Heavenly Merchandize

Mark Valeri's new book provides a lucid and thorough treatment of an enduring subject: “How did pious New Englanders come to revere the market as it developed in their day?” (p. 3). Valeri's investigation combines a collective biography of four generations of Boston's transatlantic merchants with an intellectual history of Puritan theology and political economy between 1630 and 1730. This approach results in a narrative that is closely woven and broadly transatlantic. Boston's merchants, Valeri argues, remained generally consistent in their faith across the generations, even as they anguished over a changing set of issues relating to the practice of their trade. The teachings they heard from the pulpit, on the other hand, evolved significantly from a world where preachers “asserted a contest between economic mind-sets and biblical charity” to one where “Boston's postpuritan preachers followed the logic of natural philosophy to a nearly complete validation of the market in their day” (pp. 59, 220

Art history · Biography · CONTEST · Faith · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Pulpit · Sociology · Subject (documents · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies