The Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America (review)

Women, argues Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, were central players in the urban economy of post-Revolution America. Whether they acted as producers or consumers, borrowers or lenders, they were directly involved in the economic relationships that characterized the Atlantic world. Adopting a comparative framework, Hartigan-O’Connor mines the rich resources of Charleston, South Carolina, and Newport, Rhode Island to analyze women’s economic role in two very different port cities. Rich women and poor, married and single, black and white: all, she argues, were essential to the economic well-being of their own families and of the broader community. Moreover, consumption, production, and service were inextricably intertwined, and most women were involved in more than one facet of an increasingly complex economic world.

Hartigan-O’Connor begins her study with a description of the “houseful,” a residence composed of unrelated adults involved in a variety of separate commercial activities. The “smallest knot in a web of economic ties,” the houseful allowed women the opportunity to launch businesses or to engage in trade, offering them an “economic link to life in the city and beyond” (14). Unlike the patriarchal household, the houseful was a place where all sorts of women could engage in commercial activity as autonomous actors, even as they were often hidden from the view of legal authorities or government officials. Women were also heavily involved in the service economy, receiving cash or its equivalent for their work and becoming crucial factors in the new nation’s transition to a capitalist economy. They operated boarding houses where sailors and merchants could stay when they arrived in the port of call; they sewed and washed and cleaned, proving that both the servers and the served recognized the economic value of traditionally defined women’s work. With the money they earned, of course, these women purchased domestic and imported goods, thus affecting the economy throughout the Atlantic world.

Postwar women too were creditors and debtors who recognized the importance of maintaining reputations as honest brokers. They also understood the value of money, using cash or its equivalent to set themselves up in business. As “shoppers,” women of whatever class, race, or ethnicity fueled the economy even as they prided themselves on their ability to judge the quality of merchandise or to negotiate a shrewd bargain. They were not the frivolous, luxury-loving women depicted in the popular literature of the day. To the contrary, it was men—desiring to advertise their own position as providers—who seemed interested in clothing family members in the latest styles.

Although women in both Charleston and Newport were involved in commercial activity, there were some stark differences between the two cities. Charleston, of course, was the home of many more slaves and free people of color than its northern counterpart. Female slaves carved out a commercial niche for themselves, developing marketable skills such as washing clothes or selling produce. Not insignificantly, white women benefited financially from the ownership of slave women. Newport women of color were much less numerous. They tended to live in smaller households and were not as physically or socially autonomous as their southern sisters. Charleston’s inhabitants had more commercial opportunities than did the townspeople of Newport. Finally, Charleston’s economy enjoyed boom years after the Revolution, but Newport never recovered from the devastation it suffered as a result of the British occupation during the war. Consequently, as the city’s Atlantic trade declined precipitously, fewer merchants and sailors required the goods and services of Newport women. The different expectations for women in the two cities were magnified because South Carolina allowed married women to assume the status of feme sole trader, while Rhode Island did not.

This fascinating and well-researched book challenges our assumptions at every turn. Because Hartigan-O’Connor shifts our focus from the countryside to the city, she forces historians to rethink their fundamental precepts concerning the “capitalist transformation.” Urban “housefuls” operated in fundamentally...