MO4921 Britain and its Empire in the Age of the Consumer Revolution, 1660-1820
   
Lecturer Dr Emma Hart  (St Katharine's Lodge, room 1.13)
   
Credits 60
   
Availability 2012-2013 -semester 1 and 2
   
Class Hour Wednesday 10 - 1
   
Description This course will explore modern society's first 'consumer revolution'; that which gripped Britain and its Empire from the late seventeenth century onwards. Themes include private consumers, manufacturers, the landscape and the town, and commercialisation. We will be investigating the role of fashion, mass-production techniques, innovation, the creation and expansion of markets and distribution networks, and questions of taste, style, emulation and class. Often, these phenomena have been addressed only from the point of view of leading industrialists and aristocratic consumers. However, as well as focussing on these figures, this course will also devote significant attention to the experience of small producers and lower class consumers during the period.
   
Basic Reading John Brewer, J H Plumb & Neil McKendrick, Birth of a Consumer Society
Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance
Richard L Bushman, The Refinement of America
   

Course Structure

Semester 1

  1. Organizational Meeting
  2. Themes in Eighteenth Century Society
  3. Industrial and Consumer Revolution: What is the difference?
  4. Material Culture and the use of Objects as Evidence
  5. Buildings I: The Great Fire of London and its Aftermath
  6. Buildings II: From the Palladians to Robert Adam
  7. Reading Week
  8. The Provincial and Colonial Town
  9. Manufacturers I: Wedgwood and Chippendale
  10. Manufacturers II: Artisans and Shopkeepers
  11. Selling and Buying

Semester 2

  1. The Meanings of Ownership
  2. The Rise of Taste
  3. Luxury and Vice, Frugality and Virtue
  4. Popular Critiques of Consumer Society: Smollett's Humphry Clinker
  5. William Hogarth and his World
  6. Consumer Society and Empire
  7. A Consumer Society?
  8. Student Presentations
  9. Student Presentations
  10. Field Trip
  11. Gobbet Test
   
Assessment 60% examination - two 3-hour papers
40% coursework - 2 essays, 2 gobbet tests and one long essay
   

Learning Outcomes
  • Use of a wide range or primary sources including pictures, objects, architectural plans, and written materials
  • Increased awareness of the importance and meaning of the material world
 
   
Restrictions Available only to students in the second year of the Honours programme