A History of Global Consumption 1500 - 1800 [Paperback]

In A History of Global Consumption: 1500  1800, Ina Baghdiantz McCabe examines the history of consumption throughout the early modern period using a combination of chronological and thematic discussion, taking a comprehensive and wide-reaching view of a subject that has long been on the historical agenda. The title explores the topic from the rise of the collector in Renaissance Europe to the birth of consumption as a political tool in the eighteenth century.

Beginning with an overview of the history of consumption and the major theorists, such as Bourdieu, Elias and Barthes, who have shaped its development as a field, Baghdiantz McCabe approaches the subject through a clear chronological framework. Supplemented by illlustrations in every chapter and ranging in scope from an analysis of the success of American commodities such as tobacco, sugar and chocolate in Europe and Asia to a discussion of the Dutch tulip mania, A History of Global Consumption: 1500  1800is the perfect guide for all students interested in the social, cultural and economic history of the early modern period.

Introduction. 1. Collecting the World.  2. American Gold: Sugar, Tobacco and Chocolate.  3. Consuming the New World: Settlements and Transformation.  4. Domesticating the Exotic.  5. Treasures from the East: Tulips and the Fashion for Asia's Luxury Goods.  6. Consumption as a Global Phenomenon: Colonial Dreams and Financial Bubbles in Europe, China's Consumer Culture.  7. Resisting Exotic Luxuries: Simplicity and Boycotts in the Age of Revolutions.

Baghdiantz McCabes work advances a nuanced and incredibly important argument about how consumption structured a new cultural power dynamic, by bringing it into dialogue with the booming field of world history. This is a book, and an argument, with real importance for the intersections of culture, power, and global commerce l%