Oceans of wine : Madeira and the emergence of American trade and taste / David Hancock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hancock, David, 1957-

Series:

Lewis Walpole series in eighteenth-century culture and history

The Lewis Walpole series in eighteenth-century culture and history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Madeira wine--History--19th century.

Madeira wine.

Fortified wine industry--Madeira Islands--Madeira--History--19th century.

Fortified wine industry.

Madeira (Madeira Islands)--Commerce--Atlantic Ocean Region.

Madeira (Madeira Islands).

Atlantic Ocean Region--Commerce--Madeira Islands--Madeira.

Atlantic Ocean Region.

Commerce.

Madeira Islands--Madeira.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xxix, 632 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, ©2009.

Summary:

"This innovative book examines how, between 1640 and 1815, the Portuguese Madeira wine trade shaped the Atlantic world and American society. David Hancock painstakingly reconstructs the lives of producers. distributors, and consumers, as well as the economic and social structures created by globalizing commerce, to reveal an intricate interplay between individuals and market forces. Ranging widely across history, economics, chemistry, material culture, anthropology, archaeology, and psychology, Hancock paints an engaging portrait of a commodity and the societies that grew up around it. Wine lovers and Madeira enthusiasts will enjoy Oceans of Wine, as will historians interested in food, colonial trade, and the history of the Atlantic region." "Using voluminous archives of records pertaining to wine, many of them previously unexamined, Hancock offers a dramatic new perspective on the economic and social development of the Atlantic world by challenging traditional interpretations that have identified states and empires as the driving force behind trade. He demonstrates convincingly just how decentralized the early modern commercial system was, as well as how self-organized, a system that emerged from the actions of market participants working across imperial lines. The networks they formed began as commercial structures, and expanded into social and political systems that were conduits not only for wine but also for ideas about reform, revolution, and independence. Oceans if Wine reframes American history as Atlantic history, placing colonial America and the early republic within an expansive, global context."--Jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: "An unbounded ocean of business

laid open to us"

The triumph of Bacchus

The culture of the vine

The enlivening grape

"A revolution in this trade"

A "commerce of minds" : Madeira distributors and their customers

Merchants into capitalists

Strong networks of weak ties : importing and wholesaling wine in early America

The wet goods business

"Articles of nourishment both mundane and useful" : wine consumption in an emerging Atlantic economy

"Power to give sudden refreshment" and respect : health, refinement, and the consumption of wine

Ars bibendi : "the fashionable ornaments of life"

Coda: "The pleasures of the bottle"

Conclusion: "If Bacchus, not Neptune, were god of the sea."

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 579-591) and index.

Local Notes:

HSP Historic Culinry Arts Collection

ISBN:

9780300136050

0300136056

OCLC:

317471725

Online:

Rezension