Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of plates
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction: Fashioning the Atlantic world
- 1 Dress regimes at the dawn of the shared Atlantic
- 2 Acquiring imported textiles and dress
- 3 Redressing the indigenous Americas
- 4 Dress under constraint
- 5 Dressing free settlers in the “torrid zone”
- 6 Free settler dress in temperate zones
- 7 Atlantic dress regimes: fashions and meanings, implications and ironies
- Appendix 1: Sources for Tables 2.1, 2.2, 2.3
- Appendix 2: Inventory sources for free settler garment holdings
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Plate section
2 - Acquiring imported textiles and dress
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of plates
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction: Fashioning the Atlantic world
- 1 Dress regimes at the dawn of the shared Atlantic
- 2 Acquiring imported textiles and dress
- 3 Redressing the indigenous Americas
- 4 Dress under constraint
- 5 Dressing free settlers in the “torrid zone”
- 6 Free settler dress in temperate zones
- 7 Atlantic dress regimes: fashions and meanings, implications and ironies
- Appendix 1: Sources for Tables 2.1, 2.2, 2.3
- Appendix 2: Inventory sources for free settler garment holdings
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
Fifteen hundred ells of limbourg, half blue, half red …
Eight hundred trade shirts for men, as long in front as in the back …
One hundred ells of well-chosen scarlet woolen cloth; that which has been sent previously being only a double linen serge …
Eight hundred ells of [woolen] sempiterne, blue, red, and plum …
Fifteen hundred two-and-a-half point blankets …
Four hundred lengths of scarlet woolen ribbon …
Two thousand ells of St Jean linen
Two hundred shirts for male slaves
Two hundred shifts for female slaves …
Three thousand ells of fine thread linen
Eight thousand ells of common thread linen …
Two hundred ells of striped cotton cloth …
On 31 December 1758, the leaders of the Louisiana colony submitted their yearly “Statement of Requests” for supplies to the French king. Some 127 notations in all (of a total of about 400), the listings of cloth, clothing, adornments, and associated items included 25 designated for “Annual Presents that are Given to the Indians”; another 8 for “Extraordinary presents”; 16 to exchange with Choctaws; 15 for commerce with Alabama, Attacapa, Kickapoo, Mascoutern, and Shawnee Indians together; and 14 “For the Projected Trade with the Cherokee Indians.” A further 43 items would be for officials, their enslaved laborers, and the military, while a final 6 would furnish hospitals and pay the nuns who staffed them.
This order from a remote corner of the Atlantic world opens a window onto the abundance of textile goods available to early modern consumers throughout that space. The entries suggest – if barely – the great variety of types, colors, qualities, and finishes of woven-fiber fabrics, garments, and notions distributed throughout the Atlantic world; the diverse consumers of those goods; the configurations of their particular cloth and clothing demand; and the commercial and non-commercial ways by which that demand would be satisfied: gifting, market exchange, compulsory attiring, recompense for services rendered. Fleshing out clues provided by the Louisiana document, this chapter investigates the venues, occasions, participants, and procedures involved in supplying cloth and clothing to sites around the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Atlantic; the composition of the merchant textile stocks thereby assembled; and the ways by which consumers acquired them.
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- The Material AtlanticClothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650–1800, pp. 53 - 81Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015