Title: The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence
Author: T.H. Breen
Year of Publication: 2004
Thesis:
A bottom-up look at how the political will was created for the American Revolution, which involved the creation of a common language and actions among ordinary people surrounding consumer goods imported from England, and how without the participation of these consumers (he argues that middling and some other downtrodden folks were able to engage) by denying themselves these goods in protest, the Revolution never could have occurred. Breen argues it's important to pay attention to this at least as much as we do ideological origins. (xiii)
"The Marketplace of Revolution argues, therefore, that the colonists’ shared experience as consumers provided them with the cultural resources needed to develop a bold new form of political protest. In this unprecedented context, private decisions were interpreted as political acts; consumer choices communicated personal loyalties. Goods became the foundation of trust, for one’s willingness to sacrifice the pleasures of the market provided a re- markably visible and effective test of allegiance." (xv-xvi)
Choice also key in developing consumers' image of themselves as well as status (xvii)
Time: 1764-1775
Geography: England/American Colonies
Organization:
Acknowledgments
1 - Tale of the Hospitable Consumer: A Revolutionary Argument
- "shared consumer experience facilitated new forms of collective political action" (xvii)
Part One: An Empire of Goods
2 - Inventories of Desire: The Evidence
- The way goods traveled from England to the colonies
"What should become clear from this discussion is that a spec- tacularly new material culture provided a social and economic framework— a realm of intensely personal experience—in which people could work out for themselves the implications of core liberal values which we now associ- ate with modernity." (xvii)
3 - Consumers' New World: The Unintended Consequences of Commercial Success
4 - Vade Mecum: The Great Chain of Colonial Acquisition
5 - The Corrosive Logic of Choice: Living with Goods
Part Two: "A Commercial Plan for Political Salvation"
- "traces how this private world of personal choice became the foundation for new political solidarities during the decade following the Stamp Act crisis." (xviii)
6 - Strength out of Dependence: Strategies of Consumer Resistance in an Empire of Goods
7 - Making Lists--Taking Names: The Politicization of Everyday Life
8 - Bonfires of Tea: The Final Act
Type:
Material Culture
Methods:
Sources:
Historiography:
"The Marketplace of Revolution explains popular mobilization from an entirely different point of view. In fact, it breaks with most previous accounts of this period, putting forward a new interpretation of what precisely was radical about the politics of the American Revolution. Instead of assuming the existence of political collectivities, it asks how such a dispersed popula- tion generated a sense of trust sufficient to sustain colonial rebellion. It ex- plores how a very large number of ordinary Americans came to the striking conclusion that it was preferable to risk their lives and property against a powerful British armed force than to endure further political oppression." (xiii)
Keywords:
- boycott (not a term used then, but has the same implications)
- Empire of Goods
- "Corrosive logic of choice"
Themes:
Bourgeois virtue
Critiques:
Enslaved people also "consumed," no? They themselves and the products they produce form a part of the supply chain, yet, they do not figure into this analysis.
Questions:
Quotes:
"It survived the violence of war and the abuses of time, reminding those who reflect on such matters today that common goods once spoke to power." (xii - about a teapot)
"The Marketplace of Revolution thus provides a richer intellectual under- standing of the capability of ordinary men and women to reform the character of larger political structures, even ones of global dimensions. Against staggering opposition, it is still possible to come together to create powerful collectivities which might ameliorate the conditions of our shared civic lives. At the commencement of the new millennium, therefore, we return to the years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence not to reaffirm myths about national origins but rather to discover something about our own ability to transform political society through collective imagination." (xiv)
Notes:
This is like the "bottom up" version of Bailyn's Ideological Origins. Also like the market version of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities.