Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia

by Ann Smart Martin

Overview

Cowinner, 2008 Fred Kniffen Book Award. Pioneer America Society/Association for the Preservation of Landscapes and Artifacts

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801898488
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2010
Series:	Studies in Early American Economy and Society from the Library Company of Philadelphia
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	7 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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

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 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

Editorial 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.
—Daniel B. Thorp, Journal of Southern History

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.
—Michelle Craig McDonald, Business History Review

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.
—Mary Ferrari, Roanoke Times

The best study we have to date of early American consumerism.
—Paul G. E. Clemens, Reviews in American History

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.
—Adrienne D. Hood, William and Mary Quarterly

This is a book that quite forcefully offers an interdisciplinary analysis based on the abilities of the art historian and the economic historian, a person at ease with artifacts and dusty will books and skilled at describing local vernacular architecture and long-distance consumer behavior. It joins the list of must-read books for anyone interested in economic behavior and consumer practices in the early modern Atlantic basin.
—Peter C. Mancall, Winterthur Portfolio

Exceptional. An analytical model that will advance the field of material culture.
—Trudy Eden, The Historian

An impressive example of what thinking in multidisciplinary ways about the uses and meaning of material culture can reveal about past lives . . . Martin has melded several approaches to her subject to great effect, and this work will be incredibly useful not only to those interested in the eighteenth-century Virginia backcountry, but also to any historical scholar who wishes to understand consumerism and its relationship to things and individual identity.
—Jamie C. Brandon, Enterprise and Society

From the Publisher

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

Reviews in American History - Paul G. E. Clemens

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.

Business History Review - Michelle Craig McDonald

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.

Roanoke Times - Mary Ferrari

This is a book that quite forcefully offers an interdisciplinary analysis based on the abilities of the art historian and the economic historian, a person at ease with artifacts and dusty will books and skilled at describing local vernacular architecture and long-distance consumer behavior. It joins the list of must-read books for anyone interested in economic behavior and consumer practices in the early modern Atlantic basin.

Winterthur Portfolio - Peter C. Mancall

An impressive example of what thinking in multidisciplinary ways about the uses and meaning of material culture can reveal about past lives . . . Martin has melded several approaches to her subject to great effect, and this work will be incredibly useful not only to those interested in the eighteenth-century Virginia backcountry, but also to any historical scholar who wishes to understand consumerism and its relationship to things and individual identity.

Enterprise and Society - Jamie C. Brandon

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.

William and Mary Quarterly - Adrienne D. Hood

Exceptional. An analytical model that will advance the field of material culture.

The Historian - Trudy Eden

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.

Journal of Southern History - Daniel B. Thorp

Ann Smart Martin's Buying into the World of Goods is an impressive example of what thinking in multidisciplinary ways about the uses and meaning of material culture can reveal about past lives... Martin has melded several approaches to her subject to great effect, and this work will be incredibly useful not only to those interested in the eighteenth-century Virginia backcountry, but also to any historical scholar who wishes to understand consumerism and its relationship to things and individual identity.

— Jamie C. Brandon

Enterprise and Society

Exceptional. An analytical model that will advance the field of material culture.

— Trudy Eden

The Historian