Capitalism by Gaslight : Illuminating the Economy of Nineteenth-Century America / Brian P. Luskey, Wendy A. Woloson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Luskey, Brian P., Editor.

Woloson, Wendy A., Editor.

Series:

Early American studies.

Early American Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Informal sector (Economics)--United States--History--19th century.

Informal sector (Economics).

Capitalism--United States--History--19th century.

Capitalism.

United States--Social conditions--19th century.

United States.

United States--Economic conditions--19th century.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (325 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

While elite merchants, financiers, shopkeepers, and customers were the most visible producers, consumers, and distributors of goods and capital in the nineteenth century, they were certainly not alone in shaping the economy. Lurking in the shadows of capitalism's past are those who made markets by navigating a range of new financial instruments, information systems, and modes of transactions: prostitutes, dealers in used goods, mock auctioneers, illegal slavers, traffickers in stolen horses, emigrant runners, pilfering dock workers, and other ordinary people who, through their transactions and lives, helped to make capitalism as much as it made them.Capitalism by Gaslight illuminates American economic history by emphasizing the significance of these markets and the cultural debates they provoked. These essays reveal that the rules of economic engagement were still being established in the nineteenth century: delineations between legal and illegal, moral and immoral, acceptable and unsuitable were far from clear. The contributors examine the fluid mobility and unstable value of people and goods, the shifting geographies and structures of commercial institutions, the blurred boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate economic activity, and the daily lives of men and women who participated creatively—and often subversively—in American commerce.With subjects ranging from women's studies and African American history to material and consumer culture, this compelling volume illustrates that when hidden forms of commerce are brought to light, they can become flashpoints revealing the tensions, fissures, and inequities inherent in capitalism itself.Contributors: Paul Erickson, Robert J. Gamble, Ellen Gruber Garvey, Corey Goettsch, Joshua R. Greenberg, Katie M. Hemphill, Craig B. Hollander, Brian P. Luskey, Will B. Mackintosh, Adam Mendelsohn, Brendan P. O'Malley, Michael D. Thompson, Wendy A. Woloson.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Loomis Gang’s Market Revolution

Chapter 2. The Promiscuous Economy: Cultural and Commercial Geographies of Secondhand in the Antebellum City

Chapter 3. The Era of Shinplasters: Making Sense of Unregulated Paper Money

Chapter 4. The Rag Race: Jewish Secondhand Clothing Dealers in England and America

Chapter 5. Lickspittles and Land Sharks: The Immigrant Exploitation Business in Antebellum New York

Chapter 6. “The World Is But One Vast Mock Auction”: Fraud and Capitalism in Nineteenth- Century America

Chapter 7. Underground on the High Seas: Commerce, Character, and Complicity in the Illegal Slave Trade

Chapter 8. “Some Rascally Business”: Thieving Slaves, Unscrupulous Whites, and Charleston’s Illicit Waterfront Trade

Chapter 9. Selling Sex and Intimacy in the City: The Changing Business of Prostitution in Nineteenth- Century Baltimore

Chapter 10. Economies of Print in the Nineteenth- Century City

Chapter 11. Back Number Budd: An African American Pioneer in the Old Newspaper and Information Management Business

Conclusion

Notes

Contributors

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

"The essays here contain revised and expanded versions of many of the papers presented at a conference jointly sponsored by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and the Library Company of Philadelphia"--Preface.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [237]-301) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jun 2020)

ISBN:

9780812291025

0812291026

OCLC:

903962753