The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence

T.H. Breen's "The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence" is a remarkable achievement and a milestone in the field of historiography. Through creative use of a wide variety of unusual sources - including trash pits and ceramic dishes - Breen successfully alters the way the reader may think about the causes of the American Revolution. Contrary to popular national mythology, the eighteenth century was not a pastorally rustic era of the simple homespun life: that was actually the seventeenth century, which, according to Breen, was "as different in terms of material culture [from the mid- to late-1700s] . . . as our times are from the late nineteenth century." Enthusiastic participation in a dynamic global economy, Breen argues, provided the foundation for much of the later rhetoric of liberty, self-determination, limited government, and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, the freedom of choice and empowerment found in the marketplace quickly translated into politics when relations between Great Britain and its colonies began to unravel. Experience within that same marketplace had unified Americans in a common commercial culture that would soon extend deeper than goods and advertising. Breen believes that too much scholarship of the American Revolution has focused on "carefully crafted pamphlets that learned men, many of them lawyers, prepared in defense of American rights and liberties." (I guess Bernard Bailyn's "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" would be a good example of this.) By contrast, Breen argues, it was "consumer virtue" - the exercise self-restraint in the marketplace - that proved to be a far more potent force in the non-importation movements than the elite republican tradition that "influenced some highly educated colonial American leaders who wrote formal pamphlets." He actually refers to pamphlet-writing as a "parallel discourse" that ran alongside "ordinary men and women [who] were being asked . . . to sacrifice personal comforts for the common good." In reality, newspapers were far more influential. It was the newspapers than ran the advertisements that stimulated demand and spread a uniform commercial culture, and then later helped to unite America by carrying news of the boycotts and other political activities, thereby assuring each colony that it had the support of the others. Even before the tax crises that began with the Stamp Act in 1764, the commercial revolution of the 1740s had enabled ordinary men and women to exercise the power of choice and self-definition as they sorted out their options in an expanding marketplace. As variety increased, decisions became ever more meaningful and self-empowering until one citizen could declare on the eve of independence that "I, for myself, chose that there should be many Stores filled with every Kind of thing that is convenient and useful, that I might have my choices of Goods, . . . whether foreign or homemade; I would ha

This book is an excellent look at the social and economic life of Colonial America and how each of these factors played into the Revloutionary War. Some of the most facinating aspects of this book are his discussions of the use of danty European goods, such as fine China and silks, used on the frontier, and how the use of these goods gave the impression of colonial America to visiting Europeans as a nation of vast wealth and frivolous consumers. This aspect of Colonial history gives great insight into not only the deep connections to British manufacturing in the colonies, but futhermore gives excellent insight into the work of creditors, debt, and the true break that came with the American Revolution. Breen's analysis of North-South divisions that contributed to the difficulties of the boycotts of the Stamp Act and eventual bonds that were created between the two during the boycott of the Intollerable Acts that helped the progression to independence are facinating to say the least. Furthermore, one can not help but smile at Breen's discussion of the boycotts and Thomas Jefferson's dismay of not being able to import is treasures from Europe. Though much of this was covered in Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Breen condences Wood's work into a much more managable read.

This book presents a dense and detailed account of consumer activity leading up to the american revolution. At first I was intimidated and worried that it wouldn't hold my interest. But I was wrong. It's so well-written and so interesting that I (almost) can't put it down. Some nights I only read 4 or 5 pages. But I relish each page, and I especially enjoy all the original quotes included from colonial americans. This book isn't just for historians or people that are already interested in american history. It's for everybody who wonders how our country came to be the way it is. Have you ever pondered our rampant consumerism? What caused it? Where did it come from? Maybe even how to curb it? Read this. This book tells the (true) story of an incredibly successful collective consumer effort that literally changed the world. It's been done before folks...

I found myself approaching this book as an excellent framework, or skeleton, upon which could be hung all of the other histories and biographies of the Revolutionary period. Here we do not deal so much with great historical figures, but rather with the civic discussions that evolved over time among and between everyday people as they transitioned from British patriots into American patriots. This is a compelling explanation of how and why that happened. As primary sources, Breen draws significantly upon the newspapers, letters, advertisements and broadsides that increasingly circulated among what was, at the time, one of the most literate societies on the planet. I found this to be an outstanding piece of work that contributed greatly to my understanding and comprehension of the forces that shaped the birth of this nation.

A strong book written in a very readable style that highlights the contribution of a developing consumer society to the political environment surrounding the revolution. This book puts the familar events of the revolution in a new (to me) perspective. I had never really considered how incongrous it was for the colonists to attack Tea, but as I was reading those events felt both newly strange and inevitable. I never felt bogged down in theory or arcane events, and I also felt newly empowered to effect political change through my own consumer choices. It also provided new insight to me regarding the american art in the period.