The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650–1800, by Robert S. DuPlessis

Abstract

This outstanding book by Robert S. DuPlessis has a great deal to recommend it to researchers working on the Atlantic World, as well as to postgraduate and undergraduate students. Its accessible style should be a model for all academics intending to set pen to paper. Its historical scholarship is exemplary, with wide-ranging evidence analysed thoroughly. I did not want to put this book down. The breadth of coverage is admirable—it truly tackles the Atlantic World mission head on, and refuses to limit itself by continent, by linguistic group or by region. It incorporates evidence from the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, French Atlantics and, unusually, from the Cape Colony. Some of the evidence used comes from inventories and commercial records, alongside a wide range of other documents and visual images. DuPlessis acknowledges that most sources are produced by Europeans and so African and native voices are rarely heard directly. A key aspect of the book is its surveying of contemporaries’ changing attitudes to clothes through concepts such as luxury and status display. Dress was also linked to the process of othering as judgements were made about the levels of civilisation and civility based on clothing. European accusations of nakedness applied in Africa and the Americas are shown to be constructs, as DuPlessis argues that Europeans were often aware of the subtleties of native dress. He examines distinctions between pelt and textile, between types of textile and between colours, showing that, even within one racial group or one region, clothing was far from homogeneous.