“Give over all trade and become a country gentleman:” material culture, masculinity, and social mobility in globalized Europe, 1600-1700
Creators: Sims, Ashley J.
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

<p>It is now accepted that the seventeenth century witnessed a large and rapid increase in the consumption of goods in the British Isles and across northwest Europe and the colonial Americas. Involving developing networks of global exchange, this was the period when the full force of expanding trade in Asia and the Americas was felt with increasing intensity at home in Britain and its colonies. A new breed of consumer emerged. One such consumer was Scottish merchant turned member of the landed elite, John Clerk (1611-1674). Utilizing Clerk’s meticulous business and household accounts I seek to locate his activity within wider conversations regarding Scotland in the seventeenth century, materiality, masculinity, and social mobility. Key to this project is a re-evaluation of the older notion that prior to 1725 Scotland had an undeveloped consumer culture. What is apparent based both on primary sources and the recent shift in the scholarship is that my dissertation represents a major intervention in understanding Scotland as: participant in developing networks of global exchange; and as a northern alternative to studies focussed on western and central European consumer practice. This dissertation will analyze the globalized goods Clerk dealt in as he built his successful commercial enterprise, arguing that it was the combination of goods, clients and Clerk’s knowledge that allowed him to accumulate capital and social prestige. Further to this, I argue that we need to understand Clerk’s mercantile activity as more than simply the means by which he increased his wealth. Rather, it must be seen as the conduit through which he achieved his ultimate goal: to increase his family’s status thereby setting future generations on a path to ascend throughout the ranks of Scottish (eventually ‘British’) society. Beginning his career in Paris in the 1630s, Clerk amassed a sizeable fortune buying and selling everything from calico and tortoiseshell tobacco pipes to silk ribbons and Dutch paintings. Meaningful engagement with objects supports this study as goods figure centrally in Clerk’s life and livelihood. Informed by material culture studies, I use objects as both resource and anchor, allowing goods as disparate as miniature paintings and ebony cabinets to assist in telling a more complete story than written sources alone ever could.When Clerk used some of his fortune to buy a country estate south of Edinburgh, he committed to his household accounts with increased fervor all while continuing to furnish his own home and dress his family as befitted their increased social station. His transition from middle ranked merchant to member of the landed elite is a key component to fully understanding society during the seventeenth century. Due largely to domestic turmoil and the increasing power and wealth held by the middling and professional ranks, the British Isles experienced a small (yet unparalleled) reorientation of its societal layers. In the seventeenth century if you had financial capital and social connections there was a very real possibility that before too long you could find yourself with an estate and a title. It was these mobile individuals and their families who connect metropole to periphery, and lavish, fashionable court lifestyles to the innovations of parish elites in the countryside. Gendered consumptive practices are also highlighted by Clerk’s record of things he bought for himself and his male clients. A study such as this is essential, for within the historiography there has been a push since the early 1990s to locate the voices of non-aristocratic men. With John Clerk we are granted an opportunity to observe the life of a capable merchant and banker who possessed tacit and commercial knowledge about the material world. He leveraged this knowledge and his social connections to increase his own wealth, and within a single generation increased his family’s position all while remaining an active participant in networks of global exchange.</p>