Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Material Atlantic
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
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http://www.swarthmore.edu/profile/robert-duplessis * http://www.swarthmore.edu/news-events/historian-robert-duplessis-textile-industry-atlantic-trade-and-birth-fashion
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LC control no.: n 90656489
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n90656489
HEADING: DuPlessis, Robert S.
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100 1_ |a DuPlessis, Robert S.
670 __ |a His Lille and the Dutch revolt, 1991: |b CIP t.p. (Robert S. DuPlessis, Swarthmore College)
670 __ |a The material Atlantic, 2015: |b E-CIP (Robert S. DuPlessis) data view (b. Jun. 1, 1945)
PERSONAL
Born June 1, 1945.
EDUCATION:Williams College, B.A.; Columbia University, M.A., Ph.D., 1975.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Academic and historian. Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, Isaac H. Clothier Professor Emeritus of History and International Relations.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Robert S. DuPlessis is an academic and historian. Born on June 1, 1945, he attended Williams College, where he received a B.A., and then Columbia University, where he earned both an M.A. and then a Ph.D., in 1975. He eventually became the Isaac H. Clothier Professor Emeritus of History and International Relations at Swarthmore College. DuPlessis’s research interests cover Europe and the Atlantic Basin from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries and include economic and cultural exchange across the Atlantic World.
Lille and the Dutch Revolt
DuPlessis published his first book, Lille and the Dutch Revolt: Urban Stability in an Era of Revolution, 1500-1582, in 1991. The account centers on the provincial capital of Lille, a French-speaking town in the southernmost province of the Netherlands, during the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish in the sixteenth century. Despite the turmoil in the towns and provinces surrounding it, Lille remained relatively stable throughout this period of revolt until 1579, when several hundred Protestants were expelled from the city for opposing the Spanish regime. After this brief period of turbulence for the city, it returned to the stability it had previously maintained as the revolt shifted to the northern part of the Netherlands; the town leaders were able to keep control over the population throughout this period. DuPlessis studies this stability, which withstood the external economic, religious, and political forces that tore apart many other Dutch cities during this time. As such, the book is set up to examine how Lille’s institutions were organized in the early part of the sixteenth century and solidified as revolts devastated other towns. He also shows how the local magistrates resisted the push by the wealthy weaving producers to introduce new technologies into their traditions to increase profits, fearing that this change would have negative effects on the industry and upset the balance that had provided the city its stability.
Writing in the Canadian Journal of History, Christopher R. Friedrichs commented that “DuPlessis makes clear . . . that events in Lille were never entirely driven by external pressure, for local values and concerns always played a significant role. The author’s sensitivity to this point underlies his exceptionally deft analysis.” Friedrichs reasoned that “it is not true that all national history is simply local history writ large. But the local perspective is always essential. Those who believe that the history of individual communities can offer one of the best ways to understand the past will find ample support in this exemplary work.” Reviewing the book in the English Historical Review, James Tracy said that any quibbles he had with the book “are relatively minor.” Tracy remarked that “DuPlessis does well to focus his treatment of Lille on the question of its stability, and the answer he provides is in the main both convincing and important for larger issues of social and religious history in this period.”
Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe
In 1997 DuPlessis published Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe, his second book. DuPlessis provides a brief survey of the development of industry and agriculture in Europe from 1500 until 1800. Ranging from Spain to east-central Europe and from the late medieval era to the early part of the Industrial Revolution, the account covers women’s experiences within economic development, terms of tenure, the effects of taxation systems, and organization of labor. DuPlessis concludes each chapter with his suggestions for additional reading on the topics, including local sources.
Writing in the English Historical Review, Jane Whittle found the book to be “much more ‘social’ than many economic histories.” Whittle observed that “the narrative is rather repetitive, and sometimes contradictory,” but she appended that the book’s summary is “useful.” However, Whittle concluded that “despite its exciting title, it does not further our understanding of the transition to capitalism, beyond presenting an up to date survey of research on early modern agriculture and industry.”
The Material Atlantic
DuPlessis published The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650-1800 in 2016. The account looks into the relationship between colonization and commerce in the Atlantic World from 1650 until 1800. DuPlessis pays particular attention to clothing, the way it was worn and produced, and its various styles during this period to open a window of insight into commerce, integration, and global consumption. DuPlessis draws from a wide range of materials, including official records, missionary accounts, visual images, and postmortem inventories to piece together how trade and consumption shaped social norms and society of the time. He also shows how strengthened European colonial powers used their influence to promote their styles of fashion among the colonized.
In an interview on the Cambridge University Press Blog, DuPlessis talked about how he began researching for a book on this topic and what sources he used. DuPlessis recalled: “My prior work on European cloth production and more generally on early modern economic history left me wanting to know more about exports and consumption of textiles within the context of globalizing trade. The resulting material cultural interactions—a key topic of this book—were particularly intense throughout the Atlantic basin, both in colonies and elsewhere in an increasingly integrated commercial system.” DuPlessis then added that “to explore these topics I turned first to a source that I’d used a bit previously: probate or post-mortem inventories,” appending that sources of this nature “are abundant and indispensable for studying (among many other things) textiles and clothing offered by merchants, retailers, and other suppliers, and the fabrics and apparel that individuals acquired.”
In a review in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, J. Rankin found the account to be “beautifully done.” Rankin mentioned that “this in-depth study is a must for those interested in consumption, commerce, and the textile industry.” Rankin concluded that The Material Atlantic is an “essential” book to read.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Canadian Journal of History, December 1, 1993, Christopher R. Friedrichs, review of Lille and the Dutch Revolt: Urban Stability in an Era of Revolution, 1500-1582, p. 570.
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April 1, 2016, J. Rankin, review of The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650-1800, p. 1213.
English Historical Review, September 1, 1994, James Tracy, review of Lille and the Dutch Revolt, p. 1003; April 1, 1999, Jane Whittle, review of Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe, p. 448.
ONLINE
Cambridge University Press Blog, http://www.cambridgeblog.org/ (October 12, 2015), “A Q&A with Robert DuPlessis.”
Swarthmore College Web site, http://www.swarthmore.edu/ (March 17, 2017), author profile.
Robert S. DuPlessis
Isaac H. Clothier Professor Emeritus of History and International Relations
History
rduples1@swarthmore.edu
610-328-8131
Parrish North 374
Robert DuPlessis taught a variety of general and specialized courses and seminars on Europe and the Atlantic world between the fifteenth and the late eighteenth centuries. Among them are offerings on the Italian Renaissance, witchcraft and witch crazes, the rise of capitalist economies, varieties of political development, the cultures and societies of the Atlantic basin, and a survey of early modern Europe.
Among his recent publications are books on the textile industries of central Italy and on the economic history of Europe, as well as articles on the emergence of new patterns of consumption in the Atlantic world, on the French overseas empire during the Ancien Régime, and on the advent of modern concepts of capital. His current research concerns cultural and economic exchange across the Atlantic world (Africa, the Americas, Europe) during the first era of globalization from the sixteenth-century age of exploration to the industrial revolutions of the late eighteenth century.
Historian Robert DuPlessis on Textile Industry, Atlantic Trade, and Birth of Fashion
November 9th, 2015
2
The Material Atlantic book cover
fifteeneightyfour: How Apparel Made the Atlantic World
Robert DuPlessis, the author of The Material Atlantic, answers questions about the textile industry in the early modern period, the rise of Atlantic trade, and the birth of fashion – they're all connected!
Your book, The Material Atlantic, examines the textiles and apparel that became available to consumers during the 17th and 18th centuries in the Atlantic world, and how and when they were acquired. There is so much that you cover – economic history, globalization, colonialism, consumption, fashion – how did you begin, and what resources did you find the most useful?
My prior work on European cloth production and more generally on early modern economic history left me wanting to know more about exports and consumption of textiles within the context of globalizing trade. The resulting material cultural interactions—a key topic of this book—were particularly intense throughout the Atlantic basin, both in colonies and elsewhere in an increasingly integrated commercial system.
To explore these topics, I turned first to a source that I’d used a bit previously: probate or post-mortem inventories. Inventories raise many problems of interpretation, which I discuss in the introductory chapter of The Material Atlantic, but they are abundant and indispensable for studying (among many other things) textiles and clothing offered by merchants, retailers, and other suppliers, and the fabrics and apparel that individuals acquired.
With rare exceptions, however, inventories were compiled only for free settler decedents of European descent, though I was fortunate to discover some fascinating ones drawn up for free people of color in Saint-Domingue (Haïti) and Cape Colony (South Africa), and for a Native American leader. But to find out about the dress of enslaved men and women, as well as less prominent indigenous people, it was necessary to look at many other sources—missionary reports, travelers’ accounts, merchant records, government documents, and all sorts of images, by semi-trained (often clerical) as well as professional artists. All these sources were partial in every sense, but examined together—including, at times, with inventories—they revealed the contours of dress cultures across a significant social selection of the people living around the vast Atlantic basin.
How did you decide when to begin and end your story? What was particularly interesting about the early modern Atlantic world to you?
Europeans started exploring and trading in the Atlantic in the 15th century, and in the 1500s began to colonize and exploit natural resources. But only from the mid-17th century did commerce, migration, and settlement produce a network of relationships—what the historian Pierre Gervais terms “a shared Atlantic world”—such that it makes sense to analyze patterns of consumption and dress culture creation throughout the basin as a whole. By the late 18th century, the foundations of that Atlantic world were crumbling, as the American and Haitian revolutions ushered in a first period of decolonization and as the industrial revolution began to remake the global economic order on which the Atlantic world depended. Still, in the intervening century and a half, Europeans constructed their first overseas settler empires; mass enslavement coupled with forced migration provided labor in plantation agriculture throughout that European imperium; consumer good production and consumption globalized; and prolonged encounters among immigrants, coerced and free, and indigenous peoples and cultures took place. All these phenomena, which for better and for worse have shaped the modern world, were the context in which the dress practices of early modern Atlantic people developed.
Lille and the Dutch Revolt: Urban Stability in an Era of
Revolution, 1500-1582
Christopher R. Friedrichs
Canadian Journal of History.
28.3 (Dec. 1993): p570.
COPYRIGHT 1993 University of Toronto Press
http://www.usask.ca/history/cjh/
Full Text:
The city of Lille does not normally loom very large in accounts of the Dutch Revolt. Of course there was nothing very "Dutch" about Lille, a
French-speaking community which lay in the southernmost part of the Netherlands. But the Dutch Revolt began in the southern provinces, and
Lille was certainly caught up in the turbulent early decades of the struggle against the king of Spain. Throughout the 1560s and 1570s Lille was
the scene of recurrent political and religious tensions. Finally, between 1579 and 1582, over three hundred inhabitants of the city were banished
and four were executed as suspected Protestants or opponents of the Spanish regime.
Yet ultimately Lille emerged from the Dutch Revolt relatively unscathed. In contrast to what happened in many other cities of the Netherlands,
the ruling elite of Lille never lost its control of the community. And after the early 1580s the focus of the Revolt shifted steadily to the north,
leaving Lille to remain peacefully subject to Habsburg rule until the city was conquered by the French a century later.
It is the relative stability that Lille experienced during the Dutch Revolt that forms the unifying motif in this fine study of the city's history during
the sixteenth century. Stability, of course, is never as glamorous a subject as conflict - but as Robert DuPlessis argues, it may be even more
difficult to explain. "I take stability to need explanation," the author notes, "because I do not consider it the |natural' condition of society .... On
the contrary, I regard conflict and change to be permanent attributes of every society" (pp. 11-12). From this point of view it is every bit as
important to show why Lille did not experience iconoclastic riots or a coup against the magistrates as to show why other cities did.
Not surprisingly, DuPlessis seeks to explain Lille's relative stability largely by examining how the city functioned before the Revolt broke out. As
a result the reader is treated to an admirably thorough description of Lille's institutional structure and its political, economic, and religious norms
in the first half of the sixteenth century. Yet the factors which DuPlessis pinpoints as critical to the subsequent maintenance of stability were
matters in which Lille differed in degree rather than in kind from many other cities. Like most early modern cities, Lille was governed by a quasi-
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open elite: its members included many men of relatively new wealth who rapidly adopted the norms and outlook of those whose ranks they
joined. Many urban oligarchs felt a paternalistic sense of obligation towards those over whom they ruled; in Line, however, this attitude was
particularly pronounced. This was apparent, for example, in the magistrates' determination to protect the economic independence of the city's
weaving masters. Rejecting the forceful arguments of rich producers who demanded the freedom to introduce profitable innovations, the
magistrates instead imposed regulations designed to limit individual accumulation while protecting the economic autonomy of small-commodity
producers. This was by no means an unfamiliar pattern in European cities of the early modern era, but DuPlessis argues that Lille's political
leaders were exceptionally sensitive to the needs and concerns of the broad mass of artisan householders who made up the core of the city's
politically conscious inhabitants.
This in turn contributed to the fact that most of Lille's citizens remained loyal to their magistrates throughout the troubled early years of the
Revolt. Of course some inhabitants exhibited anti-Spanish sentiments and the magistrates themselves wavered at times in their loyalty to the
Habsburg regime, but in the long run the centre held and traditional allegiances prevailed. What DuPlessis makes clear is that events in Lille were
never entirely driven by external pressure, for local values and concerns always played a significant role. The author's sensitivity to this point
underlies his exceptionally deft analysis of an obscure sequence of political events in 1577. In October of that year the Estates-General of the
Netherlands were asked to endorse a request by the city's magistrates to remain in office beyond the customary end of their terms on 1 November.
A few weeks later a new message arrived, nullifying the earlier request and indicating that the magistrates wanted new elections after all. With an
eye on the broader political framework, these events could inevitably be interpreted as reflecting the countervailing machinations of pro- and antiSpanish
factions within the community. But DuPlessis advances a simpler and more convincing explanation, for he knows that just then the
magistrates were engaged in the last stages of complex attempt to settle some pressing disputes between rich and poor elements within the clothweaving
industry. Apparently the magistrates simply needed a little more time, without the disruption of fresh elections, to wrap up their
negotiations and issue a compromise settlement that all would accept. Only a historian fully steeped in the local history of Lille would have been
alert to the fact that a highly unusual constitutional manoeuvre may have had more to do with purely local issues than with the great political
currents of the Dutch Revolt.
Of course it is not true that all national history is simply local history writ large. But the local perspective is always essential. Those who believe
that the history of individual communities can offer one of the best ways to understand the past will find ample support in this exemplary work.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Friedrichs, Christopher R. "Lille and the Dutch Revolt: Urban Stability in an Era of Revolution, 1500-1582." Canadian Journal of History, vol.
28, no. 3, 1993, p. 570+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA14825213&it=r&asid=c30e4c6ba6c19d988a703b6f660d5e54. Accessed 23 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A14825213
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Lille and the Dutch Revolt: Urban Stability in an Era of
Revolution, 1500-1582
James Tracy
The English Historical Review.
109.433 (Sept. 1994): p1003.
COPYRIGHT 1994 Oxford University Press
http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/
Full Text:
Lille, metropolis of the provinces of Walloon Flanders, was an island of stability surrounded on three sides by centres of rebellion against the
Spanish government of the Netherlands. Moreover, at a time when there were strong Calvinist movements in centres of both the traditional
woollen industry (Ghent) and the new lighter textiles (Hondschoote, Armentieres), Lille remained staunchly Catholic even though both sorts of
drapery flourished here. Indeed, as Robert S. DuPlessis points out in Lille and the Dutch Revolt. Urban Stability in an Era of Revolution, 1500-
1582 (Cambridge: U.P., 1991; pp. xv + 371. [pounds]32.50), even though some of Lille's 40,000 people were known to frequent Protestant
sermons outside the walls, on the streets of the city 'it was easier to mobilize Lillois against political and religious innovation than for it'.
Professor DuPlessis does well to focus his treatment of Lille on the question of its stability, and the answer he provides is in the main both
convincing and important for larger issues of social and religious history in this period. First, the magistrate elite avoided the patterns of
behaviour that undermined the authority of such bodies in other cities: magistrates kept up an active involvement in trade, despite other kinds of
investment; they presented a reasonably firm opposition to efforts by the central government to bypass local privileges; and they avoided the kind
of factionalism that might have driven members of the elite into opposition. Second, and perhaps more importantly, Lille's light-woollen industry
was spared the kind of restructuring that elsewhere, in rural areas of west Flanders and Walloon Flanders, led workers to seek a protective
solidarity in the new religious doctrines. Capitalist innovation meant bringing many workers under the control of a single entrepreneur, but in
Lille the magistrates backed the traditional guild regulations that favoured 'a large group of petty masters' (p. 309; cf. pp. 97-109). The importance
of Lille's new (in the 1520s) system of poor relief
in helping to preserve stability is less clear, if only because there is no evidence to show that traditional relief institutions were less able to
respond to crises than was Lille's Common Fund. Still other reasons for stability might be sought in the odd fact that a city of this size had no
printing press until 1594, and in the accommodation the magistrates reached with the fanatical inquisitor Pieter Titelmans, sparing Lille from the
inquisitorial proceedings that elsewhere roused such opposition to Habsburg heresy laws. Also, if Lille's merchants provided credit to rural lighttextile
industries producing for the Antwerp market, the question of why the magistrates supported a traditional organization of production within
the city becomes even more interesting. Finally, DuPlessis misses an opportunity to link his conclusions to the important work of Alain Lottin, for
a slightly later period, on Lille as a 'citadel' of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. But these and a few other problems (there is, oddly, no
bibliography) are relatively minor. This book, highlighting a city that in any case deserves more attention, arrives by the via negativa at a
satisfying confirmation of the connection in the Dutch Revolt between Calvinism and areas of rapid industrial innovation.
JAMES TRACY University of Minnesota
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Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Tracy, James. "Lille and the Dutch Revolt: Urban Stability in an Era of Revolution, 1500-1582." The English Historical Review, vol. 109, no.
433, 1994, p. 1003+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA16408866&it=r&asid=752b34b7cec1fcaa16d75c68f7397397. Accessed 23 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A16408866
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Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe
JANE WHITTLE
The English Historical Review.
114.456 (Apr. 1999): p448.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Oxford University Press
http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/
Full Text:
Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe by Robert S. Duplessis (Cambridge: U.P., 1997; pp. xv + 329. 40 [pounds sterling]; pb. 14.95
[pounds sterling]) provides a concise survey of the development of agriculture and industry in Europe between 1500 and 1800. The book starts
with a useful summary of the state of the late medieval economy, setting later achievements in context, and ends with a few pages on the
Industrial Revolution. It ranges across Europe, with England, France, Spain, Italy, the Low Countries, Germany and east-central Europe,
receiving the bulk of attention. The approach is much more `social' than many economic histories and attention is paid, for instance, to the
organisation of labour, terms of tenure, and the effects of taxation systems. Women's experience of economic development is integrated into the
overall picture. Each chapter ends with suggestions for further reading, which are admirably comprehensive and up to date: more experienced
readers will perhaps find this the book's most useful aspect. On the whole, the book is thoroughly researched and well written. It is good to see
someone making use of the plethora of detailed local studies. However, the editorial policy of footnoting only direct quotations, and not statistics
and local case studies, seriously reduces the usefulness of this work. Readers are not able to follow up the many examples in the text, unless they
already know the literature, or are happy to read through all the recommended reading. Nor are we able to trace the sources of some of
Duplessis's more questionable statements. A more serious criticism is the book's lack of engagement with theory. Existing contributions to this
field, for instance by Wallerstein, Braudel, and Brenner, present strong theoretical viewpoints. Duplessis does not engage in debate: although
these writers appear in the `suggested reading' they are not discussed explicitly, and in fact very few historians are mentioned by name. Duplessis
has no grand theory of his own, differing trends in contrasting parts of Europe in different periods are explained by the particular local
experiences of that place and time. As a result the narrative is rather repetitive, and sometimes contradictory. Some readers may find this an asset,
but to others it will appear as a wasted opportunity. Despite its broad geographical scope, this book is an agglomerative history rather than a
comparative one. And despite its exciting title, it does not further our understanding of the transition to capitalism, beyond presenting an up to
date survey of research on early modern agriculture and industry. It is perhaps fitting that the book has no conclusion, only an epilogue. In its
defence, we should remember that this is a textbook, intended for `advanced school students and undergraduates', but it still seems a pity that such
readers, approaching the topic for the first time, should be denied a more detailed introduction to the debates about the ultimate causes of
capitalist development.
JANE WHITTLE
University of Exeter
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
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WHITTLE, JANE. "Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe." The English Historical Review, vol. 114, no. 456, 1999, p. 448. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA54466651&it=r&asid=a0c3a7998ed03262d3267d5ecf0c8cd9. Accessed 23 Feb.
2017.
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DuPlessis, Robert S.: The material Atlantic: clothing,
commerce, and colonization in the Atlantic world, 1650-
1800
J. Rankin
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1213.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
DuPlessis, Robert S. The material Atlantic: clothing, commerce, and colonization in the Atlantic world, 1650-1800. Cambridge, 2016. 351p bibl
index ISBN 9781107105911 cloth, $29.99; ISBN 9781316405369, $24.00
53-3609
GT601
2015-14698 CIP
DuPlessis (Swarthmore) examines the interconnection between commerce and colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650-1800. More specifically,
he explains the ways in which clothing (wearing, production, styles) offers a lens into the early modern Atlantic World, providing fascinating
insights into global consumption, commerce, and integration during that time and place. His exhaustive research includes missionary and official
records; postmortem inventories; visual images (woodcuts, paintings, etc.), which provide excellent fuel for an in-depth examination of
modernity (and its place in Atlantic World history); and the role of trade and consumption in shaping society and social norms. DuPlessis argues
that as European colonial powers gained ascendancy, they used their power (although resisted and never total) and position to regulate dress and
proper decorum. This sweeping text proves once more how a single item--in this case, textiles--can serve as an important lens into a wider
society, adding vitality and clarity to the past. The book is beautifully done; numerous images add much to the text. This in-depth study is a must
for those interested in consumption, commerce, and the textile industry. Graduate students and specialists alike will enjoy the discussions of
modernity, industry, and society. Summing Up: **** Essential. Upper-division undergraduate students and above.--J. Rankin, East Tennessee
State University
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Rankin, J. "DuPlessis, Robert S.: The material Atlantic: clothing, commerce, and colonization in the Atlantic world, 1650-1800." CHOICE:
Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Apr. 2016, p. 1213. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
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p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449661740&it=r&asid=20322cf4e8e0defd576358788fef6110. Accessed 23 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449661740