{"title":"Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States by Laura F. Edwards (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a898001","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States by Laura F. Edwards Emily J. Arendt (bio) Keywords Clothing, Textiles, Property rights, Legal history Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States. By Laura F. Edwards. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 433. Cloth, $34.95.) As material displays of identity, markers of class and status, or symbols of political persuasion, clothing's power to convey a variety of cultural messages has been of increasing interest to historians. Certainly, the economic significance of clothing and textiles for both trade and manufacturing in early America is widely recognized. Vastly underappreciated, however, is the place of law in those dynamics. As Laura Edwards demonstrates in her [End Page 357] newest work, both the social and economic value of textiles derived from the legal principles that attached to this form of property: \"the legal principles associated with textiles involved foundational cultural values and social customs that defined the good order of society\" (20). Everyone knew the value of clothing and textiles, generally knew who the owners of those items were in their communities, and recognized that court protections of those possessions were necessary to uphold public order. Clothing, cloth, linens, drapes, and even accessories like hats thus represented a unique type of property that allowed the people who produced them, traded them, and wore them to make claims to property, even if they lacked strong claims to other legal rights. For dependent persons, including married women, free Blacks, and enslaved peoples, textiles could be owned and traded, used as currency, credit, and capital. Proceeding in three parts containing thematic chapters while charting a chronological narrative, the book demonstrates how marginalized people could rely upon the legal principles that attached to textiles to both engage in the economy and access the governing institutions of the new nation, at least for a time. The legal principles attached to textiles, as shown in the book's first part, pre-dated the American Revolution and were minimally altered by the establishment of the U.S. federal system. In line with recent scholarship demonstrating the extent to which people on the margins were engaged in commercial exchange, Edwards elucidates how the legalities of textiles superseded the laws of coverture and slavery to allow people with no formal rights to enter the textile trades in the decades following the Revolution. Rebecca Coles, for instance, established a successful textile business in Virginia around the same time as the Revolution, producing fabric to be used not only by the household on the plantation, but for sale. That Coles might be considered a manufacturer defies the assumptions many of us hold regarding the power of a rights-based legal framework: How could a married woman with no legal claim to the things she produced be a successful manufacturer? The answer resides in the legal qualities of textiles, qualities lodged especially in public law where concern for the public good had long allowed claims to textiles by those whose property rights would not be recognized under private law. Non-rights holders adopted an array of creative strategies to obtain the legal recognitions that allowed them to tap into textiles' full economic potential as currency and capital to trade, pawn, lend, or save. From the tale of prisoners at Philadelphia's Walnut Street jail selling the clothing they had been gifted to obtain alcohol between 1789 and 1820, [End Page 358] to the story of Rosenah Gray, an enslaved woman who invested in fabric for resale and saving but was accused of theft in 1802, the rich examples in the book's second part demonstrate the various ways textiles functioned as financial instruments as well as consumer goods. Careful to note that racial and class privilege structured the range of opportunities available to marginalized peoples, Edwards nonetheless demonstrates the extent to which people facing structural inequalities could use the creation and circulation of textiles to their own benefit within the legal order of the republic. Ultimately, Edwards argues, a series of shifts in the decades leading up to the Civil...","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a898001","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Reviewed by: Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States by Laura F. Edwards Emily J. Arendt (bio) Keywords Clothing, Textiles, Property rights, Legal history Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States. By Laura F. Edwards. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 433. Cloth, $34.95.) As material displays of identity, markers of class and status, or symbols of political persuasion, clothing's power to convey a variety of cultural messages has been of increasing interest to historians. Certainly, the economic significance of clothing and textiles for both trade and manufacturing in early America is widely recognized. Vastly underappreciated, however, is the place of law in those dynamics. As Laura Edwards demonstrates in her [End Page 357] newest work, both the social and economic value of textiles derived from the legal principles that attached to this form of property: "the legal principles associated with textiles involved foundational cultural values and social customs that defined the good order of society" (20). Everyone knew the value of clothing and textiles, generally knew who the owners of those items were in their communities, and recognized that court protections of those possessions were necessary to uphold public order. Clothing, cloth, linens, drapes, and even accessories like hats thus represented a unique type of property that allowed the people who produced them, traded them, and wore them to make claims to property, even if they lacked strong claims to other legal rights. For dependent persons, including married women, free Blacks, and enslaved peoples, textiles could be owned and traded, used as currency, credit, and capital. Proceeding in three parts containing thematic chapters while charting a chronological narrative, the book demonstrates how marginalized people could rely upon the legal principles that attached to textiles to both engage in the economy and access the governing institutions of the new nation, at least for a time. The legal principles attached to textiles, as shown in the book's first part, pre-dated the American Revolution and were minimally altered by the establishment of the U.S. federal system. In line with recent scholarship demonstrating the extent to which people on the margins were engaged in commercial exchange, Edwards elucidates how the legalities of textiles superseded the laws of coverture and slavery to allow people with no formal rights to enter the textile trades in the decades following the Revolution. Rebecca Coles, for instance, established a successful textile business in Virginia around the same time as the Revolution, producing fabric to be used not only by the household on the plantation, but for sale. That Coles might be considered a manufacturer defies the assumptions many of us hold regarding the power of a rights-based legal framework: How could a married woman with no legal claim to the things she produced be a successful manufacturer? The answer resides in the legal qualities of textiles, qualities lodged especially in public law where concern for the public good had long allowed claims to textiles by those whose property rights would not be recognized under private law. Non-rights holders adopted an array of creative strategies to obtain the legal recognitions that allowed them to tap into textiles' full economic potential as currency and capital to trade, pawn, lend, or save. From the tale of prisoners at Philadelphia's Walnut Street jail selling the clothing they had been gifted to obtain alcohol between 1789 and 1820, [End Page 358] to the story of Rosenah Gray, an enslaved woman who invested in fabric for resale and saving but was accused of theft in 1802, the rich examples in the book's second part demonstrate the various ways textiles functioned as financial instruments as well as consumer goods. Careful to note that racial and class privilege structured the range of opportunities available to marginalized peoples, Edwards nonetheless demonstrates the extent to which people facing structural inequalities could use the creation and circulation of textiles to their own benefit within the legal order of the republic. Ultimately, Edwards argues, a series of shifts in the decades leading up to the Civil...
书评:《只有她身上的衣服:19世纪美国的服装与权力的隐藏历史》作者:劳拉·f·爱德华兹(Laura F. Edwards)艾米丽·j·阿伦特(Emily J. Arendt)劳拉·爱德华兹著。纽约:牛津大学出版社,2022。433页。布,34.95美元)。作为身份、阶级和地位的标志或政治信仰的象征,服装传达各种文化信息的能力越来越引起历史学家的兴趣。当然,服装和纺织品对早期美国贸易和制造业的经济意义是公认的。然而,法律在这些动态中的地位却被严重低估了。正如劳拉·爱德华兹(Laura Edwards)在她的最新著作中所论证的那样,纺织品的社会和经济价值都来源于与这种财产形式相关的法律原则:“与纺织品相关的法律原则涉及基本的文化价值和社会习俗,这些价值观和习俗定义了良好的社会秩序”(20)。每个人都知道服装和纺织品的价值,一般都知道这些物品的主人在他们的社区是谁,并且认识到法院对这些财产的保护对于维护公共秩序是必要的。衣服、布料、亚麻布、窗帘,甚至像帽子这样的配饰,都代表了一种独特的财产类型,允许生产、交易和穿着它们的人对财产提出要求,即使他们缺乏其他法律权利的强烈要求。对于被依赖的人,包括已婚妇女、自由的黑人和被奴役的人,纺织品可以被拥有和交易,用作货币、信贷和资本。本书分为三个部分,包括主题章节,同时按照时间顺序进行叙述,展示了边缘化的人们如何依靠与纺织品有关的法律原则参与经济活动,并至少在一段时间内进入这个新国家的管理机构。正如书中第一部分所示,与纺织品有关的法律原则早在美国独立战争之前就存在了,并且随着美国联邦制度的建立而发生了最小程度的变化。与最近的学术研究一致,爱德华兹阐明了纺织品的合法性如何取代了奴役和奴役的法律,使没有正式权利的人能够在革命后的几十年里进入纺织品贸易。例如,丽贝卡·科尔斯(Rebecca Coles)在革命前后在弗吉尼亚州建立了一家成功的纺织企业,生产的织物不仅供种植园里的家庭使用,而且也可供销售。科尔斯可能被认为是一个制造商,这违背了我们许多人对基于权利的法律框架的力量的假设:一个对自己生产的东西没有法律主张的已婚妇女怎么可能成为一个成功的制造商?答案在于纺织品的法律性质,特别是在公法中提出的性质,在公法中,对公共利益的关注长期以来允许那些财产权在私法中不被承认的人对纺织品提出索赔。非权利持有人采取了一系列创造性的策略,以获得法律承认,使他们能够充分利用纺织品作为货币和资本的全部经济潜力,进行贸易、典当、出借或储蓄。从1789年到1820年间,费城核桃街监狱的囚犯们卖掉他们得到的用来买酒的衣服的故事,到Rosenah Gray(一个被奴役的女人,她投资织物用于转售和储蓄,但在1802年被指控盗窃)的故事,本书第二部分中丰富的例子展示了纺织品作为金融工具和消费品的各种方式。爱德华兹仔细地注意到,种族和阶级特权构成了边缘化人群获得机会的范围,尽管如此,他还是证明了面临结构性不平等的人们可以在多大程度上利用纺织品的创造和流通,在共和国的法律秩序内为自己谋取利益。最终,爱德华兹认为,在内战之前的几十年里发生的一系列变化……
期刊介绍:
The Journal of the Early Republic is a quarterly journal committed to publishing the best scholarship on the history and culture of the United States in the years of the early republic (1776–1861). JER is published for the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. SHEAR membership includes an annual subscription to the journal.