Waubonsee Community College

The marketplace of revolution, how consumer politics shaped American independence, T.H. Breen

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 333-371) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The marketplace of revolution

bibliography

53324960

T.H. Breen

"The Marketplace of Revolution argues that the colonists' shared experience as consumers in a new imperial economy afforded them the cultural resources that they needed to develop a radical strategy of political protest - the consumer boycott. Never before had a mass political movement organized itself around disruption of the marketplace. As Breen demonstrates, often through anecdotes about obscure Americans, communal rituals of shared sacrifice provided an effective means to educate and energize a dispersed populace. The boycott movement - the signature of American resistance - invited colonists traditionally excluded from formal political processes to voice their opinions about liberty and rights within a revolutionary marketplace, an open, raucous public forum that defined itself around subscription lists passed door-to-door, voluntary associations, street protests, destruction of imported British goods, and incendiary newspaper exchanges. Within these exchanges was born a new form of politics in which ordinary men and women - precisely the people most often overlooked in traditional accounts of revolution - experienced an exhilarating surge of empowerment." "Breen re-creates an "empire of goods" that transformed everyday life during the mid-eighteenth century. Imported manufactured items flooded into the homes of colonists from New Hampshire to Georgia. The Marketplace of Revolution explains how at a moment of political crisis Americans gave political meaning to the pursuit of happiness and learned how to make goods speak to power."--Jacket

how consumer politics shaped American independence

Introduction: The revolutionary politics of consumption -- Tale of the hospitable consumer: a revolutionary argument -- pt. 1. An empire of goods -- Inventories of desire: the evidence -- Consumers' new world: the unintended consequences of commercial success -- Vade mecum: the great chain of colonial acquisition -- The corrosive logic of choice: living with goods -- pt. 2. "A commercial plan form political salvation" -- Strength out of dependence: strategies of consumer resistance in an empire of goods -- Making lists- taking names: the politicization of everyday life -- Bonfires of tea: the final act