From privileges to rights : work and politics in colonial New York City / Simon Middleton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Middleton, Simon (Simon David)

Series:

Early American studies

Early American Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Artisans--New York (State)--New York--History.

Artisans.

Entrepreneurship--New York (State)--New York--History.

Entrepreneurship.

Working class--New York (State)--New York--History.

Working class.

New York (N.Y.)--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

New York (N.Y.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (317 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

From Privileges to Rights connects the changing fortunes of tradesmen in early New York to the emergence of a conception of subjective rights that accompanied the transition to a republican and liberal order in eighteenth-century America.Tradesmen in New Amsterdam occupied a distinct social position and, with varying levels of success, secured privileges such as a reasonable reward and the exclusion of strangers from their commerce. The struggle to maintain these privileges figured in the transition to English rule as well as Leisler's Rebellion. Using hitherto unexamined records from the New York City Mayor's Court, Simon Middleton also demonstrates that, rather than merely mastering skilled crafts in workshops, artisans participated in whatever enterprises and markets promised profits with a minimum of risk. Bakers, butchers, and carpenters competed in a bustling urban economy knit together by credit that connected their fortunes to the Atlantic trade.In the early eighteenth century, political and legal changes diminished earlier social distinctions and the grounds for privileges, while an increasing reliance on slave labor stigmatized menial toil. When an economic and a constitutional crisis prompted the importation of radical English republican ideas, artisans were recast artisans as virtuous male property owners whose consent was essential for legitimate government. In this way, an artisanal subject emerged that provided a constituency for the development of a populist and egalitarian republican political culture in New York City.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Introduction

Chapter 1 "Earning a beaver": Tradesmen in New Amsterdam

Chapter 2 "Like a child in their debt and consequently their slave": The Transition to English Rule, 1664-1691

Chapter 3 "Diverse necessaries and conveniences work found and provided": Trading in a Craft Economy, 1691-1730

Chapter 4 "The only obstruction at this present is our want of people": The Labor Problem, 1691-1730

Chapter 5 "So much as he should reasonably deserve to have": Tradesmen and the English Common Law

Chapter 6 "C'mon brave boys let us be brave for liberty and law": Artisans and Politics, 1730-1763

Chapter 7 Conclusion

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [229]-294) and index.

ISBN:

9781283897334

1283897334

9780812207224

081220722X

OCLC:

843076800