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.A survey of New York City newspapers revealed, for example, thatduring the 1720s merchants seldom mentioned more than fifteen different imported itemsper month in their advertisements.The descriptions were generic: cloth, paper, ceramics.But by the 1770s it was not unusual during some busy months for New York journalsspecifically to list over 9,000 different manufactured goods.And as the number of itemsexpanded, the descriptive categories became more elaborate.In the 1740s New Yorkmerchants simply advertised paper. By the 1760s they listed seventeen varietiesdistinguished by color, function, and quality. Diversity and unity in early North America 166If, as many scholars currently argue, human beings constitute external reality throughlanguage, then the proliferation of manufactures during the eighteenth century may haveradically altered how Americans made sense out of everyday activities.The consumermarket provided them with an impressive new vocabulary, thousands of words thatallowed them not only to describe a changing material culture but also to interpret theirplace within it.Adams demonstrated this point when in his diary he recorded hisreactions to the possessions of the wealthy Boston merchant.This language of goods wasshared by all who participated in the market.It was not the product of a particular regionor class, and thus furnished colonists with a means of transmitting experience acrosssocial and geographic boundaries.As we have seen, a visitor could engage the women ofNorth Carolina in a discourse about imported soap.It was a conversation that the womenof Virginia and Massachusetts would also have understood.An example of this kind of cultural exchange occurred in a Maryland tavern in 1744.A traveling physician from Annapolis witnessed a quarrel between an innkeeper and anindividual who by his external appearance seemed a rough spun, forward, clownishblade. The proprietor apparently shared this impression, because she served this personwho wore a greasy jacket and breeches and a dirty worsted cap a breakfast fit forsome plough-man or carman. The offended customer vehemently protested that he toowas a gentleman and to prove his status, pulled a linen hat out of his pocket.He theninformed the embarrassed assembly that he was able to afford better than many whowent finer: he had good linnen in his bags, a pair of silver buckles, silver clasps, and goldsleeve buttons, two Holland shirts, and some neat night caps; and that his little woman atthome drank tea twice a day. What catches our attention is not the man s clumsy attemptto negotiate status through possessions people have been doing that for centuries butrather that he bragged of owning specific man-ufactured goods, the very articles that werejust then beginning to transform American society.He assumed correctly, in this casethat the well-appointed stranger he encountered in a country tavern understood thelanguage of shirts, buckles, and tea.12This expanding consumer world of the mid-eighteenth century led almost inevitably toa standardization of the marketplace.To be sure, as the previous anecdote suggests,Americans had begun to define status in relation to commodities.In this they were notespecially unique.Throughout the Atlantic world choice created greater, more visiblemarks of distinction.Nevertheless by actually purchasing manufactured imports asopposed to making do with locally produced objects, by participating in an expandingcredit network, and by finding oneself confronted with basically the same types of goodswhich were now on sale in other, distant communities, Americans developed a commonelement of personal experience.One can only speculate, of course, why colonial shoppers purchased certain items.They may have been looking for status, beauty, convenience, or price.Whatever thejustification may have been, the fact remains that people living in different parts ofAmerica were exposed to an almost identical range of imported goods.In part, thisstandardization of the marketplace resulted from the manufacturing process; after all,there were only so many dyes and glazes and finishes available during this period.TheStaffordshire ceramics, for example, that sold in Charleston were of the same generalshapes and colours as the Staffordshireware that sold in the shops of Philadelphia, NewYork, and Boston.Indeed an examination of newspaper advertisements in these colonial The American and consumer Revolutions of the eighteenth century 167ports reveals no evidence of the development of regional consumer taste.Britishmerchants sent to America what they could obtain from the manufacturers; the colonistsbought whatever the merchants shipped.It is not surprising, therefore, to discover aVirginian in 1766 exclaiming, Now nothing are so common as Turkey or WiltonCarpetts
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Tematy
IndexJoel Fleishman The Foundation, A Great American Secret; How Private Wealth is Changing the World (2009)
Mark A. Noll, Luke E. Harlow Religion and American Politics, From the Colonial Period to the Present (2007)
Jesse Fox Mayshark Post pop cinema; The search for meaning in new America (2007)(1)
William Inboden Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945 1960, The Soul of Containment (2008)
Jane Elliott Popular Feminist Fiction as American Allegory, Representing National Time (2008)
Cathy J. Cohen Democracy Remixed, Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (2010)
Heather Cox Richardson West from Appomattox, The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (2007)
Untamed Hearts 1 The Viper Kele Moon
Lerum May Grethe Puchar Boga Słońca 04 Ogień
Halliday Gemma Maddie Springer 01 ÂŚledztwo na wysokich obcasach