from Part III - Convergence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2020
Pennsylvania was one of the latest American regions to pursue sericulture, and offers the best illustration of how silken ambitions survived and were reshaped to fit new political and economic environments in the Revolutionary era. Pennsylvanian silk swung from being a dutiful imperial pursuit, albeit one with particular local characteristics, to being an objective very much in step with American independence. It constituted a unique kind of homespun that came to embody not only domestic elegance but also provided ammunition for broader debates over political economy and the future identity of American industrial development. Philadelphia, situated in the heart of the North American colonies, was the first home of the Continental Congress, the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, and the site of the federal capital for ten years between 1790 and 1800. Before all that, it was also the location of the mid-Atlantic’s first silk filature. The production owed much to the creation of a Silk Society by progressive gentlemen, but much of the labour was performed by women in households and communities in the city’s hinterlands.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.