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Look Inside Unravelled Dreams

Unravelled Dreams
Silk and the Atlantic World, 1500–1840

Author: Ben Marsh, University of Kent, Canterbury

Date Published: June 2020
availability: In stock
format: Hardback
isbn: 9781108418287

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One of the greatest hopes and expectations that accompanied American colonialism – from its earliest incarnation – was that Atlantic settlers would be able to locate new sources of raw silk, with which to satiate the boundless desire for luxurious fabrics in European markets. However, in spite of the great upheavals and achievements of Atlantic plantation, this ambition would never be fulfilled. By taking the commercial failure of silk seriously and examining numerous experiments across New Spain, New France, British North America and the early United States, Ben Marsh reveals new insights into aspiration, labour, environment, and economy in these societies. Each devised its own dreams and plans of cultivation, framed by the particularities of cultures and landscapes. Writ large, these dreams would unravel one by one: the attempts to introduce silkworms across the Atlantic world ultimately constituted a step too far, marking out the limits of Europeans' seemingly unbounded power.
- A unique account of commodity failure in contrast to the much more heavily-studied success stories of silver, sugar, tobacco, rice, and cotton
- Sheds new light on the distinctive features of British, French and Spanish Atlantic settlements and environments and demonstrates how failed schemes nonetheless contributed to colonial life and landscapes
- Stresses the human challenges and improvisations at the household level, and how different populations sought to surmount the difficulties of establishing raw silk production with particular attention to the role of women and non-white labour
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Reviews & endorsements
‘Written with verve and wit, Marsh's strikingly original commodity study reshapes our understanding of the Atlantic World. Marsh masterfully employs both macro and micro history to detail the importance of silk making efforts – and its failures – to colony, empire, and nation building. Sophisticated yet accessible, Unravelled Dreams is a magisterial must read.' Zara Anishanslin, author of Portrait of a Woman in Silk
‘A deeply researched, felicitously written, probingly analytical examination of bright promise and repeated failure. Marsh's expansive account of raw silk cultivation illuminates subjects from trade to technology, empire to environment, silks to slavery, enriching while complicating our understanding of early modern European and American textile, consumption, and economic histories.' Robert S. DuPlessis, author of The Material Atlantic
‘Rarely has a history of ‘failure' been so skilfully evoked. Ben Marsh explores the western imperial hopes for silk production in the colonial Atlantic world – the stuff of competing politics, regional ecologies and assorted adventures. His sharp analyses reveal vital new perspectives, set within globally entangled material histories.' Beverly Lemire, author of Global Trade and the Transformation of Consumer Cultures
‘… a much-needed counterbalance to triumphalist tales of innovative success and unsettling easy assumptions of inevitable technological progress … This excellent book relies on meticulous research spanning an unusually wide range of times, places and cultures … Beautifully produced with lavish colour illustrations, Unravelled Dreams … reveals a substantial facet of imperial history that has previously been neglected.’ Patricia Fara, The British Journal for the History of Science
‘… Unravelled Dreams recovers the causes and consequences of a forgotten history, highlights contemporaries’ coping and compromising with contingencies, and, like all good books, inspires the readers to think and explore more into the story.’ Dan Du, Enterprise & Society
‘… a titanic work … [a] masterpiece.’ José María Luque Pecci, EH.net (Economic History Association)
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Product details
- Date Published: June 2020
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781108418287
- length: 500 pages
- dimensions: 236 x 162 x 29 mm
- weight: 0.96kg
- availability: In stock
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of colour plates
List of maps
List of tables
Acknowledgements
1. Prologue
Part I. Emergence:
2. Spain and New Spain
3. England and Virginia
4. France and New France
Part II. Persistence
5. Persistence
6. Lower South: South Carolina and Georgia
7. New England
Part III. Convergence
8. Convergence
9. Pennsylvania and sericultural revolution
10. Silk production in the wake of revolution
11. Epilogue
Selected bibliography
Index.
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Author
Ben Marsh, University of Kent, Canterbury
Ben Marsh is Reader in History at the University of Kent, Canterbury. He is the author of the award-winning Georgia's Frontier Women: Female Fortunes in a Southern Colony (2007) and Understanding and Teaching the Age of Revolutions (2017), and has published widely on early and revolutionary American history. His research on silk has featured in several exhibitions, including Enlightened Princesses: Britain and Europe, 1700-1820 (Yale Center for British Art and Historical Royal Palaces, 2017), and won the UK Textile Society's Natalie Rothstein Memorial Prize (2013).