This study examines the emergence of the middle class and consumerism in colonial America.

This interdisciplinary study presents compelling evidence for a revolutionary idea: that to understand the historical entrenchment of gentility in America, we must understand its creation among non-elite people: colonial middling sorts who laid the groundwork for the later American middle class. Focusing on the daily life of Widow Elizabeth Pratt, a shopkeeper from early eighteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island, Christina J. Hodge uses material remains as a means of reconstructing not only how Mrs Pratt lived, but also how these objects reflect shifting class and gender relationships in this period. Challenging the 'emulation thesis', a common assumption that wealthy elites led fashion and culture change while middling sorts only followed, Hodge shows how middling consumers were in fact discerning cultural leaders, adopting genteel material practices early and aggressively. By focusing on the rise and emergence of the middle class, this book brings new insights into the evolution of consumerism, class, and identity in colonial America.

This study examines the emergence of the middle class and consumerism in colonial America.

This study examines the emergence of the middle class and consumerism in colonial America.

In a richly interdisciplinary narrative, a historian offers a boldly innovative interpretation of the mobilization of ordinary Americans on the eve of independence. 19 halftones & 21 line illustrations.

A multidisciplinary analysis of the role of nutrition in generating hierarchical societies and cultivating a global epidemic of chronic diseases.

In the colonial era, Charleston, South Carolina, was the largest city in the American South. From 1700 to 1775 its growth rate was exceeded in the New World only by that of Philadelphia. The first comprehensive study of this crucial colonial center, Building Charleston charts the rise of one of early America's great cities, revealing its importance to the evolution of both South Carolina and the British Atlantic world during the eighteenth century. In many of the southern colonies, plantation agriculture was the sole source of prosperity, shaping the destiny of nearly all inhabitants, both free and enslaved. The insistence of South Carolina's founders on the creation of towns, however, meant that this colony, unlike its counterparts, would also be shaped by the imperatives of urban society. In this respect, South Carolina followed developments in the rest of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world, where towns were growing rapidly in size and influence. At the vanguard of change, burgeoning urban spaces across the British Atlantic ushered in industrial development, consumerism, social restructuring, and a new era in political life. Charleston proved no less an engine of change for the colonial Low Country, promoting early industrialization, forging an ambitious middle class, a consumer society, and a vigorous political scene. Bringing these previously neglected aspects of early South Carolinian society to our attention, Emma Hart challenges the popular image of the prerevolutionary South as a society completely shaped by staple agriculture. Moreover, Building Charleston places the colonial American town, for the first time, at the very heart of a transatlantic process of urban development.

Although transformations in retailing are of tremendous current interest, there is no single broad-ranging account of the evolution of retailing formats. A Business History of Retail fills this gap, providing a chronological presentation of changes in retail businesses and shopping experiences from pre-industrial times to the present. Retailing is explored as both an economic and a cultural phenomenon, tracing retail strategies and business operations as they are reconfigured by retailers adapting to changing conditions, new technologies, government policies, and evolving markets. Relationships between the makers, sellers, and buyers of goods are shaped and reshaped as retailers, large and small, respond to competition and pursue new opportunities. Areas of continuity are identified even as businesses grow and strategies evolve. After four centuries there are more retailers selling more merchandise in more ways to more customers. The mass consumption of goods and services is central to American and Canadian history and understanding consumer society requires understanding retailing. Combining original research with recent scholarship in business and social history, cultural theory, and readings in current retail business strategy, this study provides a valuable resource for students and scholars in a wide range of fields and will appeal to general readers with an interest in retail, shopping, and consumerism.

This volume offers the most comprehensive and incisive exploration of American consumer history to date, spanning the four centuries from the colonial era to the present.