Merchant Elite Research Articles

Ambition and identity: Chinese merchant elites in colonial Manila, 1880-1916

Ambition and identity: Chinese merchant elites in colonial Manila, 1880-1916

Aby Warburg and the Public Purposes of Art in Hamburg

This article considers Aby Warburg’s commitment to popular art education and his role in the creation of monumental artworks in Hamburg’s public realm. It considers his exhibition of drawings by Albrecht Dürer, mounted in the Volksheim in 1905, and examines his involvement with Willy von Beckerath’s mural decoration of the School of Art and Industry between 1913 and 1918. The distinctive nature of Warburg’s pedagogical goals is emphasized, partly by comparison with those of Alfred Lichtwark, director of Hamburg’s Kunsthalle. In an environment of political and social upheaval, Warburg advocated the contemplation of art to Hamburg’s working-class poor and merchant elite as a way of ameliorating social and psychological tensions. The specific episodes discussed in the article help illuminate Warburg s ideas about the public function of artworks. They also highlight the nature of Hamburg’s cultural life as the product of middle-class associations and scholars who devoted themselves to cultural affairs.

Pasqua Rosee's Coffee-House, 1652–1666

It has long been claimed that the first coffee-house in London was that of Pasqua Rosee in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill, in 1652. This essay sunreys the hitherto available sources for this claim, and observes that the claim derives from seventeenth and eighteenth century antiquarian evidence, all of it recorded some decades after the events described, as an act of recollection. When the coffee-house first became an object of historical interest in the 1690s, this antiquarian construction of Rosee's Coffee-house was established as authoritative, and has been widely repeated since in the twentieth century. Using archival evidence from vestry minutes and other parish and city records (primarily in the Guildhall Library and the Corporation of London Records Office), this essay establishes on firmer foundations the history of the first London coffee-house. Vestry minutes record the granting of leases to Rosee and his partner Christopher Bowman, from which the particular location of the coffee-house can be established. The essay argues that the early coffee-house was closely associated with the coffee-drinking culture of the London merchant elite, especially those associated with the Levant Company. By the Restoration, Bowman's coffee-house was one of many, and a celebrated part of the social life of London in the 1660s. Nonetheless, by the time Bowman's coffee-house was destroyed in the fire, its importance had been eclipsed by the Elford's Coffee-house in Exchange Alley.

Saltillo, 1770-1810: Town and Region in the Mexican North

Despite its location in the Mexican north, Saltillo, founded during the age of the Chichimeca wars of the mid–sixteenth century, is one of the older cities of Mexico. Looking at the settlement during the last decades of the eighteenth century, Offutt uses the careers and activities of politically important hacendados and merchants to construct a case for the importance of Saltillo in the region and in Mexican colonial history. Although she makes reference to a handful of more recent works throughout the book, her arguments, outlined in a brief introductory chapter, present a challenge primarily to the perspectives of François Chevalier and Herbert E. Bolton and the Boltonians—not exactly the most recent theoretical perspectives on the role of New Spain’s northern frontier in colonial history. As a result, the rest of the book, although it provides useful information on the mercantile and landed elites of Saltillo, feels stilted and narrow, and the reader never does get a good sense of “town and region”—only of select merchants and landowners.The mercantile sector gets attention first in a chapter that documents how the small merchant community of Saltillo closely mirrored patterns elsewhere in New Spain. She concludes that peninsular merchants, because they married into the local elite and made extensive investments locally, looked on the regional trading center as a permanent home rather than as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. The following chapters tackle issues of land ownership and use. A major handicap in these sections is the lack of substantial documentation on property size and production for the decades under study. In perhaps the best part of the book, chapter 4 presents three cases studies that provide a window on the activities, resources, and labor for three estates of varying sizes. Offutt concludes, not surprisingly, that while the operation of rural properties in the Saltillo region followed patterns for more central areas, they differed significantly in size and prosperity.By the end of the eighteenth century, Saltillo’s merchant elite had not only captured control of the local economy, but had also acquired the reins of power and status in the community. Offutt argues that the sale of town council posts increased because of crown pressure to raise revenue; a secondary effect was to increase the power of proprietary officeholders over elective ones. Combined with the Bourbon effort to reorganize government under the intendencia system, which also produced local representatives tied to the community, the movement away from elected offices served to further highlight the status and wealth of the powerful merchant group.A very brief final chapter advances the principal conclusion that on the eve of the Mexican War of Independence Saltillo more closely resembled central portions of the viceroyalty than it did hinterlands to the north. Unlike other parts of New Spain, where trouble was brewing as a result of growing economic ills, a wealthy and powerful merchant elite, consistent economic and demographic growth, and increased and more efficient royal administration made Saltillo a bright spot in the imperial landscape.Although Saltillo, 1770–1810 adds a northern, nonmining perspective to the field of late-colonial business history, it does not significantly enhance our knowledge of Saltillo as a community, an expectation created by the book’s title. There remains much to say on how Saltillo functioned as a Spanish colonial community and how the northeast fit into the late colonial imperial framework. Offutt’s work hints at some of the directions for future research.

Actors and Arenas, Elections and Competition: The 1958 Election of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce

In 1958, the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce had to decide whether to remain active in politics, representing not only the commercial interests of the rich but also the views of Chinese society at large, or to function solely as a commercial organisation. The eventual success of the pro-politics faction illustrates the buoyant aspirations of the Chinese merchant elite. The public battle for control over the Chamber shows that Chinese businessmen assessed their options by pragmatically balancing political, economic as well as cultural constraints and opportunities.

Book Reviews: An Archaeology of Manners: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite of Colonial Massachusetts, Picuris Pueblo through Time: Eight Centuries of Change at a Northern Rio Grande Pueblo

Book Reviews: An Archaeology of Manners: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite of Colonial Massachusetts, Picuris Pueblo through Time: Eight Centuries of Change at a Northern Rio Grande Pueblo

Formação da rede regional de abastecimento do Rio de Janeiro: a presença dos negociantes de gado (1801-1811)

Neste artigo procura-se analisar o comércio de abastecimento interno no início do século XIX. O segmento estudado é o mercado de gado para o Rio de Janeiro, com base nos registros de cobrança de uma taxa sobre os animais no caminho entre São Paulo e o Rio Janeiro. O desenvolvimento do núcleo urbano carioca, principalmente a partir da chegada da corte portuguesa, demandava expressivos fluxos de mercadorias através desta rota. Entretanto, mesmo antes da vinda da corte tal abastecimento ocorria em montantes consideráveis. Por fim, nota-se que o controle do comércio de animais encontrava-se concentrado nas mãos de poucos mercadores.

Comunes y haciendas: Procesos de comunalización en la Sierra de Piura (siglos XVIII al XX)El Norte en la historia regional, siglos XVIII–XIX

Comunes y haciendas: Procesos de comunalización en la Sierra de Piura (siglos XVIII al XX)El Norte en la historia regional, siglos XVIII–XIX

An Archeology of Manners: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite of Colonial Massachusetts

1. Introduction: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite of Colonial Massachusetts 2. History, Archaeology and the Ideal World of Manners 3. The Merchant Community in Massachussetts and England 4. Material Expressions of Mannerly Behavior 5. Manners and Women's Roles in Merchant Society 6. Conclusion: An Archaeology of Mannners. References. Index

Chinese Modernity and the Peasant Path: Semicolonialism in the Northern Yangzi Delta

Introduction: modernity, the semicolonial process and alternative histories Part I. Signposts: The Ming-Qing Transition and Beyond: 1. Agrarian class relations and peasant history in the Southern Yangzi delta during the Ming 2. The view from the periphery: Tongzhou and the Northern delta 3. Historical trends during the Qing Part II. The Semicolonial Process: 4. Shanghai, cotton cloth and the shaping of Nantong's modern merchant elite 5. Remaking local power: Zhang Jian's self-reliant path 6. Extending the sway of commercial capital 7. The politics of the peasant and modernist paths in the late Qing-early Republican years 8. Constituting 'semicolonial capitalisms': modern landlordism, commercial farming, and rural labor 9. Subproletarianization in the industrial districts Conclusion: semicolonialism and the peasant path Notes References Character list Index.

An archaeology of manners: the polite world of the merchant elite in Colonial Masssachusetts

An archaeology of manners: the polite world of the merchant elite in Colonial Masssachusetts

The Fall of the Massachusetts Standing Order and the Rise of the Boston Brahmins

Field's social history of aims to demystify the life of the mind, undermining the notion, held by the intellectuals themselves or by the historians who write about them, that these thinkers and writers were heroically engaged in the disinterested pursuit of truth (p. 7). Ideas were important to these clergymen, Field concedes. However, what we need in order to better understand the transformation of New England in the early Republic, he contends, is not another study of theology, ideology, ideas, and mentalite, but analysis of a more powerful motive force: the basic self-interests of clergymen as members of a thinking class (p. 3). From this premise Field tells two intertwined stories about religious and intellectual life in Massachusetts between 1780 and 1833. The crisis of the Standing Order in his title refers to the bifurcation of Congregationalism, which finally led to its disestablishment in 1833 (Massachusetts was the last of the former colonies to separate church and state). As Unitarian and Trinitarian Congregationalists parted company, clergymen on both sides also reconstituted the cultural authority Field mentions in his subtitle. Theologically liberal Unitarians, clustered mostly around Boston, replaced state sanction with the patronage of elite merchants and became genteel apostles of what Field describes as an indigenous secular high culture (p. 12). Conservative Calvinists serving poorer congregations reluctantly relinquished tax funding, embraced religious voluntarism, and concentrated on evangelical revivalism and reform.

A Fictional-True Self: Margery Kempe and the Social Reality of the Merchant Elite of King’s Lynn

The social reality of the merchant community of King’s Lynn played an integral role in the formation of Margery Kempe’s self-image throughout her life. In her young-formative years, Lynn’s merchant elite imparted personal, commercial, ethical, and religious values. As the daughter of John Brunham, one of the most influential members of Lynn’s elite, the merchant community also provided Margery with status, security, comfort, and self-worth. Even in her later years as Margery formulated her holy self-image as she questioned, and eventually rejected, the role imposed on her by Lynn’s merchant culture as the daughter of Brunham and wife of John Kempe, she continued to identify herself through that culture. When asked by the mayor of Leicester in 1416 or 1417 to identify herself, Margery confidently replied, “Sir, I am of Lynn of Norfolk, a good man’s daughter of the same Lynn, who had been mayor five time of that worshipful borough and alderman also many years, and I have a good man, also a burgess of the said town, Lynn, as my husband.”

A Fictional-True Self: Margery Kempe and the Social Reality of the Merchant Elite of King’s Lynn

The social reality of the merchant community of King’s Lynn played an integral role in the formation of Margery Kempe’s self-image throughout her life. In her young-formative years, Lynn’s merchant elite imparted personal, commercial, ethical, and religious values. As the daughter of John Brunham, one of the most influential members of Lynn’s elite, the merchant community also provided Margery with status, security, comfort, and self-worth. Even in her later years as Margery formulated her holy self-image as she questioned, and eventually rejected, the role imposed on her by Lynn’s merchant culture as the daughter of Brunham and wife of John Kempe, she continued to identify herself through that culture. When asked by the mayor of Leicester in 1416 or 1417 to identify herself, Margery confidently replied, “Sir, I am of Lynn of Norfolk, a good man’s daughter of the same Lynn, who had been mayor five time of that worshipful borough and alderman also many years, and I have a good man, also a burgess of the said town, Lynn, as my husband.”

Government by Polemic: James I, the King's Preachers, and the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603-1625 by Lori Anne Ferrell

466BOOK REVIEWS century Rome and Amsterdam. The images vary from architectural plans to ink drawings, woodcuts, and stately portraits of seventeenth-century notables. Equally valuable are the many tables and graphs which offer useful data on such concerns as mortality and fertility rates, household size, and the numbers of criminal offenses over the course of the century. The first half of the volume concerns the broader institutional and structural aspects of urban life in seventeenth-century Rome and Amsterdam. Luigi Spezzaferro 's "Baroque Rome: A 'Modern City'" argues that it was the late sixteenthcentury pontificate of Sixtus V (1585-1590) which proved pivotal in the shift in Roman architecture and urban planning toward a modern orientation. Conceptualizing this revived Roman urban space as a kind of "theater of modern life," Spezzaferro notes the "novelty" of the city plans developed by the pope's designers (and those of his successors) as forward-looking, and integrated more realistically with the living city, rather than pointing backward toward the Eternal City's ancient past. Koen Ottenheym's "The Amsterdam Ring of Canals: City Planning and Architecture " provides a detailed and insightful discussion of the development of socially-differentiated residential and industrial neighborhoods through the construction of new canals in the seventeenth century. This building project, the historian notes, was geared toward meeting the demands of the rising merchant elites, rather than a public works project to beautify the city as symbol, as in the case of Rome. In the second part of this book, scholars turn their attentions to the specific living conditions in seventeenth-century Rome and Amsterdam. It is impossible to discuss the wide range of topics under consideration, so I wfll simply point to a few notable "pairs" which show the promise of a comparative volume such as this. Laurie Nussdorfer and Henk van Nierop's explorations of the respective poUtical cultures of the two cities, and the complex relationships between populace and authorities, work well together and provide fascinating material for classroom considerations of emerging models of political rule in urban Europe in the seventeenth century. Elsewhere, Angela Groppi and Simon Groenveld offer insightful analyses of emerging models of poor relief in these two European capitals, highlighting the significant interplay between religion, politics, and conceptions of public welfare in early modern Europe. Jennifer D. Selwyn University ofNew Hampshire Government by Polemic:James I, the King's Preachers, and the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603-1625. By Lori Anne Ferrell. (Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1998. Pp. xv, 231. $49.50.) A major plank in the recent rehabilitation ofJames I is that his effective management of religious tensions produced a balanced and harmonious Church, BOOK REVIEWS467 which has been contrasted with the divisions and turmoil stirred up by his successor . Some scholars have cautioned against pushing this too far, noting the unresolved theological issues and pastoral priorities within his Church as well as the Jacobean antecedents of Laudian thought and action, but Government by Polemic represents an important post-revisionist analysis of this fragile situation . While the author accepts both James's construction of his rule as a moderate stance between the twin perils of popery and Puritanism, and the defacto accommodation between moderate Puritans and the ecclesiastical authorities in the dioceses, she argues that a study of the king's writings and printed court sermons reveals a significant and evolving anti-Puritan rhetoric which historians have hitherto underplayed. 'Moderation' or the much-vaunted via media became a rhetorical strategy with which to lambaste conforming Puritanism, which by 1625 was "belittled, discredited and finaUy sidelined." Nor was this the achievement of a tiny minority, for FerreU claims that the ecclesiology and polemic of Andrewes and Buckeridge represented the mainstream at court rather than the voice of a precociously avant-garde conformity; in short, another and different manifestation of the Jacobean "conformist drift" identified by Anthony Milton and Peter Lake, which laid the foundations of widespread anti-Puritan polemic in the 1630's. It would have been useful to see this developed and tested with reference to such preachers as HaU, Preston, and Prideaux, whose court sermons do not feature here. Though the interpretation is pretty persuasive, the keystone of her case, the...

Rome * Amsterdam: Two Growing Cities in Seventeenth-Century Europe ed. by Peter van Kessel and Elisja Schulte

BOOK REVIEWS465 wishes for a public statement of his Catholic faith. He likewise declined Gregory XHTs offers of consecration either in Rome or Regensburg, thus implicitly repudiating papal authority in matters affecting Imperial dignity and power. The fact that relations were strained had obvious implications for the pope's religious policy in the Empire, which relied for its implementation on the Emperor 's firm commitment. Unsurprisingly, then, the accession of Maximilian's allegedly more tractable successor, Rudolf II, in 1576 was greeted with relief. The difficult preliminary negotiations between the Emperor and the German Electors for Rudolf's election as Roman king form a major theme of the correspondence . In the years 1575-76 the curia concentrated its efforts on the issues of Maximilian's candidature to the Polish throne, the Imperial succession, and the interrelated problems of heresy and clerical reform in the Empire and Bohemia. Military maters and the abortive Imperial peace initiative in the Netherlands, which was intended to liberate forces for the defense of the eastern border of the Empire, formed scarcely less important issues. Useful bits of information on Tuscan, Genuese, and Inner Austrian affairs can likewise be gleaned from the texts. Minor criticism of the present volume concerns a small number of headings which are too monosyllabic or imprecise to be of help to the reader (e.g., nos. 33, 73, 103, 104, 1 14, 1 16, 297, 358). There are also a few inconsistencies in the spelling of names and some instances in which biographical footnotes could have been more detailed, and might have been better placed on first mention of the name. However, this does not detract from Neri's very impressive achievement in producing an accomplished edition of valuable new material. Regina Pörtner German Historical Institute London Rome * Amsterdam: Two Growing Cities in Seventeenth-Century Europe. Edited by Peter van Kessel and Elisja Schulte. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Distributed by the University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. 1997. Pp. xxiv, 333. $54.50.) Rome * Amsterdam: Two Growing Cities in Seventeenth-Century Europe is a fascinating, wide-ranging, and ambitious collection of essays on two of the most important and complex locales of early modern Europe. Conceived as a series of thematic explorations of urban history, the editors have assembled an impressive list of international scholars to explore such disparate topics as: urban design, population, family, religion, and the treatment ofJews. As with any such collection, the contributions are of uneven quality and depth, but the book should provide a valuable resource for students and instructors of early modern Europe. One of the most impressive features of this volume are the rich images which adorn the book. Perhaps as much as the textual descriptions, these visual images provide intimate portraits of the particularities of life in seventeenth- 466BOOK REVIEWS century Rome and Amsterdam. The images vary from architectural plans to ink drawings, woodcuts, and stately portraits of seventeenth-century notables. Equally valuable are the many tables and graphs which offer useful data on such concerns as mortality and fertility rates, household size, and the numbers of criminal offenses over the course of the century. The first half of the volume concerns the broader institutional and structural aspects of urban life in seventeenth-century Rome and Amsterdam. Luigi Spezzaferro 's "Baroque Rome: A 'Modern City'" argues that it was the late sixteenthcentury pontificate of Sixtus V (1585-1590) which proved pivotal in the shift in Roman architecture and urban planning toward a modern orientation. Conceptualizing this revived Roman urban space as a kind of "theater of modern life," Spezzaferro notes the "novelty" of the city plans developed by the pope's designers (and those of his successors) as forward-looking, and integrated more realistically with the living city, rather than pointing backward toward the Eternal City's ancient past. Koen Ottenheym's "The Amsterdam Ring of Canals: City Planning and Architecture " provides a detailed and insightful discussion of the development of socially-differentiated residential and industrial neighborhoods through the construction of new canals in the seventeenth century. This building project, the historian notes, was geared toward meeting the demands of the rising merchant elites, rather than a public works project to beautify...

Book Review: An Archaeology of Manners: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite of Colonial Massachusetts, by Lorinda B. R. Goodwin

Book Review: An Archaeology of Manners: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite of Colonial Massachusetts, by Lorinda B. R. Goodwin

John Singleton Copley in America (review)

Reviewed by: John Singleton Copley in America Richard Saunders Carrie Rebora and Paul Staiti, Erica E. Hirshler, Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., Carol Troyen, with contributions by Morrison H. Heckscher, Aileen Ribeiro, Marjorie Shelly. John Singleton Copley in America. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995. Pp. 348. $65. paper; $45. John Singleton Copley (1738–1815) is the most acclaimed of America’s colonial portrait painters, and this welcome publication, along with the accompanying exhibition, brings his career into focus after a considerable hiatus. Although Copley portraits can be found in virtually every major public collection in the United States, the last comprehensive exhibition reviewing his career occurred in 1965–66 at the National Gallery of Art. This earlier exhibition coincided with the publication of a two-volume catalog of Copley’s work by Jules Prown which, despite its black-and-white illustrations, remains the standard reference work on the artist. This present volume is the catalog for an exhibition of the same title opening at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and showing in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (September 26, 1995-January 7, 1996), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (February 4-April 28, 1996), and Milwaukee Art Museum (May 22-August 25, 1996). Unlike the exhibition of 1965–66, however, the present show is limited to Copley’s American career. Although this does allow for a more comprehensive look at his American work, it frustrates any attempt to examine how distinctive this work is in light of what came later. Fortunately, however, Emily Neff, curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, chose this moment to simultaneously organize John Singleton Copley in England, a parallel exhibition of Copley’s English pictures (National Gallery of Art October 11-January 7, 1996 and Museum of Fine Arts Houston, February 4-April 28, 1996), and both exhibitions will be seen side by side in Houston. This hefty and exquisitely illustrated catalog follows the current vogue among American museums for publications composed of a series of essays followed by lengthy catalog entries on the exhibited objects (eighty-one in all). The eight essays are divided among seven authors. The first is by Carrie Rebora, one of the primary organizers of the exhibition. Her essay, “Copley and Art History: The Study of America’s First Old master,” is a thoughtful and succinct historiography of Copley literature over the past 170 years. Pointing out that Copley has been the subject of at least one essay, book, or catalog every year for over a century, she nonetheless correctly observes that answers to numerous questions concerning the production, and display of Copley’s work, its market, and the possible political and social meaning, remain elusive. Clearly, the intent of this book and exhibition are to probe possible answers to these and other weighty questions. Rebora sets the stage for the next three essays, which provide the ideological heart of the publication. The first two, “Accounting for Copley” and “Character and Class,” are by Paul Staiti. The third, “An American Despite Himself,” is by Theodore Stebbins. These essays dramatize the polarization of opinion that presently colors current discussions of colonial painting. Staiti approaches the Boston art world from the standpoint of material consumption. His choice of such terms as “merchant elite,” “culture of consumption,” and “anthropological display” [End Page 334] to describe Copley’s sitters and their paintings echo the polemical stance of scholars such as Timothy H. Breen. Staiti sees Copley’s portraits as “the rhetoric—not the record—of self-representation in eighteenth-century America” (55). To some degree what is put forth in his essay “Character and Class,” such as Copley’s use of print sources and the fact that the background elements of portraits were fictionalized, are examples of vintage wine in new bottles. Much more provocative is his speculation that it was the patron, not the artist, who orchestrated decisions about pose and costume in particular portraits. A telling example is his interpretation of Copley’s 1765 John Hancock (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), in which he sees an ascetic, disciplined man who has denied the trappings of wealth and class. Staiti speculates that Hancock dictated how...

Veracruz Merchants, 1770–1829: A Merchant Elite in Late Bourbon and Early Independent Mexico

Veracruz Merchants, 1770–1829: A Merchant Elite in Late Bourbon and Early Independent Mexico

Veracruz Merchants, 1770-1829: A Merchant Elite in Late Bourbon and Early Independent Mexico.

Veracruz Merchants, 1770-1829: A Merchant Elite in Late Bourbon and Early Independent Mexico.