Abstract
From the late seventeenth century onwards, the north-west European textile trades blossomed as part of larger transformations in consumption, generally referred to as the ‘Consumer Revolution’.1 Not only did the types of textiles for sale expand greatly as a result of new product and process innovations and the influx of products from new colonies in the East Indies, due to faster circulation of products and cheaper prices the importance of fashion gained in relevance for ever larger groups of people.2 The growing demand for textiles also generated an increase in business opportunities. Although some studies have indeed shown that the number of textiles dealers grew during the so-called ‘Consumer Revolution’, we still know remarkably little about their identities.3 This chapter asks what new business opportunities arose from the expansion of the supply and the demand in textiles, and who precisely benefited from these opportunities. It will focus on the Dutch Republic, the country that, alongside England, is generally assumed to have experienced these changes earliest and most profoundly. Various studies have suggested that the rise of a consumer society and the accompanying growth of the retail sector took place exceptionally early in the northern Netherlands; in some areas, most notably the province of Holland, already around 1670.4 However, while steadily more information is uncovered on Dutch early modern retail transformations, we still lack a thorough understanding of when exactly these changes took place, at what speed and scale, and how they precisely impacted on the character of the retail sector.5 Based on a variety of records such as tax registers, municipal archives and retail guilds’ financial administrations from a selection of Dutch towns, this chapter investigates how the retail trade in textiles and associated products such as accessories and clothing changed over time, and who were the new sellers of these products.
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Notes
The concept ‘Consumer Revolution’ has been applied to several different processes and time periods, and the current consensus among historians is that there is no such thing as ‘a Consumer Revolution’. However, for the sake of clarity and because of the lack of a better overarching term I will refer to the early-modern consumer changes as ‘the Consumer Revolution’. For a thorough discussion of the concept and its problems see M. Berg (2005) Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 10–11
and F. Trentmann (2012) The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption (Oxford: Oxford University Press) esp. pp. 3–8.
See for instance: N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J.H. Plumb (eds.) (1982) The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Europa Publications)
L. Weatherill (1988) Consumer Behavior and Material Culture in Britain 1660–1760 (London: Routledge)
M. Berg (2002) ‘From imitation to invention: creating commodities in eighteenth-century Britain’, Economic History Review, 55, pp. 1–30
J. Styles (2007) The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press)
B. Blondé, E. Briot, N. Coquery and L. Van Aert (eds.) (2005) Retailers and Consumer Changes in Early Modern Europe. England, France, Italy and the Low Countries (Tours: Presse Universitaire).
H. Mui and L.H. Mui (1989) Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Routledge), pp. 62–63.
H. Dibbits (2001) Vertrouwd bezit. Materiële cultuur in Doesburg en Maassluis (Nijmegen: SUN)
T. Wijsenbeek (1987) Achter de gevels van Delft. Bezit en bestaan van rijk en arm in een periode van achteruitgang (Hilversum: Verloren)
J. de Vries (2008) The Industrious Revolution. Consumer Behaviour and the Household Economy 1650 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
D. van den Heuvel (2007) Women and Entrepreneurship. Female Traders in the Northern Netherlands c.1580–1815 (Amsterdam: Aksant)
D. van den Heuvel and S. Ogilvie (2013) ‘Retail development in the consumer revolution: the Netherlands, c. 1670–c.1815’, Explorations in Economic History, 50, pp. 69–87.
See for example: Van den Heuvel, Women; L. Van Aert and D. Van den Heuvel (2007) ‘Sekse als de sleutel tot success? Vrouwen en de verkoop van textiel in de Noordelijke en Zuidelijke Nederlanden 1650–1800’, Textielhistorische Bijdragen, 47, pp. 7–32
C. Lesger (2011) ‘Patterns of retail location and urban form in Amsterdam in the mid-eighteenth century’, Urban History, 38, pp. 24–47
D. van den Heuvel and E. van Nederveen Meerkerk (2010) ‘Huishoudens, werk en consumptieveranderingen in vroegmodern Holland. Het voorbeeld van de koffie-en theeverkopers in achttiende-eeuws Leiden’, Holland Historisch Tijdschrift, 42, pp. 102–24
Van den Heuvel and Ogilvie, ‘Retail development’; Th. Wijsenbeek-Olthuis (2007) ‘Gestolen goed. Diefstal van textiel in Den Haag 1600–1800’, Textielhistorische Bijdragen, 47, pp. 42–63.
H. Oberpenning (1996) Migration und Fernhandel im Tödden-System. Wanderhändler aus dem nördlichen Münsterland im mittleren und nördlichen Europa des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Osnabrück: Rasch); Van den Heuvel, Women, pp. 208–9.
E. van Nederveen Meerkerk (2007) De draad in eigen handen. Vrouwen en loonarbeid in de Nederlandse textilenijverheid, 1518–1810 (Amsterdam: Aksant)
B. Panhuysen (2000) Maatwerk. Kleermakers, naaisters, oudkleerkopers en de gilden (1500–1800) (Amsterdam: Stichting IISG).
Cf. S. Ogilvie, M. Küpker and J. Maegraith (2011) ‘Krämer und ihre Waren im Ländlichen Württemberg zwischen 1600 and 1740’, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, 59, pp. 54–75
D. van den Heuvel (2012) ‘Selling in the shadows. Peddlers and hawkers in early modern Europe’, in M. van der Linden and L. Lucassen (eds.) Working on Labor. Essays in Honor of Jan Lucassen (Leiden and Boston: Brill), p. 142.
Cf. J. de Vries and A. van der Woude (1997) The First Modern Economy. Success, Failure and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 581
J.A. Kamermans (1999) Materiële cultuur in de Krimpenerwaard in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw. Ontwikkeling en diversiteit (Wageningen: Universiteit Wageningen), p. 34; Van den Heuvel, Women, pp. 141, 143.
Th. Wijsenbeek (2005) Den Haag. Geschiedenis van een stad deel II (Zwolle: Waanders), pp. 70–72.
Van den Heuvel, Women, p. 191; Van den Heuvel and Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘Huishoudens’, p. 110. This pattern reflects the one observed for Antwerp. See B. Blondé and I. Van Damme (2010) ‘Retail growth and consumer changes in a declining urban economy: Antwerp (1650–1750)’, Economic History Review, 63, pp. 638–63, 645–6.
For evidence in overlap in customer bases see, for instance: N. Cox and K. Dannehl (2007) Perceptions of Retailing in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 55–7.
L. Fontaine (1996) History of Pedlars in Europe (Cambridge: Polity), pp. 183–201
J.E. Shaw (2006) The Justice of Venice. Authorities and Liberties in the Urban Economy 1550–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 82; Ilja Van Damme also hints at this duality in the character of pedlars: on the one hand they offer a wide variety of goods to a wide variety of consumers, on the other hand they offer lower prices and their numbers seem to grow when the economy is in decline.
I. Van Damme (2009) ‘The lure of the new: urban retailing in the surroundings of Antwerp’, in B. Blonde, N. Coquery, J. Stobart and I. Van Damme (eds.), Fashioning Old and New. Changing Consumer Patterns in Western Europe (1650–1900) (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 103–5.
L. Fontaine (2011) ‘Markte als Chance fur die Armen in der Fruhen Neuzeit’, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, 59, pp. 37–53.
See also: M. Calaresu (2007) ‘From the street to the stereotype. Urban space, travel and the picturesque in late eighteenth-century Naples’, Italian Studies, 62, pp. 189–203, 197–201.
Cf. J. Streng (2001) Vrijheid, gelijkheid, broederschap en gezelligheid. Het Zwolse Sint Nicolaasgilde (Hilversum: Verloren).
P. Lourens and J. Lucassen (1997) Inwoneraantallen van Nederlandse steden (Amsterdam: Stichting IISG).
J. Jones (1996) ‘Coquettes and grisettes. Women buying and selling in Ancien Régime Paris’, in V. De Grazia (ed.), The Sex of Things. Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 25–53
E. Kowaleski-Wallace (1997) Consuming Subjects: Women Shopping and Business in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press).
M. Finn (2000) ‘Men’s things: masculine possession in the consumer revolution’, Social History, 25, pp. 133–55.
B. Blondé and H. Greefs (2001) ‘Werk aan de winkel. De Antwerpse meerseniers: aspecten van de kleinhandel en het verbruik in de 17de en 18de eeuw’, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis, 84, pp. 207–22; Van Aert and Van den Heuvel,’ sekse’.
Van Aert and Van den Heuvel,’ sekse’, pp. 27–8. See also Blondé’s findings on 16th-century Den Bosch. B. Blondé (1987) De sociale structuren en economische dynamiek van’ s-Hertogenbosch 1500–1550 (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact).
Cf. G. Brunelle (2007) ‘Policing the monopolizing women of early modern Nantes’, Journal of Women’s History, 19, pp. 10–35, 19.
Van den Heuvel and Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘Huishoudens’, pp. 120–21; D. van den Heuvel (2013) ‘Guilds, gender policies, and economic opportunities for women in early modern Dutch towns’, in D. Simonton and A. Montenach (eds.), Female Agency in the Urban Economy: Gender in European Towns 1640–1830 (London: Routledge), p. 127.
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© 2014 Danielle van den Heuvel
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van den Heuvel, D. (2014). New Products, New Sellers? Changes in the Dutch Textile Trades, c. 1650–1750. In: Stobart, J., Blondé, B. (eds) Selling Textiles in the Long Eighteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137295217_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137295217_8
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