Luxury Trade Research Articles

Clean: a history of personal hygiene and purity

CLEAN is a history of the ideas and practices of personal cleansing and purity. It starts with world and Eurasian history, then focuses on Europe and finally, Britain. It takes a multidimensional and multi-temporal view of historical change, arguing that our universal bio-physical or animal cleansing mechanisms and grooming behaviour were gradually overlaid, on the different continents, by the human social history that began to emerge in the late Neolithic period. A developing culture and technology of cleansing can be found in the very early history of domestic habits, the early history of luxurious cosmetic adornments, the history of religious ascetic philosophy, and in later Greco-Roman medical science. In Europe after the fall of Rome, these different strands of thought and activity were resurrected via neo-classical science and health education, and \(in England\) via a radical Protestant, puritan, interpretation of physiology that underlaid the ‘gospel of cleanliness’ r eform movements in the 19th century. Cosmetic beauty care had a more chequered career, in the face of ascetic disapproval, but the skin-cleansing warm bath finally became widely available in the mid 19th century. The microbiological and macrobiological sciences of hygiene were fully incorporated into personal and public health-care during the first half of the twentieth century\; but as the MRSA outbreaks show, old-style hygienic technology is still required, while the so-called ‘hygiene theory’ suggests it may be possible to be too clean for our own good. The moral psychology of hygiene suffered an ideological post-war eclipse after the puritanical eugenics of Nazism, but has since been embraced by the global public in new forms – personal health regimes, green pollution ecology, food purity scares and ascetic religious fundamentalism. Meanwhile cosmetic care is one of the fastest-expanding areas of investment in the late 20th-early 21st century luxury trades.

Immigrants and the Industries of London, 1500-1700

Current concern for the scale for immigration into the UK has stimulated ever more research since the 1980s. William Cunningham's book on the subject in 1897 led the way. Now, over a century later, the bibliography of secondary sources in this present book runs to nearly thirty pages, and includes at least ten theses that are directly relevant but are as yet unpublished. So Dr Luu's work constitutes another landmark, in particular lighting up the present state of research by focusing on London, and signalling the dramatic change that has taken place in the resources available for research. Her book makes use of a database compiled on a computer, so it is a markedly orderly analysis, ranges over an extensive bibliography, and enables her to offer many helpful, basic lists and tables that will assist future researchers. The result is a stimulating discussion, asking and responding to many searching questions. It is not only concerned with gauging government policy and public opinion, but explores thoroughly practical questions about the way individuals acted and reacted to migration and migrants. Some of the story is so thoroughly familiar in our present-day experience, indeed, that readers will gasp at some passages; we are going over the same ground all over again. Here lie valuable lessons from the past for today. The book is concerned with London only, and focuses particularly on three trades, silk-weaving, silver-working, and beer-brewing. Having given in the first two chapters a general survey of the existing historiography, and summarised England's economic place in Europe, the author succinctly describes the emergence of a national policy to encourage immigration and the importing of new skills, and the varying results countrywide. She then, from Chapter 4 onwards, focuses on the London scene, telling a satisfying story of the changing strategies chosen by government, the City authorities and gilds through the decades, and responses by the foreigners themselves. Each industry directs attention to different facets of the migrant problem. Silk relied on imports of the raw material, and success resulted mainly from weaving skills, and the choice of highly varied types of silk cloth of medium quality, certainly not the high-value velvets, brocades and tissues made elsewhere in Europe. The beer industry flourished because ‘Dutch’ (often meaning German) brewers were from the start acknowledged to have the supreme skills. Hopped beer was dubbed poisonous at first, but then became acceptable, and then popular. Money inflation encouraged beer drinking (beer costing, at first, half the price of ale), male brewers took charge, and the ale wives were sidelined (this should focus our attention on the women's need to find other work). Capital expenditure on much new brewing equipment enlarged enterprises; so some foreigners found it advantageous to marry the widows of English brewers; by 1650 brewing was assimilated into English hands. In passing, we should note that people became accustomed to beer as a cold drink only, and had to learn to stomach a different taste when the furnaces were fired by coal instead of wood. Here Luu is noticeably alert to the multifarious facets of change. Silver-working lights up yet other changing circumstances: the skill was desirable because of the enhanced ceremonial role of exchanging gifts. Continental traditions for training gave foreigners the edge by insisting on their completing a ‘masterpiece’ and by encouraging apprentices to undertake Wanderjahre, working for some years under different masters. Fashions in design also placed the Huguenot French in the forefront of the business at the end of the seventeenth century. This book is so wide-ranging; it instils a host of ideas for further exploration, not the least of which is the list on page 315 of 24 further new trades and 31 luxury trades introduced by the aliens. Each assuredly will offer further insights into the busy world of consumerism at this period. Dr Luu's book is an alluring signpost inviting followers.

The Swiss Connection: International Networks in some Eighteenth-Century Luxury Trades

The Swiss Connection: International Networks in some Eighteenth-Century Luxury Trades

:Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Regime Paris

:<i>Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Regime Paris</i>

Shorter notice. Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Regime Paris. Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce. R Fox, A Turner [eds

Shorter notice. Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Regime Paris. Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce. R Fox, A Turner [eds

PUNT AND AKSUM: EGYPT AND THE HORN OF AFRICA

The ancient Egyptians tended to consider both their immediate and more remote neighbours either as excellent sources of luxury trade items and slaves, at times of political power and strength, or as uncivilized forces threatening to destroy and overwhelm the Egyptian Nile Valley. This was true not only of cultures within Africa; those in the Aegean, the Levant, Cyprus and Mesopotamia also were viewed from one or the other perspective, occasionally both at the same time. All these, together with Nubia and Libya, have received much scholarly attention and, whilst we probably will never fully understand their ancient relationship to Egypt, we have a fairly good idea, ‘hearing’ the story from both sides when surviving evidence allows, what their attitudes towards each other were at various times in their history.This article deals with what is surely the least investigated aspect of ancient Egyptian relations with its neighbours, simply because we know comparatively little about the two major successive cultures concerned – Punt and Aksum – in the ancient world.

The Impact of the Horse and Silk Trade on the Economies of T'ang China and the Uighur Empire: On the Importance of International Commerce in the Early Middle Ages

With a few notable exceptions, economic historians dealing with the Early Middle Ages (circa 625-840 A.D. )) in Europe and Asia have agreed that international commerce consisted almost exclusively of a low-volume luxury trade affecting the upper class alone. 2) Accordingly, they consider the economies of individual states to have been essentially independent of other national economies. This view thus denies any real importance to early medieval international trade via both land and sea routes. 3)

Work and wages: natural law, politics and the eighteenth-century French trades

List of figures and tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations and units of measurement Introduction 1. The limits of money 2. Images of artisans 3. Journeymen and the law 4. The world of the trades 5. Patterns of employment: the economy of the trades and the economy of the bazaar 6. Work, wages and customs 7. The Parisian luxury trades and the workshop economy 8. Conflict and the courts 9. Journeymen's migrations and the mythology of the 'compagnonnages' 10. Artisans, 'sans-culottes' and the politics of Republicanism Conclusion Appendix Bibliography Index.

The Cloth Exports of Flanders and Northern France during the Thirteenth Century: A Luxury Trade?

The Cloth Exports of Flanders and Northern France during the Thirteenth Century: A Luxury Trade?

The cloth exports of Flanders and northern France during the thirteenth century: a luxury trade?

pirenne was emphatic that the wool textiles of Flanders and northern France that were exported throughout Europe and to the Levant during the thirteenth century and formed the basis of the prosperity of the region were the full force of the term luxury products. Although this view has been questioned, it remains the accepted orthodoxy. The most recent historian of Flanders, for example, repeats Pirenne almost word for word and goes on to describe the Flemish cloth as a product held in matchless esteem by an exclusive public throughout Europe. The present study aims to provide a more comprehensive picture than has so far been undertaken of the structure of the trade and to address more particularly the question of whether the cheaper varieties of cloth were an important component of the trade and what their characteristics were. On this basis the validity of the standard view can be tested.1 The pertinent evidence is of two types. There is commercial evidence, which itself falls into two categories; the record of actual transactions in notarial contracts and in the accounts of merchants and consumers on the one hand; and on the other, official schedules of prices, duties, and cloth lengths laid down by the authorities. Such documentation is largely limited to the Italian, southern French, and Iberian markets, but it is sufficient to permit a detailed breakdown of the relative prices of textiles entering into long-distance trade-both of woollen cloth proper and the various special types of cloth such as says, stanforts, and biffes and of their place of manufacture. On relative volumes, although it provides some pointers, it is not so informative; still less so on the classes of consumer. Secondly, there is the evidence of guild regulations, which, although not as abundant as for the subsequent period, survive from the later thirteenth century for a number of the major centres of production. These throw more light on the structure of the trade. More importantly, the specifications laid down by the guilds make it possible to relate the range of prices demonstrated by the commercial evidence to differences in the techniques of manufacture, and so of quality, an obscure

Entrepreneurial Traditionalism in Nineteenth-Century France: A Study of the Patronage industriel des enfants de l'ébénisterie

The late nineteenth century was a critical epoch in the history of French industry. During this period, many French industrialists adopted, for the first time, entrepreneurial attitudes towards business. At the same time, however, traditional skilled trades continued to play an important role in the national economy. In this article, Professor Weissbach explores the attitudes and practices of nineteenth-century entrepreneurs in the French luxury trade. By focusing specifically on the Patronage industriel des enfants de l'ébénisterie—an organization established to assist, educate, and moralize children apprentices in the French furniture industry—Weissbach reveals that traditional and entrepreneurial attitudes and practices coexisted throughout the nineteenth century.

The State and the Arts in Ottoman Turkey

The purpose of this article is to present to a wide public the documents relating to the construction of Süleymaniye published by the late ömer Lutfi Barkan and his team of collaborators in Süleymaniye Camii ve Inşaati, Vols. I, II (Ankara 1972, 1979). They strikingly illustrate the ability of the Ottoman central administration to co-ordinate complex operations minutely from a distance; and nothing of such detail exists for any monument of Istanbul before the early seventeenth century, or for any other building in the Islamic world.Some topics have already been considered in detail by Barkan, which explains the present choice of the sections of the accounts relating to furnishing and decorating Süleymaniye. They offer a mass of material of considerable intrinsic interest and of considerable value for the history of the luxury trades, both domestic and foreign, in sixteenth-century Ottoman Turkey. But simple translation is not enough: there are too many variant or dubious readings; the technical vocabulary is often recondite and the senses of certain terms must be a matter for conjecture; and the identification or designation of many of the materials is problematic.

The Inland Niger Delta before the Empire of Mali: Evidence from Jenne-Jeno

The dates and circumstances of early references to Jenne have led historians to conclude that the city originated relatively late in time. It is widely believed that the city developed simultaneously with Timbuktu in the mid-thirteenth century as an artifact of trans-Saharan trade. Persistent oral traditions of the foundation of Jenne in the eighth century are generally discounted.Recent archaeological excavations at the ancestral site of Jenne-jeno have established that iron-using and manufacturing peoples were occupying the site in the third century B.C. The settlement proceeded to grow rapidly during the first millennium a.d., reaching its apogee between a.d. 750 and 1100, at which time the settlement exceeded 33 hectares (82 acres) in size. The archaeological data are supported by the results of site survey within a 1,100-square-kilometre region of Jenne's traditional hinterland. During the late first millennium a.d., several nearby settlements comparable in size to Jenne-jeno existed, and the density of rural settlements may have been as great as ten times the density of villages in the hinterland today.Evidence from excavation and survey indicates that Jenne participated in inter-regional exchange relations far earlier than previously admitted. The stone and iron in the initial levels at Jenne-jeno were imported from outside the Inland Delta; levels dated to c.a.d. 400 yield copper, presumably from distant Saharan sources. The importance of the abundant staple products of Jenne's rural hinterland, including rice, fish and fish oil, is examined in a reassessment of the extent of inter-regional commerce and the emergence of urbanism during the first millennium a.d. Jenne-jeno may have been a principal participant in the founding of commercial centres on the Saharan contact zone of the Bend of the Niger, rather than a product of the luxury trade serviced by those centres.

The Wine Economy of Tenerife in the Seventeenth Century: Anglo-Spanish Partnership in a Luxury Trade

M /rUci of the terrain of the seven Canary Islands is either arid or forbiddingly mountainous. But along Tenerife's northern coast the 5oo-metre line (the altitudinal limit for sugar, wine, and banana cultivation) retreats inland-at Orotava almost 5 kilometres inland. And in the seventeenth century these cramped but fertile mountain slopes, terraced to prevent soil erosion and watered adequately by rainfall and springs, yielded a preponderant share of the entire archipelago's exportable wealth. In i6oo Tenerife accounted for 62 per cent of the total taxes on trade in the Canaries, and its share had grown by i688 to nearly go per cent.1 Likewise, the population of the archipelago was concentrated in Tenerife. One can estimate that the population of the seven islands grew from about 35,000 in I587 to 93,000 in i678 and that over half of the islanders lived in Tenerife at the later date.2 Tenerife's growing population and predominant share of the archipelago's trade resulted in part from geographical advantages, but also from a human victory over geographical obstacles. The prevailing winds and currents made the return voyage to Europe from the Canaries a difficult one for sailing ships. The fleets of Seville's monopoly trade to America, for example, followed the route of Columbus throughout the sixteenth century, stopped at the archipelago on the way west but seldom returned to Seville or Cadiz via the Canaries. The Azores became the Canaries des retours for the American fleets.3 And yet in the sixteenth century the Canarians were already outgrowing their role as mere victuallers of American-bound ships and were tying their export economy to the pulse of older and larger European markets to the north. Hundreds of ships sailed out from Europe to the Canarian ports and then returned north, battling the prevailing north-east winds, withstanding the dark and dirty weather of winter seas, to carry the rich produce of Tenerife to old and established European markets. Tax records, port books, and merchant letters, unexplored in previous studies of the Canarian economy, reveal that this trade was encouraged by the growth

The Wine Economy of Tenerife in the Seventeenth Century: Anglo-Spanish Partnership in a Luxury Trade

The Wine Economy of Tenerife in the Seventeenth Century: Anglo-Spanish Partnership in a Luxury Trade

Spanish Pottery Imported into Medieval Britain

MEDIEVAL POTTERY imported from Spain is divided into fine tin-glazed and coarse unglazed. or lead-glazed wares, and is found in contexts from the late 13th. to 15th century. It is difficult to distinguish late 14th and early 15th-century lustrewares made at the two main production centres in Andalucia and Valencia by visual examination of the fabric or of the type of decoration. The late 13th and early 14th-century Andalusian and the 15th-century Valencian wares are more characteristic. Eighty-three finds from thirty-five sites are described and twenty-eight other sites listed. There are about equal numbers of sherds from early and late contexts; but Valencian imports have a wider distribution, found at some forty sites as opposed to about twenty Andalusian sites. This was a limited luxury trade, largely in decorative bowls and dishes. Tin-glazed albarelli presumably came as containers, but jugs could have been either containers or imported for their appearance—unlike Saintonge jugs which came in much larger quantities as part of the SW. French wine trade. Thirty-six examples of unglazed or lead-glazed costrels, amphorae, storage vessels and bowls are described and dated to the 13th and 14th. centuries. These coarse wares were containers, but the small numbers imported again confirm their context in a limited luxury trade.

Administrative Policy and Practice in Sarawak: Continuity and Change Under the Brookes

AbstractOne hundred years of Brooke rule in Sarawak seem to present a stark contrast to the political and social foment in Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam. Cognizant of the ill effects of European domination in the archipelago, the Brookes established a paternalistic rule whose policies were designed to curtail European economic investment in the area and to protect the indigenous inhabitants from internal and external exploitation. However, despite the fact that Brooke rule was structured for maintaining traditional order, not development, the European interlude in north Bornean history may have been more of a deviation than is apparent. The suppression of “piracy” in the area and the political domination of the Brookes over most of the northeastern part of the island had several important results. First, the area trade patterns—if piracy can be seen as a form of luxury trade—were altered to the ultimate economic advantage of the Chinese who came to dominate retail trade. Second, the natural northeastern expansion of the Iban people was halted to the chief benefit of the indigenous Malays who gained significant political advantage under die Brookes. Finally, an inevitable depersonalization of rule occurred as the administration of the state became increasingly complex. If, in a “modern” world, a rule of law, not economic development per se, is the essential ingredient for political stability, Brooke rule made a significant contribution to the political viability of northern Borneo by fostering a White, civilized way of settling disputes.

Administrative Policy and Practice in Sarawak: Continuity and Change Under the Brookes

One hundred years of Brooke rule in Sarawak seem to present a stark contrast to the political and social foment in Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam. Cognizant of the ill effects of European domination in the archipelago, the Brookes established a paternalistic rule whose policies were designed to curtail European economic investment in the area and to protect the indigenous inhabitants from internal and external exploitation. However, despite the fact that Brooke rule was structured for maintaining traditional order, not development, the European interlude in north Bornean history may have been more of a deviation than is apparent. The suppression of “piracy” in the area and the political domination of the Brookes over most of the northeastern part of the island had several important results. First, the area trade patterns—if piracy can be seen as a form of luxury trade—were altered to the ultimate economic advantage of the Chinese who came to dominate retail trade. Second, the natural northeastern expansion of the Iban people was halted to the chief benefit of the indigenous Malays who gained significant political advantage under die Brookes. Finally, an inevitable depersonalization of rule occurred as the administration of the state became increasingly complex. If, in a “modern” world, a rule of law, not economic development per se, is the essential ingredient for political stability, Brooke rule made a significant contribution to the political viability of northern Borneo by fostering a White, civilized way of settling disputes.

Scholarly Reprints

ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENTS in publishing since the Second World War has been the growth, on both sides of the Atlantic, of the ‘scholarly reprint’ business. To readers who cannot afford to buy expensive books this may seem by now to have become something of a luxury trade, the high prices asked—two, three and four pounds a volume—suggesting excessive profits. But in the context of such things as university expansion and the establishment of specialist libraries in need of standard works not normally available in the well‐known cheap editions, reprints of books which enjoy an acknowledged reputation in the world of learning have suddenly assumed a new importance. The demand for certain classes of books is so great that secondhand booksellers cannot meet it: and even if they could, they are under certain disadvantages when their wares are contrasted with freshly reprinted material coming straight from a modern publishing house.

Lapis Lazuli: The Early Phases of Its Trade

The long standing importance of lapis lazuli in Mesopotamia is shown by the early date of its original importation during the Late Ubaid period. This was probably the first moment that man had sufficient wealth and leisure to begin the quest for luxuries. Hitherto his trade had been confined to the import of essential materials, such as flint and obsidian for blades. But during Gawra XIII he initiated a wide-ranging luxury trade, and for the first time we find beads of turquoise, amethyst, agate, jadeite, beryl and lapis lazuli. Most of these stones occur on the Iranian plateau, but there are only rumours of a source of lapis lazuli in Iran, which cannot be substantiated. The most likely source for this early Gawran lapis is, in fact, the mines at Badakhshan, some fifteen hundred miles to the east, across desert and mountain; and one of the principal reasons for investigating lapis lazuli was the tradition that it originated only from the Badakhshan mines. Although this exclusive claim cannot be regarded as proven, Badakhshan remains the only probable source, and it follows that as early as c. 3500 B.C. trade was established between ancient Iraq and distant Afghanistan—convincing proof of the widespread scope of early trade and communications.