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Title: Commodities and consumers


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Commodities and consumers
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The 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.

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How 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

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Adult male average earnings
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The dangers of luxury
  • Moral degeneracy, breeding idleness, corruption,
    effeminacy and dissoluteness.

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Obsessive and ridiculous fashions, often for
women who were depicted as particularly
susceptible to vanity and absurdity a sense of
fashion as all-consuming
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  • 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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Fear of parvenues and social climbers, upstarts
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a disparity between outward display and inner
worth
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The danger of excess ill health literally
consumption
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  • 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

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The 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.

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Hume 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.

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  • 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.

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Great variety of new consumer products available
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http//www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/18
thcentury/index.html
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Early eighteenth century silk (Spitalfields)
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Late C17th Indian silk
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How 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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Tea
  • 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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Tea, 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.

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Coffee
  • 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

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Tobacco
  • 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.

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Sugar
  • 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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Slavery
  • 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.

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China
  • 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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Willow-ware pattern, still popular, was designed
in 1780 and manufactured by Spode.
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Wm Chamberss Designs of chinese Buildings,
Furniture, Dresses etc (1757). Chambers designed
a China house for Kew gardens with a ten story
pagoda.
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Political uses of consumer items
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  • 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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