Susan Flavin. Consumption and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland: Saffron, Stockings and Silk .

Abstract

This study emanates from a broader research project on Ireland and Bristol, and builds off of Susan Flavin’s previous publication Bristol’s Trade with Ireland and the Continent, 1503–1601: The Evidence of the Exchequer Customs Accounts (2009) a volume co-edited with Evan Jones. Consumption and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland: Saffron, Stockings and Silk uses this material—and much more—to make a significant contribution to our understanding of consumption and the flow of goods in sixteenth-century Ireland and beyond. The fact that part of the project dealt with the continent likely encouraged Flavin’s comparative perspective from the outset, and this is certainly brought to bear here—although Flavin is also alive to important colonial models, for example, those of the West Indies and the American colonies. The leitmotif of the piece is a desire to move beyond binary understandings of consumption, that is, a quantitative versus a semiotics-driven “meanings of goods” approach, using an interdisciplinary palette that includes visual art and archaeology as well as the customs records that form the centerpiece of her work. Compared to the work on eighteenth-century consumption, that on sixteenth-century Ireland is in its infancy, and without sizeable collections of wills, inventories, and, indeed, newspapers, the historian of this field needs to be creative—and that is where the customs records come in. Conveniently the richness of the Bristol records is unrivaled, and happily also it was Ireland’s most important export location for overseas trade in this period. The material achieves greater relevance after 1565, as it lists the port of arrival in Ireland and the address and occupation of the importing merchant. A major advantage of the data drawn from these records is that it allows the historian to find a host of lesser, even disposable, consumer items that might not have found their way into wills. This includes certain fabrics, cooking ingredients, and, as illustrated in some particularly revealing sections, consumer items relating to children, including bibs and bottles.