The Marketplace of Revolution : How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence

The Marketplace of Revolution offers a boldly innovative interpretation of the mobilization of ordinary Americans on the eve of independence. Breen explores how colonists who came from very different ethnic and religious backgrounds managed to overcome difference and create a common cause capable of galvanizing resistance. In a richly interdisciplinary narrative that weaves insights into a changing material culture with analysis of popular political protests, Breen shows how virtual strangers managed to communicate a sense of trust that effectively united men and women long before they had established a nation of their own. 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 man and women--precisely the people most often overlooked in traditional accounts of revolution--experienced an exhilarating surge of empowerment. Breen recreates 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. "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 [This work] 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." "[The author] 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. [This book] 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 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction: The Revolutionary Politics of Consumption......Page 12 1 Tale of the Hospitable Consumer: A Revolutionary Argument......Page 22 Part One: An Empire of Goods......Page 52 2 Inventories of Desire: The Evidence......Page 54 3 Consumers' New World: The Unintended Consequences of Commercial Success......Page 93 4 Vade Mecum: The Great Chain of Colonial Acquisition......Page 123 5 The Corrosive Logic of Choice: Living with Goods......Page 169 Part Two: "A Commercial Plan for Political Salvation"......Page 214 6 Strength out of Dependence: Strategies of Consumer Resistance in an Empire of Goods......Page 216 7 Making Lists—Taking Names: The Politicization of Everyday Life......Page 256 8 Bonfires of Tea: The Final Act......Page 315 Notes......Page 354 B......Page 394 C......Page 395 F......Page 396 L......Page 397 N......Page 398 R......Page 399 U......Page 400 Y......Page 401 T.h. Breen. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [333]-371) And Index.