Early Modern Conceptions of Property.

630 Pages·2014·17.054 MB·English

by  Brewer, John, Staves, Susan

Early Modern Conceptions
of Property
Consumption and Culture in the 17th
and 18th Centuries
Consumption and the World of Goods
Edited by John Brewer and Roy Porter
Early Modern Conceptions of Property
Edited by John Brewer and Susan Staves
The Consumption of Culture, 1600-1800
Edited by Ann Bermingham and John Brewer
Early Modern
Conceptions of
Property
Edited by
John Brewer and Susan Staves
London and New York
First published 1995
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016
Transferred to Digital Printing 2007
This collection © 1995 Routledge;
individual chapters © 1995 individual contributors
Typeset in Baskerville by Florencetype Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Early modern conceptions of property / edited by John Brewer and Susan
Staves.
p. cm. - (Consumption and culture in 17th and 18th centuries: 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Property - History. I. Brewer, John II. Staves, Susan III. Series.
HB701.E14 1994
330.1 '7--dc20 94-16164
ISBN 0-415-10533-1
Cover Illustration: Benjamin West, Lord Clive Receiving
from the Mogul the Grant ofD uanney
Cover Design: Twenty Twenty
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent
Contents
LIST OF TABLES viii
LIST OF PLATES ix
PREFACE x
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Xl
1 Introduction
John Brewer and Susan Staves
Part I Property and political theory
2 Resources, capacities, and ownership. The workmanship ideal and
distributive justice
Ian Shapiro 21
3 Lockean ideas, poverty, and the development of liberal political theory
Richard Ashcraft 43
4 The "misteries" of property. Relationality, rural-industrialization, and
community in Chartist narratives of political rights
Margaret R. Somers 62
Part II Property and legal ideology
5 Paradoxical property
Robert W. Gordon 95
6 Land law, citizenship, and the invention of "Englishness." The strange
world of the equity of redemption
David Sugarman and Ronnie Warrington III
vi Contents
7 Property, commerce, and the common law. Attitudes to legal change
in the eighteenth century
David Lieberman 144
Part III Property and the family
8 Of women and the land. Legitimizing husbandry
Carol Blum 161
9 Women and property in ancien regime France. Theory and practice in
Dauphine and Paris
Barbara B. Diefendoif 170
10 Resentment or resignation? Dividing the spoils among daughters and
younger sons
Susan Staves 194
Part IV Property and the construction of a self
11 Property and politeness in the early eighteenth-century Whig moralists.
The case of the Spectator
Lawrence E. Klein 221
12 ReWrighting Shaftesbury. The Air Pump and the limits of commercial
humanism
David Solkin 234
13 Property, politics, and personality in Rousseau
Patrick Coleman 254
14 Noblesse oblige. Female charity in an age of sentiment
Donna T. Andrew 275
15 Defending conduct and property. The London press and the luxury debate
James Raven 301
Part V Literary property
16 (Re)Writing Lear. Literary property and dramatic authorship
Laura J. Rosenthal 323
17 Epistolary property. Michel de Servan and the plight of letters on the
eve of the French Revolution
Dena Goodman 339
18 The bank, the press and the "return of Nature." On currency, credit,
and literary property in the 1690s
J.£h~ ~
Contents vii
19 Literary capital. Gray's "Elegy," Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and
the vernacular canon
John Guillory 389
Part VI Reification: the invention and institution of special forms
of property
20 Possessing Mother Nature. Genetic capital in eighteenth-century Britain
Harriet Ritvo 413
21 Monopoly, economic thought, and the Royal African Company
Tim Keirn 427
22 Delivering the goods. Patriotism, property, and the midwife mission
of Mme de Coudray
Nina Rattner Gelbart 467
23 Property in office under the ancien regime. The case of the stockbrokers
David D. Bien 481
Part VII The property of empire
24 Property and propriety. Land tenure and slave property in the creation
of a British West Indian plantocracy, 1612-1740
Michael Craton 497
25 Parliament and property rights in the late eighteenth-century
British Empire
P. J. Marshall 530
26 Coerced indigenous labor and free mestizo peasantry.
A property-rights, rent-seeking view of colonial Paraguay
Mario Pastore 545
27 The concept of "white slavery" in the English Caribbean during the
early seventeenth century
Hilary Beckles 572
INDEX 585
Tables
Table 21.1 Members of the Royal African Company's Court of
Assistants who served in the House of Commons, 1689-1714 454
Table 21.2a Members of the House of Commons moving in favor of the
Royal African Company, 1689-1714 456
Table 21.2b Members of the House of Commons moving against the
Royal African Company, 1689-1714 457
Table 24.1 Average size ofland grants in Barbados, 1628-37 524
Table 24.2 Frequency distribution oflandholdings in Jamaica, 1670
and 1754 526
Table 27.1 Labor structure of fifteen pre-sugar plantations in Barbados,
1639-43 573
Table 27.2 Servants shipped to Barbados and Virginia from Bristol,
1654--60 575
Plates
(between pp. 306 and 307)
1.1 "Romanians Can't Afford Land That Is Theirs," New York Times, February 12,
1992
11.1 English coffee-house, c. 1700
12.1 Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768
12.2 John C1osterman, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, and his brother the
Ron. Maurice Ashley Cooper, 1702
14.1 Portrait of Margaret Georgiana, Lady Spencer
14.2 A cardboard card with a handwritten appeal for discreet customers for Lady Jane
Flack's millinery business, found among the papers of Lady Spencer
14.3 The reverse of the card shown in Plate 14.2
16.1 James Gillray, Shakespeare Sacrificed - or The Offering to Avarice
17.1 Eighteenth-century French post office
20.1 Robert Bakewell's New Leicester or Dish1ey sheep
20.2 New York Times, November 15, 1991
21.1 Portrait of Mme du Coudray, c. 1773
22.2 The fetus in presentation position, as illustrated by William Hunter, The Anatomy
of the Ruman Gravid Uterus, Birmingham, 1774
22.3 "L'enfant qui vient natureIement," as illustrated by Mme du Coudray, Abrege de
l'art des accouchements, Paris, 1771
24.1 Map showing the relative sizes of Bermuda, Barbados, and Jamaica
24.2 Map of Bermuda by Richard Norwood, 1622
24.3 Map of Barbados by Richard Ligon, 1657
24.4 Central Jamaica by Charles Bochart and Humphrey Knollis, 1684