THE MARKET ECONOMY IN PORT CITIES During 1740s and 1760s, the port cities along the Northern American continent went through drastic economic changes as new goods became available to the common colonists, and more opportunities came into alive for the merchants and apprentice who possessed the skills to satisfy the increasing demand. Two major groups that benefited greatly from this change in the market economy are the female colonists and the underrepresented slaves and servants. Unlike their counterparts in Europe, slaves and women were engaged in the society as providers of not only skills and labors, but also other commodities, including both legal and illegal ones. Merchants like John Hull, a mint-master of New England, believed that …show more content…
They took up the business from their deceased spouses and made success. It was quite surprising to learn that most of the merchants in port cities like New York and Philadelphia are females, with the major one being widows. In contrast to most women in England not being allowed to own property until late 19th century, the female merchants in the American colonies were not only able to control their own goods, but also able to communicate and trade with other male merchants in establishing successful trading companies. As Patricia Cleary stated in her essay, Women’s Sphere of Trade in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia and New York, Female shopkeepers “attempted to meet and capitalize on the demand created by the consumer revolution by characterizing themselves as arbiters of taste with metropolitan connections”. Because both the consumers and the sellers are female, it makes the trading more effective as the merchants advertise to their customers with gender focus. Shopping gradually became characterized with elements of “incipient female networks”. Besides the widows and married women, sisters and cousins formed partnership before marriages and continued to maintain shops independently. This might be the spark of individualism and fight for gender equality later. Mary Cortes and Magret Varick’s wills illustrated that female merchants typically favored their daughter, because they made sure that …show more content…
In order to acquire freedom, slaves sold and purchased “passes” to travel freely through the towns and villages. They were able to disguise themselves with the skills that they practiced under their former master. Some pretended to be apprentices to avoid suspicion. One thing interesting that is described by David Waldstreicher in his essay, Unfree Workers Take Advantage of Their Economic Experience to Free Themselves is that the owners were confused about the reasons that slaves with skills run away, and failed to describe the flaws in the characteristic of the runaways. Rather than providing details about the physical appearance of the runaways, the advertisements had more detailed description about the possible jobs the runaways could take up. The slaves and servants were able to acquire freedom through the skills that made their former owners a great amount of wealth. Waldstreicher also noted in his essay that the escaped slaves and servants were able to speak in several different languages besides
The slaves are not considered human in this time, but as animals “...we were all pent up together like so many sheep in a fold…” (Equiano 4). These conditions and brutishness can be compared to today’s sex trade. Young men and women are sold illegally to be used and mistreated until death, though slavery in this time was
Mary Beth Norton is a historian who specializes in women’s history, her interview with Barker-Benfield uncovers her experiences and involvement in discovering the importance of female involvement in the late 17th, early 18th century history. Mary Beth and professor Peter Lapsion’s He Said, She Said article both explain why gender roles were so important in shaping and revealing todays gender morals in society. Mary Beth explains in her interview that in order to get a clear understanding of history, both women and men needed to be included to look at life in the 17th century. Norton clearly states that men and women had secret lives that were written in their dairies.
Women are founding structures of history, but when and where do they fall into play? Today we'll be talking about women and their impact in colonial society. Though women had an extremely strict role in these times, some defied this and influenced and expanded colonization. Statuses of colonial women were based off of their wealth, social status, and religion. Their lives and roles were decided by the following labels: Puritan women, wealthy European Colonial woman, unmarried woman or widowed women, Colonial Indentured woman, colonial slave women and Native American women who were lesser known.
Fulfilling these virtues meant living as a true woman in the 1800’s. Restricted in every aspect of their lives, women were only allowed to participate in religious work outside the home, since “church work would not make her less domestic or submissive” (Welter 2). If women responded so dutifully to their place in society, what changed in terms of
African slaves had only one “career.” Their holders were “kings”, and they were called “black animals.” They had no choice except working hard on plantations until they died. Even their family lives could be disrupted. However, a French cotton merchant reports on what happened after the marriage, “…the master may sell separately the husband and the wife and the children to another buyer…”
The colonial women arrived at American with the blood of their European ancestors, but they were different in numbers. Firstly, the article did point out that men paid attention to women's need because of their value. In the early time, colonial women were important for they contributes of productive and reproduction of labors that consisted of social communities. However, such importance was not considered those colonial women as independent individuals but more like tools. For instance, Elizabeth's husband admitted
For the 19th century America, the two sexes were to be separated into distinct spheres, the man’s public sphere and the woman’s private one. It was most common for the two sexes to spend their time mostly in the company of their own sex, and advices were given to the younger members of the society on the proper way of behaving according to one’s sex. Even though both sexes had to be instructed on how to perform in each other’s company, it was the shaping of a woman that needed to undergo through a series of instructions on the proper way to be a woman. A woman had to follow the rules of the Cult of True Womanhood to be considered proper and wife material. Fanny Fern in her writing appeals on and discusses the attributes of piety, purity, submissiveness,
The industrial revolution transformed western Europe and the United States during the course of the nineteenth century. This transformation enabled women to play active roles in the workforce. With this sudden change, women's traditional gender roles were being challenged. The movement of industrialization allowed for equal opportunity for all genders, and major improvements upon the economy. Gender roles are sets of behavior and characteristics associated with men and women.
These women were often displaced, because their husbands’ strong desire to travel, and had to live dismal lives on the frontier. Women’s lives were very closely tied to their homes and families, while men were more inclined to the business world and often left their families alone when
Moreover, the slave was not inferior to the free person of similar skills in regard to food and clothing” (72). Slaves were an economic asset in the ancient Near East. They had a price to them. If someone owned a slave, they could be resold.
Ballard’s diary shows she “traded textiles and farm products with her female neighbors as well as physic and obstetrical services.” This portrays the female economy that was present in the colonial times and beyond. Women traded their goods and services to other women creating their own economy. Martha traded with women while Ephraim traded with men, which gave her the independence to improve her own work and house
An American Slave: Written by Himself, through the slave’s inability to learn how to read
In the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” the author, Frederick Douglass, expresses the idea that slaves were to kept ignorant by their masters in order to keep them fit for a slave. In the 1800s, slaves were humans mostly African Americans, that were forced to do hard labor with no benefits. Slaves had little to eat or none at all as well as no clothes. They were treated as animals with no respect. Their masters would say to not give them any information of their childhood whatsoever.
Http://universityofgujrat.academia.edu/HammadRaza. "Fashion and Gender Roles. "Academia.edu - Share Research. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2017 Countless studies of nineteenth-century women and gender have attested to the pervasive presence in English culture of the separate-sphere ideology which assigned the private domain of home and family to women and the public arena of politics, commerce and work to men. In contrast to these ostensibly gendered spheres, fashionable society appeared not to be gendered even as its gender-free façade was underpinned by a complicated politics of gender.
The commercial development of the nineteenth-century had considerably a grand affect in Victorian England. In particular, the remodeling of London’s West End contributed to the separation between class systems as the lower class could not partake in the same activities as the upper class. It also divided the male and female gender identities into public or private spheres after centuries of working together in unison. The two sexes were now forced to live out the particular roles society had laid out for them to keep the development of the city running (Rappaport, 103). Men would be part of the public sphere to work and socialize, while women’s rightful place was in the kitchen (Nead, 172).