Cultural Change and the Market Revolution in America, 1789–1860

Although the political and economic impacts of America's market revolution are well-defined, little attention has been paid to the changes it wrought in America's social and cultural fabric. In this exciting new work, Scott C. Martin brings together cutting-edge scholarship and articles from diverse sources to explore the cultural dimensions of the market revolution in America. The essays probe how Americans' participation in widening financial networks, exposure to an ever-increasing array of consumer goods, and struggles against unfamiliar economic forces influenced family life, class formation, gender roles, ethnic and racial identification, and social interaction. The contributors also investigate how the cultural values and social practices with which Americans responded to economic change shaped the evolution of the market. By reflecting on the reciprocal relationship between cultural and economic change, Cultural Change and the Market Revolution in America, 1789–1860 deepens our understanding of American society during the turbulent early nineteenth century.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction: Toward a Cultural History of the Market Revolution Chapter 2: The Market Revolution and Market Values in Antebellum Black Protest Thought Chapter 3: A Cultural Frontier: Ethnicity and the Marketplace in Charlotte, Vermont, 1845–1860 Chapter 4: Native Americans, the Market Revolution, and Cultural Change: The Choctaw Cattle Economy, 1690–1830 Chapter 5: The "Sharper" Image: Yankee Peddlers, Southern Consumers, and the Market Revolution Chapter 6: "Well Bred Country People": Sociability, Social Networks, and the Creation of a Provincial Middle Class, 1820–1860 Chapter 7: "In the Sweat of Thy Brow": Education, Manual Labor, and the Market Revolution Chapter 8: "I Have Brought My Pig to a Fine Market": Animals, Their Exhibitors, and Market Culture in the Early Republic Chapter 9: Temperance Nostalgia, Market Anxiety, and the Reintegration of Community in T. S. Arthur's Ten Nights in a Bar-Room Chapter 10: Interpreting Metamora: Nationalism, Theater, and Jacksonian Indian Policy

About the Author :
Scott C. Martin is associate professor of history and American culture studies at Bowling Green State University. He is the author of Killing Time: Leisure and Culture in Southwestern Pennsylvania, 1800–1850.

Review :
These essays provide enticing glimpses into how the market revolution influenced Americans' lives and ideas—and how people shaped their own lives in response. Venturing well beyond familiar characters and places, the authors introduce Choctaws in the old southwest and French Canadians in Vermont, and examine cultural sites ranging from urban theaters and rural parlors to animal shows and the pages of temperance novels. In the process, they model different approaches to writing cultural history, from close textual analysis to the history of communications. An important collection of the latest work by historians who seek to understand the cultural changes wrought by the advent of market capitalism in the United States. Martin's collection offers great insight into how different people used the market for a variety of purposes, including efforts to curb it by expanding opportunity for some groups, socially excluding others, achieving moral reformation, and attaining civility. This seamlessly crafted collection is sure to attract a wide readership among scholars and students interested in the market revolution. Thoroughly researched and elegantly written, these ten essays explore the previously ignored cultural implications of capitalist expansion by analyzing racial, ethnic, and class identity, popular entertainment, and gendered perceptions of rural conviviality. Together with Killing Time, this significant anthology establishes Scott C. Martin as the leading authority on leisure and sociability during the antebellum era. Add this collection to your growing shelf of commentary on the 'market revolution' in early America. These essays stretch our understanding far beyond immediate economic consequences and help us understand why the emergence of a capitalist economic system impressed all Americans as a signal experience of the antebellum generation. Both friends and enemies of modern enterprise will learn much about the rich mosaic of experience that was the market revolution.