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Phyllis Whitman Hunter - Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants, 1670–1780 - 9780801438554 - V9780801438554
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Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants, 1670–1780

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Description for Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants, 1670–1780 Hardback. Num Pages: 240 pages, 19. BIC Classification: 1KBBE; HBJK; HBLH; HBLL; JFCX; JFFT. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 229 x 152 x 21. Weight in Grams: 504.

Americans have always had a love-hate relationship with possessions. Early Americans suspected luxuries as a corrupting force that would lead to an aristocracy. In Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World, Phyllis Whitman Hunter demonstrates how elite Americans not only became infatuated with their belongings, but also avidly pursued consumption to shape their world and proclaim their success.

In eighteenth-century New England harbor towns, the commercial gentry led their communities into full participation in a flourishing Anglo-American consumer culture. Affluent traders constructed roads, wharves, and warehouses, built mansions and assembly buildings, adopted new forms of sociability, and fostered the rise ... Read more

Hunter then explores how revolutionary politics overturned polite society and transformed the meanings of possessions. Patriots threw tea to the fish in Boston Harbor, donned homespun at Harvard commencements, and transformed a silver punch bowl into an icon of liberty. The wealthy either espoused republican values and muted their material displays or fled to exile. Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World,reveals a critical link in the complex relationship between capitalism and culture: the process by which material goods become symbols of profound social and cultural significance.

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Product Details

Format
Hardback
Publication date
2001
Publisher
Cornell University Press United States
Number of pages
240
Condition
New
Number of Pages
240
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9780801438554
SKU
V9780801438554
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About Phyllis Whitman Hunter
Phyllis Whitman Hunter is Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Reviews for Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants, 1670–1780
The strength of Hunter's analysis lies in her emphasis on patterns of consumption, rather than production, as well as in her dependence on detailed case studies to illustrate each shift in this budding American consumerism.... Her analysis makes a significant contribution to the study of early American economic culture.
Virginia Quarterly Review
Hunter's fine study examines the cultural ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants, 1670–1780


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