An innovative recasting of US legal and economic history through
the power of clothing for those who lacked power and status in
American society. What can dresses, bedlinens, waistcoats,
pantaloons, shoes, and kerchiefs tell us about the legal status of
the least powerful members of American society? In the hands of
eminent historian Laura F. Edwards, these textiles tell a revealing
story of ordinary people and how they made use of their material
goods' economic and legal value in the period between the
Revolution and the Civil War. Only the Clothes on Her Back uncovers
practices, commonly known then, but now long forgotten, which made
textiles—clothing, cloth, bedding, and accessories, such as shoes
and hats—a unique form of property that people without rights
could own and exchange. The value of textiles depended on law, and
it was law that turned these goods into a secure form of property
for marginalized people, who not only used these textiles as
currency, credit, and capital, but also as entree into the new
republic's economy and governing institutions. Edwards grounds the
laws relating to textiles in engaging stories from the lives of
everyday Americans. Wives wove linen and kept the proceeds,
enslaved people traded coats and shoes, and poor people invested in
fabrics, which they carefully preserved in trunks. Edwards shows
that these stories are about far more than cloth and clothing; they
reshape our understanding of law and the economy in America. Based
on painstaking archival research from fifteen states, Only the
Clothes on Her Back reconstructs this hidden history of power,
tracing it from the governing order of the early republic in which
textiles' legal principles flourished to the textiles' legal
downfall in the mid-nineteenth century when they were crowded out
by the rising power of rights.
General
Imprint: |
Oxford UniversityPress
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
October 2023 |
Authors: |
Laura F. Edwards
(Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor of American Law and Liberty)
|
Dimensions: |
235 x 156mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
456 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-19-776040-6 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-19-776040-6 |
Barcode: |
9780197760406 |
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