Trading Spaces
The Colonial Marketplace and the Foundations of American Capitalism
Published on 6. July 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
296 pages
978-0-226-83327-9 (ISBN)
Description
Looks at the shift from the marketplace as an actual place to a theoretical idea and how this shaped the early American economy.
When we talk about the economy, "the market" is often just an abstraction. While the exchange of goods was historically tied to a particular place, capitalism has gradually eroded this connection to create our current global trading systems. In Trading Spaces, Emma Hart argues that Britain's colonization of North America was a key moment in the market's shift from place to idea, with major consequences for the character of the American economy.
Hart's book takes in the shops, auction sites, wharves, taverns, fairs, and homes of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America-places where new mechanisms and conventions of trade arose as Europeans re-created or adapted continental methods to new surroundings. Since those earlier conventions tended to rely on regulation more than their colonial offspring did, what emerged in early America was a less-fettered brand of capitalism. By the nineteenth century, this had evolved into a market economy that would not look too foreign to contemporary Americans. To tell this complex transnational story of how our markets came to be, Hart looks back farther than most historians of US capitalism, rooting these markets in the norms of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. Perhaps most important, this is not a story of specific commodity markets over time but rather is a history of the trading spaces themselves: the physical sites in which the grubby work of commerce occurred and where the market itself was born.
When we talk about the economy, "the market" is often just an abstraction. While the exchange of goods was historically tied to a particular place, capitalism has gradually eroded this connection to create our current global trading systems. In Trading Spaces, Emma Hart argues that Britain's colonization of North America was a key moment in the market's shift from place to idea, with major consequences for the character of the American economy.
Hart's book takes in the shops, auction sites, wharves, taverns, fairs, and homes of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America-places where new mechanisms and conventions of trade arose as Europeans re-created or adapted continental methods to new surroundings. Since those earlier conventions tended to rely on regulation more than their colonial offspring did, what emerged in early America was a less-fettered brand of capitalism. By the nineteenth century, this had evolved into a market economy that would not look too foreign to contemporary Americans. To tell this complex transnational story of how our markets came to be, Hart looks back farther than most historians of US capitalism, rooting these markets in the norms of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. Perhaps most important, this is not a story of specific commodity markets over time but rather is a history of the trading spaces themselves: the physical sites in which the grubby work of commerce occurred and where the market itself was born.
Reviews / Votes
"Highly recommended. . . This thoroughly researched account offers a new interpretation that argues for the Colonial market's importance in the history of American capitalism and economic culture." * Choice * "An important contribution to our understanding of how markets functioned in the early modern British Atlantic. Providing detailed examination of evidence from sources such as newspapers, broadsides, court testimonies, maps, and private journals, Hart convincingly recreates what that early modern trading world looked like at the ground level, from the colonial era through the early American republic." * Journal of British Studies * "Ultimately,Trading Spaces tells the story of early American identity, weaving together social histories gathered from an array of qualitative sources with discussions of political economy. . . . her work starts a conversation that one hopes others will continue." * The Journal of Southern History * "Hart has crafted an important and accessible early economic history of American capitalism . . ." * North Carolina Historical Review * "Trading Spaces: The Colonial Marketplace and the Foundations of American Capitalism is an ambitious work that demonstrates how the mixture of different peoples in early North America created new tensions within traditional European ideas and practices about commerce, and thus contributed to the disembodied, unregulated market concept with which we are familiar today. In this vein, the book contributes to well-known debates about the origins of capitalism during the early modern period, as Hart shifts the focus from the counting houses of urban Europe to more quotidian activities on the ground, quite literally, in the colonial American world." * H-Atlantic * "Fascinating and insightful, Trading Spaces is a major contribution. Hart provides an important corrective to recent scholarship, reminding us that though capitalism may be a global system, it is enacted and effected locally. I can see no other book that makes clear the significance of market practice to the evolution of economic relations, political economy, and imperial politics in the way that Trading Spaces does." -- Joanna Cohen * author of Luxurious Citizens: The Politics of Consumption in Nineteenth-Century America * "Original and innovative. No other work brings early American economic experience into direct comparison with contemporary British practices and simultaneously explores the racial and ethnic dimensions of colonial marketplaces. Trading Spaces is well-reasoned and even-handed, but its argument should prove provocative in that it will ask early Americanists to reconsider their preconceptions. This will be an indispensable book." -- Christopher Clark * author of The Roots of Rural Capitalism * "A compelling addition to the history of capitalism, Trading Spaces reminds us that globalization's current realities have deep roots in the early modern era. Hart explores the shift from marketplaces to markets through the lens of colonization, revealing how the explosion of global trade gave rise to clashing visions about people's interactions with markets, with consequences for both America's independence and its capitalist future." -- Margaret Newell * author of Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
10 halftones, 1 table
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
399 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-83327-9 (9780226833279)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Emma Hart is a senior lecturer in modern history at the University of St. Andrews.
Content
Introduction
Part 1: The Early Modern Marketplace and its Colonial Encounter
1 A?Journey through Early Modern Trading Spaces
2 The Market Turned Upside Down
Part 2: Remaking the Marketplace
3 Making a Colonial Marketplace
4 The Resurgence of Early Modern Market Values
Part 3: Confronting the Colonial Marketplace
5 Revolution in the Marketplace
6 Making a Republican Marketplace
Conclusion: Constitution Making and the Marketplace
Epilogue:The Colonial Marketplace's American Legacy
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Part 1: The Early Modern Marketplace and its Colonial Encounter
1 A?Journey through Early Modern Trading Spaces
2 The Market Turned Upside Down
Part 2: Remaking the Marketplace
3 Making a Colonial Marketplace
4 The Resurgence of Early Modern Market Values
Part 3: Confronting the Colonial Marketplace
5 Revolution in the Marketplace
6 Making a Republican Marketplace
Conclusion: Constitution Making and the Marketplace
Epilogue:The Colonial Marketplace's American Legacy
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index