THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

century transatlantic society. This period witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of
complaints against materialism. While critics of luxury had lodged similar complaints in
earlier centuries, the tone of eighteenth-century jeremiads against consumption suggests
the presence of new tensions. 18 Material goods took on a gendered dimension in this
period as function and setting influenced design and meaning. 19 The widespread
availability of credit and currency as well as advertising encouraged consumers to
participate in the expanding marketplace. 20 Consumers could accept or reject goods for
any number of reasons. Consumption of or abstinence from goods was often contextual
and rarely static. New ideas about gender and commerce stressed the Atlantic world in
critical ways. Thus, the rejection of slave-grown sugar may have been as much an
expression of anxiety over the development of the world of goods and shifting gender
roles as a statement of anti-slavery or anti-slave trade sentiment.
18 Martin, “Makers, Buyers, and Users,” 151.
19 Anderson, “Nature’s Currency,” 418: “The ways in which individual objects were
contextualized, and how in turn they were interpreted by eighteenth century viewers, was further influenced
by such factors as their setting, form, style, and gendered design aspects. For example, a man’s desk in a
counting house would be scaled differently (usually larger and heavier) than a smaller, more delicate desk
or sewing table designed for a woman’s parlor.”
20 T.H. Breen, “Narrative of Commercial Life: Consumption, Ideology, and Community on the
Eve of the American Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly 50 (1993), 488. In her analysis of
retail trade in eighteenth century Virginia, Ann Smart Martin notes that slaves made up a significant portion
of merchant John Hook’s business: “The number of slaves who made purchases had grown so large and
their activity so regular that by the turn of the century, Hook’s storekeeper at Hale’s Ford began keeping a
separate account book for their purchases.” See Martin, Buying into the World of Goods, 8, 173-193.
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