Luxurious Citizens

How did the freedom to consume come to define “the meaning of American democracy” in the period between the Revolution and the Civil War (3)? This is the fundamental question that drives Joanna Cohen’s account of the transformation of Americans from “patriot consumers,” colonists willing to deny themselves luxurious goods to support revolutionary objectives, to “citizen-consumers,” individuals reluctant to give up the imported dinnerware, calicoes, and fur hats that promoted the economic interests of the nation. Citing “exigencies of war” as the driving force for this conversion, Cohen points to the federal government and its power to levy taxes and tariffs as the impetus for remaking T.H. Breen’s self-sacrificing colonists, detailed in the Marketplace of Revolution (2004), into citizens armed with cash, credit, and the sense that being a good consumer was tantamount to being a good citizen (3). Combining cultural history with the histories of consumption and capitalism, Cohen breathes new life into all three by bringing together subfields that often intersect, but too infrequently engage in the kind of sustained and thoughtful analysis Cohen offers.

Capitalism · Cash · Consumption (sociology) · Democracy · Democratic revolution · Economic history · Economics · Government (linguistics) · Meaning (existential) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Social science · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · American History and Culture · Law