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Book Cover
E-book
Author Hartigan-O'Connor, Ellen

Title The ties that buy : women and commerce in revolutionary America / Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor
Published Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, ©2009

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Description 1 online resource (253 pages) : illustrations, maps
illustration, map
Series Early American studies
Early American studies.
Contents Urban housefuls -- Work in the Atlantic service economy -- Family credit and shared debts -- Translating money -- Shopping networks and consumption as collaboration -- The republic of goods
Summary Historian Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor traces the lives of urban women in early America to reveal how they used the ties of residence, work, credit, and money to shape consumer culture at a time when the politics of the marketplace was gaining national significance. Covering the period 1750-1820, the book analyzes how women used and were used by shifting forms of credit and cash in an economy transitioning between neighborly exchanges and investment-oriented transactions. At the hearths of multifamily homes, renters, lodgers, and recent acquaintances lived together and struck financial deals for survival. A new economic practice in America--shopping--mobilized hierarchical and friendly relationships into wide-ranging consumer networks that depended on these same market connections. Rhetoric emerging after the Revolution downplayed the significance of female economic life, but women were quintessential market participants, with fluid occupational identities, cross-class social and economic connections, and a firm investment in cash and commercial goods for power and meaning.--From publisher description
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-242) and index
Notes In English
Subject Households -- Economic aspects -- United States -- History -- 18th century
Women -- Economic conditions
HISTORY -- United States -- Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)
Commerce
Households -- Economic aspects
Women -- Economic conditions
SUBJECT United States -- Commerce -- History -- 18th century
Subject United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780812203943
0812203941
1283897849
9781283897846
0812221591
9780812221596