Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants

Abstract

Phyllis Whitman Hunter, Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants, 1670 -1780, New York: Cornell University Press, 2001. Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World examines the world of trade, commerce, and material goods in a new and interesting way. As the title suggests, mere tangible goods were not always all that could be purchased. In fact, Phyllis Hunter suggests that in the fluid world of finance, one's identity could also be "purchased" through one's careful selection of partnerships and possessions. The contacts made and the goods displayed could, and often did, have a lasting effect on both one's social and financial positions. While one might not readily think of the Atlantic seaboard of early British America as an important or influential area of refinement or high finance, Hunter has found there what she calls a "critical link in the complex relationship between capitalism and culture," a link that would prove to be most influential in the overall shaping of an Anglo-American consumer culture. The dynamic process by which obtaining and displaying material goods passed from a specter of selfishness to a symbol of important social and cultural significance is interestingly explored within the pages of Hunter's Atlantic World of 1670 to 1780. Hunter's "Introduction" is quite informative and defines both her purpose and her method well. Each section of the book is clear and provides an adequately comprehensive narrative and a continuity of spirit. Hunter's chronological arrangement, although a bit loose, allows the reader to picture the changes through time in a reasonably coherent way. Drawing on resources from material culture, cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and social history, she explores in an "interdisciplinary" fashion the "rise and fall" of two dynamic and influential colonial Massachusetts ports. She traces the rise of both Boston and Salem from sober Puritan towns to provincial but diverse "Georgian cities," concluding with the later turmoil of American "revolutionary politics." In a type of "case study" approach, Hunter adopts a strict definition of "merchant" as one who is engaged primarily in "international trade," and examines a number of primary sources such as ledgers and account books, newspapers, diaries, as well as both business and personal correspondence of some of the leading merchants in both cities. And although one has to assume that occurrences of a similar sort were going on elsewhere along the Atlantic seaboard, since she does not bring them into comparison with Boston or Salem, Hunter has produced both a notable and informative work that should enhance the existing scholarship. For the most part, the scholarship around this subject has left much of the old thought in place of a strictly religious community to whom worldly gain was not to be sought, much less displayed; but Hunter challenges the paradigm as she discovers a slow, but nonetheless steady, progression from Calvinism's emphasis on earning a simple "competence" to New World capitalism's consumer-driven market economy. The contradictions existed within Puritanism from the very beginning, Hunter argues, which ultimately led to the shift. Where profits gained could also be seen as God's blessing, it became a contest between maintaining a close watch on one's successes in a more "closed" but less prosperous social society, or allowing one to use what was gained in a more "open" and growing economic one. In other words, "piety vs. profit" would define Boston and Salem's struggle for several decades. Hunter found that both a general fear of change and a fear of the "other" made the early efforts of Boston and Salem international merchants a difficult task. …