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Cover image of Buying into the World of Goods
Cover image of Buying into the World of Goods
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Buying into the World of Goods

Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia

Ann Smart Martin

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Cowinner, 2008 Fred Kniffen Book Award. Pioneer America Society/Association for the Preservation of Landscapes and Artifacts
Winner, 2009 Hagley Prize in Business History. The Business History Conference

How did people living on the early American frontier discover and then become a part of the market economy? How do their purchases and their choices revise our understanding of the market revolution and the emerging consumer ethos? Ann Smart Martin provides answers to these questions by examining the texture of trade on the edge of the upper Shenandoah Valley between 1760 and 1810.

Reconstructin...

Cowinner, 2008 Fred Kniffen Book Award. Pioneer America Society/Association for the Preservation of Landscapes and Artifacts
Winner, 2009 Hagley Prize in Business History. The Business History Conference

How did people living on the early American frontier discover and then become a part of the market economy? How do their purchases and their choices revise our understanding of the market revolution and the emerging consumer ethos? Ann Smart Martin provides answers to these questions by examining the texture of trade on the edge of the upper Shenandoah Valley between 1760 and 1810.

Reconstructing the world of one country merchant, John Hook, Martin reveals how the acquisition of consumer goods created and validated a set of ideas about taste, fashion, and lifestyle in a particular place at a particular time. Her analysis of Hook's account ledger illuminates the everyday wants, transactions, and tensions recorded within and brings some of Hook's customers to life: a planter looking for just the right clock, a farmer in search of nails, a young woman and her friends out shopping on their own, and a slave woman choosing a looking glass.

This innovative approach melds fascinating narratives with sophisticated analysis of material culture to distill large abstract social and economic systems into intimate triangulations among merchants, customers, and objects. Martin finds that objects not only reflect culture, they are the means to create it.

Reviews

Reviews

A wonderful book. It is impressively researched, logically organized, and well written. And far more than most accounts of the colonial backcountry, it introduces real people making choices about how to construct their worlds and how to present themselves to their neighbors and friends.

By salvaging and examining the transactions of one merchant operating in the Atlantic economy of the period, [Martin] reveals much that is valuable about the world of goods and indicates several possible directions for future study.

The writing is lively and easily understandable, and the mixture of methods used to study the accounts of Hook and the vast variety of topics addressed result in a book that would have broad appeal to antique and historic house enthusiasts, re-enactors and local historians.

The best study we have to date of early American consumerism.

An important contribution to the study of consumption in early America that also provides wonderful insight into the significant role of objects in illuminating the past.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6.125
x
9.25
Pages
288
ISBN
9780801898266
Illustration Description
12 color photos, 34 halftones, 4 line drawings
Table of Contents

Series Editor's Foreword
Preface
Introduction: In Backcountry Time
1. The Business of Revolutions: John Hook and the Atlantic World
William Mead's Scottish Clock
2. Getting the Goods: Local Acquisition in

Series Editor's Foreword
Preface
Introduction: In Backcountry Time
1. The Business of Revolutions: John Hook and the Atlantic World
William Mead's Scottish Clock
2. Getting the Goods: Local Acquisition in a Tobacco Economy
The Iron Plate
3. Accounting for Life: Objects, Names, and Numbers
The Ledger
4. Living the Backcountry: Styles and Standards
The Wade Cabin in Backcountry Time
5. Setting the Stage, Playing the Part: Stores as Shopping Spaces
Ribbons of Desire
6. Suckey's Looking Glass: African Americans as Consumers
Mirrors and Meanings
Epilogue: Country Gentleman in a New Country: John Hook's Beef
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

Author Bio
Featured Contributor

Ann Smart Martin

Ann Smart Martin is Chipstone Professor and Director of the interdisciplinary Material Culture Program, Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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