The Panic of 1819 was one of the first major economic and financial crises in American history. The panic led to widespread bank failures, unemployment, and distress, particularly in the western states. For decades, the only significant work to have examined this event in any depth was Rothbard’s The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies. Now, Rothbard finally has some company in Andrew Browning’s The Panic of 1819: The First Great Depression. And while both books focus on the same historical event, their differing emphases and approaches mean they can in many ways serve to complement each other: whereas Rothbard’s monograph is primarily a meticulous study of the ideological and policy debates that followed the event, Browning’s work is largely a sweeping narrative of the political, economic, and social turmoil caused by the crisis.

Differences in Focus

As a work of historical synthesis, Browning situates the Panic of 1819 within the broader economic and political landscape of early 19th-century America, tracing the expansion of banking, land speculation, and trade that preceded the panic. His work pays particular attention to the experiences of different groups affected by the crisis – landowners, urban workers, frontier settlers, and politicians – offering a broad, human-focused narrative of the panic’s consequences. Browning broadens his scope even further, devoting significant attention to the role of international factors, including the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the decline in European demand for American agricultural products, which contributed to the economic downturn. Being a contemporary academic publication in economic history, his book is also heavily empirical, drawing from a wealth of primary sources to illustrate how the crisis rippled across different regions and social classes.

Rothbard, by contrast, approached the Panic of 1819 as a case study in economic theory and policy response, analyzing how policymakers, bankers, and intellectuals debated the causes of the crisis and what should be done in its aftermath. Rothbard, of course, saw the crisis as a product of monetary inflation and credit expansion fueled by the Second Bank of the United States, and he focused on how different groups – state governments, the federal government, and private citizens – reacted to the panic, providing a detailed discussion of policy proposals such as debt relief, banking regulations, and protective tariffs. Unlike Browning, who is more interested in describing the lived experience of the crisis, Rothbard was chiefly concerned with drawing economic lessons from the period.