Trading Spaces

"“Hart successfully establishes the colonial marketplace as critical to the development of American capitalism.” * American Historical Review * “Highly recommended. . . This thoroughly researched account offers a new interpretation that argues for the Colonial market’s importance in the history of American capitalism and economic culture.” * Choice * ""An important contribution to our understanding of how markets functioned in the early modern British Atlantic. Providing detailed examination of evidence from sources such as newspapers, broadsides, court testimonies, maps, and private journals, Hart convincingly recreates what that early modern trading world looked like at the ground level, from the colonial era through the early American republic."" * Journal of British Studies * ""Ultimately,Trading Spaces tells the story of early American identity, weaving together social histories gathered from an array of qualitative sources with discussions of political economy. . . . her work starts a conversation that one hopes others will continue."" * The Journal of Southern History * “Fascinating and insightful, Trading Spaces is a major contribution. Hart provides an important corrective to recent scholarship, reminding us that though capitalism may be a global system, it is enacted and effected locally. I can see no other book that makes clear the significance of market practice to the evolution of economic relations, political economy, and imperial politics in the way that Trading Spaces does.” -- Joanna Cohen * author of Luxurious Citizens: The Politics of Consumption in Nineteenth-Century America * “Original and innovative. No other work brings early American economic experience into direct comparison with contemporary British practices and simultaneously explores the racial and ethnic dimensions of colonial marketplaces. Trading Spaces is well-reasoned and even-handed, but its argument should prove provocative in that it will ask early Americanists to reconsider their preconceptions. This will be an indispensable book.” -- Christopher Clark * author of The Roots of Rural Capitalism * “A compelling addition to the history of capitalism, Trading Spaces reminds us that globalization’s current realities have deep roots in the early modern era. Hart explores the shift from marketplaces to markets through the lens of colonization, revealing how the explosion of global trade gave rise to clashing visions about people’s interactions with markets, with consequences for both America’s independence and its capitalist future.” -- Margaret Newell * author of Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery *"