Plutocracy Research Articles

The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire

The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire

San Francisco’s Magnificent Department Stores

In the late nineteenth century, San Francisco was booming and its merchant princes built grand stores such as City of Paris, Gump’s, The White House, I. Magnin, and The Emporium in the Union Square area. These stores were integral to the city’s emergence as a world-class commercial hub, starting with the mad scramble for supplies during the gold rush, and its transformation into a tourist mecca in the decades after World War II. This article looks at three of those retail enterprises: City of Paris, which satisfied desires for anything French; the I. Magnin empire, which catered to a selective upper-class clientele; and the Emporium department store, aimed at the middle class with its Bargain Basement and Santa for the kids.

Robert Weems Jr., The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020. Pp. 210. $110.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Robert Weems Jr., <i>The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire</i>. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020. Pp. 210. $110.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

4 Cholula: The Mall of [Meso]america

ABSTRACTEthnohistoric sources describe the market of Postclassic Cholula as featuring goods from throughout Mesoamerica. Furthermore, the merchant guilds centered in the city, followers of the god Yacatecuhtli/Quetzalcoatl, were elevated to princely status. Contact‐period sources also describe the political organization of the city, in which these merchant princes played a prominent role. The far‐flung influence of the religio‐commercial diaspora is represented through the distinctive symbolism of the Mixteca‐Puebla stylistic tradition, found throughout Postclassic Mesoamerica and as far south as Pacific Nicaragua. This paper uses the ethnohistorical evidence to construct a model of Cholula's urban economy and its international influence, with archaeological evidence to critically evaluate the sources.

The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago

Review of: The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire, by Robert E. Weems, Jr.

Thomas Wyatt among the Florentines

Abstract The article considers how Thomas Wyatt—courtier, ambassador and poet maker—became Italianate. It discovers a youthful Wyatt, with other members of Henry VIII’s court, at the company of Giovanni di Lorenzo Cavalcanti and Pierfrancesco di Piero de’ Bardi in London in the 1520s. These Florentine merchant princes were international bankers and traders, and notable cultural brokers between England and Italy. Pierfrancesco was a scholar, a collector and donor of books. Wyatt bought fine Florentine fabrics from the company. They allowed his growing indebtedness, partly through friendship, but also because of their need for the patronage of his father, Sir Henry Wyatt, Treasurer of the Chamber. Wyatt was also part of the gambling fraternity in which Francesco di Bernardo de’ Bardi was a principal player. Leaving Florence for London, the merchants did not remove themselves from the turbulent politics of their city, for their wealth and prominence ensured their continuing involvement, especially once Medici popes ruled Christendom. When Rome was sacked, and Florence established a republic, London’s Florentines were called to their city’s defence. Before he ever travelled to Italy, Thomas Wyatt encountered Italians of wealth and culture living in the grandest style in London, between the worlds of the court and the city. Perhaps with them he began to learn Italian. The story of Wyatt among the Florentines leads to life in London and the court, to the defence of Italy, to the revolutionary politics of Florence, and to Henry VIII’s ‘Great Matter’. Wyatt was precursor, and inspiration, of the Italianate Englishmen and women gathered at the humanist court of Edward VI who were fascinated by Italian culture and won to reform.

Nested Patriotism: Revisiting Collaboration, Resistance and Agency in Colonial Ghana

This paper presents an account of Gold Coast elite in the nineteenth century and their patterns of interactions with the emerging colonial state. Known as the merchant princes, they acted as intermediaries and played essential roles in colonial administration. Their involvement in government was consistent with the belief among some British administrators that ‘allies must be purchased over to our side’ in order to evoke ‘a friendly spirit favourable to our purposes’. Drawing on archival documents, including petitions, official correspondences and newspaper reports, the paper shows that the relationship between merchant princes and colonial administration was a fundamentally ambivalent one. There was equivocation on both sides, the merchant princes often vacillating in their responses to colonial policy, while colonial officials constantly viewed them with suspicion. This ambivalence shaped political developments on the Gold Coast in the nineteenth and turn of the twentieth century. The merchant princes straddled their natal societies and the emerging colonial order, embodying a nested patriotism. The fundamental roles that they played in the emergent colonial order necessitate revisiting the contentious ‘collaboration versus resistance’ debate which reduced responses to colonial rule to either opposition to colonial domination or betrayal of one’s country. The paper argues that these concepts could be useful analytical tools if employed in the analysis of actions rather than actors.

Capitalist exchange, consumerism and power in nineteenth century Gold Coast: Interrogating Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa and the contested personage of the merchant prince

Commercial activities in nineteenth century Gold Coast were crucial in defining, not only the nature of African capitalism, but the consumption changes it brought to its merchant elite, commonly referred to in African historiography as merchant princes. The transformation of the Gold Coast economy into a commercial capitalist economy, which had as its life source a vibrant north Atlantic world market, exposed merchant princes to other goods which were not necessities but had the power to change one’s social status. In partaking freely in this consumerism that the north Atlantic world offered, they were redefining power relations and helping to entrench colonial capitalism in the Gold Coast. More importantly, this new kind of consumerism signaled the merchant princes’ desire to, at once, show off their newly acquired wealth and also appropriate power in a politically uncertain environment. Using available historical sources as well as creative works such as Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa, this paper suggests imaginative ways in which scholars may tease out African agency in existing narratives on the nineteenth century.

Caleb Cushing and the corporate romance of free trade imperialism in Washington Irving's Astoria (1836)

AbstractIn 1838 the Massachusetts congressman Caleb Cushing's invoked Washington Irving's Astoria (1836) in a Congressional speech that warned against the tyranny of British corporate monopolies and pleaded for the annexation of Oregon. This essay compares Cushing's and Irving's views on the viability of US commerce in the Far East and Far West and considers the rhetorical force of corporate form in nationalising commercial activity through narratives that portray merchant princes as heroes of free trade imperialism.

Book Review: Kamal Nayan Kabra and Vrajaindra Upadhyay, Plutocracy, Cronyism &amp; Populism

Kamal Nayan Kabra and Vrajaindra Upadhyay, Plutocracy, Cronyism &amp; Populism. New Delhi: Vitasta, 2017, 414 pp., ₹695.

Examining the Late Medieval Village from the Case at Ambroyi, Armenia

Examining the Late Medieval Village from the Case at Ambroyi, Armenia

1867 and the Rule of Wealth

This essay examines the widespread concern in the 1860s and 1870s with ‘plutocracy’ – the political and social power of commercial wealth. It argues that we should not interpret either the pressure for parliamentary reform in the 1860s, or the consequences of the 1867 act, simply in terms of a contest between aristocracy and democracy. A third element, the growing influence of commercial men, was very widely noted before and after 1867, with differences of opinion about whether this would more favour the aristocracy or the democracy. Anxiety about plutocracy fuelled much of the pressure for reform, from both Cobdenite radicals and academic Liberals; this last group in particular was preoccupied with the possible parliamentary dominance of unimaginative and materialistic money men. On the other hand, opponents of reform were sceptical that a new electoral settlement would halt the rising influence of money. They were proved right, not least because the 1867 reforms increased the cost of winning a seat. The three parliaments elected in 1868, 1874, and 1880 were dominated by commercial men, and there was even more alarm about plutocracy than before 1867. While this was interpreted in different ways by different groups, on the whole it benefited the Conservative Party and Conservative argument significantly more than it helped the Liberals. The Liberal Party found it difficult to agree on whether the political influence of commercial elites – a group with which it had once been identified – was now excessive, and what, if anything, could be done about it. This was to become a major problem for the left.

Once in the Elite, Always in the Elite? Changing Wealth in a Changing City (Paris, France, 1845-1859)

La mobilité économique des individus au XIX ème siècle reste peu connue. L’article examine cette question par une étude du groupe des électeurs censitaires parisiens des années 1840. Différentes sources sont appariées entre elles afin de suivre dans le temps les trajectoires des membres de ce groupe particulièrement riche et politiquement important. L’analyse porte tant sur la mobilité à court terme que sur celle à long terme. La mobilité à court terme est observée grâce à un appariement des individus qui apparaissent dans les listes électorales des années 1845 et 1846. Ces listes contiennent les informations sur les impôts directs acquittés par les électeurs. La mobilité à long terme est révélée par une exploitation des Tables parisiennes des successions et absences (TSA) des années 1845 à 1859. Ces tables contiennent des informations sur la richesse au décès des individus. Étant donné que la structure du cens électoral – lequel est fondé sur les impôts directs – diffère de celle de la richesse, l’article examine dans quelle mesure ces deux variables sont comparables entre elles puis explore la question de la représentation politique de la richesse. Malgré la différence de définition entre cens électoral et richesse, les données permettent de mettre en évidence des corrélations cohérentes entre ces deux variables au cours du temps. De plus, tant à court terme qu’à long terme, la mobilité économique s’avère élevée. 14 % des individus changent de quintile entre 1845 et 1846, ce qui est considérable pour une période d’un an. S’agissant de la mobilité à long terme, 65 % des individus changent de quintile entre 1845 et l’année de leur décès. L’ensemble de ces résultats soulève de sérieuses questions quant à l’idée, longtemps admise, d’une élite ploutocratique dont les membres constitueraient un groupe stable.

Policy Plutocrats: How America’s Wealthy Seek to Influence Governance

Policy Plutocrats: How America’s Wealthy Seek to Influence Governance

Kongo: Power and Majesty

Kongo: Power and Majesty

A Market for merchant princes: collecting Italian Renaissance paintings in America

A Market for merchant princes: collecting Italian Renaissance paintings in America

American Plutocracy

American Plutocracy

American Plutocracy

American Plutocracy

Plutocracy in America

Plutocracy in America

The Treaty with China: Its Provisions Explained

The Treaty with China: Its Provisions Explained