Material London, ca. 1600. Edited by Lena C. Orlin. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. Pp. x, 393. $65.00, cloth; $26.50, paper

Jeremy Boulton

The Journal of Economic History, 2001, vol. 61, issue 4, 1114-1115

Abstract: This volume represents the proceedings of a conference held at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1995. It consists of five parts. In part 1, “Meanings of Material London,” David Harris Sacks explores the 1601 Essex Rebellion and finds its failure in the primacy that commercial relationships now held over older patron–client bonds. Will Kemp's Morris dance from London to Norwich, meanwhile, seemingly illustrates the way in which market capitalism corrupted civic virtue and traditional hospitality. Derek Keene's richly documented survey of the London economy reinforces the value of a long-term perspective on the capital's growth. The roots of London's consumption patterns can be traced back as far as 1300, and much of its skilled trades and mercantile expertise derived from Continental rather than native sources. Part 2 examines “Consumer Culture: Domesticating Foreign Fashion.” The title of Joan Thirsk's thoughtful essay “England's Provinces: Did They Serve or Drive Material London?” is an accurate guide to its content. Existing provincial skills could be exploited to develop new industries or crops catering either to the London market, or to gentry and aristocracy intent on creating islands of metropolitan taste in the provinces. Jane Schneider shows how the accession of James I ushered in a world in glorious technicolor, a welcome relief to the relative drabness of high Elizabethan fashion, and relates this sartorial revolution to familiar changes in England's overseas trade. Color is of concern also to Anne Jones and Peter Stallybrass, who describe the growing popularity of yellow “mantles” in the early seventeenth century, an enthusiasm that ignored their criminal and, worse, Irish associations. Jean Howard analyses Westward Ho, in order to explore attitudes to foreigners. Ian Archer's rewarding essay “Material Londoners?” begins part 3 of the volume. He explores the limited extent to which “new,” “acquisitive” commercial values conflicted with traditional Christian personal and communal values. This is followed by Gail Paster's examination of that age's peculiar fashion for ever more violent purges and evacuations. Patricia Fumerton contributes an essay notable for its wrongheaded conflation of the experience of vagrancy with that of London's servants and apprentices.

Date: 2001
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