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  • Perceptions of Retailing in Early Modern England
  • Norman Jones
Nancy Cox and Karin Dannehl. Perceptions of Retailing in Early Modern England. The History of Retailing and Consumption. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007. xvi + 214 pp. + 5 color and 13 b/w pls. index. illus. tbls. bibl. $99.95. ISBN: 978–0–7546–3771–4.

This is an interesting approach to an important subject. Occupying a prominent place on the road to modernity, the development of retailing has generally been treated by economic historians whose interests and methods predispose them to look for signs of increasing levels of organization in retail operations. However, Cox and Dannehl disagree. They see retailing, carefully defined as the selling to end-consumers in small lots, as much older and much more important than do historians who situate modernity in the nineteenth century. Moreover, they see retailing as playing an important sociocultural role in England during the period between 1603 and 1815.

The authors are very careful to spell out their methodology, thoughtfully choosing the word “perceptions” to reflect what they are trying to achieve. Recognizing that perception works at many levels and depends on perspective, they use it to catch the attitudes, values, and experiences of customers, retailers, and the broader culture in which they existed. These perceptions add value to goods, characterize experiences of trade, and teach the participants. [End Page 651]

Their principle source is the Dictionary Project at the University of Wolverhampton, a digital database of documents related to trade in England and Wales in the early modern era. The existence of the database makes it possible for them to see patterns that might otherwise remain invisible. For instance, they discuss the relation between place names and fashion in retailing. They show how early modern retailers used the names of cities in their advertising, exploiting the perceptions of the accepted attributes of certain places, whether cultural, social, or industrial. The use of “London” or “Venice” on a trade card was a calculated move by a provincial retailer that displays all of these attributes, allowing them to trace the rise and fall of fashions.

Trade cards open a vista on the cultural role of itinerant pedlars, the face of retail for country people. Keepers of fixed shops feared them, and until the late seventeenth century, they were frequently prosecuted under statute law. By the early eighteenth century, however, pedlars begin to appear as intermediaries for manufacturers who needed their goods distributed. The most established of them were the “Manchester Men,” who represented shops in their travels, distributing their advertising cards along with their goods.

These ads created what they describe as a “virtual supply,” a direct extension of the premises of the retailer where goods can be “displayed” and demand created. Working within an established set of visual signs, the ad was a shared communication system based on common perceptions and values. Thus, they give the historian a window on the ways in which retailers affected and were affected by the culture in which they operated. The emergence of newspapers and women’s advice books continued and amplified the trend.

Shopping is another topic they take up. The historiography suggests that shopping for pleasure was a more modern development, but they find that the culture of retailing was creating a culture of “frequenting shops for pleasure,” long before the well-glazed eighteenth-century shopping row was created. Markets and fairs provided choice to the consumer, as well as the amusement of browsing, by concentrating shoppers and shopkeepers. For shoppers of means, the relationship with the shopkeeper became more personal, with an invitation to the room behind the shop used to receive select customers. Using probate inventories, legal texts, and literary evidence, they urge that “shopping” certainly existed in the later seventeenth century — so much so that Parliament created “shop lifting,” in 1699. They conclude that shopping as entertainment is much older than assumed. Even sixteenth-century retailers were in the business of arousing desire, providing choice, and offering enjoyment to their patrons.

The purpose of the authors’ argument is to reorient thinking about retailing by focusing on culture, rather than treating it as a branch of economic history. In this they...

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