Title: Commodities and consumers
1Commodities and consumers
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3The consumer revolution
- When did consumers first come about?
- Why do we consume? Are consumer items luxuries?
- 1982 Neil McKendrick proclaimed The Birth of a
Consumer Society, a consumer revolution
preceding and accompanying the industrial
revolution. - Approach draws on cultural history, economic
history, imperial history, history of ideas and
history of art often global in its interests.
4How to explain it?
- Nb earlier growth revolution? End of threat
of famine - Imitation and emulation?
- Thrill of possession
- New credit systems
- New investments
- Diversification of trade and manufacturing
- Wealthy bourgeoisie
- Commercial as much as landed society nation of
shopkeepers - Shift from household self-sufficiency to
commercially produced goods role of wife in
household economy - Polite society and taste
5Adult male average earnings
6The dangers of luxury
- Moral degeneracy, breeding idleness, corruption,
effeminacy and dissoluteness.
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9Obsessive and ridiculous fashions, often for
women who were depicted as particularly
susceptible to vanity and absurdity a sense of
fashion as all-consuming
10- John Dennis, 1711 Luxury is the spreading
contagion which is the greatest Corrupter of
Publick Manners and the greatest Extinguisher of
Publick Spirit
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15Fear of parvenues and social climbers, upstarts
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18a disparity between outward display and inner
worth
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22The danger of excess ill health literally
consumption
23- London Magazine when the tables of the
shopkeeper, the mechanick and artificer, are
replenished with cates and dainties unbecoming
their rank their rooms furnished in a sumptuous
manner, and themselves and their families appear
cloathed in costly garments, much exceeding their
stations in life, then it is that luxury and
extravagence not only prejudices them, but
detriments others of the same degree, by the
frequent bankrupting, insolvencies and shutting
up of shops it occasions 1754 - Economic decay subverting industry diverting
money out of the country to pay for foreign
imports undermining the landed interest - The growth of luxury is a sure prognostication
of the decline of empires The London Magazine
1755 cf the fall of Rome - Frenchified
- Often feared at times of war or crisis
- London and towns as sources of vice
- Christian and classical condemnation
24The defence of luxury
- Late C17th writers about trade the main spur to
Trade, or rather to Industry and Ingenuity, is
the exorbitant Appetites of Men which they will
take pains to gratifie and so be disposed to
work, when nothing else will incline them to it
for did Men content themselves with bare
Necessaries, we should have a poor world North,
Discourses on Trade, 1691 - Bernard de Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees or
Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714) - Questioned what luxury or comfort meant once we
depart from calling every thing Luxury that is
not absolutely necessary to keep a Man alive,
then there is no Luxury at all what is calld
superfluous to some Degree of People will be
thought requisite to those of higher Quality. - It is a received Notion that Luxury is as
destructive to the Wealth of the whole Body
Politick as it is to that of every individual
Person who is guilty of it I cannot help
dissenting from them in this point - What is put to the Account of Luxury belongs to
Male-adminstration, and it is the fault of bad
politicks - if imports are never allowd to be superior to
the Exports, no Nation can ever be impoverishd
by Foreign Luxury - As to Luxurys effeminating and enervating a
Nation, I have not such frightful Notions now as
I have had formerly where military affairs are
taken care of as they ought, and the Soldiers
well paid and kept in good Discipline, a wealthy
Nation may live in all the Ease and Plenty
imaginable.
25Hume and Smith
- David Hume Luxury, when excessive, is the source
of many ills, but is in general preferable to
sloth and idleness, which would commonly succeed
in its place, and are more pernicious both to
private persons and to the public (1742).
Sociability the more these refined arts
advance, the more sociable men become they flock
into cities love to receive and communicate
knowledge, to show their wit or their breeding,
their taste in conversation or living, in clothes
or furniture Thus industry, knowledge and
humanity are linked together by an indissoluble
chain, and are found, from experience as well as
reason, to be peculiar to the more polished and
what are commonly denominated the more luxurious
ages. - Critics mistook the disorders of the Roman state
and ascribed to luxury and the arts what really
proceeded from an ill-modelled government and the
unlimited extent of conquests. Refinement on the
pleasures and conveniences of life has no natural
tendency to beget venality and corruption. - Where luxury nourishes commerce and industry,
the peasants, by a proper cultivation of the
land, become rich and independent while the
tradesmen and merchants acquire a share of the
property and draw authority and consideration to
that middling rank of men who are the best and
firmest basis of public liberty. - Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, 1776)
- Natural order of economies agriculture,
manufacture, commerce. Consumption is the sole
end and purpose of all production and the
interest of the producer ought to be attended to,
only so far as it may be necessary for promoting
that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly
self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt
to prove it. Envy and admiration of the rich
drive men to seek wealth and inequality meant
this was an insatiable process. Though he also
expressed anxieties about excessive luxury he
thought the desire to better himself, meant man
also saved and shunned prodigality though the
principle of expense, therefore, prevails in
almost all men upon some occasion, and in some
men upon almost all occasions, yet in the greater
part of men, taking the whole course of their
life at an average, the principle of frugality
seems not only to predominate but to predominate
very greatly. it is thus that the private
interests and passions of individuals naturally
dispose them to turn their stock towards the
employments which in ordinary cases are most
advantageous to society.
26- John Tuslers Luxury no Political Evil, But
Demonstrably proved to be Necessary to the
Preservation and Prosperity of States (1780) a
desire for Luxuries begets a love of property,
makes a man attentive to the preservation of his
wealth and will not suffer any order of men to
vegetate in idleness. - Luxury promotes circulation of trade
- The provided the incentive to work hard
- Recognition of its importance 1781 luxury
produces vice and vice misery but luxury is,
notwithstanding, essentially necessary to
national greatness .. It is indeed true that
nations have been undone by luxury but it is
also true that no nation can subsist without it.
27Great variety of new consumer products available
28http//www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/18
thcentury/index.html
29Early eighteenth century silk (Spitalfields)
30Late C17th Indian silk
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33How far down the social scale?
- Henry Fielding referred to a vast torrent of
Luxury which of late Years hath poured itself
into the nation .had almost totally changed
the Manners, Customes and Habits of the People,
more especially of the lower Sort
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36Tea
- It purges the blood, opens obstructions,
strengthens the inward parts, sharpens the wit
and quickens the understanding (Thomas Povey in
1686). - Originally valued for its purging quality and
4-50 cups a day was a dosage. It was introduced
to GB via Holland in the 1650s. Initially the
preserve of the elite, within 100 years it had
established a place in the mass market. - Figures of consumption in 1690s only a few
hundred pounds of China tea were imported by
1757 the figure was 3m lbs. By 1780 the figure
stood at 17m lbs of tea being imported. If we add
tea that was smuggled, which could perhaps add
50, we appreciate that what began as
aristocratic preserve became a matter of mass
participation.
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39Tea, the East India Company and the State
- The trade was in the exclusive hands of the East
India Company yet the state drew increasing
amounts of tax from it. - Duty on it reached 112 by 1783. But the vast
increase meant that smuggling became rife and the
EIC was unable to shift all its imports by the
1770s 17m lbs of tea were in warehouses. The
problem was enough to threaten collapse of
revenues to the state therefore there was an
attempt to sell it at a lower price to the
Americans, though this wrecked market conditions
in the colonies and raised the issue of taxation.
This led to Boston tea party in Dec 1773.
40Coffee
- Legal imports rose from 5,700 cwt in 1700 to
40,000 by 1770. - Coffee houses. First in Oxford 1650, London 1651.
By end of C17th London had several hundred 1734
directory lists 551 - provincial proliferation York had 3 by mid
1660s, 30 by late C18th. 1736 Norwich had 106
coffee dealers
41Tobacco
- A similar story can be told about tobacco.
Production in the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia
and Maryland grew steadily throughout the C17th
from 60,000 lbs in 1620 to about 25m lbs by 1690
by 1728 it was 50m lbs a year and double that
figure by the time of the American revolution. - Initially the West Indies, and Barbados in
particular, had played an important part in
tobacco production but from the mid C17th
onwards the islands were increasingly turned over
to sugar production and tobacco cultivation
became a specialism of N.America. - At the time of the revolution it was far and away
the most important export, worth nearly double
the value of its nearest commodity rival, bread
and flour.
42Sugar
- Towards middle of C18th sugar overtook grain as
the most valuable single commodity entering world
trade. The British and French Caribbean colonies
supplied 70 of all sugar entering the N.
Atlantic market in 1750, rising to 80 by 1787.
The Americas as a whole supplied nearly all over
Europes sugar imports. In 1700 total world sugar
exports amounted to 57,000 tons this figure had
risen to 286,000 tons by 1787. Over a similar
period we can see that the number of slaves on
British Caribbean islands rose from 64,000 in
1680 to 480,000 by 1790. Sugar and slavery thus
were pivotal to the economies of the W. Indies.
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45Slavery
- Demand for slaves
- i) sugar-slave economies of W. Indies ii)
agricultural plantations of N.America esp.
Carolinas rice and indigo Virginia and Maryland
tobacco. - 1749 Eng commentator the extensive employment
of our shipping in, to and from America, the
great brood of seamen consequent thereon, and the
daily bread of the most considerable part of our
British manufactures, are owing primarily to the
labour of negroes. By 1780 Jamaica produced
50,000 tones of sugar, 1/2 of the Gb supply.
1701-1810 slave imports to W.Indies totalled
about 1.5m. Total slave pop was c.330,000 in 1700
and nearly 3m by 1800.
46China
- Most tea came not from India but from China.
- 1793 Lord Macartney was sent as Amb to China with
samples of GB manuf, taking an assrotment of
artielces from manuf towns, includeing Norwich.
The Emperor Chien Lungs reply was that Strange
and costly objects do not interest me. As your
Ambassador can see for himself we possess all
things. I set no value on strange objects ... and
have no use for your countrys manufactures. - Restrictions on European traders.
- Passion for chinoiserie. Lacquered or jappanned
furniture. figures, screens, cabinets, porcelain.
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48Willow-ware pattern, still popular, was designed
in 1780 and manufactured by Spode.
49Wm Chamberss Designs of chinese Buildings,
Furniture, Dresses etc (1757). Chambers designed
a China house for Kew gardens with a ten story
pagoda.
50Political uses of consumer items
51- 1745 Ant-Gallican Association founded to promote
British Manufactures, to extend the commerce of
England, to discourage the introduction of French
modes and oppose the importation of French
commodities. This paved way for founding in 1754
of the Society for Arts, Manufactures and
Commerce. It had 2000 members in 1760s. It
offered rewards for the invention by Britons of
substitutes for items that were imported eg
varnish (for lacquering perfected in Paris).
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