of seventeenth and eighteenth century British America. Since 1994 he has also served — in an honorary capacity — as Adjunct Professor of Early American History at the University of Texas, Austin.

In his research and writing McCusker focuses on the economy of the Atlantic World during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has published several books most of which are still in print:

 

Publications

• Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600-1775: A Handbook (1978; reissued with corrections, 1992)
• European Marine Lists and Bills of Entry: Early Commercial Publications and the Origins of the Business Press (1985) 
• The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (1985; 2nd ed., with a supplementary bibliography, 1991). Co-authored with Russell R. Menard
• Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 2 vols. (1989)
• The Beginnings of Commercial and Financial Journalism: The Commodity Price Currents, Exchange Rate Currents, and Money Currents of Early Modern Europe (1991). Co-authored with Cora Gravesteijn
• How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (1992; reprinted, 1993; 2nd ed., rev., 2001) 
• Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic World (1997)
• The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (2001). Co-edited with Kenneth Morgan
• History of World Trade since 1450, 2 vols. (2006). Co-edited with Louis Cain, David Hancock, Kenneth Pomeranz and Stanley Engerman

The Economy of British America won two honors: it was named an “Outstanding Academic Book” for 1985-1986 by Choice and given a Distinguished Book Award, Honorable Mention, by the Society of Colonial Wars.

McCusker has also written numerous shorter studies for such learned periodicals as The William and Mary Quarterly, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre Mer, The Harvard Library Bulletin, The Journal of Economic History and The American Historical Review. He contributed a chapter titled “Crecimiento y Cambio en la Economía de las Colonias Inglesas” to volume twenty, Angloamérica, of the Historia General de América (Caracas, 1986). Recognized by Forbes magazine an an “authority on colonial economics,” McCusker is currently at work on various projects related to the production, trade, and consumption of sugar, molasses, and rum in the Atlantic World prior to 1789. His next book, now in progress, is tentatively titled “The Price of Sugar in the Early Modern Atlantic World.”

McCusker has lectured and taught in Belgium, Canada, China, England, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, and the United States. He has served on the board of editors of such scholarly journals as the Business History Review, the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Economic History, the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Economy and Society and the William and Mary Quarterly. His research has been supported by grants and appointments from, among others, the Fulbright Senior Scholar Program (twice), the Smithsonian Institution (twice), Harvard University, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), the National Endowment for the Humanities (three times, most recently in 2007-2008), the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Enterprise Institute, the Leverhulme Trust (Great Britain), the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Various learned societies have elected him to their membership, notably the Royal Historical Society in 1976, of which he is a Fellow, and the American Antiquarian Society in 1988. The Cosmos Club admitted him as a member in 1992. He has served the societies and associations to which he belongs in a variety of elected and appointed offices. Most recently he joined the advisory committee of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Monticello, Virginia. In 1985 he was honored with an appointment as Christensen Visiting Fellow at St. Catherine's College, University of Oxford, and in 1996-1997 he received a similar honor as the Helen Cam Fellow, Girton College, University of Cambridge. In that same academic year McCusker held concurrent appointments as the Visiting Senior Mellon Scholar in American History at the University of Cambridge, as a fellow in the Fulbright Senior Scholar Program, and as a Scholar in Residence at the Rockefeller Center, Bellagio, Italy. In October 2001 he participated as the invited distinguished foreign scholar in the annual seminar organized by the graduate program in economics of the University of Helsinki, Finland. In 2005 and 2006 he spoke at meetings in Charleston, South Carolina, Dublin, Ireland, Jyväskylä, Finland, Salzburg and Vienna, Austria, and Helsinki. For the year 2007-2008 the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs, granted him a research fellowship.

McCusker is married to Ann Van Pelt. His wife and he share five children — Terrie F. Conner, Kenneth W. Florance, John J. McCusker III, Patrick W. McCusker (†), and Dr. Margaret E. McCusker — and eleven grandchildren.

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