Withington, P. (2020) Intoxicants and the invention of 'consumption'. Economic History Review, 73 (2). pp. 384-408. ISSN 0013-0117
Abstract
In 1600 the word ‘consumption’ was a term of medical pathology describing the ‘wasting, petrification of things’. By 1700 it was also a term of economic discourse: ‘In commodities, the value rises as its quantity is less and vent greater, which depends upon it being preferred in its consumption’. The article traces the emergence of this key category of economic analysis to debates over the economy in the 1620s and subsequent disputes over the excise tax, showing how ‘consumption’ was an early term in the developing lexicon of political economy. In so doing the article demonstrates the important role of ‘intoxicants’ – i.e. addictive and intoxicating commodities like alcohols and tobaccos – in shaping these early meanings and uses of ‘consumption’. It outlines the discursive importance of intoxicants, both as the foci for discussions of ‘superfluous’ and ‘necessary’ consumption and the target of legislation on consumption. And it argues that while these discussions had an ideological dimension, or dimensions, they were also responses to material increases in the volume and diversity of intoxicants in early seventeenth-century England. By way of conclusion the article suggests the significance of the Low Countries as a point of reference for English writers, as well as a more capacious and semantically sensitive approach to changes in early-modern consumption practices.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Author. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of History (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) ES/K00493X/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 27 Aug 2019 08:54 |
Last Modified: | 10 Dec 2021 09:40 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/ehr.12936 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:149897 |
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