Empire of Things
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75. Werner Sombart, Luxus und Kapitalismus (Munich, 1912), 96–7.
76. Yue Meng, Shanghai and the Edges of Empires (Minneapolis, MN, 2006), 143–6. See also: Antonia Finnane, ‘Chinese Domestic Interiors and “Consumer Constraint” in Qing China’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 27, 2014: 112–44.
77. Cited in Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 144. See also: Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ, 2000); Roy Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca, NY, 1997); and Hanchao Lu, ‘Arrested Development: Cotton and Cotton Markets in Shanghai, 1350–1843’, in: Modern China 18, no. 4, 1992: 468–99.
78. Clunas, Superfluous Things, 35, 38, 44.
79. Quoted in Clunas, Superfluous Things, 74.
80. Clunas, Superfluous Things, 111.
81. See Kathlyn Maurean Liscomb, ‘Social Status and Art Collecting: The Collections of Shen Zhou and Wang Zhen’, Art Bulletin 78, no. 1 (1996): 111–35.
82. The Plum in the Golden Vase, or Chin P’ing Mei, 223, and 383–4 for the previous quotation, which is given with the original Wade–Giles system of transliteration, and Pinyin in brackets.
83. Dauncey, ‘Sartorial Modesty’, in: Berg & Starr, The Quest for Gentility in China , 140f.
84. Many of Bourdieu’s analytical insights about the Parisian bourgeoisie in the 1960s have a remarkable resonance for the late Ming and Qing. See, e.g., his reflections on the ‘aesthetic disposition’ and the continuing attraction of the ‘scholastic world of regulated games and exercise for exercise’ for bourgeois adolescents and housewives who lack the economic capital of the male earner. ‘Economic power,’ he notes by contrast, ‘is first and foremost a power to keep economic necessity at arm’s length. This is why it universally asserts itself by the destruction of riches, conspicuous consumption, squandering, and every form of gratuitous luxury’; Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, MA, 1984/1979), 54f.
85. Craig Clunas, Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644 (London, 2007), 137–51.
86. Ho, ‘The Salt Merchants of Yang-chou’, esp. 156–60; to make the spelling consistent with the standard Pinyin system of transliteration used elsewhere in this book, I have converted the names from the older Wade–Giles system used by Ho: Ma Yüeh-kuan and Ma Yüeh-lu).
87. Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (London, 2008), 74–83, quoted at 82.
88. Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. IV, ch. 8, 179.
89. Charles Wilson, ‘Cloth Production and International Competition in the Seventeenth Century’, Economic History Review 13, no. 2, 1960: 209–21.
90. C. Lis et al., eds., Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power and Representation (London, 2006).
91. This paragraph draws especially on De Vries and Woude, First Modern Economy; see also: DuPlessis, Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe; Bas van Bavel, ‘The Organization of Markets as a Key Factor in the Rise of Holland’, Continuity and Change, 27, no. 3, 2012, 347–78.
92. Jan De Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500–1700 (New Haven, CT, 1974), 218–22.
93. Atwell, ‘Ming China and the Emerging World Economy’, in: Twitchett & Mote, eds., Cambridge History of China, Vol VIII : The Ming Dynasty, 1368–44, Part 2, 396.
94. For this and the following, see Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches (Berkeley, CA, 1988), chs. 3 & 5.
95. Clunas, Empire of Great Brightness, 141:
96. Brant van Slichtenhorst; see Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, 193–201.
97. Dyer, An Age of Transition?; and Kowaleski, ‘A Consumer Economy’.
98. William Harrison, A Description of England (London, 1577/1587), ch. 8, 151–6, available at: https://archive.org/stream/elizabethanengla32593gut/pg32593.txt. For fashion in this period, see Carlo Belfanti, ‘The Civilization of Fashion: At the Origins of a Western Social Institution’, Journal of Social History 43, no. 2, 2009: 261–83.
99. Linda Levy Peck, Consuming Splendour: Society and Culture in Seventeenth-century England (Cambridge, 2005).
100. Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects. See also now: Sara Pennel, ‘Material Culture in Seventeenth-century “Britain” ’ in: Trentmann, ed., Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, ch. 4.
101. Daniel Defoe, A Tour through England and Wales, II (London 1727/1928), 126.
102. Jane Whittle & Elizabeth Griffiths, Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth-century Household: The World of Alice Le Strange (Oxford, 2013), 120–4, 144–53. On the growing variety of products, their qualities and prices, see further: Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects.
103. Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (London, 1996, 2nd edn), table 3.3, 49.
104. Edward Roberts & Karen Parker, eds., Southampton Probate Inventories 1447–1575 (Southampton, 1992), Vol. I, 54–5.
105. Ann Smart-Martin, ‘Makers, Buyers and Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework’, in: Winterthur Portfolio 28, no. 2/3, 1993: 141–57, p. 154. See also: Cary Carson, ‘The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America: Why Demand?’ in: Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century, eds. Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman & Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville, VA, 1994), 483–697; and Carole Shammas, The Pre-industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford, 1990).
106. Peter King, ‘Pauper Inventories and the Material Lives of the Poor in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’, in: Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840, eds. Tim Hitchcock, Peter King & Pamela Sharpe (New York, 1997), 155–91.
107. John Styles, ‘Lodging at the Old Bailey: Lodgings and Their Furnishing in Eighteenth-century London’, in: Gender, Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700–1830, eds. John Styles & Amanda Vickery (New Haven, CT, 2006).
108. Charles P. Moritz, Travels, Chiefly on Foot, through Several Parts of England in 1782 (London, 1797, 2nd edn), 24.
109. Shane White & Graham White, ‘Slave Clothing and African-American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Past & Present 148, 1995: 149–186, quoted at 156.
110. See Frank Salomon, ‘Indian Women of Early Quito as Seen through Their Testatements’, The Americas 44, no. 3, 1988: 325–41, esp. 334–7; and now Elena Philips, ‘The Iberian Globe’, in: Amelia Peck, ed., Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800 (New York, 2013), 28–45.
111. John Irwin & P. R. Schwartz, Studies in Indo-European Textile History (Ahmedabad, 1966). For the global expansion of cotton cultivation, see now: Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism (London, 2014).
112. ‘First Report’ (24 Dec. 1783), in Reports from the Committee on Illicit Practices Used in Defrauding the Revenue (1783–4), Vol. XI, quoted at 228, figures from appendix 4, 204-1. See also: William J. Ashworth, Customs and Excise: Trade, Production and Consumption in England, 1640–1845 (Oxford, 2003), 149–50. For French smugglers, see now: Michael Kwass, Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground (Cambridge, MA, 2014), esp. 106–8, 218–20; and Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World (Cambridge, 2013), 121. For smuggling of silk, see: William Farrell, ‘Silk and Globalization in Eighteenth-century London’, PhD thesis, Birkbeck College/University of London, 2013, 148–95.
113. Maxine Berg, ‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century’, Past & Present 182, no. 1, 2004: 85–142.
114. J. F., The Merchant’s Ware-House Laid Open: Or, the Plain Dealing Linnen-Draper. Shewing How to Buy All Sorts of Linnen and Indian Goods (London, 1696), A3, 7, 27, 29–30. For the sheer variety of patterns available, even to poorer consumers, see John Styles: Threads of Feeling: The London Foundling Hospital�
�s Textile Tokens, 1740–70 (London, 2010).
115. On France: Roche, Culture of Clothing, 126–39. For silk, see Natalie Rothstein: ‘Silk in the Early Modern Period, c.1500–1780’, in: D. T. Jenkins, The Cambridge History of Western Textiles (Cambridge, 2003), 528–61; and Farrell, ‘Silk and Globalization in Eighteenth-century London’. See now also: S. Horrell, J. Humphries & K. Sneath, ‘Consumption Conundrums Unravelled’, in: Economic History Review (online version 17 Dec. 2014).
116. Roger-Pol Droit, How are Things? A Philosophical Experiment, trans. Theo Cuffe (London, 2005), 52.
117. Fourteen ducats in 1546, see Patricia Allerston: ‘Clothing and Early Modern Venetian Society’, in: Continuity and Change 15, no. 3, 2000: 367–90, at 372.
118. 1765, quoted in Beverly Lemire, Fashion’s Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1991), 94. See now also: Prasannan Parthasarathi & Giorgio Riello, eds., The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850 (Oxford, 2009).
119. Roche, Culture of Clothing, 108–11; and John Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-century England (New Haven, CT, 2007).
120. Andrew Bevan & D. Wengrow, eds., Cultures of Commodity Branding (Walnut Creek, CA, 2010).
121. McKendrick, in McKendrick, Brewer & Plumb, Birth of a Consumer Society, 141.
122. Phyllis G. Tortora & Keith Eubank, Survey of Historic Costume: A History of Western Dress (New York, 1998, 3rd edn), 147–9, 158–60.
123. Quoted in Om Prakash, ‘The Dutch and the Indian Ocean Textile Trade’, in: Parthasarathi & Riello, eds., The Spinning World, 149.
124. Quoted in Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600–1800 (London, 2002), 50.
125. Magazine à la Mode, or Fashionable Miscellany (January 1777), 49–51.
126. McKendrick in: McKendrick, Brewer & Plumb, Birth of a Consumer Society, 43–7.
127. Pomeranz, Great Divergence; compare Prasannan Parthasarathi, ‘The Great Divergence’, Past & Present 176, 2002: 275–93; Robert Brenner & Christopher Isett, ‘England’s Divergence from China’s Yangzi Delta: Property Relations, Microeconomics and Patterns of Development’, in: Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 2, 2002: 609–22; and Kenneth Pomeranz, ‘Standards of Living in Eighteenth-Century China: Regional Differences, Temporal Trends, and Incomplete Evidence’, in: Standards of Living and Mortality in Pre-industrial Times, eds. Robert Allen, Tommy Bengtsson & Martin Dribe (Oxford, 2005), 23–54.
128. Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2009); Robert C. Allen et al., ‘Wages, Prices and Living Standards in China, Japan and Europe, 1738–1925’, GPIH Working Paper no. 1, (2005); and Stephen Broadberry & Bishnupriya Gupta, ‘The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices and Economic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800’, Economic History Review 59, no. 1, 2006: 2–31. Compare now: Jane Humphries, ‘The Lure of Aggregates and the Pitfalls of the Patriarchal Perspective: A Critique of the High Wage Economy Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution’, Economic History Review 66, 2013: 693–714; and Robert C. Allen, ‘The High Wage Economy and the Industrial Revolution: A Restatement’, Economic History Review 68, no. 1, 2015: 1–22
129. Kenneth Pomeranz, ‘Chinese Development in Long-run Perspective’, in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 152, 2008: 83–100; and Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850 (Cambridge, 2011), 37–46.
130. Bozhong Li, ‘Xianminmen chi de bucuo’, Deng Guangming xiansheng bainian shouchen jinian wenji (2008). I am grateful to Bozhong Li for an English version of this article. For opium, see Zheng Yangwen, The Social Life of Opium in China (Cambridge, 2005).
131. Tokugawa Japan was more equal still, but it was also closed to international commerce. Japanese living standards in this period may have been underestimated, because many peasant households received land shares of their outputs as well as enjoying additional income from wives, children and non-agricultural jobs; see now: Osamu Saito, ‘Growth and Inequality in the Great and Little Divergence Debate: A Japanese Perspective’, Economic History Review 68, 2015: 399–419; and Osamu Saito, ‘Income Growth and Inequality over the Very Long Run: England, India and Japan Compared’, (2010), at: http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/rp/publications/no02/P1-C1_Saito.pdf.
132. Neil McKendrick, ‘Home Demand and Economic Growth’, in: N. McKendrick, ed., Historical Perspectives (London, 1974), 209
133. Daniel Defoe, Everybody’s Business is Nobody’s Business (1725), De Foe’s Works, Vol. II (London, 1854 edn), 499f., 504.
134. See Styles, Dress of the People.
135. Jan De Vries, ‘The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution’, Journal of Economic History 54, no. 2, 1994: 249–70.
136. The following draws on Craig Muldrew, Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness: Work and Material Culture in Agrarian England, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 2011).
137. Hans-Joachim Voth, Time and Work in England, 1750–1830 (Oxford, 2001). Whether late-medieval workers enjoyed so much more leisure is debatable; see: Gregory Clark & Ysbrand van der Werf, ‘Work in Progress? The Industrious Revolution’, Journal of Economic History 58, no. 3, 1998: 830–43.
138. Frederic Morton Eden, The State of the Poor: Or, an History of the Labouring Classes in England (London, 1797), Vol. II, 87–8.
139. Julie Marfany, ‘Consumer Revolution or Industrious Revolution? Consumption and Material Culture in Eighteenth-century Catalonia’; for the limited number of new objects, see J. Torras & B. Yun, eds., Consumo, condiciones de vida y comercialización: Catalunˇ a y Castilla, siglos XVII–XIX (Castile and León, 1999); Jan De Vries, ‘Peasant Demand Patterns and Economic Development: Friesland 1550–1750’, in: European Peasants and Their Markets, eds. W. N. Parker & E. L. Jones (Princeton, NJ, 1975); and Mark Overton, Jane Whittle, Darron Dean & Andrew Hann, Production and Consumption in English Households, 1600–1750 (London, 2004).
140. Ogilvie, ‘Consumption, Social Capital, and the “Industrious Revolution” in Early Modern Germany’.
141. Quoted in DuPlessis, Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe, 36.
142. Regina Grafe, Distant Tyranny: Markets, Power and Backwardness in Spain, 1650–1800 (Princeton, NJ, 2012).
143. Fernando Carlos Ramos Palencia, ‘La demanda de textiles de las familias castellanas a finales del Antiguo Régimen, 1750–1850: ¿Aumento del consumo sin industrialización?’, in: Revista de historia económica 21, no. S1, 2003: 141–78; and Torras & Yun, eds., Consumo, condiciones de vida y comercialización.
CHAPTER 2
1. Girolamo Benzoni, La historia del Mondo Nuouo (1572 edn; 1st edn, Venice, 1565), 103, my translation.
2. George Sandys, Travels (1615), quoted in Anon., The Vertues of Coffee (London, 1663), 8, reprinted in Markman Ellis, ed., Eighteenth-century Coffee-house Culture, Vol. IV (London, 2006).
3. J. H. Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, Voyage à l’Îsle de France (1773).
4. Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985).
5. Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986). See also: Robert J. Foster, ‘Tracking Globalization: Commodities and Value in Motion’, in: Handbook of Material Culture, eds. Christopher Tilley, et al. (London, 2006); Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Food: A History (London, 2002).
6. Elias, The Civilizing Process. Gabriel Tarde had formulated a similar top-down model in the 1890s.
7. Jürgen Habermas, The Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, 1989; 1st German edn, Germany, 1976).
8. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants (New York, 1992).
9. Mintz, Sweetness and Power.
10. Compare the more Eurocentric treatment by Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life (New York, 1979/1981), 249–60.
12. Antonio de Alcedo, 1786, quoted in Ross W. Jamieson, ‘The Essence of Commodification: Caffeine Dependencies in the Early Modern World’, Journal of Social History, 2001: 269–94, 278. For the above and the following, see also: William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Cocoa and Chocolate, 1765–1914 (London, 2000); and William Gervase Clarence-Smith & Steven Topik, eds., The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 1500–1989 (Cambridge, 2003).
13. Johann Kaspar Riesbeck, 1780, quoted in Christian Hochmuth, Globale Güter – lokale Aneignung: Kaffee, Tee, Schokolade und Tabak im frühneuzeitlichen Dresden (Konstanz, 2008), 64, my translation.
14. Roman Sandgruber, Bittersüße Genüße: Kulturgeschichte der Genußmittel (Vienna, 1986), 80f.
15. Retained imports of tea were 540 tons in 1724, but tea leaves produce around four times as much beverage as coffee, by unit. My estimate takes into account loss of weight during roasting. Calculated from retained import data in Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics 1697–1808 (Oxford, 1960), table XVIII.
16. For this and the following, see Jamieson, ‘Essence of Commodification’, Marcy Norton, ‘Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics ’, American Historial Review 111, no. 3, 2006: 660–91; Michael D. Coe & Sophie D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate (London, 1996); and Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Ornelas, eds., The Cambridge World History of Food, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2000).
17. Jacob Spon, De l’usage, du caphé, du thé, et du chocolate (Lyon, 1671); I quote from the contemporary English translation by John Chamberlayne, The Manner of Making Coffee, Tea and Chocolate (London, 1685), reprinted in Ellis, ed., Eighteenth-century Coffee-house Culture, Vol. IV , 105–11.
18. Quoted from John Chamberlayne, The Natural History of Coffee, Tea, Chocolate, Tobacco (London, 1682), 4–5.