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Consumption and global history in the early modern period
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Berg, Maxine (2018) Consumption and global history in the early modern period. In: Roy, Tirthankar and Riello, Giorgio, (eds.) Global Economic History. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 118-136. ISBN 9781472588425
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Official URL: https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/global-economic-hist...
Abstract
The factors lying behind consumption, the choices, the stimulus and the complexities of satisfaction are central to explaining a history of consumption in the early modern world. What difference has global history made to the histories we have written of consumption? What part has consumption played in the factors considered in global economic history?
An economic history of consumption has eluded many economic historians. Many have continued instead to create larger data sets and to compare like with unlike on levels of wages and standards of living. In the space left by Pomeranz in the Great Divergence debate they have debated whether wages were different between regions of the world, and whether this factor drove other economic stimulants such as technological change. But all those factors explored by social and cultural historians behind changing consumer behaviour from status and social structure to gifts, diplomacy and display, and on to fashion, sensibility and identity have remained beyond the purvue of most economic historians. The window opened to such investigation by Jan de Vries’s concept of ‘industriousness’ has, however, provided little illumination into key consumer practices. Global economic history in fact turned attention away from such investigation. A global economic history must include global connections as well as global comparisons. The impact of exotic goods and of encounters between merchants from different parts of the world helped to transform the contents of the probate inventories, toll registers, thefts, foundling hospital identifiers, and indeed food baskets. Individual, micro and local studies are now revealing these in research such as that recounted here on cotton textiles. Different products and distinctive qualities, different preparations and presentations affected food baskets as much as domestic interiors and dress. There is much for global economic historians to discover at the micro level that will move us beyond the now very dated questions and materials still informing the big data sets of wages and prices.
Item Type: | Book Item | ||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Consumption (Economics) , Consumer behavior , Consumption (Economics)| -- History | ||||||
Publisher: | Bloomsbury Academic | ||||||
Place of Publication: | London | ||||||
ISBN: | 9781472588425 | ||||||
Book Title: | Global Economic History | ||||||
Editor: | Roy, Tirthankar and Riello, Giorgio | ||||||
Official Date: | 1 November 2018 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Number of Pages: | 370 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 118-136 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 15 March 2017 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 1 May 2020 | ||||||
Related URLs: |
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