The Business of Emotions in Mod - Cooper Mandy L Popp Andrew

The Business of Emotions in
Modern History
History of Emotions
Series Editor:
Peter N. Stearns, University Professor in the Department of History at
George Mason University, USA and Susan J. Matt Presidential Distinguished
Professor of History at Weber State University, USA
Editorial Board:
Rob Boddice, Senior Research Fellow, Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence
in the History of Experiences, Tampere University, Finland
Charles Zika, University of Melbourne & Chief Investigator for
the Australian Research Council’s
Centre for the History of Emotions, Australia
Pia Campeggiani, University of Bologna, Italy
Angelika Messner, Kiel University, Germany
Javier Moscoso, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Madrid, Spain
The History of Emotions offers a new and vital approach to the study of the past. The
field is predicated on the idea that human feelings change over time and they are the
product of culture as well as of biology. Bloomsbury’s History of Emotions series seeks
to publish state-of-the-art scholarship on the history of human feelings and emotional
experience from antiquity to the present day, and across all seven continents. With
a commitment to a greater thematic, geographical, and chronological breadth,
and a deep commitment to interdisciplinary approaches, it will offer new and
innovative titles with convey the rich diversity of emotional cultures.
Published:
Fear in the German Speaking World, 1600–2000, edited by Thomas Kehoe
and Michael Pickering
Feelings and Work in Modern History, edited by Agnes Arnold-Forster
and Alison Moulds
Feeling Dis-Ease in Modern History, edited by Rob Boddice and Bettina Hitzer
Emotional Histories in the Fight to End Prostitution, by Michele Renee Greer
Emotions and Migration in Argentina at the Turn of the 20th Century, by María Bjerg
Emotions in the Ottoman Empire, by Nil Tekgül
The Business of Emotions in Modern History, edited by Mandy L. Cooper and
Andrew Popp
Forthcoming:
The Renaissance of Feeling, by Kirk Essary
The Business of Emotions in
Modern History
Edited by
Mandy L. Cooper and Andrew Popp
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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Copyright © Mandy L. Cooper and Andrew Popp, 2023
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To Kyle, and to my students, who inspire me every day.
To the memory of Valerie and Derek Popp.
vi
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Contributors xi
Acknowledgments xiv
Introduction: At the Heart of the Market Mandy L. Cooper and Andrew Popp 1
Part One Disciplinary Emotions
1 Accounting for the Middling Sorts: Emotions and the Family Business,
c. 1750–1832 Katie Barclay 31
2 Emotional Strategies: Businesswomen in the Civil War Era United
States Mandy L. Cooper 49
3 Selling Trust in the Antebellum Service Sector Daniel Levinson Wilk 65
4 The Cold War and the Making of Advertising in Post-War Turkey
Semih Gökatalay 83
Part Two Enabling Emotions
5 Marriage à la mode du pays: When Identity and Contractual Love

Became a Pledge for the Signares’ Business Cheikh Sene 107
6 “the commerce of affection”: Masculinity and Emotional Bonds Among
Boston Merchants Laura C. McCoy 125
7 From Scotland with Love: The Creation of the Japanese Whisky
Industry, 1918–1979 Alison J. Gibb and Niall G. MacKenzie 143
8 Malone’s on the Southside: Hearing a Telling of Their Story Andrew Popp 159
Part Three Unruly Emotions
9 The Worst Business in the World? The Emotional Historiography of the

Arms Industry Catherine Fletcher 177
10 Making Sense of Financial Crises in the Netherlands: The Emotional
Economy of Bubbles (1637–1987) Inger Leemans, Joost Dankers, Ronald
Kroeze, and Floris van Berckel Smit 195
viii Contents
11 Waiting for Fevers to Abate: Contagion and Fear in the Domestic Slave
Trade Robert Colby 219
12 Selling Out or Staying True? Fear, Anxiety, and Debates About Feminist
Entrepreneurship in the 1970s Women’s Movement Debra Michals 239
Select Bibliography 257

Index260
Figures
I.1 A trader. Courtesy of Getty Images 2

4.1 “For this little Mehmetçik [referring to the boy] to become such a
robust Mehmetçik [referring to the soldier], Çapamarka flour must
be mixed with his food.” Akşam, November 13, 1945 87
4.2 “The healthy child of today is the symbol of [future] victories.”
Akşam, May 8, 1948 89
4.3 “It can make your dream come true.” Cumhuriyet, December 3, 1949 93
4.4 Emotional Marketing and Banks. Akşam, January 11, 1948,
Akşam, May 28, 1948; Akşam, September 29, 1949; Yeni İstanbul,
January 5, 1950; Akşam, February 17, 1950 94
4.5 Advertisement for American baby powder. Cumhuriyet,
November 7, 1947; Akşam, February 5, 1948 97
4.6 “Give a Frigidaire as a gift to your home!” Cumhuriyet,
December 29, 1950 99
5.1 Trading posts in Senegambia, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries 109
5.2 A signare Source. Courtesy of the artist, Corentin Faye 118
10.1 Nieuw-Jaars Geschenk / Lauwmaand herdenking, in Het Groote
Tafereel der Dwaasheid (1720). Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-P-
OB-83.573 196
10.2 Mushrooms (“Bubbles”) with the names of Dutch joint stock
companies. The short poem calls out to people to curb their
enthusiasm and desire. Detail of Bernard Picart, Monument
consacré à la postérité en mémoire de la folie incroyable de la XX.
année du XVIII. siècle. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-P-1908-2355 202
10.3a–e The emotional economy of the 1720 Wind Trade. Details of
Bernard Picart, Monument consacré à la postérité en memoire de
la folie incroyable de la XX. année du XVIII. siècle. Rijksmuseum
Amsterdam, RP-P-1908-2355 204
10.4a–b The “Beursbarometer,” a weekly infographic used to take the
atmosphere of the stock market, published in De Telegraaf,
October 31 and November 11, 1929 207
x Figures
10.5 Reprint in De Telegraaf (November 6, 1929) of the 1720s cartoon

“Wind Is the Beginning, Wind Is the End,” originally printed in
The Great Mirror of Folly (1720) 209
10.6 Emotions at the stock exchange (from left to right): “Desperation
(‘wanhoop’), joy (‘vreugde’) and despair (‘vertwijfeling’).”
“Rotterdamse studenten op beurs ervaring rijker.” “Na de krach
wilden we een kroeg beginnen.” Het Vrije Volk, November 14, 1987 213
Contributors
Katie Barclay is deputy director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in the History of
Emotions and associate professor, University of Adelaide. She writes widely on the
history of emotions, family life, and gender. Her recent publications include Caritas:
Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self (2021) and Academic Emotions: Feeling the
Institution (2021). With Kate De Luna and Giovanni Tarantino, she edits Emotions:
History, Culture, Society. Her current work explores the emotional dynamics of
accounting practices.
Robert Colby is an assistant professor of History at the University of Mississippi.

He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for American Studies at
Christopher Newport University. His work on the United States’ domestic slave trade
and the American Civil War has won prizes from the Society of American Historians
and Society of Civil War Historians, and has appeared in the Journal of the Civil War
Era, Slavery & Abolition, and the Journal of the Early Republic.
Mandy L. Cooper is a lecturer of history at the University of North Carolina at

Greensboro and an editor of H-Emotions. Her manuscript explores the relationship
between emotional family bonds and the development of commerce and governance
in the United States from the Revolution through Reconstruction.
Joost Dankers is associate professor and manager commissioned research at Utrecht

University in the Department of History and Art History. He is interested in the
history of Dutch business, financial crises and cartel formation in an international
perspective, and in the social significance of historical research in general. He has
initiated and supervised research projects on behalf of Royal Dutch Shell, Heineken
International, and Royal Dutch Airlines KLM. He co-authored studies on financial
institutions like Rabobank Nederland and Dutch savings banks. His most recent book
(co-authored with colleagues from Utrecht) is Driven by Steel: From Hoogovens to Tata
Steel, 1918–2018 (2018).
Catherine Fletcher is professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University,

UK. She has published widely on early modern European political and diplomatic
culture. Her most recent book is The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of
the Italian Renaissance (2020). She is grateful to the Arms and Armour Heritage Trust
for supporting her research on the history of firearms.
Alison J. Gibb is senior lecturer in Marketing at the University of Glasgow, UK, and
former marketing director for a number of Scotch whisky brands.
xii Contributors
Semih Gökatalay is a PhD candidate in History at the University of California, San

Diego. His research and publications have been focused on the economic and business
history of the Middle East during the transition from empire to nation states.
Ronald Kroeze is associate professor of Political History and director of studies

at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Department of Art and Culture, History,
Antiquity. His research interests focus on the history of modern politics, democracy,
anti/corruption and good government, and colonial governance. He has also
published on business–politics relations, the impact of (new public) management and
neoliberalism on national and European politics, business history, financial history
and heritage, applied history, and oral history. One of his key publications (co-edited
with Guy Geltner and André Vitoria) is A History of Anticorruption: From Antiquity
until the Modern Era (2018).
Inger Leemans is professor of Cultural History at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and

principal investigator of NL-Lab at the Humanities Cluster of the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on early modern cultural history,
the history of emotions and the senses, cultural economy, history of knowledge and
digital humanities. She has published about the history of (radical) Enlightenment,
pornography, cultural infrastructure, stock markets and financial crises. In the recent
volume Early Modern Knowledge Societies as Affective Economies (edited with Anne
Goldgar, Routledge 2020) Leemans analyzes the stock market in terms of emotional
economy.
Niall G. MacKenzie is professor of Entrepreneurship and Business History at the

University of Glasgow, UK, and co-editor of Business History. His research interests
are in the intersection of business history, entrepreneurship, and policy. His work
has appeared in Business History, Business History Review, Human Relations,
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Product Innovation Management,
Regional Studies, Small Business Economics, and Asia Pacific Journal of Management,
among others.
Laura C. McCoy is an independent scholar and equity advocate based in Chicago,

IL. She received her PhD from Northwestern University in 2020 with the dissertation
“In Distress: A Marketplace of Feeling in the Early American Republic.” Her research
interests include the history of gender and emotion work in early American capitalism,
and equity in the modern workplace.
Debra Michals is an assistant professor and director of Women’s and Gender Studies
at Merrimack College. Her research interests focus on the links between the history
of activism and entrepreneurship, particularly for marginalized groups, which she
chronicles in her forthcoming book, She’s the Boss: The Rise of Women’s Entrepreneurship
since World War II (Rutgers University Press, 2023). Her publications also include a
study of feminist banks and credit unions, “The Buck Stops Where? 1970s Feminist
Credit Unions, Women’s Banks, and the Gendering of Money.”
Contributors xiii
Andrew Popp is professor of History at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

He has written on a range of topics in British business, social, and cultural history,
with a current focus on business, emotions, and the everyday. He is editor-in-chief at
Enterprise and Society: The International Journal of Business History.
Cheikh Sene is I Tatti Harvard Florence/DHI Rom Joint Fellow for African Studies
for 2022–23.
Floris van Berckel Smit is a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the
Department of Art and Culture, History, Antiquity. His research interests focus on
the history of higher education governance, (new public) management, political
history, learning histories, and oral history. He has participated in various projects in
which he collaborates with historians, political scientists, educational scientists, public
governance experts, and organizational sociologists. In 2020 he published (with co-
author Ab Flipse) Van democratie naar New Public Management: invoering van de Wet
modernisering universitaire bestuursorganisatie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam, on
the rise of new public management in Dutch university governance.
Daniel Levinson Wilk is professor of American History at SUNY-Fashion Institute of

Technology, New York City. He writes about the history of waiters, elevators, and the
modern service sector. He is also a trustee of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition,
which has almost completed its decade-long goal of putting a vertical memorial to the
victims of the 1911 fire on the façade of the building where it took place.
Acknowledgments
When writing or organizing any project, you incur countless debts along the way—
perhaps even more so when the project is one primarily carried out during a global
pandemic. The list of people who have provided encouragement, support, and
assistance along the way is, to be sure, innumerable. Yet, there are a few people in
particular who I’d like to thank. First, I must thank my co-editor, Andrew Popp.
This project has been a long while in the making, but every step of the way has been
delightful, fun, and completely enlightening. I have learned so much through this
process and have thoroughly enjoyed every bit. Thank you. And to our contributors:
thank you all for your work, your dedication, and your excitement about this project.
It’s been a pleasure working with you all. Additionally, I would like to thank Meggan
Cashwell, who provided invaluable comments on my own chapter, as well as my
students at UNCG, whose insightful questions, comments, and enthusiasm helped to
shape a significant portion of the chapter.
Finally, as always, I thank my husband Kyle for his love and support throughout
this process.
Mandy L. Cooper
At this stage in my career there are many people to whom I feel deeply indebted. They
may have helped shape me as an historian, or as a person, or as both. All of that has
played its part in making me whatever kind of scholar I am now. Obviously, it is not
possible to directly thank so many people. Nonetheless, I am thankful. But I do wish
to thank by name my co-editor, Mandy L. Cooper. One could say these have not been
the easiest of circumstances—almost from start to finish, this project has unfolded
alongside a global pandemic—and yet working with you could not have been easier,
or more fun, or a better, richer learning experience. Thank you. In addition, I wish to
thank Agnes Arnold-Forster, for reading and providing invaluable feedback on my
own chapter, as well as audiences at the Business History Conference, Baltimore, 2018,
and the Centre for Business History, Copenhagen Business School.
And I am truly thankful for the love and support of my family; for Theo, Clara, and
Marina, and for Christine.
Andrew Popp
Introduction: At the Heart of the Market
Mandy L. Cooper and Andrew Popp
Introduction
So familiar and formulaic are the images we can categorize them as belonging to a
genre: panic porn. They capture the faces and bodies of traders during periods of crisis
on the world’s stock markets. The faces above all else, very often with a hand clasped
across mouth, eyes raised in supplication. In centering individuals, these images also
center emotions and their performance, as in the image in Figure I.1. They are visceral
and invite us to speculate about the emotions the subjects are experiencing: disbelief,
shock, fear, confusion, indecision, and uncertainty? They also invite us to consider our
own emotions: pity, empathy, pleasure, schadenfreude? At the same time, however, they
picture moments of extremity at which the unwanted and unwelcome has burst in on
this world, provoking rupture, dissonance, and displacement. This is not how things are
meant to be, they seem to say (even as such events keep recurring through time). The
worlds of business and emotions do not belong together. They get in each other’s way.
That has often been the conclusion of historians of business. The essays in this
volume bring the histories of emotions and of business into focused and productive
dialogue. Our originating motivation is simple: so long as histories of business
minimize the entanglement of emotions and business, they are incomplete. Incomplete
not because thinking about emotions would in some way “add” to how we think about
business and its history, but because thinking about business and its history should be
impossible without thinking about emotions.
As Rob Boddice has observed, “Objectivity is … an affect—a posture of situated
scientific practice, rather than a true understanding of the world.”1 An affectation of
objectivity has characterized approaches to the history of business and our practices as
historians of business. Cailluet and his colleagues argue that the few works attempting
to integrate the histories of business and emotions have remained in “partial isolation
because of the difficulties to integrate emotions” into the field.2 Bringing emotions
1
Rob Boddice, “History Looks Forward: Interdisciplinarity and Critical Emotion Research.” Emotions
Review 12, no. 3 (2020): 132.
2
Ludovic Cailluet, Fabian Bernhard, and Rania Labaki, “Family Firms in the Long Run: The Interplay
Between Emotions and History.” Enterprise et Histoire 91, no. 2 (2018): 9.
2 The Business of Emotions in Modern History
Figure I.1 A trader. Courtesy of Getty Images.
into any domain of historical research certainly involves difficulties of methods

and sources. In business history, those are far from the most significant barriers. As
Kenneth Lipartito has argued:
Economic theory portrayed humans as calculating engines and strategic actors,

fully cognizant of the world, always seeking gain and advantage. Self-interested
behavior was universal across time and space. Economists claimed that rational
choice could explain such matters as politics, the law, virtually all social institutions,
family patterns, and even sex. The logic of action in history was clear—individuals
always understood and pursued their self-interest, and their self-interested
actions.3
Similarly, Philip Scranton and Patrick Fridenson identify an over-reliance on

“scienticism” as a “trap” into which much scholarship on business has fallen, led astray
by “the assumption that reason governs.”4 Simply put, business history’s conceptual
and theoretical repertoire has provided little in the way of encouragement or guidance
for those who wish to understand emotions in ways that do not reduce them to a
deviation from norms of rationality. Boddice argues that historians “have long assumed
3
Kenneth Lipartito, “Connecting the Cultural and the Material in Business History.” Enterprise &
Society 14, no. 4 (2013): 687.
4
Philip Scranton and Patrick Fridenson, Reimagining Business History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2015), 40.
Introduction: At the Heart of the Market 3
a kind of fourth-estate practice of keeping other disciplines honest, in part by exposing

assumptions paraded as given truths, and in part by adding context (often political,
cultural, or affective) to narratives presented as neutral or objective.”5 It is in this spirit
we aim to further the integration of emotions into the historical study of business.6
We also aim to contribute to the history of emotions. Again, the aim is more than
additive, even if more firmly embedding business in the thematic repertoire of the
history of emotions is valuable and worthwhile. Business is assumed to be a realm of
strategy, choice, decision, and action. Claims of rationality will emerge as a heuristic
for sensemaking amidst the emotional complexity—and sometimes chaos—that has,
historically, been inherent to business. Thus, if emotions “history’s contribution to
emotion knowledge” is the “disruption of the very starting point of emotion research,”
then bringing in business represents another welcome unsettling of emotions history’s
own boundaries and points of departure.7
This introduction has four aims. First, it surveys relevant literature, primarily
historical, on emotions and business, though what exists is scattered across a number
of scholarly domains and traditions. In business historical research, the approach
has mostly (though not exclusively) been “additive”—business history + emotions.
We will also survey a range of other disciplines within and beyond history, including
management and organizational studies, as well as the broad field of the history of
emotions. We beg understanding of our omissions. Secondly, surveying the literature
prepares the ground for our claims for the value of integrating the histories of emotions
and business. Third, arguments for the value of this endeavor foreground explanation
of the structure we have adopted and for brief introduction of the individual chapters.
Finally, we will consider some of the challenges of doing this work, whilst also looking
forward, with optimism and expectation, to the work that we hope will be done in the
future. Our desire is that this volume will excite others to follow the traces of emotions
into the beating heart of the market.
Reviewing the Literature
In 1941, Lucien Febvre called for a history of emotions.8 His call, however, was largely
ignored for over forty years, until 1985, when Peter and Carol Stearns published
“Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards.”
They defined emotion as “a complex set of interactions among subjective and
5
Boddice, “History Looks Forward,” 133.
6
See Ute Frevert, “Passions, Preferences, and Animal Spirits: How Does Homo Oeconomicus Cope
with Emotions?” in Science and Emotions after 1945, ed. Frank Biess and Daniel M. Gross (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 2014), 300–17.
7
Ibid.
8
Lucien Febvre, “Sensibility and History: How to Reconstitute the Emotional Life of the Past,” in
A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Febvre, ed. Peter Burke, trans. K. Folca (New York:
Harper and Row, 1973), 12–26. As Susan Matt has pointed out, Febvre was not alone in making
this call. Johan Huizinga and Norbert Elias, among other European scholars in the early twentieth
century, focused on the role of emotions in history. Susan J, Matt, “Current Emotion Research in
History: Or, Doing History from the Inside Out.” Emotion Review 3, no. 1 (2011): 117.
objective factors, mediated through neural and/or hormonal systems, which gives
rise to feelings (affective experiences as of pleasure or displeasure) and also general
cognitive processes toward appraising the experience.”9 They proposed the concept of
emotionology, or “the attitudes or standards that a society, or a definable group within
a society, maintains toward basic emotions and their appropriate expression,” arguing
that all societies have emotional standards, whether implicit or explicit, and these
emotional standards vary across both space and time.10 The concept of emotionology
can be used to delineate between a society’s collective standards for emotion and an
individual’s (or a specific group’s) emotional experiences. Conceptually, emotionology
helps distinguish between a society’s thinking about emotion and the actual experience
of emotion, between the professed emotional values of a society and actual emotional
experiences of an individual or group.
Just over ten years later, William Reddy began the process of fleshing out a theoretical
framework for the history of emotions, first in his 1997 article “Against Constructionism:
The Historical Ethnography of Emotions,” and then in his landmark 2001 book The
Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions.11 In The Navigation
of Feeling, Reddy provided a framework for the history of emotions, combining ideas
from the affective turn in cognitive psychology and cultural anthropology with new
theories in order to deal with historical change. He defined emotions as “goal-relevant
activations of thought material that exceed the translating capacity of attention within
a short time horizon.”12 Reddy proposed two key concepts that have come to define
much of the theoretical underpinnings of the field: emotives and emotional regimes.
Emotives are “a type of speech act … which both describes (like constative utterances)
and changes (like performatives) the world.”13 Combined with translation (“something
that goes on, not just between languages and between individuals, but among sensory
modalities, procedural habits, and linguistic structures”), emotives help to bridge the
gap between cognitive psychology and cultural anthropology in the study of emotions.14
According to Reddy’s theory, emotions can be self-managed through emotives in order
to achieve a goal.
Further, Reddy argued that all societies have an emotional regime, a “set of normative
emotions and official rituals, practices, and emotives that express and inculcate them,”
and that an emotional regime is essential for the stability of any political regime.15
The concepts of emotional suffering (acute goal conflict brought on by the activation
of emotions), emotional refuge (something that provides an individual with a release
from the emotional regime), emotional liberty (the freedom to change goals and
challenge emotional management), and induced goal conflict (effects of policies that
9
Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, “Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and
Emotional Standards.” The American Historical Review 90, no. 4 (October 1985): 813.
10
Ibid.
11
William M. Reddy, “Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions.” Current
Anthropology 38, no. 3 (1997): 327–351; William M. Reddy, A Navigation of Feeling: A Framework
for the History of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
12
Reddy, A Navigation of Feeling, 128.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid., 79.
15
Ibid., 129.
support going against the emotional regime) all play a key role in Reddy’s theoretical
framework for understanding the political (and historical) components of emotion.
Subsequently, Barbara Rosenwein argued for the inclusion of emotional expression
(including expressions such as tears, blushing, and more, not just linguistic expression)
in “Worrying about Emotions in History.”16 In her 2006 book Emotional Communities
in the Early Middle Ages, Rosenwein argued that historians should focus on emotional
communities rather than emotional regimes, which are not universally applicable.
Rosenwein defines emotional communities as “groups in which people adhere to the
same norms of emotional expression and value—or devalue—the same or related
emotions,” and in which “other sets of emotional norms … coexisted with those that
were dominant,” leading to a number of emotional communities existing at the same
time.17 To give an example, it is common to talk of “the business community.” Such
categorization is typically predicated on a belief in the existence of structural factors,
such as an alignment of interests or fulfillment of certain roles, like “business owner.”
Nonetheless, it is telling that the “business community” often also finds itself having
sentiments, such as “confidence” or “pessimism,” ascribed to it. Sentiment and affect
become formative elements of its identity.
Historians of emotion, including those in this volume, generally rely on one (or a
combination) of these three approaches—Stearns and Stearns’s emotionology, Reddy’s
emotives and emotional regimes, or Rosenwein’s emotional communities.18 Regardless
of the theoretical underpinnings, historical specificity and cultural context are key.
Rosenwein, for example, asserts that the meaning of the word emotion itself is neither
self-evident nor universal—an argument we extend to reason and rationality, often
positioned as non- or anti-affects. Nor do all cultures have the same emotions. For
example, in France, “love is not an emotion; it is a sentiment. Anger, however, is an
emotion, for an emotion is short term and violent, while a sentiment is more subtle
and of longer duration.”19 Rosenwein argues, then, that “emotions” is “a constructed
term that refers to affective reactions of all sorts, intensities, and durations.”20 The very
nature of emotions is social and relational, historically and culturally specific.
In a 2007 article, Daniel Wickberg argued that the “problem with the history of
emotions is its tendency to separate emotion from cognition, to treat emotions as if
16
Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Worrying about Emotions in History.” The American Historical Review 107,
no. 3 (2002): 821–845.
17
Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2006), 23, 2.
18
A plethora of interviews, conversations, and introductions to the field have been published in recent
years. These works tend to present these three as the defining theoretical underpinnings of the field.
For examples, see Jan Plamper, “The History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barbara
Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns.” History and Theory 49 (2010): 237–265; Matt, “Current Emotion
Research in History”; Nicole Eustace, Eugenia Lean, Julie Livingston, Jan Plamper, William M. Reddy,
and Barbara H. Rosenwein, “AHR Conversation: The Historical Study of Emotions.” The American
Historical Review 117, no. 5 (2012): 1487–1531; Susan J. Matt and Peter N. Stearns, eds., Doing
Emotions History (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Jan Plamper,
The History of Emotions: An Introduction, trans. Keith Tribe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015);
Rob Boddice, The History of Emotions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018).
19
Rosenwein, Emotional Communities, 3.
20
Ibid., 4.
they were a discrete realm rather than seeing them as linked to larger characterological
patterns involving modes of perception and thinking as well as feeling.”21 While some
early work in the history of emotion did have this problem, more recent works have
seen emotions (and reason) as linked to larger patterns and ways of thinking, dissolving
boundaries between emotions and other forms of knowing. Scholars like Nicole
Eustace and Michael Woods, whose works focus on the build-up to the American
Revolution and the American Civil War, respectively, exemplify this movement.22 As
Woods put it, “Emotion and reason are intertwined, not incompatible.”23 Like Woods
and Eustace, the literature on the history of emotion in the past ten to fifteen years
(including this volume) shows that emotion and reason were inherently intertwined
and should not be considered separately. Yet, with a few exceptions, much of this new
literature, as Barbara Rosenwein has pointed out, tends to focus solely on politics and
the state.24
This volume takes up Wickberg’s call to treat emotions as part of larger, historically
and culturally specific patterns. Yet, we also see some commonalities in the way
emotions are—and have been—used across time and cultures. Critically, emotion and
reason, so often placed in sharp contrast with each other, have more often been deeply
intertwined. In fact, as the essays in this volume show, reason/rationality has often been
a particular type of emotion: claims to reason/rationality may themselves be thought of
as “emotives,” as affective performances of non-emotion, if you will. In parallel, affect
theory has a long tradition of focusing on the idea of emotional labor, building on Arlie
Russell Hochschild’s The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. In this
tradition, scholars examine the emotional labor performed by workers such as flight
attendants, waitresses, and models for a wage.25
21
Daniel Wickberg, “What is the History of Sensibilities? On Cultural Histories, Old and New.” The
American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (2007): 682.
22
Nicole Eustace, Passion is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008). Michael E. Woods, Emotional and Sectional
Conflict in the Antebellum United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
23
Woods, Emotional and Sectional Conflict, 14.
24
For Rosenwein’s critique, see Barbara H. Rosenwein, Generations of Feeling: A History of Emotions,
600–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 10. Exceptions to this trend include: Eva
Illouz, Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007); Agnes
Arndt, “Entrepreneurs: Encountering Trust in Business Relations,” in Encounters with Emotions:
Negotiating Cultural Differences since Early Modernity, eds. Benno Gammerl, Philipp Nielsen, and
Margrit Pernau (New York: Berghahn, 2019); Rob Boddice, A History of Feelings (London: Reaktion
Books, Ltd., 2019), particularly Chapter 6; Agnes Arnold-Forster and Alison Moulds, eds. Feelings
and Work in Modern History: Emotional Labour and Emotions about Labour (London: Bloomsbury,
2022). See also Thomas Dixon’s argument that emotions are part of and cannot be separated from
decision-making, captured as felt judgments. Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The
Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
25
On emotional and affective labor in affect theory, see particularly Arlie Russel Hochschild, The
Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983); Elizabeth Wissinger “Always on Display: Affective Production in the Modeling Industry,”
in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, ed. Patricia Ticento Clough, with Jean Halley, 231–260.
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and
Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 108; Johanna Oksala, “Affective
Labor and Feminist Policies.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 41, no. 2 (2016):
281–303; Michael Hardt, “Foreword: What Affects Are Good For,” xi, and Patricia Ticineto Clough,
“Introduction,” 21–22, both in The Affective Turn.
Within business and economic history, and the new history of capitalism, a small
but growing literature has drawn directly on the history of emotion to examine
the relationship between emotions and business in such areas as: the language of
credit and sensibility; family business; business and religious affect; and emotions
and capitalism.26 Similarly, a cultural turn in business history has focused on how
economic actors construct webs of meaning rooted in subjectivities, challenging a
prior, underlying reliance on methodological individualism derived from economics.27
Likewise, increasing attention is being paid to capitalism’s dark or hidden side.28
Nonetheless, if historians of business have not ignored emotions they have tended
to compartmentalize both emotions and the study of emotions, with emotions
typically conceived of and treated as resources, competencies, or elements of a strategic
repertoire that businesses possess or leverage. Emotions have thus been positioned as
components of that bundle of assets and capabilities that constitutes the firm.
This might be thought of as emotions through addition. Thus, Cailluet and his
colleagues ascribed their motivation for bringing together a collection of essays on
emotions and family firms to a search for “‘business history with emotions,’” calling
this a “sensible project” to initiate.29 If emotions do somehow penetrate nearer to
the core of business, they do so as unwanted intrusions, as in the fears that paralyze
or distort markets during panics. This approach to bringing emotions into business
history is colored by the discipline’s choice of the market-located business enterprise
as its primary object of analysis, a position that assumes the possibility of isolating
discrete, bounded, self-activating units, interacting through an automatic system of
signals and responses (inputs and outputs, supply and demand, prices). Emotions have
had to find their place in a framing that considers them essentially aberrant.
Nonetheless, mapping how business history has sought to include emotions helps
us better establish our own contribution. Prominent are studies of the role of emotions
in mediating relationships between firms and consumers. Firms sell products and
26
Margot Finn, The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003); Andrew Popp, Entrepreneurial Families: Business, Marriage,
and Life in the Early Nineteenth-Century (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012); John Corrigan,
Business of the Heart: Religion and Emotion in the Nineteenth-Century (Oakland: University of
California Press, 2001); Margot Finn, “The Female World of Love and Empire: Women, Family
and East India Company Politics at the End of the Eighteenth Century.” Gender & History 31, no.
1 (2019): 7–24; Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, “Abigail’s Accounts: Economy and Affection in the Early
Republic.” Journal of Women’s History 17, no. 3 (2005): 35–58; Sarah M.S. Pearsall, Atlantic Families:
Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Mandy
L. Cooper, “Cultures of Emotion: Families, Friends, and the Making of the United States,” Phd
diss., Duke University, 2018; Andrew Popp and Robin Holt, “Emotion, Succession, and the Family
Firm: Josiah Wedgwood & Sons.” Business History 55, no. 6 (2013): 892–909; Alexandra J. Finley,
An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade (Chapel Hill:
UNC Press, 2020); John Tosh, “From Keighley to St Denis: Separation and Intimacy in Victorian
Bourgeois Marriage.” History Workshop Journal 40 (1995): 193–206; Nicholas Wong, Andrew Smith,
and Andrew Popp, “Religiosity, Emotional States, and Strategy in the Family Firm: Edm. Schluter &
Co Ltd., 1953–1980.” Enterprise et Histoire 91, no. 2 (2018): 98–125.
27
Lipartito, “Connecting the Cultural and Material in Business History”; Lipartito, “The Ontology of
Economic Things.” Enterprise and Society 21, no. 3 (2020): 592–621; Finley, An Intimate Economy.
28
Kenneth Lipartito and Lisa Jacobson, ed. Capitalism’s Hidden Worlds (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2020).
29
Cailluet et al., “Family firms in the Long Run,” 9. Emphasis added.
services based on their affective appeal, promising affective responses from or affective
benefits for consumers. Sometimes affect is the offer; sometimes it is peripheral.
Here, affect is performed.30 Cynically or sincerely, advertisers have used emotional
appeal to sell everything from toothpaste, contraception, and sanitary products to life
insurance, self-service shopping formats, and home improvement stores.31 Whereas
selling contraception or life insurance might hinge on reassurances and promises of
security, marketers also found themselves applying emotional balms to consumers
discomfited by innovations such as convenience foods or the new experience of
queuing.32 Emotional appeals have applied to the marketing of everything from the
most mundane—the humble harmonica—to the sublimities of Italian supercars.33
Emotional selling has relied on visibility, and contended with the necessity for
invisibility.34 The mechanisms through which emotional appeals were leveraged have
ranged from the most trivial, as in the cheap retail “premiums” studied by Woloson,
to the awesome, including the exploitation of history itself.35 Rarely have such appeals
been subtle, as in the belief of advertising agency J. Walter Thompson that Mexican
consumers were “over” emotional, naturalizing acceptable (and unacceptable) levels
of emotionality. Some enterprises were more considered and thoughtful, developing
richer understandings of the cultures in which they sought to operate, touching the
30
Scholars studying affective labor have discussed its role in selling services, particularly those that
have examined the affective labor of workers in the service sector. See Elizabeth Wissinger, “Always
on Display: Affective Production in the Modeling Industry,” in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the
Social, ed. Patricia Ticento Clough, with Jean Halley (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007);
Hochschild, The Managed Heart. Scholars studying emotional labor in the US have similarly focused
on the performance of emotion necessary to sell services. See Finley, An Intimate Economy.
31
Peter Miskell, “Cavity Protection or Cosmetic Perfection? Innovation and Marketing of Toothpaste
Brands in the United States and Western Europe, 1955–1985.” Business History Review 78, no. 1
(2004): 29–60; Kristin Hall, “Selling Sexual Certainty? Advertising Lysol as a Contraceptive in the
United States and Canada, 1919–1939.” Enterprise and Society 14, no. 1 (2013): 71–98; Camilla
Mørk Røstvik, “Mother Nature as Brand Strategy: Gender and Creativity in Tampax Advertising
2007–2009.” Enterprise & Society 21, no. 2 (2012): 413–452; Monica Kenely, “Marketing the Message:
The Making of the Market for Life Insurance in Australia, 1850–1940.” Enterprise & Society 16,
no. 4 (2015): 929–956; Andrew Alexander, Dawn Nell, Adrian R. Bailey, and Gareth Shaw, “The
Co-Creation of a Retail Innovation: Shoppers and the Early Supermarket in Britain.” Enterprise
and Society 10, no. 3 (2009): 529–558; Richard Harris, “The Birth of the North American Home
Improvement Store, 1905–1929.” Enterprise and Society 10, no. 4 (2009): 687–728.
32
Margaret Weber, “The Cult of Convenience: Marketing and Food in Postwar America.” Enterprise &
Society 22, no. 3 (2021): 605–634; Adrian R. Bailey, Andrew Alexander, and Gareth Shaw, “Queuing
as a Changing Shopper Experience: The Case of Grocery Shopping in Britain, 1945–1975.” Enterprise
and Society 20, no. 3 (2019): 652–683.
33
Hartmut Berghoff, “Marketing Diversity: The Making of a Global Consumer Product—Hohner’s
Harmonicas, 1857–1930.” Enterprise and Society 2, no. 2 (2001): 338–372; Paolo Aversa, Katrin
Schreiter, and Fillipo Guerrini, “The Birth of a Business Icon through Cultural Branding: Ferrari
and the Prancing Horse, 1923–1947.” Enterprise and Society (2021): 1–31.
34
Rachel Gross, “From Buckskin to Gore-Tex: Consumption as a Path to Mastery in Twentieth-
Century American Wilderness Recreation.” Enterprise & Society 19, no. 4 (2018): 826–835; Hallie
Lieberman, “Selling Sex Toys: Marketing and the Meaning of Vibrators in Early Twentieth-Century
America.” Enterprise & Society 17, no. 2 (2016): 393–433.
35
Wendy Woloson, “Wishful Thinking: Retail Premiums in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America.”
Enterprise and Society 13, no. 4 (2012): 790–831; José Antonio Miranda and Felipe Ruiz-Moreno,
“Selling the past. The Use of History as a Marketing Strategy in Spain, 1900–1980.” Business
History (2020).
emotional chords of local or domestic cultures.36 From time to time, businesses have
even pulled on emotions to claim they are acting disinterestedly for the greater good,
participating in public service campaigns around child safety, for example.37 More
recently, business historians have begun exploring business’ impact on emotions at
the level of the experience of everyday life.38 The financialized self, for example, might
experience a radically reordered relationship to the affective experience of being in the
world.39 In turn, this connects to a growing interest in the emotional dimensions to
constructions of moral economies; community-based beliefs about the proper ordering
of the relationship between business, economy, and society.40 Here, the emotionalized
“selling” of business takes place across the largest canvas.
If emotions were important to how things were sold, then they were also sometimes
important to whom things were sold to. Gender has played an important role, with
business (and sometimes historians) believing that women are inherently more
emotional (and thus less rational) consumers. Jacobson revealed how “advertising
discourses on the archetypal boy consumer promoted a masculinized ideal of
consumption that broke decisively from the stereotype of the emotion-driven female
shopper. Boys were lauded as rational, informed buyers who prized technological
innovation.” Similarly, studying early automobile advertising, Schorman relays how
one executive believed there was “no room for emotion or visual imagery as persuasive
forces. ‘Man is a reasoning animal,’ he once wrote. ‘You cannot win converts to your
opinion except by appeal to reason.’”41 There is a curious process at work in these
examples, in which an affect (that of rationality) is performed as being affectless,
beyond or outside the confines of the emotional. Of course, both men and women
buy and drive automobiles. Some products, such as post-mastectomy breast implants,
might be largely consumed by women, but others, like romance novels, are no less
subject to gendering than the car.42 As important here as the gendering of both products
and consumers is the persistent belief that “emotions” and “reason” can be split off
from one another, confined to separate, inviolable domains. Business historians have
36
Julio E. Moreno, “J. Walter Thompson, the Good Neighbor Policy, and Lessons in Mexican Business
Culture, 1920–1950.” Enterprise and Society 5, no. 2 (2004): 254–280. Paula de la Cruz-Fernandez,
Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinationals in Spain and Mexico, 1860–1940
(London: Routledge, 2021).
37
Paul M. Renfro, “Keeping Children Safe is Good Business: The Enterprise of Child Safety in the Age
of Reagan.” Enterprise and Society 17, no. 1 (2016): 151–187.
38
Andrew Popp, “Histories of Business and the Everyday.” Enterprise and Society 21, no. 3 (2020):
622–637.
39
Orsi Husz and David Larsson Heidenblad, “The Making of Everyman’s Capitalism in Sweden:
Micro-Infrastructures, Unlearning, and Moral Boundary Work.” Enterprise and Society (2021):
1–30.
40
Ewan Gibbs, “The Moral Economy of the Scottish Coalfields: Managing Deindustrialization under
Nationalization c.1947–1983.” Enterprise and Society 19, no. 1 (2018): 124–152.
41
Lisa Jacobson, “Manly Boys and Enterprising Dreamers: Business Ideology and the Construction
of the Boy Consumer, 1910–1930.” Enterprise and Society 2, no. 2 (2001): 225–258; Rob Schorman,
“‘This Astounding Car for $1,500’: The Year Automobile Advertising Came of Age.” Enterprise and
Society 11, no. 3 (2010): 468–523.
42
Kirsten E. Gardner, “Hiding the Scars: A History of Post-Mastectomy Breast Prostheses, 1945–2000.”
Enterprise and Society 1, no. 3 (2000): 565–590; Denise Sutton, “Marketing Love: Romance
Publishers Mills & Boon and Harlequin Enterprises, 1930–1990.” Enterprise & Society (2021): 1–31.
rarely exposed these divides or distinctions—emotion/reason, affect/affectless—to the

critique they deserve, even as they have unpicked the gendered appeals advertisers and
others have invoked or invented.
The gendering of emotions has also colonized the internal structuring and
functioning of firms, where businesses—and historians—have again relied on
assumptions and categories. Unsurprisingly, there has been considerable reliance on
the theoretical framing of emotional labor. The mirror figure to the emotionalized
consumer is the salesperson, expected to perform selling as an emotional act, one that
became increasingly subject to corporate codification and control and thus hardly an
opportunity for emotional “authenticity.”43 Selling first emerged as a male role, even
when the product or service being hawked was gendered female by society. Perhaps
in response to the emotions generated by this work, salesmen developed exaggerated
displays of masculinity, expressed through dress, for example.44 Masculinity has also
sometimes been a defense against the emotional trials of immiseration and career
insecurity.45 In time, using women to sell to other women effectively leveraged emotions
circulating around notions of the home and domesticity.46 Service workers, from railway
porters to bellhops, also have a long history of being studied as doing emotional labor.47
Selling builds emotional bonds between business and consumer, but is not the only
site of emotional labor, generating studies of the emotional wellbeing of employees,
whether that be connected to the attitude testing of workers to programs to instill
employee loyalty via paternalism or religiosity.48 Attempts at the emotional enlistment
of employees have often taken place in the context of organization-wide attempts at
using emotions to buttress corporate cultures, for example through workplace rites
and rituals, or during corporate change processes.49 Consideration of the emotional
43
Walter Friedman, Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2004).
44
Andrew Popp and Michael French, “‘Practically the Uniform of the Tribe’: Dress Codes Among
Commercial Travelers.” Enterprise and Society 11, no. 3 (2010): 437–467.
45
Michael French, “‘Slowly Becoming Sales Promotion Men?’: Negotiating the Career of the Sales
Representative in Britain, 1920s–1970s.” Enterprise & Society 17, no. 1 (2016): 39–79; Peter Scott,
“Managing Door-to-Door Sales of Vacuum Cleaners in Interwar Britain.” Business History Review
82, no. 4 (2008): 761–788.
46
Katina Manko, Ding Dong! Avon Calling! The Women and Men of Avon Products, Incorporated
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
47
Daniel Levinson Wilk, “Tales from the Elevator and Other Stories of Modern Service in New York
City.” Enterprise and Society, 7, no. 4 (2006): 695–704; Daniel Levinson Wilk, “The Red Cap’s Gift:
How Tipping Tempers the Rational Power of Money.” Enterprise & Society 16, no. 1 (2015): 5–50.
48
Sanford M. Jacoby, “Employee Attitude Testing at Sears, Roebuck and Company, 1938–1960.”
Business History 60, no. 4 (1986): 602–632; Margaret C. Rung, “Paternalism and Pink Collars:
Gender and Federal Employee Relations, 1941–50.” Business History Review 71, no. 3 (1997):
381–416; Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Ken Fones-Wolf, “Managers and Ministers: Instilling Christian
Free Enterprise in the Postwar Workplace.” Business History Review 89, no. 1 (2015): 99–124.
49
John Griffiths, “‘Give my Regards to Uncle Billy …’: The Rites and Rituals of Company Life at Lever
Brothers, c.1900–c.1990.” Business History 37, no. 4 (1995): 25–45; Jürgen Kocka, “Family and
Bureaucracy in German Industrial Management, 1850–1914: Siemens in Comparative Perspective.”
Business History Review 45, no. 2 (1971): 133–156; Jennifer Delton, “Before the EEOC: How
Management Integrated the Workplace.” Business History Review 81, no. 2 (2007): 269–295; Ruth
Barton and Bernard Mees, “The Charismatic Organization: Vision 2000 and Corporate Change in a
State-Owned Organization.” Enterprise and Society (2021): 1–22.
wellbeing and character of employees has naturally extended to leadership. It has often
been assumed not only that leadership is naturally gendered but that it is so because
of the gendered distribution of vital emotional traits. Once more, unquestioned
distinctions between reason and emotion intrude, leading to the systematic
exclusion of women from leadership positions, from boardrooms to the Hollywood
director’s chair.50 Where women were accorded room close to the top, it was often in
subsidiary roles to which they were thought better fitted, for example in providing
emotional support as corporate wives.51 Of course, emotionality was never far from
the homosociality of male corporate leaders, who formed and inhabited emotional
communities.52 If male salesmen liked to assert a particular masculine emotionality
through modes of dress, then so did corporate leaders.53
If leaders are expected to display (male-gendered) emotional characteristics
such as detachment and calculation in their decision-making, then the figure of
the entrepreneur is allowed a little more emotional leeway. Ever since Schumpeter’s
construction of the entrepreneur as the actor who “gets things done,” the entrepreneur
has been a man of sometimes impetuous action. Fundamentally future-oriented,
facing a world of non-calculable uncertainty and risk, the entrepreneur is permitted a
dose of intuition and spontaneity.54 The entrepreneur is one business figure for whom it
seems to be respectable to talk about “character,” with all that implies about emotional
traits.55 Unsurprisingly, the entrepreneur has often been an intensely gendered figure,
and historians have explored how, as entrepreneurs, both men and women performed
gendered and emotionalized cultural scripts.56
In addition to impinging on human actors, emotions have also been attached to
specific organizational forms and behaviors. Family firms have routinely been assumed
to be especially emotionalized realms. This is one area in which the distinctions between
business and emotions, reason and affect, break down, a family firm being inherently
50
Karen Mahar, “True Womanhood in Hollywood: Gendered Business Strategies and the Rise and
Fall of the Woman Filmmaker, 1896–1928.” Enterprise and Society 2, no. 1 (2001): 72–110; Eelke
Heemskerk and Meindert Fennema, “Women on Board: Female Board Membership as a Form
of Elite Democratization.” Enterprise and Society 15, no. 2 (2014): 252–284; Søren Fris Møller,
“Histories of Leadership in the Copenhagen Phil–A Cultural View of Narrativity in Studies of
Leadership in Symphony Orchestras.” Business History 59, no. 8 (2017): 1280–1302.
51
Therese Nordlund Edvinsson, “Standing in the Shadow of the Corporation: Women’s Contribution
to Swedish Family Business in the Early Twentieth Century.” Business History 58, no. 4 (2016):
532–546.
52
Therese Nordlund Edvinsson, “The Game/s that Men Play: Male Bonding in the Swedish Business
Elite 1890–1960.” Business History (2021).
53
Eric Guthey, “Ted Turner’s Corporate Cross-Dressing and the Shifting Images of American Business
Leadership.” Enterprise and Society 2, no. 1 (2001): 111–142.
54
R. Daniel Wadhwani, “Gales, Streams, and Multipliers: Conceptual Metaphors and Theory
Development in Business History.” Enterprise and Society 21, no. 2 (2020): 320–339; R. Daniel
Wadhwani and Christina Lubinski, “Reinventing Entrepreneurial History.” Business History Review
91, no. 4 (2017): 767–799.
55
Maury Klein, “In Search of Jay Gould.” Business History Review 52, no. 2 (1978): 166–199.
56
Susan Broomhall, “Face-making: Emotional and Gendered Meanings in Chinese Clay Portraits of
Danish Asiatic Company Men.” Scandinavian Journal of History 41, no. 3 (2016): 447–474; Eirinn
Larsen and Vibeke Kieding Banik, “Mixed Feelings: Women, Jews, and Business around 1900.”
Scandinavian Journal of History 41, no. 3 (2016): 350–368.
inseparable from the family emotions that animate and motivate it.57 Nonetheless, even
here the literature can exhibit a significant degree of instrumentality about emotions,
particularly when drawing on family business studies, which insist on a near implacable
separation of firm and family as domains of study.58 The importation of constructs
such as the curiously impassive notion of “socio-emotional wealth” is unlikely to help
business historians significantly improve their own emotional intelligence. Business
networks, viewed as depending on bonds and ties based in trust and connections of
family and amity, are another form of business organization for which the importance
of emotions is sometimes acknowledged. The literature is extensive, focusing on many
different temporal and geographical contexts, from early modern France to twentieth-
century Australia via the Atlantic World.59 Networks are, by definition, relational,
making them difficult to divorce from emotions. Yet there has been a tendency to treat
an affect such as trust as the functional property of the structure of the network, not
the conditional, contingent flow of feeling between network members, though there
are exceptions.60
Networks, consumers, and markets all demand engagement in one form or
another. So do stock markets, banks, creditors, regulators, and governments. Affect-
oriented words are often used in relation to stock markets, which are frequently
characterized as febrile, feverish, dull, bullish, panicked, or irrational (meaning,
emotional).61 Enterprises and investors have often found stock markets frightening and
unpredictable environments, too often deserted by reason.62 These affects are found
not only on the bourses of great European capitals, but also in Mandate Palestine,
where Pfefferman and de Vries found that gendered emotions structured access to
credit for female micro-enterprises.63 Regulatory reactions to panics and crisis have
often aimed at control, seeking to preventatively tamp down flares of emotion, whether
of exuberance or despair, whilst emotions have crept into corporate governance law
57
Hartmut Berghoff, “The End of Family Business? The Mittelstand and German Capitalism in
Transition, 1949–2000.” Business History Review 80, no. 2 (2006): 263–295; Christopher Kobrak,
“Family Finance: Value Creation and the Democratization of Cross-Border Governance.” Enterprise
and Society, 10, no. 1 (2009): 38–89.
58
Begoña Giner and Amparo Ruiz, “Family Entrepreneurial Orientation as a Driver of Longevity
in Family Firms: A Historic Analysis of the Ennobled Trenor Family and Trenor y Cía.” Business
History 64, no. 2 (2022): 327–358.
59
Arnaud Bartolomei, Claire Lemercier, Viera Rebolledo-Dhuin, and Nadège Sougy, “Becoming a
Correspondent: The Foundations of New Merchant Relationships in Early Modern French Trade
(1730–1820).” Enterprise and Society 20, no. 3 (2019): 533–574; Claire Wright, Simon Ville, and
David Merrett, “Quotidian Routines: The Cooperative Practices of a Business Elite.” Enterprise &
Society 20, no. 4 (2019): 826–860; John Haggerty and Sherryllynne Haggerty, “Visual Analytics of an
Eighteenth-Century Business Network.” Enterprise and Society 11, no. 1 (2010): 1–25.
60
Sophie Jones and Siobhan Talbott, “Sole Traders? The Role of the Extended Family in Eighteenth-
Century Atlantic Business Networks.” Enterprise and Society (2021): 1–30.
61
Larry Neal, “The Money Pitt: Lord Londonderry and the South Sea Bubble; or, How to Manage Risk
in an Emerging Market.” Enterprise and Society 1, no. 4 (2000): 659–674.
62
James Taylor, “Inside and Outside the London Stock Exchange: Stockbrokers and Speculation in
Late Victorian Britain.” Enterprise and Society 22, no. 3 (2021): 842–877; Janette Rutterford and
Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos, “The Rise of the Small Investor in the United States and United Kingdom,
1895 to 1970.” Enterprise and Society 18, no. 3 (2017): 485–535.
63
Talia Pfefferman and David de Vries, “Gendering Access to Credit: Business Legitimacy in Mandate
Palestine,” Enterprise & Society 16, no. 3 (2015): 580–610.
in the form of conceptions of the good or moral economy.64 Even tax lawyers can be a
source of discomfiting emotions for a business in the wrong circumstances.65
Where it is much harder to find emotions is in what we might think of as the higher
functions of business: decision and strategy. Here reason and rationality—or, at least,
claims to those attributes—often hold sway. Business historians, influenced by their
intellectual proximity to economics, have modeled their understanding of decision-
making according to precepts such as bounded rationality, in which our capacity for
rationality is not limited by a surfeit of unwelcome emotions but simply by our own
feeble powers of cognition. With more computing and more information ever more
rational (that is, non-emotional) decision-making will be possible. Reason remains
attainable and aspirational. However, both conceptual and empirical work is beginning
to question the reign of reason, even regarding decision and strategy, including,
inter alia, in relation to decision-making, merger decisions, and organizational
commitments.66 However, business historians have rarely inquired closely into how
businesses understood what is commonly called “human nature,” particularly the
balance and relationship between reason and feeling. Merle Curti’s 1967 paper on
conceptions of human nature in the US advertising industry is an interesting exception,
tracing shifts in beliefs about that balance and relationship.67
However, in 1956, sociologist William Whyte introduced the world to “organization
man,” the human embodiment of the collectivist ethos of corporatism. A 2016
roundtable convened to reconsider this text posed a simple, but vital, question: “Just
where do new business ideas come from?”68 Pursuing this question, the assembled
scholars exposed a series of paradoxes that illuminate the uneasy relationship between
emotions and reason in understandings, then and now, of business activities.
One central paradox was how to achieve both the efficiencies of scale, routinization,
and bureaucracy and the creativity and innovation of entrepreneurialism.
Organizations had become “stifling and inhumane.”69 Creativity had come to seem
“the opposite of ‘business,’” again setting up a reason/emotion dichotomy.70 Corporate
responses to this dilemma were emotionalized as sending “a shiver down the spine
of American business.”71 Answers, it was thought, might lie in better understanding
64
David Chan Smith, “The Mid-Victorian Reform of Britain’s Company Laws and the Moral Economy
of Fair Competition.” Enterprise and Society 22, no. 4 (2021): 1103–1139.
65
Alexandra D. Ketchum, “Cooking the Books: Feminist Restaurant Owners’ Relationships with
Banks, Loans and Taxes.” Business History 64, no. 1 (2022): 1–27.
66
Daniel Raff, “Business History and the Problem of Action.” Enterprise and Society 21, no. 3 (2020):
561–591. Andrew Popp, “Making Choices in Time.” Enterprise and Society 14, no. 3 (2013): 467–474;
Julie Bower and Howard Cox, “How Scottish & Newcastle Became the U.K.’s Largest Brewer: A Case
of Regulatory Capture?” Business History Review 86, no. 1 (2012): 43–68; David L. Mason, “The Rise
and Fall of the Cooperative Spirit: The Evolution of Organisational Structures in American Thrifts,
1831–1939.” Business History 54, no. 3 (2012): 381–398.
67
Merle Curti, “The Changing Concept of ‘Human Nature’ in the Literature of American Advertising.”
Business History Review 41, no. 4 (1967): 338.
68
Christopher McKenna, “Introduction: From Management Consultant to Psychological Counsel.”
Business History Review 90, no. 4 (2016): 691.
69
Samuel Franklin, “Creativity.” Business History Review 90, no. 4 (2016): 694.
70
Ibid., 696.
71
Ibid., 700.
how to manage employees’ fruitful, but troubling and unsettling, emotions. Could
emotions be harnessed, rationalized even? Some management consultants and
theorists thought so, the circle squared: “‘creativity’ could be understood rationally
and thereby operationalized—taught, improved, and deployed on demand—so as to
dovetail with the metrics of managerial science.”72 In search of their creative wellsprings,
managerial participants in programs designed by management consultants Synectics
were encouraged to follow “subconscious cues about what ‘felt right.”’73 Synectics
was positioned as “a more efficient and dependable method for corporate innovation
that made use of ‘the personal, the non-rational, the seemingly irrelevant, emotional
aspects’ of an employee, which they believed were essential to innovation.”74 Thus,
not only could creativity be rationalized but, against received wisdom, reason was
not always the surest route to efficiency. Meanwhile, others argued that the “business
world was entering the ‘age of the intuitive manager’ … a new type of leader who
relied not on established procedures or analytical reasoning, but on the ‘visionary
and anticipatory qualities’ of intuition.”75 Nonetheless, those pushing the intuitive
manager had to battle corporate “skepticism of intuition,” and to encourage executives
to recognize the “reason and order in intuitive judgment,” out of which emerged a
“shared … commitment to explicate intuition in rational terms.”76 Emotions remained
in need of the taming influence of reason.
The creativity paradox was not the only unintended consequence of corporatism.
Management burnout was another, with emotions now the enemy. If post-war
management thinking had “sought to restore individuals, in all their emotional and
psychological complexity, to management thinking,” by the 1970s “darker implications
of that belief were beginning to manifest themselves; in particular, emotional
investment could be particularly taxing.”77 The risk of burnout was “compounded for
managers by the fact that they were expected to govern, guide, and direct the emotions
and interactions of their subordinates.”78 As ever, management consultants were ready
with answers—but not answers that involved a better understanding of emotions.
Instead, the recommendation was “not less work but rather less emotional involvement
in work,” avoiding “the pitfalls of emotional interaction with … staff.”79 Emotions were
better banished.
We have given extended consideration to a single set of articles for two reasons.
First, we need more such studies of what business (and scholars) have thought about
how people think and act and the roles therein of reason and emotion. Second, and
more importantly, the analysis has shown the extent to which that thinking has
struggled, and failed, to escape a binary distinction between affect and rationality.
Non-historical business and organizational scholars have also shown interest in
emotions. A special issue of Enterprise et Histoire on emotions and family business
72
Ibid.
73
Ibid., 699.
74
Ibid.
75
Kira Lussier, “Managing Intuition.” Business History Review 90, no. 4 (2016): 708.
76
Ibid., 709.
77
Matthew J. Hoffarth, “Executive Burnout.” Business History Review 90, no. 4 (2016): 701.
78
Ibid., 702.
79
Ibid., 703.
brought together historians and family business scholars aimed at seeding a process
of cross-fertilization between the two groups, arguing that while “emotions may be
an undeniable influence in any decision making” they may play a particularly notable
role in family businesses, involving “unique interactions,” when emotions generated
in the business “spill over to the family sphere.” These dynamics create “fertile soils
for studies into emotions’ interactions with business decisions,” again dichotomizing
business and emotions.80 Nonetheless, believing multidisciplinary approaches might
prove productive, the issue sought to be the “‘first’ to tackle emotions as an object for
business historians and management scholars.”81
As Andrea Colli has noted, family business studies have “approached the issue of
emotions and sentiments with caution, largely because of the difficulty of analyzing them
with a solid and sufficiently theoretical framework.” To date, socio-emotional wealth has
“represented the major contribution” of the field to the study of emotions in business
contexts.82 Socio-emotional wealth argues that the value placed by family firms on non-
financial returns can shape priorities, motivations, attitudes, behaviors, and choices—in
the firm. The causal flow is in one direction: from familial emotional priorities to strategic
choices at the firm level. This can be characterized as a highly functional relationship
and we believe it offers historians little scope for enriching the play of emotions in
business contexts, or economic contexts more generally. Indeed, many approaches to
emotions in organization and management studies are self-described as functional: that
is, as performing a specific function in an almost mechanical fashion.83 The operation of
such mechanisms would often also be assumed to be acultural and ahistorical, or at least
relatively so, giving little scope to the historian attuned to cultural and temporal difference.
This review of the literature has introduced key concepts and approaches from
the history of emotions, whilst also providing insights into the rich potential of a
greater recognition of the historically specific entanglement of business, emotions, and
cognition; potential found in the many dimensions across which this entanglement
has played out and in the difficulties in maintaining boundaries between emotions
and reason as ways of knowing and acting. Next we succinctly state our core argument
before introducing the structure and content of this volume.
Our Argument
When Kenneth Lipartito observed that business historians had “not recognized
that culture inheres in the very idea of rationality,” his purpose was—first—to
critique the discipline’s attachment to structural-functionalist models of the
80
Cailluet et al., “Family Firms in the Long Run,” 4.
81
Ibid.
82
Andrea Colli, “A Theory of Emotions and Sentiments in Family Firms: A Role for History.” Enterprise
et Histoire 91, no. 2 (2018): 126.
83
Dirk Lindebaum, Deanna Geddes, and Peter J. Jordan, “Theoretical Advances Around Social
Functions of Emotion and Talking about Emotion at Work,” in Social Functions of Emotion
and Talking About Emotion at Work, ed. Dirk Lindebaum, Deanna Geddes, and Peter J. Jordan
(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018), 1.
economy, and—second—to propose that a cultural analytical lens might provide

an alternative, better set of answers to some of the questions puzzling the field.
Lipartito’s anti-functionalism noted but did not elaborate on the existence of
emotions.84 Though critical of structural-functionalist approaches for their
insistence that what human actors “believed and felt was unimportant,” Lipartito’s
answer to the question of “what lies beyond … the boundaries rationality?” was
“the realm of culture.” Lipartito defined culture as “a system of values, ideas, and
beliefs which constitute a mental apparatus for grasping reality,” and business
culture specifically as “that set of limiting and organizing concepts that determine
what is real or rational for management.”85 Business historical studies owe Lipartito
a considerable debt for his advocacy for cultural analysis. We acknowledge that
and extend it by arguing that if culture inheres in the very idea of rationality, then
so does affect. This then is our first core argument: that reason and rationality do
not have borders beyond which lie the disordered wilds of feeling. We propose the
removal of conceptual boundaries between reason and rationality and affect, feeling,
and sentiment. Claims to rationality are heuristic devices, made from subjective
affective positions, and generative of further subjective affective positions.
What do we do with such a proposition, which threatens to upend the toolbox on
which historians of business have relied for generations? Are emotions simply always
there, always prior? Here we turn to the history of emotion and, in particular, Rob
Boddice’s “striking takeaway” that though “the brain makes emotions, it makes them
in a body that is situated in time and space.”86 The business historical, we argue, as a
second core proposal, is a key time and space within which emotions are made and
which is itself constantly remade by embodied emotions—a powerful exemplar of
“bodies, brains, and worlds, locked in dynamic but unstable relationships.”87 Why key?
Boddice argues that sense and feelings are “directed and made meaningful in exchange
or interaction, in and through social contexts and institutions, and through culturally
bound scripts of expression and action that provide the building blocks of emotional
and sensory lives, and experience itself.”88 As a dominant institution under modernity,
business provides a particularly powerful social context for affective exchange and
interaction and thus for the writing and rewriting of compelling culturally bound
scripts directing expression, action, and experience. The concept of cultural scripts
returns us to Lipartito, who argued that business “has contributed to the construction
of such powerful ideas as rationality and efficiency, to such values as progress and to
such structures as technology and bureaucracy.”89 Bringing together our propositions,
reframing rationality as affect as well as thought not only opens up new perspectives
on the history of business but also on the role of business in shaping the affective world
we inhabit today.
84
Kenneth Lipartito, “Culture and the Practice of Business History.” Business and Economic History 24,
no. 2 (1995): 14.
85
Ibid., 3, 5, 2.
86
Boddice, “History Looks Forward,” 131.
87
Ibid., 132.
88
Ibid.
89
Lipartito, “Culture and the Practice of Business History,” 36.
Thus, in this volume, we aim to effect a deep integration of the histories of business
and emotions, showing that emotions are—and have been—at the heart of the market,
of the enterprise, and of capitalism.
Structure
This volume is not intended to be the definitive treatment of business and emotion.
Rather, we aim to initiate a sustained and growing discussion—to provide places to
start. The geographic and chronological breadth of the volume—from Africa to Asia,
to Europe, and to North America, from the early modern period to the present—
highlight the potential for further exploration. Focusing on different subjects and
sources, utilizing different methodologies, the chapters address enterprises as varied
as family businesses, slavery, the arms industry, whisky, advertising, finance, feminist
entrepreneurship, and the service sector.
Yet, despite their differences, the chapters address some overarching themes and
questions, revealing commonalities and promising areas of further research. Several
chapters discuss the various ways that emotions have been (and still are) sold—from
selling feelings of trust in the service sector, to selling nostalgia and national/regional
pride. Others focus on specific emotions: fear, nostalgia, anxiety, love, pride, anger, and
more. Several focus specifically on gender, questioning the gendered nature of various
emotions in business. By taking seriously what happens when emotions and emotional
situations—whether fear and anxiety, nostalgia, love, or the longing of distance and
separation—affect businesses, and, in turn, how businesses affect the emotional lives of
individuals and communities, this collection reframes conventional understandings of
both business and emotion. Examining business in all its facets through the lens of the
history of emotion allows us to recognize, and to question, the emotional structures
behind business decisions and relationships.
The volume is structured around three key elements and concepts from business
that are radically reframed in terms of emotions and emotionality. The first section
focuses on disciplinary emotions, analogous to the co-ordinating and disciplining
functions of markets; the second on enabling emotions, analogous to the numerous
dependencies and obligations that tie businesses and economies together; and the
third on unruly emotions, analogous to the dynamic and volatile forces that can both
propel and upend businesses and economies.
On one level, this structure might be thought of as just a rather neat device (at
least, we hope it is quite neat). Working with analogy it aids the readier transposition
of ideas and claims across realms—business and emotions—that we are accustomed
to thinking of as separated by a near impermeable barrier. And we hope that it does
work like that. But our intentions in adopting this structure do not end there. We do
not wish to argue merely that some things in the realm of emotions are “like” some
things in the realm of business. Instead, we suggest the possibility of a thoroughgoing
reconfiguration or reorientation of historical studies of business around emotions
and emotionality. We use the language of business as a Trojan horse. In this sense,
our choices around structure are meant to echo and to reinforce the propositions
we advanced in the section above entitled “Our Argument”: namely that reframing
rationality as affect as well as thought not only opens up new perspectives on the
history of business but also on the role of business in shaping the affective world we
inhabit today. At the same time, the structure reflects a further important element of
our framing: an emphasis on the work that emotions do, as well as the performative
nature of emotions. Thus, in framing the volume around three types of emotions, we
are also explicitly building on and expanding Reddy’s work on emotives, or emotional
expressions that describe and change the world.90
One more word on structure. Our schema maps the depth, complexity, and multi-
directionality of the relationship between business, economy, and emotions. Yet, it
provides but a first outline of a typology of these interactions. We look forward to
others taking up, adding to, and elaborating on this tentative typology, which has much
more to yield.
Disciplinary Emotions
Firms and entrepreneurs operate in highly complex systems requiring intricate

co-ordination. Conventional thought argues that the market is the dominant co-
ordinating mechanism, working through rational responses to prices and other signals.
The market is also a disciplinary mechanism, punishing enterprises that misread the
signals and rewarding those that make the right moves. The assumed rationality of
the market remains robust but has long been questioned. The chapters in this section,
however, go further than simply suggesting that emotions complicate our assumptions
about market rationalities and market power. Instead they show that the consideration
of emotions can reveal deeper modes of co-ordination and discipline, rooted in
subjectivities that can be prior to markets.
Katie Barclay’s essay focuses on the middling sorts in Britain and Ireland from 1750
to 1850 to tie emotion to one of the most commonly used business history sources—the
account book, which might be thought of an institutionalized cultural script. Revealing
the emotions at the heart of this seemingly rational and straightforward source, Barclay
shows how accounting practices were a way for the middling sorts to practice self-
discipline, including of their emotions. In doing so, a particular type of capitalist self
was produced or performed, one rooted in the performance metrics that accounting
offered (and offers). Mandy Cooper’s essay turns to the ways that businesswomen in
the Civil War era US South—Black and white, free and enslaved—deployed emotions
strategically to help their businesses succeed, showing how social context shaped
emotional expression and action. As Cooper shows, these women recognized the
emotions at the heart of market co-ordination and discipline throughout the Civil War
era and used them to their advantage.
Daniel Levinson Wilk explores a concept at the heart of business history: trust.
In examining how trust was sold in the antebellum service sector, he lays out a
consciously theoretical argument that trust was an emotion that was both bought and
90
Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling, 128.
sold—and that trust was crucial for the development of capitalism. Levinson Wilk
wrestles with the intangibleness of this commodity, particularly in the service sector,
where the emotional labor of workers has tended to be ignored, both in the sources
and in the historiography. Semih Gökatalay shifts the discussion to selling another
type of emotion, examining how advertisers in the social context of early Cold War
Turkey sold a sense of safety and security (and American-ness) in the face of a growing
Soviet threat. Focusing on emotions in advertisements, clear examples of cultural
scripts, Gökatalay shows that during the early Cold War era, Cold War tensions heavily
influenced emotional marketing strategies, both in Turkey and globally. Together,
these four essays reveal the market co-ordination and discipline that so often relied on
emotion and emotional norms, whether in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland, the
nineteenth-century United States, or twentieth-century Turkey.
Enabling Emotions
Firms and entrepreneurs must possess resources, such as physical assets, financial
capital, and human capital, in order to compete in marketplaces. More recently,
concepts such as social and emotional capital have been added to the bundle of
resources with which firms compete against one another. Firms and entrepreneurs are
also often reliant on others for access to key resources, building webs of reciprocal
obligations, including financial debt but extending to include notions such as trust
and reciprocity. The chapters in this section reveal a series of other, equally important,
connections and entanglements between firms, entrepreneurs, markets, customers,
cultures, and societies that are rooted in emotions. Indeed, it is often through emotional
commitments that enterprises gather the other resources they require.
Cheikh Sene begins this section by examining the complex emotions involved in the
institution of contractual marriages between signares (mixed-race female merchants/
traders) and Europeans in Senegal—and how those emotions and the marriages
themselves changed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Sene shows how
the signares used these marriages (and their attendant emotions) to develop their
trade networks and further their own social status. Laura McCoy similarly looks at
networks, shifting the focus to the relationship between masculinity and emotional
bonds amongst Boston merchants in the nineteenth century. Examining prescriptive
literature, correspondence and memoirs, McCoy reveals that Boston merchants formed
a supportive brotherhood that traded in a commerce of affection with each other in an
attempt to successfully navigate the ever-looming specters of failure and risk.
Allison Gibb and Niall MacKenzie turn to a different sort of commerce of affection:
the marriage between Rita and Masataka Taketsuru, which helped establish the
Japanese whisky industry in the early twentieth century. Analyzing letters from Rita
to her family in Scotland, among other sources, Gibb and MacKenzie highlight Rita’s
centrality to the early development (and success) of Nikka Whisky through her work,
social connections, financing, and emotional encouragement of her husband. In
so doing, they highlight both the emotional side of business and the transnational
differences that, through emotions, shape businesses and business relationships. Here,
the clash of differently scripted versions of marital love proved unsettling. Andrew
Popp examines a different emotional resource: nostalgia. Bringing us to the twenty-
first century, he examines how community businesses anchored people in a sense of
place that bridged time. Situating his analysis on the outpouring of feelings of loss and
nostalgia upon the closing of one such business, Popp argues that nostalgia—or, more
specifically, culturally scripted expressions of nostalgia—create bridges between the
past, the present, and the future. Taken together, these four essays reveal the emotions
so often at the heart of the relationships between businesses, individuals, and the
communities of which they were a part.
Unruly Emotions
Capitalism is a dynamic system in which change is a constant and volatility never far
away. Change is seen as originating in the innovativeness of firms and entrepreneurs,
in the ebb and flow of competitive advantage, and in bursts of irrationality in the
marketplace. In turn, effects from these processes ripple out to induce change and
volatility in societies and cultures. This section explores how this situation has never
been a one-way street, with emotions generated outside the economic sphere frequently,
sometimes dramatically, intruding into it. These unruly emotions are the subject of this
section. These chapters highlight the power of emotions such as fear and anxiety to
shape the actions of businesses, individual entrepreneurs, and communities and show
that such emotions are integral and ever present, not peripheral or occasional.
Catherine Fletcher’s essay deals with these unruly emotions in two distinct—and
yet clearly connected—ways. First, she examines the emotions of the arms industry
itself (the fear, pride, and other emotions created by and used to sell arms). Yet, she also
turns to how historians and others have written about the arms industry, prompting
us to consider our own emotional response to and investment in our topics—and what
that might mean for the literature. Inger Leemans, Joost Dankers, Ronald Kroeze,
and Floris van Berckel Smit turn to one of the emotions most commonly associated
with business—anxiety surrounding financial crises. Taking a long view of financial
crises in the Netherlands, the authors highlight what happens when unruly emotions
and unruly markets collide. Using three case studies (early modern bubbles and the
crises of 1929 and 1987), they highlight the historical phenomenon of sensemaking
that accompanied each financial bubble (and its associated cultural bubble). In each
crisis, emotions were seen as essential driving forces of the stock market, and emotion
narratives played an important role in the broader processes of cultural sensemaking
that showed, over the long run, common dramatic themes and plots.
Robert Colby examines the fears and anxieties surrounding a different crisis—
cholera outbreaks affecting the domestic slave trade in the antebellum United States.
He focuses on slave traders’ extensive correspondence networks to show how they
sought to navigate emotionally and pathologically volatile markets. In so doing, Colby
reveals that fear of disease fundamentally shaped the business of slavery, with the
emotions of everyone involved in the trade factored in to their business decisions—
except the enslaved men and women upon whom profits depended. Debra Michals
brings us firmly into the twentieth century, examining the fears surrounding feminist
entrepreneurship in the 1970s. She shows how anxieties about the future of feminism
played out in the feminist movement’s passionate internal debates and critiques
of feminist businesses (of which there were thousands). Perhaps more importantly,
though, Michals’s essay shows that critiques of capitalism, politics, and emotion
were (and remain) deeply intertwined. The institutionalization of feminist enterprise
provoked contending expressions and actions. These four essays get at the very heart
of unruly emotions: fear, anxiety, suspicion, and even pride. Together, they highlight
how such unruly emotions fundamentally shaped the development of businesses,
individual—and collective—entrepreneurship, and capitalism itself.
Looking Forward
Conceptually, the chapters in this volume apply theoretical approaches from the
literature specifically on the history of emotions and from affect theory more
broadly. The theoretical literature on the history of emotions emphasizes the work
that emotions and emotional situations do simply by their presence—whether in an
emotional regime, as William Reddy posits, or an emotional community, as Barbara
Rosenwein has argued.91
This volume builds on that work, while turning the conversation specifically to
the emotional structures behind business decisions and relationships. The range of
methodologies, sources, and approaches explored here highlight the multiple areas in
which paying attention to emotion can further the field of business history—and vice
versa. They also highlight the potential for further avenues of research, thematic and
methodological.
Perhaps, for example, there is an overarching emotional regime in each society and
culture. But, perhaps there is also a set of emotional communities within that regime
that provide emotional refuge. (As, for example, feminist collective enterprises provided
a refuge from starkly capitalistic economics—the dominant emotional regime—but
were themselves part of a larger feminist emotional community.) What does it do for
the history of emotions if we consider these methodological and theoretical approaches
as a “both, and” approach?
Our contributors also use a broad array of sources: account books, newspaper
articles, memoirs, correspondence, advertisements, social media, and even the
historiography of business itself. All of these sources show the potential for examining
the emotional dimensions of business sources—some old ones with a new eye, as with
account books or business correspondence, and some new ones, as with social media
or the historiography of particular businesses. But these are not the only avenues of
research. Corporate records, for example, while seemingly rational and non-emotional,
tend to follow prescribed formats. Much as Katie Barclay has shown the emotional
91
Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling; Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages;
Stearns and Stearns, “Emotionology”; Matt and Stearns, eds., Doing Emotions History; Rosenwein,
“Worrying about Emotions in History”; Plamper, The History of Emotions.
structure behind account books, if we consider “rational” as an emotive, an expression

or projection of studied non-emotion, then that might change how we understand
the content of many records. Perhaps, then, we can start to investigate the emotions
surrounding corporate decisions and strategy.
The essays in this volume rely on a range of approaches. Some focus on specific
emotions or specific businesses. Some focus on change over time. Others take
longer approaches, highlighting continuities and similarities across time and space.
But, more work remains to be done. More comparative work, for example, could
highlight similarities and differences in the historically and culturally specific ways
that businesses, individuals, and communities have interacted with, used, and felt
particular emotions—and how those interactions shaped their actions. Moreover, as
Mandy Cooper’s, Laura McCoy’s, Robert Colby’s, Cheikh Sene’s, and Debra Michals’s
chapters show, paying attention to the particular ways that gender and race have—and
continue to—shape individuals’ relationship with business shows great promise. The
emotions of the politics of business, not covered in this volume, are likely to be equally
rewarding.
Even when focusing on specific emotions, the essays in this volume raise important
questions. The section on unruly emotions, for example, focused largely on emotions
perceived as negative: anger, fear, anxiety, suspicion, etc. But, what if love is an unruly
emotion? Or friendship? Or nostalgia? What might it mean to consider how these
seemingly positive emotions intruded into the business sphere, shaping the actions of
businesses, entrepreneurs, and communities? Or, what if we consider anger, anxiety,
fear, or suspicion as a disciplinary emotion? What if those emotions play/ed an
important role in market co-ordination?
In this sense we view the heterogeneity of approaches taken by our contributors
as a strength, not a weakness. That heterogeneity is found across every possible
dimension: temporal; geographic; socio-cultural and institutional setting; sources and
methodologies; analytical operations; and specific theoretical lenses. Here heterogeneity
serves as a signal of great further potential. It shows in startling clarity that there are
few contexts in which business and emotions cannot be fruitfully explored.
By integrating the history of business with the history of emotion, the chapters in
this volume show that the presence of emotion and emotional situations (whether fear/
anxiety, rationality, nostalgia, love, or the longing of distance and separation) altered
(and were altered by) the structure and content of relationships between individuals,
businesses, and communities, placing emotion at the very heart of the market.
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Part One
Disciplinary Emotions
We are often told that we must labor to exert control over our emotions lest they
control us. Emotions run away with us. They get the upper hand. We find ourselves
caught in their grip. Our discipline breaks down. Capitalism, in contrast, holds an
inexorable sway. Under capitalism, the great disciplining force is thought to be the
inescapable judgment of the invisible, and impersonal, hand of the market—the
ultimate arbiter. In response, it is assumed, owners, managers, and entrepreneurs
seek command and control. While emotions spring from base instincts, in contrast,
rationality, the most effective of disciplinary forces, is deliberately chosen. The measure
it imposes is objective and exacting, offering the promise of command and control over
the market itself. This common framing of the economy seems to be built around some
fundamental, motivating tensions and dichotomies.
But as this section argues, those dichotomies are false. Emotions exert their own
disciplines, whether, for example, through fear, guilt, or shame, each of which cultivates
within us the imperative of their avoidance, or through more positive emotions,
which appeal to us like a siren song. Love too can keep us in line, or drive us to new
endeavors, new achievements. Duty appears a matter of conformity to social norms and
conventions, externally imposed, but exactly where does it shade into loyalty, which
with its deep interiority few would dispute is also an emotion? Instant gratification is
deplored as giving way to the tides of desire. Delayed gratification is championed as
rational and right. But is it still not gratification, rooted in the subjectivities and pleasures
of wishes and wants? Is it always rational to wait or otherwise chasten ourselves? After
all, it is not often that we frame the flagellant as rational. Emotions discipline, through
both punishment and reward, quite as powerfully as the bottom line.
30
1
Accounting for the Middling Sorts: Emotions and

the Family Business, c. 1750–1832
Katie Barclay, University of Adelaide
Introduction
In 1815, George Heywood, an English grocer, reflected on his lengthy courtship of

Mrs. Owen, a widow, mother, and businesswoman, and its failure:
I now feel willing after four years attention and solicitude for her to give up all my
poor and feeble presentations to her. I begin to see such inequality in our ages,
persons, properties, family and circumstances in life that I almost doubt whether
we should be as happy as I have imagined, and as we ought to be perfectly equal we
ought to bear some proportion before marriage. After I had been industrious for
years her family or friends might come to me and say all I had belong’d to them,
that I had nothing before I knew them, how hard a case would this have been and
not an improbable one.1
Heywood was a journeyman when he began his courtship and at least part of the
attraction of Mrs. Owen was that she offered him the opportunity to move from
employee to owner of his own business. Like many such romances, pragmatic
ambition coupled with affection and the desire for an industrious wife competed with
the investments and expectations of children from a first marriage. Articulating his
decision to end this relationship in his account book/diary, a hybrid text, Heywood
drew on a well-established biblical principle that one should not be unequally yoked
in marriage. Originally deployed to prohibit marriage outside of the faith, by the
eighteenth century this concept had been expanded to apply especially to social class
but occasionally to personal qualities, such as age, intelligence, or personality.2 The
1
George Heywood, “George Heywood’s Diary and Memoir,” in Business and Family in the North of
England during the Early Industrial Revolution: Records of the Lives of Men and Women in Trade,
1788–1832, ed. Hannah Barker and David Hughes (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British
Academy, 2020), 212–13. See also Hannah Barker, Family and Business during the Industrial
Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
2
David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart
England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 297.
growing importance of the companionable marriage placed greater weight on the

compatibility of the couple.
The desirability of “perfect equality”—an equality that rarely extended to gender
hierarchies—was a popular trope by 1815 and Heywood would have encountered
plenty of stories and proverbs that supported this choice.3 Yet, it is notable that it was
not until Heywood needed to justify ending his relationship that such considerations
came to figure in his decision-making. That Mrs. Owen came with children, a business,
and an age gap had been evident since their first encounter. Situated within a text that
included both tables of accounts and a narrative littered with income and expenditure,
and their justifications, the decision to weigh the attributes of a marriage partner
against oneself in an effort to judge “equality” was suggestive of the way that practices
of accounting came to influence not only business matters but how people felt about
each other. This chapter explores accounting practices amongst the middling sorts in
Britain and Ireland between 1750 and 1850 as not only an important cultural practice,
but a mechanism for disciplining the self and its attendant emotions. It contributes to
histories of business by providing insight into the culture of the men and women who
ran the many family enterprises that were at the heart of the Industrial Revolution,
suggesting, like others, how the mentalities of capitalism emerged not only within
the workshops of entrepreneurs but also the family practices and feelings of the
entrepreneurial.4
The importance of accounting to eighteenth-century middling families has been
noted. Margaret Hunt described the flourishing culture of double-entry bookkeeping
as accompanied by a “propaganda campaign” that situated this practice at the heart
of moral, frugal living.5 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall describe the uptake of
accounting as part of a more general effort in the eighteenth century to render the
world “in a more measurable, even quantitative way.”6 Young people, especially of the
mercantile classes, were educated to value accounting practices as central to effective
financial management, to worldly success, and to the maintenance of a harmonious
household.7 Accounting offered an order that could be applied at every level, from
personal accounts to household management to those associated with business and
finance. It was a practice expected of both men and women and to which children were
introduced at a young age, offering an education that they could use across their lives.8
3
Helen Berry, Gender, Society and Print Culture in Late-Stuart England: the Cultural World of the
Athenian Mercury (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); Esther Godfrey, “Gender, power and the January-
May marriage in nineteenth-century British literature,” PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2006.
4
Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class
1780–1850 (London: Routledge, 1992), 229; Eleanor Hamilton, Entrepreneurship across Generations:
Narrative, Gender and Learning in Family Business (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2013).
5
Margaret Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender and Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996), 49.
6
Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 202.
7
Margaret Hunt, “Time-management, Writing and Accounting in the Eighteenth-Century English
Trading Family: a Bourgeois Enlightenment.” Business and Economic History 18 (1989): 150–59.
8
Effie Botonaki, “Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen’s Spiritual Diaries: Self-Examination,
Covenanting and Account-Keeping.” Sixteenth-Century Journal 30, no. 1 (1999): 3–21; Amanda
Vickery, “His and Hers: Gender, Consumption and Household Accounting in eighteenth-century
England.” Past and Present (2006), supplement 1: 12–38.
Emotions and the Family Business 33
Significantly, accounting practices not only bolstered the claims of middling

families to frugality, morality, and careful living, but could become an opportunity
for families to negotiate their identities and relationships, and exercise power and
affection. Accounting practices entrained people to feel for each other, according
to an ethical logic that arose through accounting culture.9 This chapter extends this
discussion to consider how accounting practices enabled a “quantified self,” whereby
a mercantile or capitalist logic came to influence how people understood the self and
related to other members of their community. Emotional responses to events, the
value judgments and decisions that arose from such feeling, and affective relationships
with others—behaviors closely tied to the production of self and identity—came to be
underpinned by the logic of accounting practices.
As Craig Muldrew suggested, the early modern “economy of obligation” was
underpinned by trust, family affections, and ethical duties of care, which ensured that
matters of credit and debt were never passionless affairs.10 Buttressed by marriage and
kinship ties, which often provided an impetus for economic behavior that sat at tension
with the pursuit of profit, late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century family businesses
shared much in common with their predecessors.11 This chapter draws on the
principles and methodologies of the history of emotion to recognize that such family
feeling is not simply a “natural” behavior that disrupts the rationality of capitalist
systems.12 Rather, emotion is understood here as a social practice, shaped by cultural
norms and beliefs, and whose form is determined by an individual’s socialization and
education. Accounting practices directed the flow of feeling, what form it should take,
how people and things were valued, and the boundaries and scope of affective ties; they
enabled a particular “emotional regime.” This chapter argues that emotion is central to
capitalism and that accounting practices offer a site where such feeling is given shape
and definition.
This chapter draws on a study of accounting books that survive for the middling
sorts in Britain and Ireland between 1750 and 1850. This was a period associated with
the making of a new middle class, rooted not only in a growing mercantilism and easier
access to cheap consumables, but early industrialization, urbanization, and economic
transformation.13 The middling sorts constitute a diverse group. At one end are men
like the extraordinarily wealthy and upwardly mobile Edinburgh banker Gilbert Innes
9
Katie Barclay, “Illicit Intimacies: the Many Families of Gilbert Innes of Stow (1751–1832).” Gender
& History 27, no. 3 (2015): 576–90.
10
Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early
Modern England (London: Palgrave, 1998); Alexandra Shepard, Accounting for Oneself: Worth,
Status and the Social Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Katie Barclay, “The Emotions
of Household Economics,” in Routledge Companion to Emotions in Europe: 1100–1700, ed. Susan
Broomhall and Andrew Lynch (London: Routledge, 2019), 185–99.
11
Andrew Popp, Entrepreneurial Families: Business, Marriage, and Life in the Early Nineteenth Century
(London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012); Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes; Barker, Family and
Business; Katie Barclay, “Capitalism and Consumption,” in The Routledge History of Emotions in the
Modern World, ed. Katie Barclay and Peter Stearns (London: Routledge, 2022).
12
Jan Plamper, “The History of Emotions: an Interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein and
Peter Stearns.” History and Theory 49 (2010): 237–65.
13
Emma Griffin, Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2013).
of Stowe (1751–1832), who rose to be the chief executive officer for the Royal Bank of
Scotland. His surviving accounts, ranging several hundred books, include personal
accounts, household accounts, business accounts, and accounts for his estate, kept by
his factor.14 Between his own record and that of his mother, Innes’s expenditure can
be tracked from infancy to death. At the other end are people like George Heywood,
a modest Manchester grocer. His formal accounts cover only a year of his life, and his
more open-ended narrative account largely captures his early years before marriage.
Women too are represented. The personal accounts of Susanna Pope chart forty years
of her life in northern Scotland, a rare record of a middling woman whose relationships
and experiences can be reconstructed through her expenditure but about whom we
know little else.15 Where accounts exist as part of an archive, they have been considered
in that context, but not all do.
This chapter considers accounts as a narrative of the self, a technology through
which people create a story of the self and their relation to others.16 It begins with a
discussion of accounting practices as a cultural form during the eighteenth century
that enabled a particular form of selfhood, which can be compared with a modern
“quantified self,” and that encouraged individuals to view their own actions and those
of others in terms of an ethical weighing of value. It then considers how this quantified
self shaped how people related to each other, first looking at family life, and in a final
section, community and trade relationships. Not least important here is recognizing
that accounts were not made by individuals alone, but could be produced by groups,
especially families, and often refused a clear distinction between family finance and
that of the business, farm or other income stream that funded family expenditure. The
quantified self of eighteenth-century accounting practices, and its emotional regime,
was thus produced as part of a collective negotiation about how and what to count.
Account Books and the Quantified Self
The culture of accounting in Britain and Ireland, and its associated quantified self,
shared much with the rest of Europe, bolstered by the circulation of advice books and
training manuals translated across multiple languages.17 If accounting practice could
be useful in all spheres of life, and books were written for diverse groups from youth
to the manager of the household to the landed gentry, the texts themselves associated
bookkeeping with merchant life. The Gentleman’s Complete Book-Keeper (1741), for
example, began by arguing that “every prudent Person that has but the least Regard
14
His records are held by the National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh [hereafter NRS] at GD113.
15
Pope’s account book is held by the Highland Archive Centre, Inverness at D318/1.
16
Jason Scott-Warren, “Early Modern Bookkeeping and Life-Writing Revisited: Accounting for
Richard Stonely.” Past and Present 230 (2016), supplement 11: 151–70; Adam Smyth, “Money,
Accounting and Life-Writing, 1600–1700: Balancing a Life,” in A History of English Autobiography,
ed. Adam Smyth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 86–99.
17
Daniel A. Rabuzzi, “Eighteenth-Century Commercial Mentalities as Reflected and Projected in
Business Handbooks.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, no. 2 (1995/6): 169–89; James Aho, Confession
and Bookkeeping: The Religious, Moral, and Rhetorical Roots of Modern Accounting (New York: State
University of New York Press, 2005).
to his own Estate, or for the Welfare of his Family” acknowledged the convenience of
keeping books. The author, however, particularly tied this practice to merchant life,
littering the text with references to this group: “For the Merchants themselves (who
commonly are the most exact in keeping their Books and Accounts of any) differ very
much among themselves about the Number of Books”; “These Things being so well
known to the Merchant’s Acommptant”; “that does commonly occur in the Course of
Merchandizing, or in other Ways of Dealing.”18 The Servant’s Directory or Housekeeper’s
Companion, designed for servants and housekeepers, provided account templates
for their envisioned female audience to complete, viewing the principle purpose of
such a record as managing household engagements with trade: “so you may take your
Receipts once a Week, once a Month, once a Quarter, or a Year, as you pay your Trades-
people; but with these Rules you never can make a mistake.”19
Advice books aimed at men of business—a term that was construed widely to
include merchants, factors of estates, and trustees—more fully lauded the value of
keeping accounts.20 Account keeping allowed the merchant to engage in trade—a
noble profession performed even by King Solomon himself—and assured the wealth
not only of private families, but “Princes, Potentates and Commonwealths.”21 Accounts
not only measured the flow of resources but were performed as an ethical practice.
John Carpenter’s advice book, like many others, saw bookkeeping as the “Art of
equality, which restoreth just as much as it taketh from another, without partiality;
and therefore it may be fitly compared to a paire of Balances.”22 A well-organized and
transparent financial record affirmed character. The “unfortunate” individual who fell
into debt could use their accounts as “the fairest and best Apologie of his Innocence
and honesty to the World.”23
The practice of keeping accounts became a discipline of the self through which
one could take measure of an economic performance that was simultaneously that of
identity and character. Account keeping could allow the individual to know themselves
across the life course: “he shall or may know how his Estate-standeth (in every respect)
to a penny, and how the same increaseth or decreaseth; as likewise, how much he
hath gained or lost, by any one particular Commodity that he dealeth in, from the
beginning of such his Accompt to the end of any Term or Time afterwards, through
the whole Course of his Dealing.”24 For some, this allowed a person to be collapsed into
their financial estate. Robert Colinson contrasted what a man of trade “in ane instant
can see” in his accounts with a person looking in the mirror; both were a display of self
18
Richard Hayes, The Gentleman’s Complete Book-Keeper (London: J. Noon, 1741), 1, 3, 13.
19
H. Glass, The Servant’s Directory or House-Keeper’s Companion (London: W. Johnston et al., 1760),
part 6, 3.
20
I have not found any aimed at women in business, although there are those aimed at housekeepers
and servants, who are presumed female. This could just be a limitation of my sample, but it suggests
they’re rare.
21
John Carpenter, A Most Excellent Instruction for the Exact and Perfect Keeping Merchants Bookes of
Accounts by Way of Debitor and Creditor (London: James Boler, 1632), preface.
22
Carpenter, A Most Excellent Instruction, 1.
23
Robert Colinson, Idea Rationaria, or The Perfect Accomptant (Edinburgh: David Lindsay et al.,
1683), 1.
24
J.H, Clavis Commercii: or the Key of Commerce, Shewing the True Method of Keeping Merchants
Books (London: Eben Tracy, 1704), 1.
and (due to the association between appearance and morality) character.25 Accounting
practices, and the ethical self they produced, were at the heart of mercantile identity,
but also a moral order offered to other groups as a principle for orderly living. It was a
future-oriented practice that offered a pattern and evidence of a good life. The emphasis
on economic prudence and financial probity, which in earlier centuries might have
precluded this group from political life, as it was placed at odds with the independence
of a landed class, was to become a predominant mode of living.26
The keeping of accounts was recognized as a disciplinary activity, requiring
education and training, and to be maintained over time. If accounts could be reckoned
at various points in the year, not least to accommodate payments of tradesman or
to invoice for income, the maintenance of a financial record was a daily activity.
Individuals were encouraged to carry “waste books,” where they would note every
transaction and purchase as a memory aide. These could later be transferred into a
more permanent record to be held for posterity as evidence of economic behavior.
Through performing these daily rituals, individuals learned and naturalized the ethical
logic of accounting practices, while the account book itself offered suggestions as to its
shape and form.
There was no single way to organize one’s finances. An individual might keep an
account of their personal expenditure, including clothing, leisure activities, or frivolous
consumption, separately from that of a household account. This might particularly be
the case if a household account was kept by a servant, or for a record produced by a
number of individuals with different family responsibilities. Businesses might keep their
accounts separate from the household; farmers might keep a record of farm produce
and sales distinct from the household budget. For others, however, such distinctions
were unnecessary, and accounts might appear in a single book, ordered by date and
time, rather than function. Most accounts tried to bring some order to expenditure.
Account books that grouped by product were common: clothes, cereals, meats,
wages, charity. So were those that collected information under particular individuals,
like a tradesman or customer. For small businesses, farms and large households,
the distinctions between income and expenditure, business and consumption could
be fragile. It is not always evident when goods were purchased to sell or for private
use. The list of servant wages often included staff with multi-purpose functions for
home and business. These decisions, and the various forms of order created, acted as
structures for financial and emotional life, offering ways to think about a self-made
through production, consumption, reproduction, and exchange.
This can be seen in the selectivity of many accounts. Some began accounts to
abandon them, only to restart them months or years later, offering a patchy financial
record. Innes of Stowe is remarkable for the detail his offer, but those of many others
appear to be missing large categories of purchase—food, frivolity, clothing—that
raise questions as to whether there were additional accounts that did not survive or
whether cash purchases went unrecorded. What is missing might be as suggestive of
25
Colinson, Idea Rationaria, 1.
26
Dror Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class: the Political Representation of Class in Britain,
c. 1780–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
the mental world of the account keeper as what was considered necessary to include.
Combining and disguising frivolous purchases as cash might affirm a frugal self that
a fuller account might disturb. Excluding produce grown in a garden from the record
might suggest that the practice of accounting was viewed as a relationship with the
outside world, rather than labor or productivity. Such decisions indicate not only
degrees of shrewdness in financial management but how individuals ordered, valued,
and felt about their economic choices. Here the failures may also be suggestive of the
challenges of this practice, where keeping accounts requires effort and discipline. The
capacity for accounts to display a budget deficit might itself have had a dissuasive effect.
The accounting practices of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century middling sorts
can be interpreted as a form of quantified self. The term “the quantitative self ” was
recently coined to describe the process through which people build identities using
repetitive measurements of the body, its health, and associated practices.27 In recent
years, this has been marked in the use of wearable technologies that measure steps
walked, heart-rate, or distance cycled, producing not only information about health
or performance but groups who share and compare such data and offer each other
feedback. The quantitative self is formed through the disciplinary practice of measuring
the body and its behaviors.28 Sometimes associated with “data fetishism,” such activities
place a value on the production of particular numbers, or with measuring improvement
over time.29 The moral self becomes equated with a performance interpreted through
a metricized lens, reinforced by supportive, and sometimes judgmental, communities
of practice. The quantitative self not only defines itself through numbers but can come
to display the characteristics and attributes that their data suggests—thus the keen
cyclist evidences their achievement not only through data but physical appearance or
better health.
For eighteenth- and nineteenth-century middling families, the keeping of
accounts should have been a routinized and daily activity, which produced a record
of achievement that could be shared with a community to display moral character,
or which might become evidence of a lack of financial acumen. Accounts should
stand for something more than the measure—they evidence wealth, frugal household
management, or conversely imprudent business practices—but also offered their own
value as a daily practice that supported community relationships. Accounting practices
of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century middling sorts produced a quantified self
that in turn shaped how individuals came to relate to each other and so levels of
affection, care and commitment, duty and obligation. If an “economy of obligation”
draws attention to the ways that credit relationships were informed not only by rational
risk-taking but emotions and relationality, attention to accounting practices highlights
how engagement in economic behaviors shaped both the self and the affective quality
of people’s relationships with each other.
27
Deborah Lupton, The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking (Cambridge: Polity, 2016); Btihaj
Ajana, ed., Self-Tracking: Empirical and Philosophical Investigations (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2018).
28
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).
29
Orit Halpern, Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 (London: Duke University
Press, 2014); Helen Kennedy and Rosemary Lucy Hill, “The Feeling of Numbers: Emotions in
Everyday Engagements with Data and their Visualisation.” Sociology 52, no. 4 (2018): 830–48.
Metricizing the Family
The self that emerges through accounting practices was not produced in isolation
but in relation to family and community, a group that extended to those with whom
account keepers traded and employed. Account books are a rich source of names—
they list the people who were paid for goods and services and the family members who
received them. On one page of his accounts alone, Richard Latham, a yeoman farmer
in Lancashire, mentions his daughter Betty, “2 cordiels bottls 2s6d: Betty Latham
she going at home—3/4”; his brother whom he employed as a laborer from time to
time, “John at moss ground 2 dayes 1s8d—1/8,” and a couple from whom he made a
purchase and who were likely related to his sister-in-law Alice Forshaw, “for 1 calf of
James & Isobel Forshaw 29th of August—14/6.”30 Family and business relationships
often closely overlapped. For bookkeepers who acted as money managers for others,
or who ran the accounts for another’s business or estate, they can offer access to a web
of connections, highlighting nodes within economic networks and allowing financial
interdependencies to be traced.
A social network analysis might fruitfully produce a picture of community life,
of the short and longstanding relationships between customers and tradespeople, of
the casual laborers and temporary servants who moved in and out of households and
businesses, and of gifts and benevolence provided to local charities and the poor. Noting
who was named—Betty Latham—and who was subsumed under a trade identity—
washerwoman—might suggest something of the different statuses that attached to
individuals for the account keeper. Account keeping involved the inscription of social
and business relationship through a lens of exchange, a repetitive gesture that continually
reinscribed economic functions to family and community life. The quantitative self of
the accounts was brought into a quantified relationship with the other.
As records that were produced about relationships, and which were at times multi-
authored or produced on the behalf of another or a business, accounts could operate
as a location where such relationships were negotiated, contested, and affirmed. The
boundaries of account keeping—who kept what accounts and what expenditure was
under a person’s responsibility—could reify domains of authority within a family,
reduce conflict, and so ensure that the family affections operated in an orderly way.
Middling women were often made responsible for the expenses of the household,
receiving payment from the family budget to settle accounts. This could offer women
considerable latitude of expenditure and reinforced their authority over their financial
domain. Margaret Aikman, for example, when providing an account of her marriage
to a spendthrift husband to a family friend in 1731, described how she “Dubled my
expence of the House upon him [her husband] and saved that and som for buying
cloaths for myself and the children which I never did until I got a 100 pound together
and then give it to him to buy a South Sea bond till at length I gave him five in that
nature.”31 Aikman’s authority over the household expenses offered her an opportunity
30
Richard Latham, The Account Book of Richard Latham, 1724–1767, ed. Lorna Weatherhill (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990), 110.
31
NRS, GD18/4640 Margaret Aikman to John Clerk, June 22, 1731.
to shore up the finances of the household through prudent investment, despite her
marriage to a man with little financial ability.
When such payments appear in the account books of husbands who provide
the underlying income, they are often noted with little detail. James Beattie, for
example, recorded such payments as “Given to Mrs. B. for the current month” and
even “Family expences paid to Mrs. Dun during Mrs. B’s illness.”32 The number
recorded varied and so was not a set allowance, but rather appeared to reflect a
needed or desired expenditure. How this expense was outlaid was never recorded
by Beattie, and if we might expect that behind such a record may have been a more
detailed justification by his wife or a proxy, nonetheless the account form reinforced
that it was not his role to explain this cost. The inscription of the boundaries of
economic domains in accounts therefore affirmed the location of various interests
and authority in marriage and offered opportunity for women like Aikman who used
it to their advantage.
Account books were also deployed in negotiations between family members. This
could be frivolous. The three Innes siblings, who lived together in Edinburgh during
the second half of the eighteenth century, all kept detailed financial accounts of their
expenditure. On one occasion in 1806, arguing over who had paid for a painting
that hung in their house, Gilbert and Jane bet twenty guineas on who remembered
the price correctly, before turning to their accounts as the determinative record.33
Accounts here were deployed to resolve a minor, and entertaining, dispute, facilitating
a peaceful household. Offering a history for a piece of shared property, accounts could
support relationships over time, providing evidence of the flows of finances that might
otherwise be the cause of friction.
Accounting practices could also be the cause of conflict. As I have highlighted
elsewhere, Gilbert Innes of Stowe insisted that his many mistresses and illegitimate
children kept accounts of their expenditure, both as a moral and educational practice
and as a mechanism for managing his financial support.34 Arguments and justifications
around expenditure feature as a large component of his correspondence with a group
that he often resisted as defining as family but who viewed themselves as such. A failure
to demonstrate appropriate financial probity through account keeping was a source of
anxiety for those who relied on Gilbert for an income or employment, unsettling their
sense of themselves as capable actors, and indeed, as worthy of Gilbert’s love. At times,
this anxiety manifested as anger, such as when Gilbert’s son and factor William lost
patience with Gilbert’s continual criticism of his records and wrote a multi-page letter
outlaying the pain and hurt that it caused him.35 Importantly, if Gilbert had hoped that
mediating his familial relationships through a quantitative lens might have reduced
the emotional obligations of a group that he held at a distance, he instead found that
monitoring and managing the expenses of others reinforced an intimate connection,
not least the domestic affections that arose between the “providing” husband and his
32
James Beattie, James Beattie’s Day-Book, 1773–1798, ed. Ralph S. Walker (Aberdeen: Spalding Club,
1948), 82 (May 23, 1778) and 89 (December 5, 1778).
33
NRS, GD113/5/400 Note of the wager signed by Jane Innes and Gilbert Innes, May 29, 1806.
34
This argument is detailed at length in Barclay, “Illicit Intimacies.”
35
Ibid.
dependents. Love arose, perhaps against his will, as the repetitive practices of account
making became a form of family making for the Inneses.
The centrality of accounting to ordering family life is most evident in the hybrid
form of many accounts. While some accounts resemble what a modern reader might
expect by that term, with lists of goods and services and their prices, many others
combine a record of expenditure and purchase with narrative descriptions, details of
important events (especially births, deaths, and marriages), and diary entries. Some
accounts primarily exist as letters to another. It can be tempting to consider that such
hybrid forms were not accounts but rather, like waste books, aides memoir of debits
and credits that could be transferred to a more formal record. However, often the
narratives that accompany accounts, or where accounts appear in narrative form, act as
more of an explanation and justification for expenditure or economic decision-making
than a diary that also contains finances. I suggest that this hybrid form of accounting
reflects the ways that the logic of economic life came to permeate the middling self,
where accounts displayed not only income and outgoings but moral character and so
required to be placed within and alongside narratives that justified and enabled the
interpretation of such data. These in turn shaped how the family produced through
accounts came to consider each other through a quantitative lens.
Georgie Heywood’s diary provides a useful example here, where his diary-account
book provides a financial record of his expenditure and the logic that underpinned his
decisions. Thus in 1815, he describes a visit that he makes to his family:
[I] went to Longly to see sister & Richard, he was not in, she did not know where
he was. I stopt and got Tea, gave her 2oz Tea & 6 for Butter–Child 2d. Was sorry
to find them in such low circumstances … they have a good house & Garden
for £6 a year, the garden would produce more. I call’d to see mother-in-law [e.g.
stepmother], she is all poverty, she wants to profess some religion, but I cannot
hear such cant, she cannot afford to send David [stepbrother] to school, perhaps
she thought I should pay for him but I am not inclined to do any thing more for
her or him. I find I might beggar myself to do for one and another of them and all
would not be enough. I got breakfast with her on Monday and gave her 1/- to pay
for some Cloggs and 1½d for David.36
Heywood combines a record of expenditure on the occasion of a visit with his family
with an assessment of his family’s economic standing, and a consideration of his
financial and emotional obligations towards them. He is happy to provide small gifts of
groceries and money, particularly for the children, but not to take on larger financial
obligations. Here the seeming insatiability of his stepfamily is placed as a risk to his
own solvency, and so their requests become unequitable within relationships that
should be marked by balance, just as an account book should suggest. Notably, this was
not just an economically rational decision but a mechanism through which affective
ties were assessed, valued, and found worthy of further investment. Through enabling
quantified selves, accounting practices shaped the emotional dynamics of social life.
36
Heywood, “Diary and Memoir,” 213–14.
Accounting for Community
Accounting practices not only shaped relationships between family members or those
who produced accounts together but influenced how the middling sorts came to relate
to others in their community, including those with whom they did business. This
might especially be seen in the way that charitable giving was practiced and articulated
through accounts. Charitable giving is a significant feature of many account books
of this period, reflecting its wider social importance to a Christian community for
whom neighborly love was expected to be a daily practice.37 Giving part of your
income to the poor or to those in need was required of the Christian life; so too was
gift-giving. The latter, sometimes overlapping with hospitality in the home, was a key
social activity that affirmed ties between family and friends, business partners, and
the wider community.38 As a number of theorists of both charitable giving and the gift
suggest, if money and goods exchanged under this umbrella were expected to be freely
given, not least if they were to reflect well on a person’s moral character, nonetheless
they bound people into a web of obligation, marked by loyalty, gratitude, and service
(and conversely anger, irritation, and hurt that might arise from failure).39 For the
poor this might simply require remembering the benevolent in prayer, but for others,
such behaviors should be reciprocated at appropriate times in the life course.40 An
account book that measured such giving became a useful mechanism for assessing
both gratitude and reciprocity within a community connected through the affective
obligations produced by charitable exchanges.
Much of this type of giving in account books is listed under generic headings such
as “benevolence” or “given at church,” but diaries might also note who received charity,
the circumstances, or curious events, such as the money Jane Innes gave to support an
abandoned baby in 1782.41 Within established communities, where giving and receiving
happened within a known network, recording who received such gifts and the longer-
term outcomes became part of managing social and emotional relationships.
The Sussex shopkeeper Thomas Turner’s account-diary from the 1750s provides
a particularly interesting example of how quantitative thinking came to shape his
gift-giving and charitable action, and so of how this way of relating to others became
a dominant framework for social relationships. Turner routinely gave money to
37
Katie Barclay, Caritas: Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2021).
38
Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014); Felicity Heal, “The Idea of Hospitality in Early Modern England.” Past & Present 102
(1984): 66–93.
39
Rab Houston, Peasant Petitions: Social Relations and Economic Life on Landed Estate, 1600–1850
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014); Katie Barclay, “Negotiating Independence: Manliness and Begging
Letters in Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland,” in Nine Centuries of Man:
Manhood and Masculinity in Scottish History, ed. Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Ewan (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 142–59; Sara Maza, Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century
France: The Uses of Loyalty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
40
Barclay, “Negotiating Independence”; Steven King, “Regional Patterns in the Experiences and
Treatment of the Sick Poor, 1800–1840: Rights, Obligations and Duties in the Rhetoric of Paupers.”
Family & Community History 10, no. 1 (2007), 61–75.
41
NRS, GD113/5/419/2 Account book of Jane Innes, February 1782.
charitable causes, particularly during traditional periods of giving like Christmas.42

On December 21, 1758, for example, he noted his diary that “This being St Thomas’s
Day, gave [33] people one penny and a draught beer for a Christmas gift.”43 Such
activities marked a desire by this group to practice charity and to record that they
did so, affirming their benevolence through an account that was both a register of
financial activity and an evidence of moral character. Yet, if that was the case, like
other social relationships, account books could also become records of the contest
and negotiation that such exchanges might produce. A few days after giving charity
to the poor in 1758, Turner offered his postman John Streeter 12d for “his box,” the
traditional end of year gift given to servants, apprentices, and tradesmen by their
customers.44 Far from being happy with this gift, Streeter was offended by the meager
contribution and returned a week later, on January 4, to give back the 12d, saying it
“was [not] enough,” at which “I gladly received and then gave him just nothing.”45
A year later, Turner offered 2s—noting in his diary that it consisted of the 12d from
the year previous that had been returned and 12d for this year—and Streeter appears
to have accepted this amount.46
Whatever underlay this dispute, the “gift” for the box did not simply reflect Turner’s
benevolence but was part of a negotiation between these men as to the worth of
the service being provided; the tip symbolized Turner’s gratitude and his apparent
stinginess soured this economic relationship by acting as a critique on the service
offered or the lowly status of the man who provided it. Gratitude was a necessary social
emotion within economic relationships that were not limited to a simple exchange of
labor for wages, but contributed to the production of a community bound by duties
and obligations and their affective dimensions.47 The account book that allowed for
these relationships to be measured, not only in relation to previous years but with tips
from and to others, drew particular attention to the economic value that was associated
with these obligations and so came to shape the emotional world of trade. Not least
important here was the requirement for a “perfect equality” that should emerge within
an account, if not in a single transaction then over time.
Charitable giving was complexly tied into ideas of social equality, ideally reinforcing
social hierarchies wherein the benevolent was in a superior position to the recipient,
and where both parties recognized their place within a God-given social order.48 For
those in the middle, however, rapid social mobility, both up and down, challenged this
ideal, contributing to an anxiety with one’s own economic success and how it shaped
relationships with others.49 That a family or business might fail, as well as succeed, led
42
Tim Hitchcock, “Begging on the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London.” Journal of British Studies
44 (2005): 478–98.
43
Thomas Turner, The Diary of Thomas Turner, 1754–1765, ed. David Vaisey (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1984), 169 (December 21, 1758).
44
Ibid., 169 (December 28, 1758).
45
Ibid., 171 (January 4, 1759).
46
Ibid., 196 (December 29, 1759).
47
See the related discussion by McCoy (Chapter 6) in this volume.
48
Houston, Peasant Petitions.
49
K. Tawny Paul, The Poverty of Disaster: Debt and Insecurity in Eighteenth-Century Britain
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
to particular sympathy for middling families who fell on hard times.50 For those who
also held debts with those who were struggling, charitable giving might also reflect a
consideration of how one’s own actions contributed to the balance of their accounts.
Thus, Turner recorded a charitable donation he gave to Master Paris for his sons,
whose debts if not paid would require them to leave the country, with the note: “I
gave the man 2s. 6d for his son—not that I did it so much from principle of charity as
self-interest, having formerly bought some brandy of them. I could not tell but their
poverty might induce them to do that for me which another has done for them, in
order to clear themselves.”51
Turner offered the men a financial gift in the hope that it would delay them
calling in a debt for brandy that he had purchased from them. Here he recognized
his “own interest,” in wishing to avoid having to pay his own debt, but also the ways
that the obligations produced by credit and debt relationships extended beyond
the transaction into aiding those with whom you traded. It may well be that Paris
approached Turner knowing that these considerations would shape the likelihood
of Turner offering support. The “perfect equality” measured by the accounts did not
simply apply to fair dealing within trade, but to a measurement of the obligations that
emerged between those operating in an exchange relationship, where self-interest and
care of the other combined.
Such calculations were not limited to relationships with more distant trading
acquaintances, but could be critical to the smooth functioning of everyday sociability
amongst groups where business and friendship overlapped. Turner’s antagonistic
relationship with Dr. Snelling is a case in point. Snelling was the Turners’ doctor,
something that was especially significant during the period in which the diary was
kept as his wife had a long illness, ending in her death in 1761. If the relationship
was primarily functional, it nonetheless required Snelling to spend considerable time
in the Turners’ home, including staying overnight and eating meals with the family.
Within a context where account books not only measured the balance between
services provided and payment made, but the affective obligations that surrounded
that practice, friendship—with its hospitality and gift-giving—could confuse attempts
to measure a perfect equality between businessmen. Turner’s reflections on Snelling’s
behavior is thus worth quoting at length:
Dr Snelling went away after breakfast. I paid him half a crown for cutting my
seton and likewise am to pay John Jones for his horse’s hay, oats etc. 18d. which
together make 4s. Oh, could it have been imagined that he [Snelling] could have
took anything of me, considering that I paid him £39 for curing my wife, great
part of which I paid him before he had it due, and all of it within 5 months
after he had performed the cure. I always do and ever did use him after the
50
Peter Wessel Hansen, “Grief, Sickness and Emotions in the Narratives of the Shamefaced Poor
in Late Eighteenth-Century Copenhagen,” in Poverty and Sickness in Modern Europe: Narratives
of the Sick Poor, 1780–1938, ed. Andreas Gestrich, Elizabeth Hurren, and Steven King (London:
Bloomsbury, 2012), 35–50.
51
Turner, The Diary of, 121–22 (November 10, 1757).
best manner I was capable of when he was at our house. He was that man that
never gave my servants anything, no, not even the meanest trifle that could be.
Notwithstanding they always waited on him like as if they were his own servants.
Oh, thou blackest of friends, ingratitude, what an odious colour and appearance
does thou make! Oh, may the most ever-to-be-adored Supreme Excellency that
sees and views all our most private and secret actions and even knows our most
secret thoughts before we bring them into action guide me with His grace that
I may never be guilty of that hateful crime, nor even so much as to indulge an
ungrateful thought.52
That Snelling took a very small sum of money—4s—for a minor procedure, when on
the same occasion he was given an overnight stay and had recently been paid a large
sum in a timely fashion was viewed as a mark of ingratitude by a loyal customer.
Turner weighed up not only the service with its cost, but its place within a larger
relationship of hospitality and friendship, one where Snelling had conspicuously
failed to display any generosity towards the household that provided him care. By
contrast, Turner regularly noted his tips for the servants in the houses where he
received hospitality, keen to record his own good behavior.53 Weighed up in a hybrid
account-diary, Turner’s consideration of gratitude, or its lack, in this social relationship
was measured in service, in money, and in an array of socio-emotional practices of
hospitality and gift-giving. If this “economy of obligation” predated Turner and his
account books, nonetheless the uptake of accounting practices and their foregrounding
as a measure of ethical life came to quantify that which was often previously considered
customary, and to place this quantified relationship to the other at the center of a record
that was expected to display one’s moral character for those who wished to hold one
to account. The practice of accounting came to quantify and shape how the middling
sorts engaged with each other.
Conclusion
The repetitive and ritual nature of account keeping directed the imagination of the
middling sorts during the Industrial Revolution, shaping how they articulated their
relationship to each other and how they came to frame the moral self. As a practice that
was ideally performed daily, accounting was not simply a convenient mechanism for
tracking finances, but a discipline of the self that placed financial probity as a central
moral characteristic. Within a structure that emphasized balance and equality, it offered
an opportunity to measure oneself in relation to others and to use that calculation as
part of a consideration of the value of social relationships. As with any form of self-
discipline, the self that was produced through this activity was not defined by numbers
alone, but rather quantitative practices became a mechanism to articulate, explore,
and evaluate a larger emotional framework—to place the “economy of obligation,” as
52
Turner, The Diary of, 20 (December 29, 1755).
53
For example, see ibid., 23 (January 26, 1756) and 24 (January 29, 1756).
Muldrew framed it, under scrutiny and to bring a rational order to the intangible, the
emotional and the ethical.54 As Turner’s diary suggests, relationships based not only
on trade but on hospitality, gift-giving, and friendship could now be accounted for
through a metricized lens.
The middling sort that was produced through accounting practices brought this
method for feeling and relating to their families—where accounts could become a site
of negotiation, conflict, and resolution—and to their wider economic relationships
with customers, service providers, and trading partners. Far from attending only
to profit and loss, accounting practices looked for a “perfect equality” between
social actors that required each to measure and perform the obligations of loyalty,
gratitude, recognition, and neighborly love, and to hold the formal aspects of their
trade relationships in balance with the less tangible obligations required of a caring
community. Such consideration extended business relationships into the domain of
emotion, as the practice of trade continued to be marked by an outward display of
neighborly affection that was so critical to the quantified self of the period.
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48
2
Emotional Strategies: Businesswomen in

the Civil War Era United States
Mandy L. Cooper, University of North Carolina-Greensboro
Introduction
Cries filled the air of nineteenth-century New Orleans as market women and men
hawked their wares. Clementine, a Black creole woman who sold calas (a type of
pastry), sang out to the women passing by:
Beeeeeelles calas—Beeeeeelles calas—Aaaaaa!

Madam, mo gaignin calas,
Madame, mo gaignin calas,
Tou cho, tou cho, tou cho.
Beeeeeelles calas—Belles calas
À madame mo gaignin calas,
Mo guaranti vous ye bons!1
Just like Clementine’s calas, “Everything” that these Black creole women sold “was
either ‘bel’—beautiful—or ‘bon’—good.”2 The streets so filled with similar cries that the
sounds of “Rich basses and shrill trebles, whining, pleading, cajoling, screaming […]
blended and mingled into a symphony.”3
As street vendors in nineteenth-century New Orleans called and sang out their
wares, they played with the emotions of those passing by to convince them to purchase
their goods. When businesswomen in the Civil War era South expressed a particular
emotion, it did certain work, allowing them (hopefully) to achieve particular goals,
like making a sale, enticing a customer, or receiving a tip. Achieving that goal meant
1
Gumbo Ya-Ya: Folk Tales of Louisiana, ed. Lyle Saxon, Edward Dreyer, and Robert Tallant (Gretna,
LA: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 1987), chapter 2. As Ashley Rose Young has pointed out,
singing made “good business sense” as it preserved the voice and carried over crowd noise. Ashley
Rose Young, “Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in Nineteenth-Century America”
(Phd diss., Duke University, 2017), 107.
2
Saxon, Dreyer, and Tallant, Gumbo Ya-Ya, chapter 2.
3
Ibid., chapter 2.
knowing which emotions to express or to elicit in potential customers in particular

situations: these women had to know the boundaries and expectations of the business
community, the emotional norms that disciplined the market. For these women, who
made a living selling goods despite the restrictions of coverture on their business
activities, emotion was key. Other women invested in stock, bought and sold all
manner of goods, managed boardinghouses, ran schools, and kept the household
economy afloat. For all of these women, strategically deploying specific emotions at
certain times allowed them to successfully navigate the business world.4
Paying attention to emotion as a strategy for attracting customers, selling goods,
and participating in the business world reveals several things about the way business
worked in the Civil War era United States. More importantly, however, if we take
emotion and plays on emotion seriously as a clear business strategy, we can more
clearly see how women navigated through and around the laws that were designed
to keep them from fully participating in the economic realm. Emotion was key to
conducting business—from the personal level to the seemingly impersonal decisions
to buy and sell stock. This chapter examines the strategies that Southern women—
Black and white, enslaved and free—used in the Civil War era to participate in a variety
of business activities, despite being constrained in law.
This chapter focuses broadly on women in the Civil War era South who engaged in
business, whether by selling wares at market, running boardinghouses or schools, or
investing in stock. I define the Civil War era as roughly the years between the 1820s
and the early 1900s. While the war itself only lasted from 1861–1865, broader trends
and questions defined the era; thus, taking this longer chronological approach reveals
continuities despite intense disruptions while also highlighting key moments of change
for women in business. It allows us, for example, to see similar emotional strategies
used by women advertising their services in the 1820s and the 1860s, or by women
selling food in the streets of New Orleans in the 1850s or the 1890s.
Women have always worked, despite a variety of legal constraints, as the literature
on women’s work makes clear. The literature on women’s work in early America has
4
Under coverture, once a woman married, her legal identity was subsumed under that of her
husband. Thus, technically, a married woman would not have been able to conduct legal affairs—like
obtaining loans, entering into contracts, etc. (Of course, as the women in this chapter show, there
were ways around this.) See particularly Laura F. Edwards, Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing
and the Hidden History of Power in the 19th-Century United States (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2022). Edwards highlights the reality of coverture for both married and unmarried women,
as well as other dependents. Theoretically, coverture protected married women. In reality it made
it so difficult to conduct legal matters in their own names that it left them exposed. Households
functioned similarly—with children, servants, and enslaved people all subordinate to the household
head’s authority. Similarly, wage workers (both men and women) worked under their employers,
who had a similar legal control over the workplace. The logic of coverture affected more than just
married women. Edwards shows how women—white and Black, enslaved and free, married and
unmarried—worked within this system. See also Edwards, “The Legal World of Elizabeth Bagby’s
Commonplace Book: Federalism, Women, and Governance.” Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no.
4 (December 2019): 504–23; Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women
as Slave Owners in the American South (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019);
Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1989); Hendrik Hartog, Man and Wife in America: A History (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
Businesswomen in Civil War Era United States 51
emphasized women’s prominent role in the household economy, as well as their

presence in—and importance to—trading networks.5 Recent scholarship on the
nineteenth century goes a step further and focuses on white women’s active role as
enslavers.6 Other recent scholarship highlights the importance of enslaved women’s
emotional labor in the development of capitalism in the antebellum United States.7
Together these strands of scholarship make clear women’s active involvement in the
business world, whether they were Black or white, enslaved or free, elite or working
class, and married or unmarried. All women participated in the economic realm.
This chapter builds on that work, combining methodologies from affect theory
and the history of emotion to look at more “traditional” business activities, including
selling goods and services, advertising, and purchasing stock, revealing how individual
women used emotion to navigate the legal constraints of conducting business as
a woman in the Civil War era. In affect theory, scholars studying affective labor (or
“the labor of interaction and human contact that can elicit ‘intangible feelings of ease,
excitement, or passion’”) typically focus on the affect economy, examining workers
such as flight attendants, waitresses, and models.8 The majority of these studies focus
on forms of waged labor, following in the footsteps of Arlie Russel Hochschild’s work
on emotional labor, or “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial
and bodily display,” such as when a flight attendant keeps a smiling, calm, and friendly
persona even under stressful situations. Hochschild further specifies that “emotional
5
On women in economic networks, see Marta V. Vicente, Clothing the Spanish Empire: Families
and the Calico Trade in the Early Modern Atlantic World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006);
Sarah M.S. Pearsall, Atlantic Families: Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth Century (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009); Sheryllynne Haggerty, The British-Atlantic Trading Community,
1760–1810: Men, Women, and the Distribution of Goods (Boston: Brill, 2006); Susanah Shaw
Romney, New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century
America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014); Anne F. Hyde, Empires, Nations,
and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800–1860 (New York: Ecco, 2012);
Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, The Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Hartigan-O’Connor, “Abigail’s Accounts:
Economy and Affection in the Early Republic.” Journal of Women’s History 17, no 3 (Fall 2005):
35–58; Karen L. Marrerro, Detroit’s Hidden Channels: The Power of French-Indigenous Families in
the Eighteenth Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2020). On women in the
household economy, see Hartigan-O’Connor, Ties that Buy; Alexandra Finley, An Intimate Economy:
Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2020); Karin Wulf, Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
6
In particular, see Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property. Jones-Rogers emphasizes that married
white women both acknowledged and enforced that the people that they enslaved were their
property, not their husbands’ property, despite coverture. She also documents how these married
women’s property rights were recognized in the court system and in their communities. Kirsten
E. Wood’s Masterful Women: Slaveholding Widows from the American Revolution through the Civil
War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004) shows how widowed white women
exercised similar property rights. Inge Dornan sheds light on similar white widows in colonial South
Carolina. Dornan, “Masterful Women: Colonial Women Slaveholders in the Urban Low Country.”
Journal of American Studies 39, no. 3 (December 2005): 383–402.
7
See, for example, Finley, An Intimate Economy; Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property.
8
Elizabeth Wissinger, “Always on Display: Affective Production in the Modeling Industry,” in The
Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, ed. Patricia Ticento Clough, with Jean Halley (Durham: Duke
labor is sold for a wage.”9 Yet, not all women worked for pay—such as the enslaved
women in this chapter. But, these women still used similar emotional strategies to
navigate through the business realm. They still performed affective or emotional labor.
Combining those insights with Bill Reddy’s theory of emotives and Barbara
Rosenwein’s discussion of emotional communities helps us understand the
emotional work these women performed—and why specific emotional strategies
helped them navigate the world of business. As Reddy explains it, an emotive is
an emotional expression that “both describes […] and changes […] the world.”10
If we think of the business community as an emotional community, or a group of
people with “a common stake, interests, values, and goals” that are imbedded in
“shared vocabularies and ways of thinking,” then we can begin to understand these
women’s actions.11
The business community in the Civil War era, like all emotional communities, had
internalized norms surrounding emotion. Individuals in the community regularly
expressed emotions like respect, esteem, and, yes, non-emotional rationality. Those
who made the right moves—expressing the right emotions at the right times to the
right people—would be rewarded with access to the business world. Much as the
merchants in Laura McCoy’s chapter later in this volume (Chapter 6) traded in a
commerce of affection to compete in the market, the women in this chapter recognized
(and traded on) the emotional norms by which individuals in the business community
co-ordinated their world.
Women knew exactly what it entailed to enter that community and be recognized
as a valid member: they had to use the community’s “shared vocabularies,” including
those tied to emotion. Yet, they also recognized that because they were women, or
because they were both a woman and Black, some of the emotions they performed
or expressed should be performed in certain ways to be most effective, because wider
society (the larger emotional community to which the business community belonged)
had particular ideas about the proper emotions that people could express, based on
their gender, race, freedom status, and class, among other things. Thus, if we understand
these women as operating within two emotional communities, each with set rules and
expectations, we can begin to understand why they expressed or performed certain
emotions to further their business endeavors—and why those emotions in particular
might have worked for them.
9
Arlie Russel Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983), 7. Similar to Wissinger, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
define affective labor as labor that “produces or manipulates affects such as feelings of ease, well-
being, satisfaction, excitement, or passion.” See Hardt and Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in
the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 108. On Hardt and Negri’s concept of affective
labor, see Johanna Oksala, “Affective Labor and Feminist Policies.” Signs: Journal of Women in
Culture and Society 41, no. 2 (2016): 281–303. For a brief examination of affective labor, see Michael
Hardt, “Foreword: What Affects Are Good For,” xi, and Patricia Ticineto Clough, “Introduction,”
21–22, both in The Affective Turn.
10
William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 128.
11
Barbara Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2006), 25.
Whether a woman was enslaved or free, investing in stock or managing

boardinghouses, selling goods or running a school, she had a deep awareness of the
various emotional strategies necessary to conduct business in the nineteenth century.
Finding these emotional strategies involves some detective work. It means gathering
bits and pieces of information scattered throughout narratives, memoirs, newspaper
articles, and letters. It includes putting together what we know about emotional
care work and emotional labor both today and in the nineteenth century with these
fragments and vague reminiscences about women’s work in the Civil War era. This
chapter pulls on those scraps, focusing on women across the South—Black and white,
enslaved and free— who used different emotional strategies to make their way in the
business world.
Each individual story in this chapter is like a separate block in a sampler quilt in
which each block showcases different techniques, strategies, and approaches. They look
visibly different, and the quilt itself can at times seem disjointed. And yet, each block
uses a similar starting point, relying on techniques and strategies that build on the
techniques used in previous blocks as the quilter works to learn the techniques. Once
the quilt is put together, it tells a clear story—a story of developing techniques and
approaches to the same task: piecing together pieces of material into something larger.
More importantly, the patchwork approach shows the varied ways that individual
women used their knowledge of these emotional strategies to conduct business in what
was, ostensibly, a man’s world.
In the case of the women in this chapter, each woman’s story and strategy was
unique. They lived in different parts of the South. Some were white; some were Black.
Some were enslaved; some were free. Some were business owners; others were not. Each
woman’s situation, her use of emotions, her business was just that—hers. Yet, these
women’s emotional strategies were strikingly similar in terms of their initial approach.
Moreover, in many cases, women clearly built on the techniques used so effectively by
a larger community of women who performed various kinds of work during the Civil
War era. Despite the different approaches, strategies, places, and situations, the stories
of these businesswomen have a common thread: emotion was clearly a key strategy,
whether for making a sale, bringing in customers, or earning tips.
As women in the Civil War era South navigated the business world, they watched,
listened, and learned from each other, developing strategies that deployed emotion
in different ways, all to great effect. This chapter begins with more overtly emotional
strategies, examining the emotion-laden cries and appearances of street vendors in
New Orleans, both in the antebellum period and in the later nineteenth century,
highlighting continuity as well as market women’s adaptability to the changing
circumstances. From there, it turns to shopkeepers, focusing on female milliners and
mantua makers to highlight how such women drew in customers—and maintained
customer loyalty—through the use of particular emotional appeals. The chapter then
examines advertisements placed by a variety of women business owners—milliners
and mantua makers, tavern-keepers, boardinghouse keepers, and school mistresses,
in particular. These ads display strikingly similar emotional appeals—some of which
were inherently gendered. The chapter then examines the emotional strategies used
by an enslaved women to obtain her freedom. The chapter ends with the presence of
emotion in women’s investment decisions—highlighting the studied non-emotional,

rational language in transactional requests.
Travelers in nineteenth-century New Orleans often commented on the character of

the French Market, relating tales of the many vendors. In the 1850s, Swedish writer
Fredrika Bremmer observed, “Most of those who offer articles for sale are black Creoles,
or natives, who have the French animation and gayety, who speak French fluently.”
She continued, “‘Bon jour, madame! bon jour, madame!’ was addressed to me from
many lips with the most cheerful smiles.” The market itself was “lively and picturesque”
and full of “cheerful life, and good humor.”12 In the 1870s, Massachusetts-born author
Edward King recalled the “rotund and ever-laughing madame who sells little piles
of potatoes.”13 Later visitors to New Orleans remarked on the effectiveness of these
marketing tactics, saying that “before you know it you have your hands down in your
purse” to get money to buy what the women vendors were selling.14 These strategies
took several different forms, including outright expressions (or performances) of
emotion along with performing specific roles that evoked sentimentalism and nostalgia
in potential customers.
Street vendors’ varying expressions of cheerfulness were a common theme in
travel narratives and later folk tales. This cheerfulness, whether mere performance or
genuine feeling, was an effective means to sell wares. As Ashley Rose Young has argued,
street vendors used a variety of rhetorical techniques, including wit, humor, and irony,
to capture shoppers’ attention and sell their products.15 Yet, these cries—and the
performance of cheerfulness, good humor, and flattery that accompanied them—were
quintessentially a form of emotional labor: they were selling a product (or a service)
by portraying a specific emotion. For women in particular, positioning themselves as
cheerful or their goods as beautiful acted to draw in customers. Of course, women
vendors could also be so persistent that people would buy their goods simply “for the
sake of escaping the[ir] horrid yelling”—not because of any positive emotion.16 These
women drew in customers by creating specific feelings in passersby—whether pleasant
or unpleasant.
After the Civil War, market women traded on the sense of nostalgia that many
white Southerners relied on as they sought to rewrite the history of the antebellum
period and memorialize the Old South. In the post-war period, white Southerners
12
Fredrika Bremer, The Homes of the New World: Impressions of America, vol. II (New York: Harper &
Bros. Publishers, 1853), 213.
13
Edward King, The Great South: A Record of Journeys in Louisiana, Texas, the Indian Territory,
Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina,
Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland (Hartford, CT: American Publishing
Co., 1875), 46.
14
“Toto the Creole Praline Woman.” Springfield Republican, August 20, 1894.
15
Young, “Nourishing Networks,” 112–114.
16
Touring the Antebellum South with an English Opera Company: Anton Reiff ’s Riverboat Travel
Journal, ed. with an introduction by Michael Burden (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press,
2020), 49.
put forth the Lost Cause narrative that glorified the Old South; sanitized the system
of slavery as one in which enslaved people were happy, docile, and part of the family;
and cast the Civil War as a matter of honor and states’ rights. As David Blight has
pointed out, “The Lost Cause took root in a Southern culture awash in an admixture of
physical destruction, the psychological trauma of defeat, a Democratic Party resisting
Reconstruction, racial violence, and with time, an abiding sentimentalism.”17 The
sentimental figure of the mammy became the centerpiece of much of this nostalgia
and rewriting of history.18 The mammy was the quintessential “faithful slave” in Lost
Cause narratives, both in personal reminiscences and in popular literature.19
It was that sentimentalism that these market women used in their favor. By creating
a sense of nostalgia in white Southerners who walked past as they called out their
wares—or simply in the way they presented themselves through clothing—these
women used white Southerners’ sentimental longing for the Old South against them.
In so doing, they turned the sentimentalism and nostalgia clearly in their favor,
working emotion as a strategy to further their own economic interests. In fact, as Blight
points out, this sentimentalism came to be at the heart of the reunion of the United
States—for white Northerners as well as Southerners. Thus, these market women’s
emotional strategies would likely have been effective for White Northerners visiting
the South as well.
Women who sold pralines were particularly adept at trading on this sentimentalism
and nostalgia, for generations after the war. As folk tales from late nineteenth-century
Louisiana related, pralines had been sold in New Orleans for years and always by Black
women of “the ‘Mammy’ type.”20 Praline vendors like la viellllo Tolo, Tante Titine, and
Praline Zizi used “soft, crooning voices” that were irresistible to children—and to their
parents, who longed for the comfortable and happy days of their youth when they were
cared for by an enslaved mammy.21 These women tugged on feelings of nostalgia for
decades after the Civil War, setting themselves up “garbed in gingham and starched
white aprons and tignons” and “smiling at the passers-by.”22 One observer recalled that
as he saw a praline vendor named Toto seated at Jackson Square selling her pralines to
children playing around her, “the time comes back when you, too, were a little child
17
David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 258. On the development of the Lost Cause, see
chapter 4.
18
The premier work on how the figure of the mammy was deployed in the twentieth century is Micki
McElya’s Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America (Cambridge, MA:
19
On the mammy and other elements of the Lost Cause in popular literature, see Blight, Race and
Reunion, chapter 7. For personal reminiscences, newspapers, poems, and essays, see chapter 8.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy lobbied for years to have memorials to mammies put
up in every state, even going so far as lobbying Congress for a national mammy memorial in the
nation’s capital. On the mammy memorials, see pages 287–89. For more on the national mammy
monument, see Micki McElya, “Commemorating the Color Line: The National Mammy Monument
Controversy of the 1920s,” in Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of
Southern Memory, ed. Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 2003): 203–18.
20
21
“Are Pralines Losing Ground?” The Daily Picayune, September 13, 1893.
22
and used to go with your nurse to the old Creole square in the summer evenings, just
to spend your ‘picayune’ for one of ‘Toto’s’ pralines.”23
These free Black women—whether born free or emancipated following the war—
knew well which roles were acceptable to perform, and knew how to capitalize on that
knowledge. To potential white customers, it was acceptable for them to play the part
of happy, loving, old mammy. In fact, it was largely expected by White patrons. Like
Toto, their decision to do so should be understood in that context. Yet, it was also a
conscious decision about what would sell—and memories of the Old South appealed.
Black market women would then turn a profit, bettering their own circumstances, and
undermining the prevailing hierarchy in the process.24
Clearly, these types of emotional strategies were convincing to customers in the
Civil War era United States, whether by women hawking their wares in markets, on
the streets, or in their own shops. As one woman later recalled, New Orleans’ most
fashionable milliner in the 1840s was a woman named Olympe who was particularly
adept at using emotion to make a sale. Olympe specialized in imported chapeaux
(hats), a specialty item with a more elite clientele. She sold her hats by creating feelings
of pleasure and the appearance of being close, intimate friends with each customer.
Olympe always met customers at the door to her shop and exclaimed that she had
found the perfect bonnet in Paris to fit them. Even more enticing was that she claimed
to have had the bonnet shipped over specially for them. Olympe would then gush
over how lovely the customer looked in their new bonnet, as if the sale was closed.
As the woman recalled, “Olympe’s ways were persuasive beyond resistance.”25 Olympe
treated each customer (or potential customer) as a friend of such close acquaintance
that she thought of her wherever she journeyed. Because of that bond, she always went
the extra mile to make her “friends” happy. Her actions in doing so would have been
incredibly familiar to her clientele. After all, it was what they did for their own friends.
In fact, women regularly shopped for their female friends and relatives, particularly
when traveling. Olympe’s first strategy, then, was to treat the women as if they knew
each other intimately, with all of the emotional closeness implied.
Olympe worked to make her customers find pleasure in feeling special: each woman
was someone who she immediately thought of when she saw a beautiful bonnet in
Paris—so much so that she shipped it overseas only for that one woman. The woman
and the bonnet were then united in Olympe’s shop as an act of fate. Whether or not
Olympe was telling the truth (and, as most people would guess, she probably was not),
the effect was the same: each of the women who patronized her business felt loved,
valued, and beautiful, finding pleasure not just in the hat, but also in their relationship
23
“Toto the Creole Praline Woman,” Springfield Republican, August 20, 1894.
24
Nicole Eustace has demonstrated that cultural representations of gender were both racialized and
gendered and were tied to power. Thus, emotional expressions could both reinforce or undermine
social and political hierarchies through contestations and assertions of status. Eustace, Passion is the
Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2008), esp. 12.
25
Eliza Moore Chinn McHatton Ripley, Social Life in Old New Orleans, Being Recollections of My
Girlhood, electronic edition, 1998, Documenting the American South, p. 60. Originally published
in 1912 (New York and London: D. Appleton & Company). https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/ripley/
ripley.html#ripley58 [accessed December 14, 2021].
(or their perceived relationship) with Olympe. Olympe’s tactics helped ensure that
customers would return to her shop—and spread the word to all of their friends,
ensuring the growth and prosperity of her business.
Milliners and mantua makers often emphasized pleasure in their advertisements
for similar reasons. Miss Twohig, a milliner in Oxford, Mississippi, proudly announced
in the Oxford Falcon that she had received a new shipment of goods at the end of March
1867. She did not stop there, however, and “respectfully invite[d]” customers to “call
and see her,” before she assured them that they would “not fail to be pleased with both
her goods and price.”26 If a potential customer was assured that they would be happy
with their visit—and presumably with their purchase as well—then they would be
more likely to patronize the establishment. Pleasure was key: no one wanted unhappy
customers, so they promised to create a pleasurable experience and, like Olympe had,
worked hard to do so. Happiness was perhaps the strongest selling point to a clientele
who wanted to feel good during and after their visit to a shop like the ones run by
Olympe and Miss Twohig. As these women’s advertisements made clear, emotion was
a deliberate marketing strategy.
Free women of color like Rebecca Dwight of Charleston used a similar approach
in advertising their services. Rebecca, who operated a drinking space called the Long
House during Charleston’s race week, presented herself as a respected businesswoman
in advertisements in the mid-1820s, invoking language commonly used in business
culture to firmly establish her credentials. Her advertisement “respectfully” told her
“friends and former customers” that her space had been completely renovated and
repaired and would have the “best of WINES and LIQUORS” as well as providing
“soups, Relishes, &c.”27 Ads like Rebecca’s showed that the women who posted them
knew the conventions of business culture where respect and friendship were valued by
many.28 In her ad, Rebecca cast herself as a friend who would be grateful if her friends
patronized her establishment. Much like Olympe, who portrayed each of her female
customers as a personal acquaintance, Rebecca did the same. The implications of doing
so were clear to anyone who read the ad: customers were friends, and friends took care
of each other. If Rebecca’s customers at the Long House were friends (or at least treated
as friends), then they could be assured of the “best of WINES and LIQUORS” like the
ad stated—and much like a friend attending a dinner party would be treated.
This type of framing was an even more common strategy for women who ran
boarding houses. Mrs. Spencer of Oxford, Mississippi, “respectfully” placed an ad that
she was accepting boarders and “earnestly” solicited visitors.29 Mrs. D. C. Speck of
Columbia, South Carolina, talked about the “gratifying” patronage that had made her
determined to grow her boardinghouse and give it a “distinctive title.” She was quick
to assure potential customers that travelers would be “accommodated promptly and
26
“Miss Twohig, Milliner and Mantua Maker,” Oxford Falcon (Oxford, Mississippi), March 30, 1867.
27
“Rebeca Dwight,” Charleston City Gazette, February 17, 1826. Thanks to Warren Milteer for sharing
this source with me.
28
For more on this aspect of business culture, see Mandy Lee Cooper, “Cultures of Emotion: Families,
Friends, and the Making of the United States,” PhD diss., Duke University, 2018, particularly
chapters 1 and 2.
29
“This Way Boarders!” The Oxford Falcon, March 30, 1867, 3.
well” and that servants would be “attentive […] to individual wants.”30 Other women
advertised that they would provide “every attention to render it most agreeable to her
boarders” or that “every effort” would “be made to render those comfortable who may
favor her patronage.”31 Emotional labor was not only part of boardinghouse keeper’s
jobs, but it was also a clear business strategy, with women who ran boardinghouses
advertising their emotional labor for their customers. Part of their job was to provide
comfort for their guests. As Alexandra Finley has demonstrated in her work on
enslaved women, for a woman to keep a proper household, she needed to “creat[e] a
sense of warmth, safety, and devotion for other residents, and appearing to happily do
so out of love and devotion.”32 Potential boarders expected this type of emotional labor
on their behalf from women who ran boardinghouses.33
Women like Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Speck recognized these emotional expectations
and marketed/advertised themselves and their services to take advantage of them.
They recognized that women were expected to be nurturing, comforting, and caring,
ensuring the pleasure of all in their household: this was a woman’s job as hostess.
More importantly, though, it was a mother’s job. They knew that they were playing on
particular, gendered expectations of the emotional role of wives and mothers, just as
they knew that part of their role as boardinghouse keeper was to fulfill that role for their
lodgers.34 In depicting themselves and their boarding houses in this way, they posed
themselves as a person who could be trusted to care for anyone who boarded with
them, whether men, women, or entire families. It also ensured that potential boarders
would be drawn in, wanting to board with someone who would ensure their comfort
within the household as they would in their own homes with their own families.
Some female boardinghouse owners went above and beyond and promised to cater
to the individual needs of their guests as any good friend or family member would. Mrs.
E. A. Ford opened a new boardinghouse in Wilmington, North Carolina, and declared
that “no exertion will be spared calculated to add to the happiness and contentment of
her guests.”35 Others, like Mrs. A. B. Taylor of Shreveport, Louisiana, emphasized the
pleasure that her boarders would find. Mrs. Taylor “pledg[ed] herself that nothing shall
be wanting on her part that can tend to the comfort and pleasure of her guests.” Both
“families and single gentlemen” would be assured of “pleasant rooms.”36 For mothers
who boarded with their families, they were also ensured a bit of respite from their
own emotional and physical labors if they lodged with someone who ensured that
30
“Central Hotel,” The Newberry Herald (Newberry, South Carolina), March 27, 1867, 4.
31
“NOTICE—FOR RENT—PARLORS AND Chambers, with board” and “BOARD, &c.—MRS.
BATES,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), July 6, 1855.
32
Finley, An Intimate Economy, 5.
33
Ibid., 113.
34
For other examples of this type of emotional strategy that emphasized comfort, see “NOTICE. – FOR
RENT – PARLORS AND Chambers, with board,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), May 30, 1855;
“Boarding,” Richmond Daily Dispatch, March 1, 1856. “Mrs. M.C. Greer’s Boarding House,” “Notice
– For Rent – Parlors and Chambers,” “Board, &c. – Mrs. Bates,” all in Evening Star (Washington,
DC), May 30, 1855.
35
“New Boarding House. Mrs. E. A. FORD,” Tarboro’ press. Tarborough (Edgecombe Co., NC),
July 19, 1851.
36
“Private Boarding. Travis Street, adjoining the Baptist Church, Shreveport,” The South-Western
(Shreveport, Louisiana), February 27, 1861.
they too would experience comfort, happiness, etc. These advertisements drew in men
who expected women to care for them and women who might need lodging for a
time and wanted at least a brief respite from the emotional care work of motherhood
and wifehood.
Much like female boardinghouse keepers, women who ran schools and academies
for young ladies often portrayed themselves as caring and comforting individuals and
emphasized their motherly affections for their charges. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Mrs.
Harris announced that her school for young ladies had reopened in November 1846.
She assured the parents of her prospective students that “particular care is bestowed
on the children committed to her charge.” Moreover, her “mode of discipline” was
one of “uniform gentleness” and was “calculated to produce the happiest effects upon
all dispositions.”37 Her phrasing was clearly designed to put the anxieties of parents
and guardians at ease. By casting herself as a maternal figure who would care for the
wellbeing of the young women attending her school with compassion and gentleness,
Mrs. Harris made parents feel that their daughters would be healthy and happy in her
care. Other women, like Mrs. L. A. Garner of Alexandria, Virginia, emphasized that,
in addition, they would attend to the young ladies’ “moral and religious instruction” as
any good mother would.38 It was even more important that their marketing included
these assurances, as they needed to create feelings of trust and alleviate anxiety in
the hearts of parents who might send their children to board with them away from
home—especially if those children were daughters.
This type of emotional labor was common for women who worked in other types
of service industries in the antebellum era as well; many relied on emotional strategies
not just to earn their wages, but also for additional income through tips. Moses
Grandy’s daughter, Catherine, struck a bargain with her enslaver to hire herself out in
the early nineteenth century, pay him a weekly hire wage, and keep the rest, with the
end goal of purchasing herself for $1,200. Catherine secured work on a steamboat on
the Mississippi River for $30 a month, and she also sold apples and oranges to those
on board. As Moses related, “commonly, the passengers give from twenty-five cents to
a dollar, to a stewardess who attends them Well.”39 Moses’s words, “a stewardess who
attends them Well,” are both vague and revelatory. When considered in relation to the
emotional labor promised in advertisements for boarding houses—the emotional care
work that women in the service industries provided—his words reveal a clear approach
on Catherine’s part. Catherine could have simply worked as a stewardess, earning $30 a
month. Yet, she strategized, discovering more ways to make money. Yes, selling apples
and oranges was one of those ways. (And, yes, she likely used emotional strategies to
attract customers there as well, much as street vendors did, even if we do not have a
record of that.) Catherine clearly recognized that part of her role as a stewardess was to
provide emotional care and comfort to the passengers—a type of emotional labor that,
if she performed it well, could earn her extra money in tips.
37
“School for Young Ladies” The Arkansas Banner, November 4, 1846.
38
“Boarding and Day School,” Alexandria Gazette, October 6, 1846.
39
Moses Grandy, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy: Late a Slave in the United States of America
(London: C. Gilpin, 1843), 48. First electronic edition, 1996, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, DocSouth. https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/grandy/grandy.html [accessed December 31, 2021].
Through her wages as a stewardess, her sales of apples and oranges, and her tips from
passengers, Catherine earned $60 a month, double her set wage. Catherine acquired
her freedom, then found her sister Charlotte, struck a similar bargain with Charlotte’s
enslaver, and together, the two women earned enough to purchase Charlotte’s freedom
as well.40 Catherine’s emotional labor and care work hastened the process of purchasing
both her own freedom and that of her sister.41 Her story highlights that for many
enslaved women, emotion was a key part of taking control of their labor, the products
of their labor, and even their lives.
So far, all of these women’s strategies have relied on the outward performance of
emotion or the creation of particular emotions in potential customers; yet, women’s
decisions to invest in particular stock—and particularly the way they presented those
decisions to men—reveal a different type of emotional strategy: non-emotion. Many
more elite women who heavily invested in stock took an active role in managing
their investments. To do so, they had to present their choices as clearly rational—and
themselves as knowledgeable about the market and business culture more broadly.
Ann Miles, a wealthy White woman in South Carolina, wrote in early January 1816
to Richard Singleton to inquire about the $20,000 payment that he had said he would
be sending soon after Christmas. She needed the payment because, as she informed
him, she had the “opportunity of purchasing Public Stock to advantage.” Moreover, she
continued, “my friends inform me” that the public stock was “rising in value.” Thus,
she asked Richard to “oblige” her and make the payment to her “as soon as possible,”
whether by personally delivering the payment to Charleston or by sending a payment
through his factor in Charleston. Her language—and the overall letter—leaned heavily
on the language of business culture and reminded him of the reciprocal obligations
inherent in business relationships.42
But Ann Miles’s request for repayment—and her explanation of her investment—
reveals a different key emotional strategy: presenting a rational, studied, non-emotion
to prove that she was competent to handle the money and make (detached and rational)
decisions for herself. This tactic was an important one, and a clear inversion of the
more explicitly woman-centered emotional strategies that boardinghouse keepers
and school mistresses used. Because she was not fulfilling a “woman-ly” job, Ann had
to present herself as a businessman would expect from another businessman: coolly
rational and knowledgeable. Her presentation of herself and her business acumen was
a projection of non-emotion rather than emotion to create the appearance of being
rational, which was so prized in the business world.
40
Ibid.
41
The type of emotional labor that Catherine performed was likely similar to that performed by flight
attendants today. See Hochschild, The Managed Heart. Her reliance on tips would have been similar
to servers in the restaurant industry today, who typically perform such emotional labor to ensure
that they receive tips.
42
Ann did not mention the reason for the payment in her letter. Ann B. Miles to Richard Singleton,
January 8, 1816, in Box 1, Folder 11 of the Singleton Family Papers #668, Southern Historical
Collection at Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. For more on this language and these conventions, see Cooper, “Cultures of Emotion,” chapter 2.
For women in the Civil War era South, emotion was a key business strategy. Women
performed specific emotions to entice customers, portrayed themselves in certain
ways to create emotions like nostalgia in potential customers, advertised themselves
and their businesses in ways that assured emotional happiness for patrons, and created
the appearance of rational non-emotion to prove themselves as worthy of participating
in the business world. As they did so, they revealed their knowledge of the broader
emotional conventions that shaped both their society and the business world that they
engaged with, carefully portraying themselves as knowledgeable of their own role in
society and business more broadly.
Women clearly thought through which strategies would be most effective at getting
and keeping customers, and some women used multiple types of strategies to navigate
the business realm successfully, whether in terms of customer service or marketing.
These women undoubtedly learned from each other and from the larger business
culture, carefully paying attention to what emotions they should portray, when they
should portray them, and to which groups of people they should do so in order to
be most successful. Emotion, or at least the appearance of it, was clearly a strategic
decision made for the good of their business—whatever that may be. Of course, these
emotional strategies were not always successful, but, they were still recognized as what
they were, an emotional strategy tied to business/labor.
The women in this chapter spanned a broad spectrum of Southern society across
the Civil War era. They include elite white women in the 1820s, free women of color in
the 1830s, middle-class white women in the antebellum and post-war period, enslaved
women in the early nineteenth century, and Black women in the late nineteenth
century. Their involvement in the business world covered a broad range of activities and
enterprises, including making loans and purchasing stock, running various businesses,
working in the service economy, and more. And yet, despite their different places in
society and their different business activities, these women shared a common strategy:
using emotion to navigate the complex relationships that made up the business world
during the Civil War era. These strategies themselves were both similar and different.
Like a sampler quilt, one key technique that was continually refined, expanded, and
built upon ties them together: women’s use of emotion to navigate the legal dimensions
of the business world.
Bibliography
Archival and Manuscript Sources

Singleton Family Papers #668, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University
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Alexandria Gazette (Alexandria, VA)
Charleston City Gazette (Charleston, SC)
Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA)
Evening Star (Washington, DC)

Oxford Falcon (Oxford, MS)
Richmond Daily Dispatch (Richmond, VA)
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Tarboro’ Press (Tarboro, NC)
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64
3
Selling Trust in the Antebellum Service Sector

Daniel Levinson Wilk, SUNY-Fashion Institute of Technology
Introduction
Tools are everywhere waiting for us to pick them up, but sometimes we can’t see them.
More powerful than a hammer, a steam engine, an elevator, or an automobile, more
powerful than agriculture or fire, the ability to trust is the greatest tool in humanity’s
kit. Sometimes we can see it but can’t get to it. Trust is a hard emotion to master.
Charles Willis trusted in the face of a hotelkeeper’s deception. The confidential
clerk for the merchant firm Windle & Son, Willis sold merchandise, handled money,
offered credit to customers, and searched out repayment. The job required subjective
judgments about people, especially when deciding how much credit to offer. Was a
customer who walked into their Manhattan store virtuous and competent enough to
pay back the debt on time? At one point Willis must have asked these questions about
Charles Lovejoy, a local hotelkeeper who usually did his own shopping, though he
sometimes sent the bartender. As Willis got to know him over the years, he trusted
him with more debt.
In late 1841, Willis sold Lovejoy $200 in knives, forks, and other goods, all on credit.
Soon after, he learned that Lovejoy, who had always suggested he owned his hotel,
actually leased it from a landlord, an entirely different financial standing. Then Willis
read in the newspaper that Lovejoy had filed for bankruptcy. His trust evaporated, and
he confronted Lovejoy at his hotel and again at his personal residence on Charlton
Street, lecturing Lovejoy on his responsibilities and pointing out objects around the
room that Lovejoy had purchased from Windle & Son.1
Historians often focus on failures of trust, which leave long documentary trails. But
think of all the people who earned Charles Willis’s trust, all the people who believed in
each other in spite of all the Lovejoys.
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Americans tested themselves.
They extended the vote to all White men. Northern states slowly freed slaves and
began to count some Black men’s votes. Men started living in one place and working
1
Testimony of Charles F. Willis in George H. Blanchard, “In the matter of Charles H. Lovejoy,
Bankrupt,” Bankruptcy Records, C-F 1398, Act of 1841, United States District Court for the
Southern Federal District of New York, National Archives and Record Administration, Northeast
Region, New York City [hereafter referred to as Bankruptcy Records, C-F].
in another, leaving wives home alone all day with the children, servants, and slaves.
The government deregulated food and privatized money. The guild system collapsed,
and apprentices living in masters’ households and eating at their tables became the
youths of an industrial working class, living in boarding houses and tenement slums
without patriarchal supervision, working in factories on the west side and partying
on the Bowery. Young men and women from villages bound together by friendship,
intermarriage, experience, adjacent land, and gossip left for factory towns and
anonymous metropoles.
Forced to trust each other in greater numbers and with less coercive oversight,
Americans failed on many counts, most still with us: patriarchy, poverty, racism, all
the ways we fall back into a master–servant mentality, an assumption that when we
collaborate, one must always dominate another. But capitalist to capitalist, and in
many other social relationships, people learned to feel trust and found that it worked,
because people often did what they said they’d do.
Entrepreneurs of trust helped build that feeling. One might even say that they
disciplined people to feel trust so that they would participate in the marketplace. They
came in many fields—accounting, insurance, cheap newspapers, credit reports, anti-
counterfeit circulars, the pseudo-science of physiognomy, sentimental fashion and
etiquette, courts convened by the US Bankruptcy Act of 1841. These new industries
sold new kinds of knowledge that helped people feel alright about building modern
capitalism together.
Proprietors of service firms were also entrepreneurs of trust: tavern and coffee-
house keepers, restaurateurs and hoteliers, barbers and bootblacks. They made intense
use of emotional labor to induce emotions of wellbeing in customers who might, at that
moment, be deciding whether to trust each other. Men and women courting. Logrolling
politicians. Businessmen sizing each other up. To help these negotiations along, service
entrepreneurs put more trust into the atmosphere. They offered customers tools,
stages, and marketplaces for trust. They sold a feeling that was conducive to capitalism.
What does it mean to call trust an emotion that is bought and sold, an intangible
commodity that has been crucial to the development of capitalism? This chapter
will lay the theoretical base for this claim, drawing on the work of many disciplines
and focusing particularly on Arlie Hochschild’s concept of emotional labor. It offers
almost no evidence. This is in part because the theory posits an unconscious transfer
of emotion from the worker–customer relationship to the customer–customer
relationship. It is also because the emotional labor of service workers, even more than
servants and slaves, tended to be ignored, and did not make its way into the historical
record. Perhaps other scholars will find the theory interesting enough to find some
evidentiary basis for testing the theory; I’ll keep looking too.
The Service Sector
Through the nineteenth century, writings on commodified services tended to discuss

service as a non-good. Like political economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx,
entrepreneurs and critics drew this distinction and then ignored most of the things that
Selling Trust in the Antebellum Service Sector 67
set services off from goods, let alone qualities outside the relevance of the dichotomy,
belittling services as “unproductive” or “reproductive” labor.2
During the nineteenth century, American service entrepreneurs moved beyond the
household model of the colonial tavern and developed an array of new occupations
that are still recognizable today—desk clerk, janitor, elevator operator, restaurateur,
etc.—but ideas about service did little to keep up. As late as the turn of the twentieth
century, most celebrants and critics of service industries, especially hotels, identified
other aspects (especially architecture and technology) as more significant than the
new division of labor. They still saw workers through the prism of traditional master–
servant relationships.
In the early twentieth century, service-sector entrepreneurs began to articulate
understandings and ideologies of “service” that set their industries off from agriculture
and manufacturing; decades later the “service sector” became an object of academic
study. Scholars of the late twentieth century, like earlier ones, tended to define services
as commodities that are not goods, and service jobs as jobs that are not making goods.
From Daniel Bell (services are part of the post-industrial society that will come to
displace manufacturing) to Harry Braverman (services are deskilled in different
ways than manufacturing jobs, but it amounts to the same sort of oppression), to
William Julius Wilson (post-war American poverty is driven by the disappearance of
manufacturing, and low-paying service jobs don’t measure up), to Barbara Ehrenreich
(ditto), services are seen mostly in the mirror of manufacturing.3
This focus on what services are not often leads to confusion over what work is
in the “service sector”—do we include business services like finance, law, insurance,
real estate; professionals like doctors and nurses, teachers, and architects; clerics;
people in sales; any job that doesn’t produce a good; anything that’s not agriculture
or manufacturing? Many argue that these disparate kinds of services are linked
intimately in the development of capitalism after 1945—high-paid service jobs and
low-paid service jobs expand in tandem, especially in our global cities, as the middle
class collapses.4 These scholars, like everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Donald
Trump, blame ruin on the decline of manufacturing. If we stopped looking at services
through the mirror of manufacturing, though, we might see the real fault—the decline
of the labor movement since Ronald Reagan. If unions were still strong today, service-
sector jobs would provide middle-class incomes. Even the name generally given to
our current phase of capitalism—post-industrial capitalism—shows nostalgia for a
2
An exception can be found in the utopian/feminist defense of apartment houses found in Sarah
Gilman Young, European Modes of Living (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1881). Jean-Claude
Delaunay and Jean Gadrey, Services in Economic Thought: Three Centuries of Debate (Boston: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1992).
3
Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Monthly Review Books, 1974), 359–74; Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial
Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973); William J. Wilson, When
Work Disappears (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996); Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures:
Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–1940 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1986).
4
Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America (New York: Basic Books,
1982); Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1991).
manufacturing-based economy and contempt for the expanding economy of services.

They can’t bear to call it service capitalism.
In our age of service capitalism, more of us work in jobs that do not produce
tangible things in factories or on farms. More of us specialize in the “customer service”
at the ends of long supply chains. More of us work in trust-building occupations of
the sort pioneered in the antebellum United States. And more of us work in bars and
restaurants, enabling emotions, performing and evoking feelings, putting trust into the
air all around the world, helping to make this capitalist thing go.
Emotional Labor
Some sociologists in the early post-war period looked at services without being
completely blinded by their status as non-goods—William F. Whyte, C. Wright Mills,
Erving Goffman—but it wasn’t until the publication of Arlie Hochschild’s The Managed
Heart in 1983 that service workers were defined as what they are, a set of jobs with or
adjacent to heightened emotional labor, instead of what they aren’t.5 Emotional labor is
the work of performing emotions on the job in order to evoke emotions in others.6 The
commodity is the trip on the airplane, but it is also the emotional “state of mind” that
the flight attendant’s emotional performance creates for the customer.
The emotional labor that characterizes the service sector is, according to Hochschild,
deeply oppressive and psychologically damaging, especially if done well. Hiding our
true feelings behind a smile—what she calls “surface acting”—is for amateurs. To
really do the job, you have to go deep—adjust your feelings and then express them
sincerely. This is where the damage lies. Our entire emotional lives can be hijacked by
our corporate employers’ drive for profits.7
Hochschild also distinguishes emotion work or management, in which people try to
manage each other’s emotions in all sorts of situations, from emotional labor, in which
they do it specifically to earn money. Hochschild sees emotion management as inevitable,
probably going back to the beginning of humanity, sometimes done on terms of equality
and sometimes not. She sees emotional labor as relatively new and dystopian—large
corporations coercing the emotional worlds of service workers by paying them to feel a
certain way and convey that feeling authentically to their customers.8
Hochschild is wrong that emotional labor is new. Since the time of Charles Lovejoy
and Charles Willis, stores, hotels and other firms, some with hundreds of employees,
have sold commodified services in which managers pushed workers to emote in certain
ways. Since the beginning of the twentieth century and accelerating in the 1920s,
huge service corporations have created the kinds of standardized, codified direction
of emotional labor that she describes as a product of the post-war world. And even
5
Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983).
6
Ibid., 7.
7
Ibid., 33.
8
Ibid., 49.
before the nineteenth century, way back to our most ancient texts, there were inns,
taverns, and other businesses selling emotional labor for money. If you worked for an
innkeeper, your emotions were not your own.
Moreover, Hochschild’s distinction between emotional labor and emotion work
presupposes a distinction between work and all the other things we do in our lives.
But it’s only been two centuries and change since we began to distinguish home
from work and business from family. Even in the time of Lovejoy and Willis, a small
hotel or store was usually a family affair, and most of the large hotels and stores were
also run by families, with lots of non-family hired to do the customer-facing work.
A boss telling a worker how to smile was often the husband or father of that worker.
Hochschild says that emotional labor for money is a modern trend, but emotion work
was implicated in economic gain much more frequently before the nineteenth century,
when work and everything else were all mixed together.
Hochschild is also too negative about emotional labor. Compared to the millennia-
spanning reigns of slavery and servitude, the modern service sector is remarkably gentle
in its demands for emotional labor. We are rightly disturbed by the flight attendant
whose smile is plastered on so tightly that she has trouble relaxing it when she goes
home, or the Filipina nannies who love their young charges in California because they
miss their own children so much. But we ought to be more disturbed by the love of an
enslaved wet nurse sent to feed her antebellum mistress’ daughter, her own children
sold down to the Deep South or the Texas frontier, never to be seen or heard from
again.9 More recently, sociologists such as Robin Leidner and Rachel Sherman have
also challenged Hochschild’s dark view of service work, though not by comparing it to
slavery, servitude, and other systems that dole out more emotional abuse.10
Historians of sales and service industries have followed in the sociologists’ wake,
and on these two questions—whether emotional labor is relatively new, and whether
it is generally oppressive (especially in contrast to manufacturing work)—they have
avoided the mistakes of Hochschild and others. The earliest and most significant
work is Susan Porter Benson’s study of department store workers, Counter Cultures,
9
Ibid., 24–6; Janet Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996); Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property:
White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019),
101–23.
10
In Global Women and her related book Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich notes that during
her stint as a maid for a corporate, Taylorized home-cleaning service, she first resented her loss of
control over cleaning methods but “came to love the system” because it was truly more efficient,
and it helped her keep track of where she had cleaned and what she still had left to do. “After a
week or two on the job, I found myself moving robotlike from surface to surface, grateful to have
been relieved of the thinking-process.” Robin Leidner, Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the
Routinization of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 5, 135, 146; Rachel
Sherman, Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2007); Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York:
Henry Holt, 2001); Greta Foff Paules, Dishing it Out: Power and Resistence Among Waitresses in a
New Jersey Restaurant (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991); Cameron Lynne Macdonald
and Carmen Sirianni, eds., Working in the Service Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1996); Sharon C. Bolton, Emotion Management in the Workplace (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2004); Amy Hanser, Service Encounters: Class, Gender, and the Market for Social Distinction in Urban
China (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2008).
which appeared in 1986, three years after The Managed Heart. Benson does not cite
Hochschild and may not have been aware of her work, though she does mention the
Baltimore department store Hochschild Kohn and Company. Benson’s theoretical
point of reference is Harry Braverman, who argued that service-sector entrepreneurs
deskill and disrespect work the same way managers in manufacturing do. Benson
argued that it was quite the reverse—because department store workers, unlike factory
workers, had face-to-face relationships with their customers, they were sometimes able
to leverage those relationships to offset the power of their managers. Though Benson
does not use the term “emotional labor,” she sees it as a powerful tool that workers can
use to their advantage in labor-management conflicts. In addition, she dates the rise of
this kind of work much earlier than Hochschild et al., to the late nineteenth century.
Still wrong, but less wrong by half a century or so.11
From Benson on department stores followed Dorothy Sue Cobble on waitress
unions and vast, excellent literatures on flight attendants, African-American hair
workers, and Pullman porters. Alongside these labor histories of service work, which
all discuss emotional labor in one form or another, came another set of histories of
service-sector firms and industries that focused on entrepreneurship, not emotional
labor. These historians see the hotel and other service industries as sites of modernity—
for political parties, public personae, a “public sphere”—but they do not say much
about the contributions of the service labor that went with the space.12
Neither sociologists nor historians of emotional labor make much use of
psychologists’ theories of emotions, but perhaps they should. (Historians of emotion
like Barbara Rosenwein, William Reddy, and Carol and Peter Stearns make more
serious attempts to engage with psychologists’ theories, but rarely discuss emotional
labor—they are more concerned with the history of particular emotions coming and
going out of fashion; or changing emotional regimes or communities, like the wave of
sentimentalism that struck the Anglo-American world in the 1800s.13) In particular,
11
Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American
Department Stores, 1890–1940 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988). Hochschild also cites
Braverman on the deskilling of service work, in order to note that he only discusses the deskilling and
standardization of physical and mental labor in service work, not the emotional labor. Hochschild,
The Managed Heart, 119.
12
Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz, Hotel: An American History (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2007); Rebecca L. Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Andrew P. Haley, Turning the Tables: The
Aristocratic Restaurant and the Rise of the American American Middle Class, 1880–1920 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will:
Workers & Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983);
Douglas Walter Bristol, Jr., Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins Press, 2009); Quincy T. Miles, Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and
Barber Shops in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Markman Ellis, The
Coffee-House: A Cultural History (London: Orion, 2004).
13
Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977); Peter N.
Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, “Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional
Standards.” The American Historical Review 90, no. 4 (October 1985): 813–36; William M. Reddy,
The Navigation of Feeling (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Barbara H. Rosenwein,
Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); Simon
Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); William
M. Reddy, The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia & Japan,
900–1200 CE (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Susan J. Matt and Peter N. Stearns, eds.,
Doing Emotions History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014).
recent studies by Lisa Feldman Barrett and others argue that emotions are neurologically
constructed, and less dependent on external stimuli than we think.14 Our emotions
follow our perceptions too quickly for our perceptions to fully discern what they are
seeing, hearing, or smelling. Our brains, using a little sensory data and filling in a lot
with guesses guided by our memories and prejudices, can get it wrong. We misjudge
our sensations, and we misjudge which sensations lead to which feelings. One time
Barrett went on a date and thought she really liked the guy, but it was just the first
symptoms of the flu.15
This explains why a good waiter, bartender, or barber might help you trust a fellow
customer. Your brain doesn’t necessarily know the source of that feeling of trust;
you might think it’s the guy having dinner with you when it’s really the guy serving
the food.16
Theories of Trust
You can turn pretty much any theory about living things into a theory about trust—
Darwin, Marx, Freud, Milton Friedman—just by substituting the word here and
there. A slew of scholars argue for the role of trust in the history of the modern
world. Trust builds democracy. Trust builds capitalism. Trust decreases corruption.
Modern institutions help to expand the circle of trust beyond our kin and close friends,
allowing broader co-operation. Trust allows people to come together to create law,
14
See, for example, Frans de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About
Ourselves (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019), 4.
15
More specifically, the brain anticipates and processes sensory information by running simulations
of what the person might actually be seeing or experiencing, and then uses those simulations to
adjust its regulation of unconscious functions in our nervous system, our immune system, and
our endocrine system, a process known as interoception. As more information comes in, the brain
continues to match it to the most likely scenarios we have already imagined, discarding scenarios
that no longer fit. What our brain imagines is informed by past experiences, though that includes our
experiences of hearing stories, looking at art, and being bombarded by mass media. Lisa Feldman
Barrett, “The Theory of Constructed Emotion: An Active Inference Account of Interoception and
Categorization.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12, no. 1 (2017): 1–23.
16
Some psychologists discuss trust as an emotion. In one experiment, Antonio Damasio, Ralph
Adolphs, and Daniel Tranel showed images of people to experiment subjects and asked them to
rate how “trustworthy” and “approachable” they seemed, from 1 to 5. The control group sorted the
trustworthy and untrustworthy groups somewhat consistently. In the experimental group, whose
participants had damage to their amygdalas, everyone was deemed trustworthy, even and especially
those deemed most untrustworthy by the control group. The authors do not show us the pictures.
They do not consider that what society considers “trustworthy” and “untrustworthy” may be driven
by stereotypes. Did the damaged amygdala erase fear, boosting trust, or did it forget the racism and
prejudice that probably fueled the decisions of the control group? Even so, Damasio’s critics also
see trust as an emotion. Criticizing Damasio’s reduction of complex, culturally defined emotions
into basic neurological drives, English professor Daniel Gross writes “when it comes to seriously
analyzing a ‘secondary’ or social emotion such as an embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, pride, or, for
that matter, the feeling of trust, literary insight gives way to evolutionary biology and ‘secondary’
emotions reduce to ‘primary’: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust.” Gross does
not believe in this reduction to primary emotions—trust is just as much an emotion as happiness.
Daniel Gross, The Secret History of Emotions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 32.
Thanks to Bill Reddy for pointing me to this.
science, business, art, and everything else we modern people do. It is a source of “social
capital” that humans use to get ahead and build wealthy, happy, powerful societies.17
Our community of business historians is thick with studies of commercial networks—
entrepreneurs and business people who somehow figured out how to trust each other
and maintain that trust over time.18 It is also thick with studies of entrepreneurship in
trust—the institutions, cultures, and events that created incentives and disincentives to
trust and be trustworthy, or that stepped in when trust was broken: Rowena Olegario
and Josh Lauer on credit and credit reporting, Stephen Mihm on people who printed
and forged money, Edward Balleisen on bankruptcy and fraud. Much of the best work
is on the antebellum United States, the decades before the Civil War, the era of Charles
Willis and Charles Lovejoy.19
A few studies explicitly note the role of service firms in building trust. Among hotel
historians, the classic piece is “Palaces of the People,” a chapter in Daniel Boorstin’s
book The Americans: The National Experiment. It celebrates hotels as centers of
nationalism, sociability, architectural and technological innovation, politics, finance,
and communication. “They were both creatures and creators of communities,” wrote
Boorstin, “as well as symptoms of the frenetic quest for community.”20 More broadly
known is the relatively short but famous passage in Jurgen Habermas’ The Structural
17
See, for example, Kenneth Arrow, The Limits of Organization (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974);
Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981);
Geoffrey Hosking, Trust: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Charles Tilly, Trust and
Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues
and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1995); Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The
Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Jurgen Habermas,
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: Polity, 1989 [1962]); Craig Muldrew,
The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England
(London: Palgrave, 1998); Laurence Fontaine, The Moral Economy: Poverty, Credit, and Trust in
Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Pamela Walker Laird, Pull:
Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006);
and many other contemporary economists, sociologists, political scientists, and historians, not to
mention their forebears, especially sociologists Simmel, Durkheim, Weber, Tonnies, and Parsons.
18
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); Philip Scranton, Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and
American Industrialization, 1865–1925 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Charles F.
Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin, eds., World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western
industrialization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel M.
G. Raff, and Peter Temin, “Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Toward a New Synthesis of American
Business History,” The American Historical Review 108, no. 2 (2003): 404–33; Susie J. Pak, Gentlemen
Bankers: The World of J. P. Morgan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); Philip
Scranton and Patrick Friedenson, Reimagining Business History (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013), 34–37. Scranton and Friedenson also have a chapter on “Trust, Cooperation, and Networks.”
19
Rowena Olegario, A Culture of Credit: Embedding Trust and Transparency in American Business
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Rowena Olegario, The Engine of Enterprise:
Credit in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Josh Lauer, Creditworthy: A
History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2017); Stephen Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of
the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Edward Balleisen, Navigating
Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: The University
of North Carolina Press, 2001); Edward J. Balleisen, Fraud: An American History from Barnum to
Madoff (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
20
Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (New York: Knopf, 1965), 134–47; Peter
Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200–1650 (London: Longman, 1983), 134–47, quote
on 143.
Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) about the coffeehouses of London in the
1700s. They helped create a “public sphere” distinct from both family life and the
government, where one could debate questions of art, literature, economics, and
politics.21 In 1989, the same year that Habermas’ book finally came out in English, Ray
Oldenburg published The Great Good Place, a celebration of service-sector businesses as
creators of human community; he coined the phrase “third place,” which the Starbucks
corporation later co-opted to market its coffee shops. Likewise, Elizabeth Currid-
Halkett’s The Warhol Economy (2009) gives many examples of how networking and
business deals take place in restaurants, bars, and clubs. Boorstin mentions the high
status of the hotelkeeper in antebellum America—European travelers were shocked—
but he, Habermas, Oldenburg, and Currid-Halkett have little else to say about the hosts
of these establishments, let alone their servants, slaves, employees, and the emotional
labor that goes into building trust.22
Historians of service industries consistently note their importance in building
trust/networks/a public sphere/social capital/class consciousness:
In the hundred years after the first coffee-houses opened in London, they came to
be ubiquitous features of the modern urban landscape, indispensible centres for
socializing, for news and gossip, and for discussion and debate.23
[The bar] is where the freedom to associate has been traditionally exercised. …
Bars are where people gather and talk.24
Restaurants … provided a staging ground for social interactions and stratification,
for gender mores and conventions, and for working out social relationships and
public behavior in the increasingly complicated metropolis.25
21
Habermas, Structural Transformation, 31–43. The original was published in 1962, but it was not
translated into English until 1989.
22
Oldenburg even argues against the significance of managers and workers in creating a sense of
community: “It is the regulars, whatever their number on any given occasion, who feel at home
in a place and set the tone of conviviality. It is the regulars whose mood and manner provide the
infectious and contagious style of interaction and whose acceptance of new faces is crucial. The
host’s welcome, though important, is not the one that really matters; the welcome and acceptance
extended on the other side of the bar-counter invites the newcomer to the world of third place
association.” Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair
Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (New York: Marlowe, 1999 [1989]), 34;
Howard Schultz, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time (New
York: Hachette Books, 2012), 120. See also Phillipe Aries, “The Family and the City,” Daedalus 106,
no. 2 (Spring 1977), 227–35; W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability Among the
French Working Class, 1789–1914 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Elizabeth
Currid-Halkett, The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art & Music Drive New York City (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2009); Simon Shaw-Miller, Tag Gronberg, and Charlotte Ashby, The
Viennese Café and Fin-de-Siecle Culture (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013); Leona Rittner and
W. Scott Haine, The Thinking Space: The Café as a Cultural Institution in Paris, Italy, and Vienna
(Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2016); Shachar M. Pinsker, A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern
Jewish Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2018).
23
Ellis, The Coffee-House, 1.
24
Christine Sismondo, America Walks into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies
and Grog Shops (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), xii–xiii.
25
Cindy R. Lobel, Urban Appetites: Food and Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 2014), 101.
As middling folk transformed restaurant culture, they were creating the modern
middle class. … small preferences about where and what to eat, repeated daily,
could serve as the basis for identity but also discovered a common enemy. Bound
together by their contempt for the extravagance of the rich, middle-income diners
shaped themselves into the modern middle class.26
During the 1820s, black-run barbershops emerged as microcosms of the public
sphere in the new republic. The enfranchised men of the community, its citizens,
gathered for egalitarian camaraderie, and barbershops were one of the favorite
gathering places.27
With the level of trust and public intimacy that existed in barber shops, black barbers
were uniquely situated as conduits of racial politics. They overheard conversations
about private and public matters and developed working relationships with their
patrons and customers. Black barbers literally and figuratively had the ear of
influential men.28
… hotels were different. They played a distinctive role in organizing civil
society because they functioned simultaneously as gathering places and travel
accommodations. Hotels brought local people together, put them into contact
with strangers and outsiders, and tied them into larger networks of commerce,
politics, and association … [b]y focusing and projecting the power of direct
personal contact.29
… luxury hotels contributed to a burgeoning civil society [and] supported the
growth of a new public sphere, different from the one Jurgen Habermas identifies in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which operated in deliberate disregard for
status. Instead, American urban luxury hotels intentionally conferred a contrived
and highly prized social standing upon all those who visited and lived within.30
Most of these books cite Habermas, but none cites Hochschild, few dwell on emotional
labor, and none asks what it means to call trust an emotion that is bought and sold. We
must piece it together ourselves, from scraps of theory about emotions, trust, and the
service sector.
A Theory of Trust as an Emotion That is Bought and

Sold in the Service Sector
The concept of emotional labor (as articulated by Arlie Hochschild and others) defines
services as more than non-goods. Managers and workers of service establishments
exert emotional labor to evoke emotions in their customers; this is a primary function
26
Haley, Turning the Tables, 6.
27
Bristol, Knights of the Razor, 51.
28
Miles, Cutting Along the Color Line, 7.
29
Sandoval-Strausz, Hotel, 232.
30
Molly Berger, Hotel Dreams: Luxury, Technology, and Urban Ambition in America, 1829–1929
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 4–5.
of services, not a byproduct. One of the emotions frequently evoked is trust—people

go to service establishments together in the hopes that they will trust each other more
after the visit, and workers use emotional labor to create an atmosphere of trust. On
a neurological level, during the service interaction, a feeling of trust grows from our
predicting, misjudging brains’ attempts to interpret sense perceptions and act on them.
The emotional labor of a service worker is easily interpreted as the trustworthiness of
a fellow customer.
Service workers have been providing this kind of emotional labor since the
beginning of recorded history, but in the last 200 years there have been changes. The
division of labor in service firms (as everywhere) has increased. Service workers have
learned to use their three-way relationship with bosses and customers (described by
Susan Porter Benson and others) as leverage to improve wages and working conditions.
Styles of service have become less (though still) servile and emotionally damaging to
perform. During these years, the emotional labor of service workers helped individual
customers to trust each other, and also contributed to an emotional regime (of the sort
discussed by William Reddy and others) in which the feeling of trust—finding the
feeling, interpreting it, encouraging it, decrying its absence—became central to the
culture. And this emotional regime of trust has helped build the complex co-operation
at the heart of capitalism. In other words, buying and selling trust helped people find
the confidence to buy and sell other things too.
Service workers of the nineteenth century built trust, but were not its beneficiaries.
More often, their exclusion from the circle of trust was something that customers
could bond over, by treating workers badly or demeaning them and sharing a laugh
about it. Service workers—especially African American and Irish workers—willingly
and unwillingly offered themselves up as stereotypes that evoked a feeling of mastery
in customers. Even if you did not own slaves, you could feel like a slave master if you
ate in some of the fanciest restaurants in America, North or South. In the nineteenth
century, there were a few thwarted attempts to expand the circle of trust to include
these service workers, but the ideal relationship between customers and service
workers remained that of a master and servant, or master and slave. This would change
in the twentieth century, as ideologies of service articulated by managers, workers, and
service-sector labor leaders brought more dignity to the work, and the circle of trust
expanded a little more.
Selling Trust in the Antebellum Service Sector

The antebellum era was a crucial period for entrepreneurs of trust. Historians often
suggest that Americans became less trusting and less trustworthy during the first half
of the nineteenth century. It is true that “confidence” became an obsession in American
culture. The eight US presidents leading up to Abraham Lincoln each made the word
a centerpiece of their inaugural addresses, and President Andrew Jackson used the
word in practically every public address he ever made—both to thank the people for
their confidence in him and to warn them against confidence in his enemies, like the
Second Bank of the United States. The popular literature and fiction of the time was
obsessed with the question of confidence and its betrayal, capped by Herman Melville’s
1857 novel The Confidence-Man, today a central text for historians and literary
scholars looking back on that era.31 Lack of trust also characterized American politics,
especially sectional politics, as Northerners’ and Southerners’ paranoia about each
others’ motives grew during the era.32 Some Americans celebrated their reputations as
frauds, most famously P. T. Barnum. But most worried.
Most saw these problems as evidence of a decline, but one could argue instead
that trust and trustworthiness increased dramatically during this period, just not as
dramatically as the new demands placed on them. During this period, democracy and
capitalism vastly raised the requirements of trust on ordinary people, and although
Americans often failed to meet these new challenges, they tried, and sometimes they
succeeded. The gap between increased expectations and increased effort gave people
the sense that trust and trustworthiness were in decline, and historians have found and
echoed those assessments. Perhaps this is a mistake, the same mistake, perhaps, that
we are making today at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
As the requirements to trust increased, government protections declined.
Legislatures and judges deregulated the labor system, the money supply, meat
production, and medical licensing.33 Courts made it much harder to sue or prosecute
fraud.34 Management and regulation of communication devolved from the federal
government to the states and private corporations, which is why we have a federal
mail system but no government-run systems of telegraphs, telephones, or internet.35
Historians have sometimes exaggerated deregulation in the age of Jackson. Local
regulations continued to govern fire prevention, health and sanitation, inspection and
licensing, trade and fraud, alcohol and prostitution, and many other aspects of life.36
But the government’s role in policing individuals’ economic activities declined.
31
Karen Haltunnen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America,
1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); Matt Seybold, “Destroyer of Confidence:
James Gordon Bennett, Jacksonian Paranoia, and the Original Confidence Man,” American Studies
56 no. 3/4 (2018): 83–106; Kathleen De Grave, Swindler, Spy, Rebel: The Confidence Woman in 19th-
Century America (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995).
32
Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Vintage,
1952); David B. Davis, The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1969); Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York: Norton,
1983), 4–5; Michael W. Pfau, The Political Style of Conspiracy: Chase, Sumner, and Lincoln (East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005); Mark W. Summers, A Dangerous Stir: Fear,
Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
33
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 2000 [1776]), 4–5; Sean Wilentz,
Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1984); Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-
Century America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters,
27–33; Gergely Baics, Feeding Gotham: The Political Economy and Geography of Food in New York,
1790–1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017); Lewis A. Grossman, “The Origins of
American Health Libertarianism.” Yale Journal of Health Policy and Ethics 13 (2013): 76–134.
34
Balleisen, Fraud, 48–51.
35
Richard R. John, Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications (Cambridge, MA:
36
William J. Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
As the government’s role in policing trustworthiness receded, the private sector

stepped into the void. Surpassing old and ancient techniques—signatures, notaries,
blood oaths, wax seals—entrepreneurs of trust founded new strategies, new professions,
and new industries to help people size each other up. Newspapers, trade journals,
currency circulars, and credit reports shared information about reputations and past
practices that could be used in decisions about whether to do business, and pressured
businesspeople to stay true to their word. Even when their work was not conducted
face-to-face, entrepreneurs of trust were engaged in emotional labor. They aimed to
make people feel enough trust to do business.37
But before, during, and after the antebellum decades, service firms always played
an important role—arguably the most important role, though it would be impossible
to measure—in the entrepreneurship of trust. During the colonial era, businesspeople,
politicians, criminals, and revolutionaries used taverns to meet, make plans, and size
each other up. This continued after the American Revolution, as the functions of the
tavern were fragmented among many new industries—especially hotels, restaurants,
saloons, barbershops, and gentlemen’s clubs such as the Philadelphia Club (founded
1834), the Century Club in New York (1847), the Somerset in Boston (1851), and the
Pacific Union in San Francisco (1852).38
Meetings in service establishments initiated long relationships of trust among
individuals, like an 1837 banquet at the City Hotel, where Washington Irving met
his future publisher George Palmer Putnam.39 They nurtured those relationships, as
when Andrew Carnegie was invited out to dinner by his mentor Thomas A. Scott:
“Mr. Scott would occasionally insist upon my going to his hotel and taking a meal
37
Other ways to build commercial trust became more widespread after the Civil War: branding goods
to create consumer loyalty, the creation of trade and professional associations and schools that
policed their industries, the growth of professional accounting and its acceptance of the responsibility
to keep honest books and root out fraud. And the balance also tipped away from trust and back
toward coercion, as federal and state governments shifted from deregulation to increased regulation,
and large business corporations asserted control over business decisions in industries where they
became dominant. Nancy F. Koehn, Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers’ Trust from
Wedgwood to Dell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2001); Thomas L. Haskell, ed.,
The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1984); Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of
Higher Education in America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976); Samuel J. Haber, The
Quest for Authority and Honor in the American Professions, 1750–1900 (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1991); Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand, 278–9, 445–8; Margaret Levenstein,
Accounting for Growth: Information Systems and the Creation of the Large Corporation (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1998), 20–39; Gary John Previts and Barbara Dubius Merino, A History
of Accountancy in the United States: The Cultural Significance of Accounting (Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 1998), 135–44; John L. Carey, The Rise of the Accounting Profession: From Technical
to Professional, 1896–1936 (New York: American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, 1969);
John Richard Edwards and Stephen P. Walker, eds., The Routledge Companion to Accounting History
(New York: Routledge, 2008).
38
E. Digby Baltzell, Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class (New York: The
Free Press, 1958), 337.
39
Putnam would always look back fondly on the dinner, and repeated its success in 1855, when he
organized a dinner at New York’s Crystal Palace, catered by the Astor House, that helped launch the
New York Book Publishers’ Association. Ezra Greenspan, George Palmer Putnam: Representative
American Publisher (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 67, 360–6.
with him, and these were great occasions for me.”40 Companies were founded in
service firms, like the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company,
created at a meeting in the Clarendon Hotel in 1854; Peter Cooper was unanimously
elected the chairman.41 Service firms could build communication among individuals
from different communities, as when abolitionist US Senator William Sumner
stopped by the Boston barbershop of John Smith to hear the concerns of the Black
community.42 Working-class saloons were places to network—to find jobs, win votes,
build associations, unions, and communities—all by sitting down and talking it
over. Service firms even offered places to hide out when experiments in trust failed:
President Andrew Jackson escaped to Gadsby’s Hotel after he invited the public to
the White House for an inaugural reception and received “a rabble, a mob, of boys,
negroes, women, children, scrambling, fighting, romping” and grinding a 1,400-pound
gift cheese into the carpets.43
Service firms hosted countless associations, organizations, and societies. Even the
Washingtonians, the first great temperance organization in US history, held meetings
at Chase’s Tavern in Baltimore until Mrs. Chase chased them out.44 They hosted
conspirators in crime and dissent. In 1842, Thomas Wilson Dorr set up an alternate
state government in a tavern in Rhode Island because the government wouldn’t let
Roman Catholics like him vote. Dorr was convicted of treason and sentenced to hard
labor, the government seized the tavern and drank up all the liquor, and Rhode Island
passed a new law allowing any adult—even African Americans—to vote, as long as
they paid the one-dollar poll tax.45
The past two centuries are full of examples like this—people, organizations, trades,
social classes, and nations learning to trust each other as customers in service firms. No
doubt you have your own examples, including some very important moments in your
life. In each case, you purchased emotional labor that helped you to feel trust. The trust
you have purchased is an emotion in several senses. It has a physiological component
that can be either exciting or calming (heart-rate, breathing, glandular activity), and
that is hard to untangle from the related unphysiological causes and effects. It is not
a rational measurement—even if we think we are scientists of trust, we cannot use
a character reading in a bar as definitive evidence of someone’s trustworthiness. But
even rational measures like news reports and credit scores communicate information
that is never dispositive. In the end, evidence about trustworthiness, like other data we
use to make “rational” decisions, help to shape a feeling, and it is the feeling on which
we choose to act.
40
When Scott moved from Pittsburgh to Altoona to take over as Superintendent of the Pennsylvania
Railroad, he took Carnegie with him, where they lived together for several weeks in the same hotel
room, until Scott moved his family to town. Andrew Carnegie, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920), 81 [quote], 82.
41
Thomas Hughes, Life and Times of Peter Cooper (London: Macmillan, and Co., 1886), 212.
42
Bristol, Knights of the Razor, 75.
43
Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 53–4; Ted Widmer, Martin Van Buren (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 2005), 72; Sismondo, America Walks into a Bar, 120; Margaret Bayard Smith, The First
Forty Years of Washington Society (New York: Scribner, 1906), 295 [quote].
44
Sismondo, America Walks into a Bar, 106–7.
45
Ibid., 131.
Do different kinds of service create different feelings of trust? Do some promote

democracy and capitalism better than others? Styles of service did indeed vary in the
antebellum period (as they still do today). Most importantly, you could choose what
color your waiter or barber was—Black, Irish, or white. Thus we see trust balanced
with another emotion—mastery. The desire to feel like a master over a servant or slave
remained strong in the nineteenth century, and service firms responded to that too. As
they sold customers a feeling of trust among each other, they also sold them a feeling
of mastery over their employees. The trust was built, in part, by the shared mastery.
Ultimately, though, we don’t know how the emotional labor of service workers
created an atmosphere of trust, or the effects of their different styles of service. The
evidence from the antebellum period isn’t detailed enough; neither is evidence from
today. We could make generalizations—a calm, mature, mellow-voiced waiter might
provide the right mood for a romantic dinner, a more energetic bartender for a night
out with the coworkers—but mostly we’d be guessing. Just like Charles Lovejoy could
only guess whether to trust people like Charles Willis, and whether that feeling of trust
came from some legitimate intuition, or just a spell of good weather.
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4
The Cold War and the Making of Advertising in

Post-War Turkey
Semih Gökatalay, University of California, San Diego
Introduction
On May 9, 1945, the government-owned Ulus [Nation] wrote that “the conclusion of
the war in Europe was celebrated with joy all over Turkey yesterday.”1 The end of armed
conflicts in Europe was enough to cheer up the Turkish public for reasons easy to
discern. Turkey had remained neutral until February 1945, when it entered into the
war on the side of the Allies. It did not suffer heavy casualties, but the interruption of
international trade and the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of men had brought
about drastic increases in the prices of basic goods, created lingering agricultural
scarcities, and corroded business confidence since 1939. With the Allied victory
in Europe, a general desire prevailed in Turkey to return to pre-war economic and
social conditions. Citizens looked to make a new life and demanded a better future
for themselves. Their hope, however, proved to be short lived. First, a “war of nerves”
between Turkey and the Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of the war and then
the Cold War continued to create certain emotional moods, such as anxiety and fear,
across the country.
This study foregrounds the effects of the Cold War on how big businesses and
small-space advertisers promoted their products via mass media in Turkey in the
late 1940s and early 1950s. With a focus on the diverse repertoire of emotions
used, it illustrates the role of international politics in shifting the link between a
macro-scale business context and emotions in early Cold War Turkey. Emotional
marketing included advertising efforts that primarily used a variety of emotions to
attain profitability. As profit-oriented but not necessarily rational actors, Turkish
firms sought to use emotions within the context of the Cold War to persuade
consumers to buy their products by explaining what positive emotions, such
as happiness and pride, they would feel if they bought these products and what
1
Ulus, May 9, 1945, 1.
negative emotions, such as regret and sadness, they would experience if they chose
other companies.
This compartmentalization of emotions and the formation of new relationships
between consumers and enterprises altered Turkish advertising at its core and was
hugely influential on the incorporation of emotions into marketing. The next section
discusses how companies exploited images of soldiers and army vehicles to publicize
their products by taking advantage of the perception of a growing Soviet threat and
trying to create a sense of safety and security.
The cultivation of stronger diplomatic relations between Turkey and the United
States likewise contributed to the increasing popularity of emotional marketing.
In concert with integration into the capitalist world economy and modernization,
commercial enterprises in Turkey imported new methods of advertising from their
American counterparts, further increasing anti-communist messages conveyed
through marketing communication, as well as morally conservative symbols, such
as images of the happy family, and commercialized nationalist language. The third
section deals with the connection between emotions and marketing techniques relying
on children and family relationships.
The substantial increase in the consumption of American goods and products in
Turkey made up another important component of emotional marketing. As the fourth
section unpacks, politicians and other public figures portrayed the consumption of
American imports as a patriotic action that would increase the safety of Turks against
the Soviet encroachment. Private enterprises took advantage of these developments
and formulated innovative marketing approaches to cater to new customers via
gendered and emotionalized selling.
Although focused on Turkey, this study investigates the influence of the Cold War
tensions on emotional marketing within a global framework of international relations
and advertising. Pioneered by Frank Costigliola, historians of diplomatic relations
have written about the role of emotions in the conduct of international relations in
the Cold War.2 Although relatively little has been written about the role of emotions
in the making of Turkish foreign policy, recent scholarship has given attention to the
emotional dimension of Turkey’s Cold War policies after the emotional turn in the
field.3 This chapter discusses the fluid, complex, and emotional Cold War context
that not only held important implications for Turkish foreign policymaking, but also
underpinned the growth of emotional selling and presented firms with the novel
opportunity to adjust to post-war consumerism.
Previous studies of Cold War cultural history have addressed the influence of
Americanization on the cultural and economic spheres. Several historians have used
the Cold War as an explanatory paradigm for the growing importance of emotions in
2
See Frank Costigliola, “Culture, Emotion, and the Creation of the Atlantic Identity, 1948–1952,”
in No End to Alliance the United States and Western Europe, ed. Geir Lundestad (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 1998), 21–36; Frank Costigliola, “‘I React Intensely to Everything’: Russia and the
Frustrated Emotions of George F. Kennan, 1933–1958.” The Journal of American History 102, no. 4
(2016): 1075–101.
3
Mehmet Akif Kumral, Exploring Emotions in Turkey–Iran Relations (Cham: Springer International
Publishing, 2020), 119–82.
The Cold War and Advertising in Post-War Turkey 85
advertising in the decades that followed the Second World War.4 Scholars have further
provided a comprehensive account of the acceleration of Americanization in US allies
after the Marshall Plan.5 Nonetheless, there has been no in-depth historical study of the
primacy of emotions in the making of Americanization and actualizing the American
way of life, particularly in Cold War Turkey.
By integrating the histories of emotions and business, this chapter deals with the
largely unexamined emotional marketing in early Cold War Turkey. It utilizes a variety
of Turkish magazines and newspapers with local and national circulation because
the visual presentation of advertisements as persuasive forces was the main tool to
attract consumers’ attention and influence the decisions that they made through
emotional marketing. All these periodicals included similar advertisements from the
same companies. In addition, this study consults memoirs and literary works to better
appreciate what emotions meant in the period under consideration. An analysis of this
rich trove of sources illustrates that the Cold War played a crucial role in shaping the
Turkish emotional landscape and the rise of emotional selling.
The Soviet Threat and Selling Fear, Anxiety, And Pride
Although Turkey stayed out of the Second World War until 1945, fear and anxiety
became dominant emotions in the country throughout the war years.6 In preparation
for an expected war, the Turkish government ordered that citizens extinguish exterior
lights in big cities, and sirens sounded several times a day. Literary works and memoirs
demonstrated the long-term psychological harm of blackouts on Turkish citizens.7 After
the war turned against Germany, the threat of the Axis invasion receded, but Turkey
confronted another threat. Turkey had been in close alliance with the Soviet Union in the
interwar period but Soviet–Turkish relations deteriorated during the war.8 As a newly
risen superpower, the Soviet Union pointed to Turkey’s delayed entry into the war and
4
Stefan Schwarzkopf, “Advertising, Emotions, and ‘Hidden Persuaders’: The Making of Cold-War
Consumer Culture in Britain from the 1940s to the 1960s,” in Cold War Cultures – Perspectives
on Eastern and Western European Societies, ed. Annette Vowinckel, Marcus M. Payk, and Thomas
Lindenberger (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 172–90; Timothy D. Taylor, The Sounds of
Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2012), 101–26; Mark Tadajewski and Inger L. Stole, “Marketing and the Cold War: an Overview.”
Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 8, no. 1 (2016): 2–16.
5
Richard F. Kuisel, “Coca-Cola and the Cold War: the French Face Americanization, 1948–1953.”
French Historical Studies 17, no. 1 (1991): 96–116; Sean Nixon, “Apostles of Americanization?
J. Walter Thompson Company Ltd, Advertising and Anglo-American Relations 1945–67.”
Contemporary British History 22, no. 4 (2008): 477–99.
6
M. Sinan Niyazioğlu, İroni ve Gerilim: İkinci Dünya Savaşı Yıllarında İstanbul’da ve Ankara’da Savaş
Algısı (Ankara: VEKAM, 2016).
7
Yeni Hikâyeler – 1951 (Istanbul: Varlık Yayınları, 1951), 71–5; Safa Önal, Dünyanın En Güzel
Gemisi: Hikâyeler (Istanbul: Mete Yayınevi, 1960), 57; Muzaffer Arabul, Çakrazlar (Istanbul: Tuncay
Yayınları, 1967), 114; Reşat Enis, Ekmek Kavgamız (Istanbul: Cem Yayınevi, 1974), 57; Hıfzı Topuz,
Tavcan – Savaş Yıllarında Kültür Devrimi (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2005), 67; Doğan Özgüden,
“Vatansız” Gazeteci – Cilt 1 (Sürgün Öncesi) (Istanbul: Belge Yayınlar, 2010), 20.
8
Onur İşçi, Turkey and the Soviet Union during World War II: Diplomacy, Discord and International
Relations (London: I.B.Tauris, 2021), 69.
did not renew the treaty of neutrality due to expire in 1945.9 Setbacks in Soviet–Turkish
diplomatic relations led to emotional press campaigns against leftists in Turkey, who
were viewed as insubordinate toward the state. According to politicians and journalists,
the Soviets and its “fifth columns” threatened Turkey’s most important values: freedom,
honor, and national independence.10 At the same time, Turkish politicians worried
that the Soviet Union was sowing seeds of rebellion among minorities, mostly Kurds,
against the Turkish state. The cumulative effect of these developments created a feeling
of anxiety and alarmed Turkish leaders in the months that followed the war.11
The perception of the Soviet threat became the main source of fear in early Cold
War Turkey. Turkey was isolated in the international arena and tried to confront the
Soviet Union alone since the United Kingdom and the United States did not offer
it any support to do so in the immediate aftermath of the war.12 On the one hand,
politicians tried to prepare citizens for a possible conflict with the Soviet Union. On
the other, they made efforts to alleviate anxiety by assuring the public that Turkey had
the military power to defend itself against a Soviet invasion. The speeches of high-level
politicians testified to this dual approach. In his speech at the National Assembly, the
speaker of the assembly Kâzım Karabekir stated that Turkey was ready to defend itself
to death in case of an attack by the Soviet Union.13
For their part, journalists portrayed the Soviet Union as the gravest danger to
Turkey in emotive columns. Hüseyin Câhit Yalçın, who was an influential MP and
the editor of pro-government Tanin [Resonance], for example, called the Soviet
Union an “impostor” that sought to occupy Turkey.14 Nadir Nadi of anti-government
Cumhuriyet [Republic] wrote that “brave Turkish men” were ready to defend their
countries against Soviet imperialism.15 War fears led authorities to continue intensified
security requirements. As it had done during the war, the government asked citizens
to blackout their homes at night. Stringent blackout regulations cultivated a constant
sense of danger among ordinary citizens in the late 1940s.16 Since the Soviet Union
appeared as an emerging threat, it became inseparable from a generalized sense of fear
at the national level throughout the early Cold War.
After fear became the predominant emotion in contemporary life, the broader
marketing strategy of businesses began to stimulate multiple emotions, such as courage
and pride. Advertisers, including child-oriented firms, used military references to
trigger a sense of safety in the consumer, exemplified by the ads of Çapamarka, a
9
Mustafa Aydın, “Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy: Changing Patterns and Conjunctures
during the Cold War.” Middle Eastern Studies 36, no. 1 (2000): 106.
10
Necmeddin Sadak, “Turkey Faces the Soviets.” Foreign Affairs 27, no. 3 (1949): 449–61.
11
Mustafa Sıtkı Bilgin and Steven Morewood, “Turkey’s Reliance on Britain: British Political and
Diplomatic Support for Turkey against Soviet Demands, 1943–47.” Middle Eastern Studies 40, no.
2 (2004): 41; Jamil Hasanli, Stalin and the Turkish Crisis of the Cold War, 1945–1953 (Maryland:
Lexington Books, 2011), 208–10.
12
Şaban Halis Çalış, Turkey’s Cold War: Foreign Policy and Western Alignment in the Modern Republic
(London: I.B.Tauris, 2017), 58–64.
13
Minutes of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, December 20, 1945, 44–5.
14
Hüseyin Câhid Yalçın, “Bolşevikler Maskeyi Yüzlerinden Attılar,” Tanin, July 13, 1945, 1.
15
Nadir Nadi, “Milli Misak Şuuru,” Cumhuriyet, December 28, 1945, 1.
16
Burhan Felek, Felek (Istanbul: Gündüz Yayınevi, 1947), 140; Savaş Sönmez, “1950’lere Doğru Çerkeş
Sokağı ve Çevresi.” Ankara Araştırmaları Dergisi 4, no. 2 (2016): 194.
leading firm in baby food founded in 1915.17 The firm bought large orders of space
in periodicals to advertise after the formation of the republic in 1923.18 It had creative
marketing employees with a massive advertising budget and placed advertisements
with various papers with national circulation in the early Cold War.
As the government and press emphasized the tension between the Soviet Union
and Turkey, there was an increase in the number of militaristic symbols in the firm’s
advertisements. For example, a boy holds a toy gun in Figure 4.1. The advertisement
connected the future of Turkey’s territorial integrity and national security to healthy
Figure 4.1 “For this little Mehmetçik [referring to the boy] to become such a robust
Mehmetçik [referring to the soldier], Çapamarka flour must be mixed with his food.”
Akşam, November 13, 1945, 8.
17
Oya Baydar and Gülay Dinçel, 75 Yılda Çarkları Döndürenler (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları, 1999),
110–12.
18
Orhan Koloğlu, Reklamcılığımızın İlk Yüzyılı, 1840–1940 (Istanbul: Reklamcılar Derneği, 1999),
263.
and strong generations, who could eliminate the fear and anxiety that the Soviet
threat generated. Another of the company’s advertisements depicted a baby resting
on a bed, with a necklace marked with the logo of Çapamarka being placed on it.
There is a Turkish flag on the sheet, and the caption reads “Turkey demands a strong
generation.”19
Firms such as Çapamarka not only promoted their products through repetition
of militaristic themes but also kept the threat of a Soviet invasion of Turkey alive,
addressing the necessity for preparing for a long-term confrontation with a common
enemy—the Soviet Union, the only great power with which Turkey’s relations were
strained in this period. The repetition of such themes reinforced the perception of the
Soviet Union as a permanent danger for the foreseeable future. Taking this nationwide
emotional mood into account, Çapamarka sought to seize expectations that the Soviet
threat would be persistent. It targeted parents who wanted to provide security and
safety for their children and the nation.
As these advertisements highlighted, Turks perceived themselves under threat
throughout the early Cold War, but the degree of threat varied over time. After the
promulgation of the Truman Doctrine, there was a short-term relief because public
figures believed that Turkey was not alone in its struggle against the Soviet Union.20
When the Cold War intensified and the Soviet Union increased its influence in the
countries surrounding Turkey, however, the Turkish press published articles about
the “Third World War” and nuclear weapons. The developments in the US political
landscape further stimulated the sense of fear and anxiety. During the campaign for
the 1948 United States presidential election, President Harry S. Truman benefited
from “an overstated anti-communism” to “instill fear” and “exaggerated the power
and influence of communists within the United States.”21 Truman’s strategy heavily
influenced Turkey. Along with politicians, the Turkish press became a critical tool for
spreading anti-communist messages and directing public fear.22
The fear-driven atmosphere found reflections in the business world. Şevket Rado,
a columnist of pro-government Akşam, wrote that all children’s toys “complied with
all the requirements of new war technology.” He pointed to the replacement of “tin
soldiers” with “war machines.” He thought that toy shops in Turkey were “no different
from American arsenals.” Criticizing toys that depicted war as “pleasing,” Rado
sarcastically stated that “if the Allies had been so prepared at the beginning of the
war, Hitler would certainly not have dared to ignite the war.”23 Rado’s observations
demonstrated how the Cold War affected even toys. Children in both capitalist and
communist blocs provided the most important base for contemporary support for the
Cold War politics—and emotional marketing. For example, the American Heritage
19
Akşam, November 28, 1945, 8.
20
Ahmet Şükrü Esmer, “Tehlike Karşısında,” Ulus, March 16, 1947, 3.
21
Andrew Hartman, Education and the Cold War: the Battle for the American School (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 79.
22
Yeni Sabah, January 1, 1948, 3; Yeni Sabah, January 15, 1948, 1.
23
Şevket Rado, “Vitrinlere Bakarken,” Akşam, January 4, 1948, 3.
Foundation wanted to reach children because it believed that “loyalties and ideals
built during the impressionable years of childhood often thrive for a lifetime.”24 The
significance of children in the Cold War can explain the primary role of children in
emotional marketing in Turkey.
Like their counterparts in the West, Turkish businesses intended to create a whole
new generation of customers. Çapamarka’s advertisements in January 1948 portrayed
the “happy” Turkish child who grows up with Çapamarka as the “only hero of security”
were emblematic of this intention.25 Similarly, the image in Figure 4.2 advertised the
Figure 4.2 “The healthy child of today is the symbol of [future] victories.” Akşam, May 8,
1948, 8.
24
Spring, Advertising in the Age of Persuasion, 36–8.
25
Akşam, January 22, 1948, 8; Yeni Sabah, January 24, 1948, 6.
same firm through images of Turkish soldiers and a baby and implied the heightened
sense of potential danger. As with the army, the product was explicitly depicted as a
bulwark against the enemy, i.e., communism.
In terms of the implications of post-war fear and anxiety in daily life, Turkey
looked very much like its counterparts in the Western Bloc. For example, a fear
of nuclear attack increased the importance of civil defense and created a wave of
collective anxiety in West Germany.26 Likewise, the use of nuclear-related fears in
the economic sphere was commonplace in the United States and its allies. Sellers
branded their products as a way for families to survive a potential nuclear attack.27
Similarly, fashion designers “turned fears into possibilities, finding novelty in the
products of a militarized world and assimilating them into a rather hopeful vision
of modernity.”28
The formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) became another
stimulus for the use of emotion in advertising. Since Turkey was not admitted to the
organization, Turkish politicians viewed the Soviet Union increasingly as an existential
threat to Turkey. In 1949, on the anniversary of Atatürk’s landing on Samsun, which
was conceived as the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence, President İsmet
İnönü voiced fears that the Soviet Union and its “fifth columns” posed a major threat
against the territorial integrity of Turkey and called for unity against the common
enemy of the nation.29 Within this atmosphere, companies decided to weave more
emotions into their marketing. While advertising their products, companies tried to
prove “military readiness” to deter any Soviet aggression.30
The use of emotions in advertising in early Cold War Turkey was not fruitless for
companies. For example, Çapamarka, the exemplar of the businesses that benefited
from emotions, was not financially successful until the 1940s, but it expanded its
business and imported machines to extend its production capacity in 1950,31 and
dominated the market in the following decade.32 The expansion of the company
was a sign of the success of advertisements the company ran during the late 1940s.
Indeed, rival companies, such as Arı Unları, began to rely on emotional marketing
after the success of Çapamarka.33 For instance, one of Arı Unları’s advertisements in
1949 used a muscular wrestler as the role model for the boy. It urged that parents
needed to buy its products if they wanted to fulfill their child’s “aspiration” to become
“strong like a Turk.”34 As the financial success of Çapamarka and the imitation of its
marketing strategy by rival companies suggests, the use of Cold War-related emotions
in marketing created desires in consumers and stimulated demand.
26
Frank Biess, “‘Everybody has a Chance’: Nuclear Angst, Civil Defence, and the History of Emotions
in Postwar West Germany.” German History 27, no. 2 (2009): 215–43.
27
Tanfer Emin Tunc, “Eating in Survival Town: Food in 1950s Atomic America.” Cold War History 15,
no. 2 (2015): 179–200.
28
Jane Pavitt, Fear and Fashion in the Cold War (London: V&A Publishing, 2008), 8.
29
Akşam, May 20, 1949, 1–2.
30
Akşam, September 14, 1949, 8; Akşam, September 29, 1949, 8.
31
Hakkı Göktürk, “Çapa Marka Gıdâ Sânayii Anonim Şirketi,” in İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, ed. R. Ekrem
Koçu (Istanbul: İstanbul Ansiklopedisi ve Neşriyat Kollektif Şirketi, 1958), 3733.
32
Fıstık Ahmet Tanrıverdi, Büyükada’nın Solmayan Fotoğrafları (Istanbul: Everest, 2006), 10.
33
Cumhuriyet, December 28, 1949, 6.
34
Cumhuriyet, December 1, 1949, 6.
American Aid and Selling Security
While the Soviet threat increased anxiety in early Cold War Turkey, increasing
economic and political ties between the United States and Turkey bolstered feelings of
safety and security. In addition, advertising portrayed the process of feeling safe and
secure as a channel to elicit positive emotions, such as euphoria and happiness. The
military supremacy of the United States, the formation of US-initiated international
institutions, such as the United Nations, and the post-war recovery of the capitalist
world economy combined to make possible the transition from Pax Britannica to Pax
Americana, aiding Turkey’s turn toward the West.35 Political developments produced
a profound change in the Turkish cultural landscape as US officials committed their
energy to facilitating (largely unilateral) cultural exchanges between Turkey and the
United States.36 As this section unpacks, advertising became another avenue through
which to examine the effect of Americanization.
The link between Americanization and advertising in Turkey should be located
within a larger framework of the Cold War. As Dawn Spring has observed, “advertising
and brand names became a vital part of the Cold War and American foreign policy” by
1948.37 Founded as a non-profit organization in the United States in 1942, the Advertising
Council served the needs of American foreign policy in the decades to come.38 Having
operated through collaboration between private and public figures, the council was able
to “produce a successful U.S. propaganda apparatus.”39 The council gave messages of
both fear of the Soviet Union and hope of defense against communism.40 As the previous
section made clear, Turkish politicians and advertisers disseminated these dual messages.
The main duty of the Advertising Council was to publicize the “American way of life.”
“The American dream” was touted as a “weapon” against the Soviet threat, especially in
the fifties, for target audiences in the United States and recipients of Marshall Plan aid.41
Turkey’s post-war Western orientation and cultural Americanization had far-
reaching effects on advertising after 1945. The pro-American press wanted advertisers
in Turkey to turn toward the American model as the basis for marketing strategies.42
35
Dilek Barlas, Şuhnaz Yılmaz, and Serhat Güvenç, “Revisiting the Britain-US-Turkey Triangle during
the Transition from Pax Britannica to Pax Americana (1947–1957).” Southeast European and Black
Sea Studies 20, no. 4 (2020): 642.
36
Frank A. Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas: United States Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations,
1938–1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 52–3; Cangül Örnek, “‘The Populist
Effect’: Promotion and Reception of American Literature in Turkey in the 1950s”, in Turkey in the
Cold War: Ideology and Culture, ed. Cangül Örnek and Çağdaş Üngör (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2013), 130–57.
37
Dawn Spring, Advertising in the Age of Persuasion: Building Brand America, 1941–1961 (New York:
38
Robert Griffith, “The Selling of America: the Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942–1960.”
The Business History Review 57, no. 3 (1983): 396.
39
Inger L. Stole, “Advertising America: Official Propaganda and the US Promotional Industries,
1946–1950.” Journalism & Communication Monographs 23, no. 1 (2021): 5.
40
Daniel L. Lykins, From Total War to Total Diplomacy: The Advertising Council and the Construction
of the Cold War Consensus (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 53–80.
41
Inger L. Stole, “‘Selling’ Europe on Free Enterprise: Advertising, Business and the US State
Department in the late 1940s.” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 8, no. 1 (2016): 44–64;
Lawrence R. Samuel, The American Way of Life: A Cultural History (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson
42
Reha Oğuz Türkkan, “Amerika Mektubları,” Cumhuriyet, October 30, 1953, 2.
Taking inspiration from contemporaries in the United States, Turkish advertisers

made greater use of visual materials in the late 1940s and early 1950s than their pre-
war counterparts.43 In addition to periodicals, firms mailed their advertisements
to homes, urban and rural, to reach a broader audience.44 Within this atmosphere,
in which advertising sectors further modernized and expanded, multi-emotional
marketing made its way into print advertising. While some companies utilized only
one emotion, such as happiness, most sought to combine several emotions in their
classified advertisements, sometimes even seeking to arouse a mixture of negative and
positive emotions simultaneously.
The growth of emotional marketing was nowhere more evident than in the use of
“family” in advertising. The fears of nuclear technology and the idea of civil defense
increased the importance of the family in Cold War propaganda.45 Even before the
Kitchen Debate, kitchens in particular and houses in general became a symbol of
anti-communist social narratives in the United States. The early Cold War saw an
increase in popular prescriptive food discourse in the United States in which “a highly
gendered, racialized, and nationalistic home cooking ideal” had a dominant place.46
At the same time, the US government encouraged the construction of new houses,
especially outside city centers. Homes were depicted as “familial rewards.”47 Suburban
“dream house[s]” symbolized “American hopes for the good life” in this period.48 US
policymakers assigned women a patriotic role defending their families and homes
against the threat of communism.49 Through the Advertising Council and the Marshall
Plan, the United States exported this ideal image of family and home to its allies.50
Turkey was exposed to messages in line with broader processes of Americanization.
Housing had become a serious problem in Turkey during the war due to the interruption
of international trade and the scarcity of construction materials.51 When the war came
to an end, the construction of houses and housing estates accelerated, as with the rise
of the suburbs in the United States.52 Concurrently, banks offered more home loans
43
Kemal Salih Sel, “Press Advertising in Turkey.” Gazette (Leiden, Netherlands) 10, no. 3 (1964):
250–4.
44
Muhtar Körükçü, Köyden Haber (Istanbul: Varlık, 1950), 75.
45
Guy Oakes, “The Family under Nuclear Attack: American Civil Defence Propaganda in the 1950s,”
in Cold-War Propaganda in the 1950s, ed. Gary D. Rawnsley (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999),
71–3.
46
Jessamyn Neuhaus, “Cooking at Home: The Cultural Construction of American ‘Home Cooking’
in Popular Discourse,” in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture, ed. Kathleen
LeBesco and Peter Naccarato (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 99.
47
Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic
Books, 2008), 161–7.
48
Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work, and Family Life
(New York: WW Norton & Company, 1985), 38.
49
Mary Brennan, Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade against
Communism (Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 2008), 60.
50
Greg Castillo, “Domesticating the Cold War: Household Consumption as Propaganda in Marshall
Plan Germany.” Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 2 (2005): 261–88; Greg Castillo, “The
American ‘Fat Kitchen’ in Europe: Postwar Domestic Modernity and Marshall Plan Strategies of
Enchantment,” in Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology, and European Users, ed. Ruth
Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), 38.
51
Nermin Abadan-Unat, Kum Saatini İzlerken (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2007), 133.
52
Altan Öymen, Bir Dönem Çocuk (Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2012), 476.
to prospective customers.53 After the war, the “modern house” became a symbol of
modernity in Turkey, and mainstream advertising propagated this message.54 The goal
behind projecting an ideal image of a nuclear family was not only to better market
products but also to give the impression of a “safe” family.
One can see this ideal image of families and the promotion of new homes through
emotional marketing even in the advertisements of political parties. The Democratic
Party (DP), whose name was inspired by its American counterpart, was the main
opposition party in Turkey in the late 1940s. The DP challenged the Republican
People’s Party, which had ruled since the formation of the Turkish Republic in 1923.
One of the most popular ways through which the DP tried to woo Turkish voters was
raffles. Figure 4.3 shows a DP-organized raffle in 1949, with prizes worth Turkish lira
(TL) 500,000 going to the people and the rest to the party. One ticket cost TL 1.00.
The DP included houses in the same raffle. The “modern” family in the advertisement
resembled an average American family, not a stereotypical Turkish married couple.
Figure 4.3 “It can make your dream come true.” Cumhuriyet, December 3, 1949, 6.
53
Ruşen Keleş, 100 Soruda Türkiye’de Şehirleşme, Konut ve Gecekondu (Istanbul: Gerçek Yayınevi,
1972), 203.
54
Senem Gençtürk Hızal, Cumhuriyetin İlanı: Türkiye’de Modernleşmeyi Reklâm Metinlerinden
Okumak (1928–1950) (Ankara: BilgeSu, 2013), 197–200.
The caption next to the couple reads: “it can make your dream come true.” The
advertisement portrayed the ownership of a stand-alone house and a brand-new car as
a “dream,” one that bore a striking resemblance to the American dream.
Literary works were likewise full of references to Americanization and the
American dream. The ownership of “the latest brand American car”55 and “American
cloth” was considered a marker of social status and wealth.56 Only a handful of socialist
intellectuals criticized the wide currency of the “American dream” in Turkey.57 Most
public figures championed it, laying the ground for the promotion of the American
way of life via emotional marketing.
Banks and other financial institutions used this Americanized image of families the
most. Almost all banks launched an advertising campaign featuring what they called
a “happy” family and a “safe” house. Banks gave these modern houses to a limited
number of families who opened any kind of new bank accounts throughout the early
Cold War.59 Figure 4.4 presents different advertisements from both public and private
Figure 4.4 Emotional marketing and banks.58 Akşam, January 11, 1948, 8; Akşam, May 28, 1948,
8; Akşam, September 29, 1949, 8; Yeni İstanbul, January 5, 1950, 6; Akşam, February 17, 1950, 8.
55
Haldun Taner, Günün Adamı (Istanbul: Saray Kitabevi, 1953), 40.
56
Refik Halit Karay, Yeraltında Dünya Var (Istanbul: Çağlayan, 1953), 90.
57
Aziz Nesin, Medeniyetin Yedek Parçası (Istanbul: Akbaba Mizah Yayınları, 1955), 88.
58
For other examples, see Akşam, August 24, 1951, 8; Akşam, September 18, 1951, 8.
59
Akşam, March 1, 1948, 8.
banks. All include portrayals of families, who were either recently married or had
one child. They tried to convince customers that these houses were the right step to
make the American dream true and families contented. One can see the portrayal of
prosperous customers who were smiling and peaceful because of their ownership of
the “dream” house.
Such emotionality spoke specifically to middle- and upper-class families. There
was no image that represented urban lower classes and rural populations. The reason
behind their exclusion was twofold. First, these family ideals had a relatively niche
audience and were entirely for urban residents who were expected to better internalize
American values and the American way of life. Second, advertising was aimed mostly
at the middle and upper classes because the lower classes did not have sufficient funds
to invest in banks and purchase new houses. Still, as the next section elaborates,
emotional marketing and the promotion of the consumption of American goods
included even people from humble backgrounds over time.
The Consumption of American Goods and Selling Happiness
The economic sphere was another, and arguably the most important, dimension of
the influence of Americanization on emotional marketing. Economic containment,
part of the Truman Doctrine and broader US foreign policy, contributed to this
influence.60 The Truman administration propagated democratic freedom as a way of
public diplomacy to “create support for liberal capitalism” in its allies.61 At the same
time, it propagated “free enterprise” as the “economic basis” of liberal democracy.62
US officials expected the Marshall Plan to provide wider access to raw materials and
primary products in countries receiving aid.63 As one recipient of American aid via the
plan, Turkey committed itself to integrating into the world economy as an exporter of
raw materials.64 A more liberal agenda of economic policies, contrasting with interwar
protectionism, was firmly established in Turkey by 1953.65
As with other US allies, consumerism gained momentum in Turkey. American
policymakers and diplomats promoted consumerism and consumer society in the
Cold War both at home and abroad.66 Print propaganda was based on the slogan
of “classless abundance for all,” against the Marxist emphasis on class conflict.
Political leaders promised social welfare to the working classes to prevent the latter
60
Ian Jackson, The Economic Cold War: America, Britain and East-West Trade, 1948–63 (New York:
61
Laura A. Belmonte, Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 48–9.
62
Harry Magdoff, The Age of Imperialism: The Economics of US Foreign Policy (New York: NYU Press,
1969), 175.
63
Robert E. Wood, “From the Marshall Plan to the Third World,” in Origins of the Cold War: An
International History, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter (New York: Routledge, 2005), 209.
64
Korkut Boratav, Türkiye İktisat Tarihi, 1908–2007 (Ankara: İmge Kitabevi, 2008), 101.
65
Şevket Pamuk, Türkiye’nin 200 Yıllık İktisadi Tarihi: Büyüme, Kurumlar ve Bölüşüm (Istanbul:
Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2014), 229.
66
Mark Tadajewski, “Promoting the Consumer Society: Ernest Dichter, the Cold War and FBI.”
from turning against the former.67 “Consumer abundance” reflected American

toughness and competitive spirit, as well as public confidence in the ability of the
US military to defeat the Soviet Union.68 The Advertising Council and the Marshall
Plan allowed the United States to transfer these ideas and slogans to the other side
of the Atlantic Ocean. Other European nations also portrayed “consumerism” as a
vital value to their societies.69 Anti-communist propaganda in the US’ European
allies propagated “private consumption” as an integral part of the “American way
of life.”70
Outward-looking Turkish businessmen played an intermediary role in the
influence of consumerism on the emotional market. For example, Vehbi Koç,
who was the president of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce and Industry and a
leading member of the ruling party, made his first business trip to the United States
in 1946. His main purpose was to enhance commercial relations between Turkey
and the United States, as the “representative of many American firms in Turkey.”71
Anti-government businessmen, such as Nuri Demirağ, also favored close economic
relations between Turkey and the United States. Like Koç, they bought American
firms’ franchises and advocated for liberal economic policies and government support
of private enterprises.72
The alliance with the United States and the subsequent departure from interwar
statism provided fertile ground for businessmen to promote the American way of
life. Even restaurants in Ankara, the Turkish capital, were named “Missouri” and
“Washington.”73 Different foods, most of which Turks had been unfamiliar with
before, such as sandwiches, cookies, and burgers, gained popularity. The consumption
of American goods was not limited to urban wealthy classes. People from a modest
background, too, began to “gravitate toward the temptation of the American lifestyle.”
American goods and products, from nylon belts to chewing gum, broadened their
appeal to Turkish citizens.74 A “happy” consumer referred to those who bought US-
made commodities.
Advertising provided a new frontier for Americanization in the Turkish commercial
landscape in many areas of daily life. The number of references to the United States in
advertisements multiplied after the pronouncement of the Truman Doctrine.75 It was
the best marketing technique for a commodity to be “American” for sellers in Turkey.
Children selling goods on the street claimed that their products came from the United
67
Andrew L. Yarrow, “Selling a New Vision of America to the World: Changing Messages in Early US
Cold War Print Propaganda.” Journal of Cold War Studies 11, no. 4 (2009): 6–7.
68
Aaron Bobrow-Strain, “Making White Bread by the Bomb’s Early Light: Anxiety, Abundance, and
Industrial Food Power in the Early Cold War.” Food and Foodways 19, no. 1–2 (2011): 78.
69
David F. Crew, “Consuming Germany in the Cold War: Consumption and National Identity in
East and West Germany, 1949–1989, an Introduction,” in Consuming Germany in the Cold War, ed.
David F. Crew (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 7.
70
Castillo, “Domesticating the Cold War,” 268.
71
Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivleri (Prime Ministry’s Republican Archives) (BCA), 30.1.0.0.42.250.4,
December 20, 1947.
72
Bernard Lewis, “Recent Developments in Turkey.” International Affairs 27, no. 3 (1951): 324; Boratav,
Türkiye İktisat Tarihi, 90.
73
Öymen, Bir Dönem Çocuk, 515–16.
74
Özgüden, “Vatansız” Gazeteci, 87.
75
Cumhuriyet, May 5, 1947, 5.
States, even if they were made elsewhere.76 A similar keenness for “American” goods
appeared in second-hand goods advertisements in Turkish newspapers. These items
ranged from electric ironing machines, and sewing machines to radios and heating
equipment.77 The sale of American goods took place through auctions. The sellers
used emotional marketing to publicize auctions. An advertisement for an auction of
American goods in 1952 stated that “those who would buy furniture can be sure that it
will bring ‘beauty, comfort, and novelty’” to their homes.78 An assessment of primary
accounts demonstrated that such auctions were popular.79
As such, the promotion of the American way of life created a pool of potential
customers eager to buy American goods. Families were a significant target audience
of emotional advertising. Figure 4.5 shows an advertisement for baby powder by the
Figure 4.5 Advertisement for American baby powder. Cumhuriyet, November 7, 1947, 4;
Akşam, February 5, 1948, 8.
76
E.L., “Readers and Writers in Turkey,” The New York Times, October 2, 1947, 30.
77
Cumhuriyet, May 18, 1946, 4; Cumhuriyet, November 1, 1947, 5; Ulus, June 21, 1952, 4; Ulus, August
4, 1952, 5; Cumhuriyet, August 1, 1954, 7.
78
Vatan, August 23, 1952, 6.
79
Haldun Taner, On İkiye Bir Var (Istanbul: Varlık, 1954), 86; Aziz Nesin, Deliler Boşandı: Mizah
Hikâyeleri (Istanbul: Karikatür Yayınları, 1957), 108–9.
company Hasan Çocuk Pudrası [Hasan Baby Powder]. It states, “If you want your baby
to be always cheerful, use Hasan Baby Powder … made from very pure raw materials
from America.” Likewise, an advertisement for RCA radios claimed that the radios
were “immensely popular in the United States,” and promoted them as follows: “Here
is a rare and masterpiece radio that will make a family home even happier!”80 Such
advertisements linked products to the American way of life and a sense of happiness.81
The Frigidaire Appliance Company was the perfect example of the businesses that
promoted the American way of life via emotional marketing. Although there were other
firms that sold refrigerators, the company’s name became synonymous with refrigerators
in Cold War Turkey.82 The company benefited from family-oriented themes to attract new
customers and claimed that its refrigerators brought health and happiness to children
and families.83 In addition to these positive feelings, the company referred to negative
emotions if the consumers bought refrigerators from other producers.84 In a classified
advertisement in 1948, the company warned the customer as follows: “Don’t lose sleep over
an inappropriate purchase! The slight hesitation of today can lead to regret tomorrow.”85
The advertisement in Figure 4.6 combined the American way of life and emotional
marketing in harmony. It called for customers to “give a Frigidaire as a gift” to their
homes. It portrayed a woman, presumably a homemaker, who was very happy because
her husband had purchased a “Frigidaire” for her. This gendered dimension of
emotional marketing was consistent with the “American way of life” that identified
women primarily as wives and mothers. Emotional marketing in Cold War Turkey
concentrated on the so-called traditional gender roles and a feminized ideal of
consumption in a similar way.86
From a marketing perspective, the role models for Turkish families were their
American counterparts, who achieved happiness by consuming American products.
Frigidaire’s advertisements were emblematic of this marketing strategy that promoted
the company’s refrigerators as the choice of millions of “happy,” “healthy,” and “satisfied”
families around the world,87 with the company being the most popular brand in the
United States.88 Soon after its entry into the Turkish markets, the company had scores
of branches not only in the big cities but also provincial towns.89 Throughout the
Cold War, when they thought about refrigerators, what came to the minds of Turkish
consumers was Frigidaire.90
After American goods and the American way of life gained widespread currency,
the companies that sold non-US products adopted similar family-oriented themes and
emotional marketing strategies. As with the promotion of American goods, “happy”
80
Akşam, April 19, 1948, 8. Also, see Cumhuriyet, April 11, 1947, 6.
81
For example, see the ad of Duo-Therm oil stoves (Cumhuriyet, December 12, 1951, 6).
82
Cumhuriyet, March 7, 1949, 6; Cumhuriyet, August 1, 1950, 6.
83
Cumhuriyet, October 23, 1947, 6; Cumhuriyet, November 3, 1947, 6.
84
Cumhuriyet, April 16, 1951, 6.
85
Cumhuriyet, August 29, 1948, 6.
86
Many other companies advertised women as homemakers. For example, see the ad of Hotpoint
refrigerators (Cumhuriyet, July 6, 1953, 8).
87
Cumhuriyet, September 6, 1951, 6; Cumhuriyet, July 12, 1952, 8.
88
Cumhuriyet, June 5, 1952, 6.
89
Cumhuriyet, September 12, 1952, 8.
90
Alber Bilen, Türk Sanayiinde Kırk Zorlu Yıl (Istanbul: Final, 1988), 80.
Figure 4.6 “Give a Frigidaire as a gift to your home!” Cumhuriyet, December 29, 1950, 5.
families became a hallmark of emotional advertising for these companies.91 For

example, an advertisement of Orion, which was a Hungarian corporation, promoted
its radios as the sources of “happy hours” and “a joyful corner” at home. This example
suggested that although Americanization played a decisive role in the development of
emotional marketing, the use of emotions affected other companies’ strategies as well.92
Conclusion
Focusing on the print advertising that became a staple of everyday life in early Cold
War Turkey, this study has analyzed a variety of ways that Turkish businesses used
both positive and negative emotions to market their products. The broader context
91
Akşam, February 23, 1951, 8.
92
For example, see Cumhuriyet, November 11, 1954, 7.
of the Cold War was the major factor behind the intensive use of emotions. Post-war
Soviet expansionism in the Balkans and the Middle East and the diplomatic spat
between Turkey and the Soviet Union fueled many Turks’ fears of a communist
threat to their country and the rest of the world. Furthermore, Turkey’s pro-Western
orientation increased trade with the capitalist world. Turkey came into frequent
contact with American culture following its pro-Western orientation after the
Second World War. As an economically undeveloped country and a staunch ally
of the United States, Turkey was part of a universal discourse of marketing in the
post-war period.
Scores of newspaper advertisements testify to the effect of the Cold War on
emotional marketing. Businesses incorporated emotions into their marketing efforts
and designed advertising to militarize children and society at large as they promoted
their products. They further combined anti-communist messages and family-related
emotions to influence consumers’ actions and increase sales. American commodities of
all sorts were promoted in these newspapers and magazines. Advertisements created a
role model that Turkish people were expected to look up to. Accordingly, the imported
images of cheerful children, couples, and families were projected onto Turkish citizens
as ideals of what they should aspire to be.
To make their companies stand out in the market, entrepreneurs spent a great
deal on emotional advertising. Turkish firms used the cultural and economic
aspects of Americanization to expand their share in the market, engage consumers’
emotions, and launch campaigns that promoted the consumption of American
goods and the American way of life. Although it is difficult to tell the exact extent
of these advertisements’ reach, Turkish citizens, particularly the middle and upper
classes, were inundated with these advertisements on a daily basis. The experiences
of Çapamarka and Frigidaire, which were the exemplars of emotional marketing
in early Cold War Turkey, suggest that emotional marketing worked. Furthermore,
judging by the frequent use of emotions in advertisements and the variety of the
companies that benefited from emotions to advertise their products, it is safe to
argue that such companies elicited an emotionalized consumer response, and
consumers tended to gravitate towards these brands that conveyed messages to
evoke emotions.
Indeed, the influence of the Cold War on Turkish advertising persisted, and more
companies used the American way of life to reach out to large audiences in the following
decades.93 Turkish companies, along with other non-American enterprises, continued
to center their marketing on emotions and advertised their products through the use
of “happiness” and “tranquility,” as well as the promotion of family values.94
93
Nazife Karamullaoglu and Özlem Sandıkçı, “Western Influences in Turkish Advertising:
Disseminating the Ideals of Home, Family and Femininity in the 1950s and 1960s.” Journal of
Historical Research in Marketing 12, no. 1 (2019): 127–50.
94
Cumhuriyet, October 28, 1959, 6.
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Part Two
Enabling Emotions
Joseph Schumpeter defined the entrepreneur as someone who “gets things done,”
making it sound like a simple matter of initiative and will. In this imagining the
entrepreneur stands alone, as an island. Right? But whether a massive corporation
or an individual entrepreneur, everyone needs certain resources to compete. No one
simply “gets things done.” It is almost a given that anyone wanting to successfully enter
the marketplace possess the necessary capital, the required labor, and the physical
resources necessary to conduct whatever business they are about. But, how do we go
about gaining those resources? Through the cold, hard art of the deal? What price must
one pay to gain them, what sorts of debts must one incur? Is it only about financial
debt and social capital? And what metrics do we employ—the inexorable logics of
inputs and outputs, profit and loss? Or is there something more that undergirds the
connections necessary to gather and marshal resources?
This section takes those logics apart in order to explore the questions we pose
above, revealing the deeply emotional commitments and entanglements that firms and
entrepreneurs use to gather the resources they need to compete. And so, if emotions
can discipline and constrain us, then they can also enable, just as powerfully as do social
and financial capital. Indeed, in the right circumstances emotions might be the surest
route to securing such capital. Can pleasure and happiness grease the machinery, or act
as convulsive livewires that get things moving? Emotions help us tap the intelligence of
ourselves and others. Loyalty and commitment? Those are more than just calculations
based in past performance. Is it always right to trust the head over the heart? And
emotions enable us to cope in the face of the lash of fortune.
Emotions activate! Emotions animate! Emotions get things done!
106
5
Marriage à la mode du pays: When Identity

and Contractual Love Became a Pledge for the
Signares’ Business
Cheikh Sene, Institut des Mondes Africains (IMAF), Aubervilliers, France
Introduction
In the second half of the fifteenth century, Portuguese navigators called lançados
(Portuguese Jewish emigrants) frequented the Senegalese coast. They created
stopovers on the Petite-Côte,1 at Rio Fresco (Rufisque), Porto d’Ale (Portugal), and
Joala (Joal) (see Figure 5.1) to trade with the local populations. In doing so, some
formed unions with the local women, whom they called “senhora” (madam), and thus
created so-called Métis communities.2 The Métis women from these unions were also
called “signaras” by the Portuguese travelers to indicate the high social status they held
within the Métis community of the Petite-Côte.3 It was the French who transformed
the term “senhora” into signare. Thus, the signare is a European representation of a rich
Black or biracial merchant.
The signares became involved in trading, particularly in the export of leather, indigo
and spices to Portugal and Holland, and the manufacture of cottons for the region.4
However, following the loss of the Portuguese trading monopoly on the Petite-Côte,
the occupation of Gorée in 1677 by the French, at the expense of the Dutch, and the
violence of the slave trade on the Petite-Côte, the signares were dispossessed of their
trade. They left the Petite-Côte with their families and migrated, partly to Gambia,
then to Gorée and Saint-Louis, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Luso-
African signares were not numerous in the trading cities of Gorée and Saint-Louis and
they were quickly replaced in those places by signares resulting from unions between
the French or the English and local women. Indeed, in 1658, Saint-Louis of Senegal
1
The coastal area between Gorée and Casamance.
2
Françoise Descamps, “Les signares: de la représentation à la réalité,” in Histoire de Gorée, ed.
A. Camara and J. R. De Benoist (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003), 60.
3
Jean-Luc Angrand, Celeste ou le temps des Signares (Sarcelles: Anne Pépin, 2006), 19.
4
Ibid. 16.
became a French town. A few years later, in 1677, the island of Gorée was occupied
by France. In Gorée and Saint-Louis, the signares wove marriages à la mode du pays
(contractual marriages) with the French. These links enabled them to become rich and
to invest in the gum and gold trades and in craftsmanship.
From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, the term signare underwent a
significant evolution. First meaning lady or mistress, signaling an undeniable autonomy
of action and socio-economic domination, it came to designate mixed-race women,
part of the group that had become inclusive of mixed-race people who asserted their
racial difference within the community of the inhabitants of the trading posts of
Senegal.5 There are three generations of signares. The first generation was made up of
Black women living in the trading posts of the Petite-Côte at the time of Portuguese
hegemony. The term signare is given to those Black women who lived in concubinage
with the Portuguese. The daughters born of these unions were also called signares and
constituted the second generation. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, agents
of the French Compagnie des Indes, in relationships with Black women from Saint-
Louis and Gorée, fathered a third generation of signares. These women in Saint-Louis
and Gorée kept the signare title because of their high social status. It is important
to point out that in Gorée and Saint-Louis, some of the signares had English origins
due to the successive domination of these two cities by the English.6 However, we
are interested in their descendants who are both mixed-race and signares. The latter
constituted a social group in their own right because of their dual identity (European
and African) and their socio-economic status. There is some research on signares.7 In
contrast to these studies, which are limited only to the economic life of the signares,
my study tries to focus on the use of emotions in the business of these shrewd, free
women entrepreneurs.
This chapter explores the emotional, social, and economic life of these
charismatic businesswomen, who have been portrayed as knowing how to use
their physical assets and to play on emotions to attract Europeans and defend their
commercial empire. The first part will be devoted to the origin of the signares. Then,
a second part will study the unions between the signares and Europeans. Finally,
the third part will allow us to understand the economic stakes hidden behind these
negotiated “love relationships” that allowed the signares to become rich and to form
a new social class from the eighteenth century until their decline at the end of the
nineteenth century.
5
Guillaume Vial, Femmes d’influence: les signares de Saint-Louis du Sénégal et de Gorée, XVIIIe-XIXe
siècle: étude critique d’une identité métisse (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, Hémisphères éditions,
2019), 141.
6
The Seven Years’ War, which was at the origin of the English occupations of Gorée (1758–1763
and 1779–1783) and Saint-Louis (1758–1779). This city was occupied a second time during the
Napoleonic Wars between 1809–1817.
7
Pierre Cariou, Promenade à Gorée (Paris: BNF, unpublished manuscript 1966); George E. Brooks,
“The Signares of Saint Louis and Gorée: Women Entrepreneurs in Eighteenth Century Senegal,”
in Women in Africa, ed. Nancy J. Hafkin and Edna G. Bay (Stanford: Standford University Press,
1976), 19–44; Jean Delcourt, La turbulente histoire de Goree (Dakar: Editions Clairafrique, 1982);
Vial, Femmes d’influence; Aïssata Kane Lo, De la Signare à la Diriyanké sénégalese: trajectoires
féminines et visions partagées (Senegal: L’Harmattan, 2014).
Contractual Love and the Signares’ Business 109
Figure 5.1 Trading posts in Senegambia, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.8
Who Were the Signares?
To understand the origin of the signares, we must return to the fifteenth century, when
Portugal was the first European nation to settle on the coast of Senegal. Some Portuguese
men formed relationships with the women of the country, whom they called “senhora,”
i.e. ladies. Thus, in Portuguese trading posts, the signares probably existed from at
least the end of the fifteenth century. These Senegalese women, the first partners of the
Portuguese, constitute the first generation of signare, one entirely made up of Black
women. From these unions between Black signares and Portuguese, biracial or Métis
children were born, constituting the second generation of signare. This generation,
broadly, existed until the second half of the eighteenth century. These signares of
Portuguese origin traded in leather, fabrics, and food products. Their disappearance
from the economic scene can be linked to the conquest of the Senegalese coast by the
Dutch, French, and English. Indeed, the Portuguese did not attach great importance to
Senegambia and neglected their trading posts. Consequently, in pre-colonial Africa, as
in colonial America, a neglected possession or colony became an attraction for other
European maritime powers.
After the Portuguese trading post at Arguin was abandoned, the Dutch Company
moved in during the second half of the seventeenth century to process gum with the
8
The exact toponymy of Senegambia as defined by the English in 1765 designates their hold on Saint-
Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River, which they had occupied since 1758, and the Gambia River,
from where they owned the Fort James trading post. It is thus the space between the Senegal and
Gambia rivers that constituted the Senegambia.
Moors of Trarza. Dutch hegemony in Senegambia was very brief. Indeed, the creation of
the French trading posts of Saint-Louis in 1659, the English Fort James in 1661, and the
conquest of Gorée by the French in 1677, to the detriment of the Dutch, began the end
of the Portuguese and Dutch monopoly in Senegal. The trade came under the control
of French and English trading companies. In turn, by the beginning of the eighteenth
century, the Petite-Côte had fallen under the exclusive monopoly of France. Unlike the
Portuguese Lançados, who married the women of the Petite-Côte, we do not know of
any Dutch sailors and merchants who lived with indigenous women.
The end of the Portuguese hegemony in Senegal deeply affected the second
generation of signare. The bulk of the immigration of Luso-African women, the
second generation of signares, and their families, to Gorée and Saint-Louis took place
between 1701 and 1725. The Lançados (Portuguese Jews), from whom the mixed-race
minority of the Petite-Côte had come, no longer visited the coast of Senegal, which
was now under French domination and, moreover, has become “unstable” because of
the raids by slavers from the kingdom of Kajoor.9 The island of Gorée received some
Luso-African signares weakened by the loss of the commercial monopoly of their
Portuguese fathers and fleeing the violence of the slave trade on the Petite-Côte. Among
these signares were Victoria Albis and Jeanne Gracia, among the first inhabitants of
the island of Gorée.10 The Luso-African signares were contemporaries of the third
generation of Franco-Senegalese signares born of unions between French men and
Senegalese women. Thus, at the time of the appearance of the mixed-race world in
Gorée and Saint-Louis, the Luso-African world continued to exist, and was even at its
apogee, asserting its specificity since the end of the fifteenth century.11 Nonetheless,
the Franco-Senegalese signares of Gorée and Saint-Louis gradually replaced the Luso-
African signares economically. They played a major role in the socio-economic life of
Senegal by holding a significant share of the trade because of their family ties with the
French, who managed French trading interests in Senegal, and the support of their
families settled in France.
Signares and Europeans: A Conditionnal Love
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, trade in Senegal was dominated by the
Compagnie des Indes, headquartered in the fort of Saint-Louis. At Gorée, the Company
had an assistant administrator who was in charge of trade with the states of the Petite-
Côte (Kajoor, Bawol, Siin, Saloum and Albréda in Gambia). In all the French trading
posts in Senegambia, there were few Métis signares. Black African women were in the
majority. Generally, they were businesswomen from the local high bourgeoisie, who
formed relationships according to social status, including with Europeans holding high
positions in the colony, such as the bourgeois or aristocratic staff of the Compagnie des
Indes, especially the directors and their assistants, or the senior soldiers of the Gorée or
9
Angrand, Céleste ou le temps des Signares, 22.
10
Ibid., 27.
11
Vial, Femmes d’influence, 48.
Saint-Louis garrison. The Compagnie des Indes forbade its agents to bring their wives
to the colonies. However, it allowed them to openly practice marriage à la mode du
pays,12 and their descendants to benefit from the right to inheritance. An agent living
with a signare (Black or Métis) familiar with the French language and customs enjoyed
the best possible conditions. Marriage à la mode du pays was very common in Gorée,
Rufisque, Joal, Portudal, and Saint-Louis between the seventeenth and nineteenth
centuries. These marriages were business marriages initially concluded between a
village chief or king and a European merchant. Of these marriages Durand explains:
The union of a white man with a black or mulatto girl has a very special conventional
character. It is not indissoluble; it lasts only as long as the parties have nothing to
complain about, or as long as one is not obliged to move away from the other
forever. If the absence is to last only a certain period of time, the woman who is
left alone, waits patiently and without failing in her duties, for the return of her
husband; she chooses another only in the event of death or assurance that he will
not return. This union does not affect the woman’s honour and reputation.13
According to Golbéry, the signares willingly entered into these marriages of limited
duration with Europeans.14 From these contractual unions mixed-race children were
born. The girls from these marriages were also called signares, because of their way
of life, which was similar to that of French women. These were the Métis signares.
As a group, they emerged slowly. According to André Delcourt, “in 1724, there were
only five young mulattoes in Saint-Louis between 12 and 15 years old.”15 It was from
the second half of the eighteenth century that the number of Franco-Senegalese
signares began to increase in Gorée and Saint-Louis. In Gorée, the signares came to
own many huts: thus, in 1749, ten properties out of thirteen belonged to the mixed-
race population, and more particularly nine to signares.16 The majority of the first
marriages à la mode du pays were unions between whites and Blacks. These unions
contributed to the increase in the number of Métis signares in the second half of the
eighteenth century. Thus, by 1786, Saint-Louis had 7,000 inhabitants, including 2,400
freemen, Black or mixed-race, 660 Europeans, and a little over 3,000 slaves. In Gorée,
out of 2,500 inhabitants there were 522 free men, mixed-race or Black.17 The island of
12
See Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Gilles Boëtsch, Dominic Thomas, and Christelle Taraud,
eds., Sexe, race & colonies. La domination des corps du XVe siècle à nos jours (Paris: La Découverte,
2018), 74.
13
Jean-Baptiste-Leonard Durand, Voyage au Sénégal ou Mémoires historiques, philosophiques et
politiques sur les découvertes, les établissemens et le commerce des Européens dans les mers de l’Océan
atlantique (Paris: Henri Agasse, 1802), 215.
14
Silv. Meinrad Xavier de Golberry, Fragmens d’un Voyage en Afrique fait pendant les années 1785,
1786 et 1787 (Paris: Chez Treutell et Würtz, T.1, 1802), 157.
15
André Delcourt, La France et les Etablissements Français au Sénégal entre 1713 et 1763 (Dakar:
Mémoire de l’IFAN no. 17, 1952), 123.
16
Marie-Hélène Knight-Baylac, “La vie à Gorée de 1677 à 1789.” Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer
57, 4e trimestre, no. 209 (1970): 402.
17
Robert Cornevin, Histoire de l’Afrique, L’Afrique précoloniale 1500–1900 (Paris: Payot, T.2,
1966), 351.
Gorée was marked by a female presence divided into three social categories: domestic
slaves; free Black women; and free and mixed-race signares.18
However, from the second half of the eighteenth century, “mulattoes were
particularly desired.”19 The agents of the Compagnie des Indes were no longer
fascinated and attracted by the Black signares but rather by the Métis signares for
physical and cultural reasons. The bodies of the signares symbolized exoticism among
Europeans. Thus, Michel Adanson, a French botanist, who was present in Senegal
between 1749 and 1754, wrote “the mulatto daughters enjoyed the privileges of their
mothers, privileges which their white or basan colour, so similar to that of their fathers,
made them extend.”20 The Métis signares were culturally similar to European women in
their dress and modes of living. Like their Senegalese mothers, the signares were much
coveted by the French and English who shared the trade of Senegal and the Gambia.
These marriages were as much business unions as they were love unions. Generally,
married to persons holding high positions in the trading companies and in the French
royal administration, the signares benefited greatly from these unions. Sometimes, as a
strategy, they married the poorer staff of the Company or of the French administration,
such as carpenters or masons, because of their technical know-how, which could be
passed on to their slaves.21 The signares actively participated in the gum trade and also
helped the Company in this trade by hiring their skilled domestic slaves to European
traders. Thus, many signares accumulated significant wealth living under the protection
of the French. These practices must have provoked a range of emotions, positive and
negative. Indeed, some agents of the French administration even felt disgust with their
colleagues, who distributed French property to the signares. Thus, for example, Michel
Adanson accused the directors of the Company of theft and corruption in giving part
of the staff provisions (bread, wheat, firewood) to signares, arguing that they “obtained
for this purpose from the director-commanding officer, the goods from France that
were refused to employees of a lower order.”22
Prominent unions involving signares included the governor of Senegal, Chevalier
Stanislas de Boufflers, and Anne Pépin. Appointed governor in 1785, Chevalier de
Boufflers gave the island of Gorée its status as the capital of Senegal. Married in France,
de Boufflers was also the companion of Anne Pépin, daughter of Jean Pépin, surgeon
major of the island, and her mother, the signare Catherine Baudet. Anne Pépin was the
sister of Nicolas Pépin, father of the signare Anna Colas Pépin, who in the eighteenth
century built the “House of the Slaves” on the island of Gorée. Anne Pépin, like her
cousins, was a formidable trader, specializing in the smuggling of gum arabic, with the
complicity of the French and English governors. During the time when she consorted
with Chevalier de Boufflers, Anne Pépin was also married à la mode du pays to
18
Ndèye Sokhna Gueye, “Splendeurs et misères des Signares: du rôle des femmes dans la traite
transatlantique et l’esclavage à Gorée (XVIIe-XIXe siècles),” in Pratiques d’esclavage et d’asservissement
des femmes en Afrique, Les cas du Sénégal et de la République Démocratique du Congo, ed. Ndèye
Sokhna Guèye (Dakar: NENA/CODESRIA, 2017), 27.
19
Delcourt, La France et les Etablissements Français, 123.
20
Charles Becker and Victor Martin, “Mémoire d’Adanson sur le Sénégal et l’île de Gorée.” Bulletin de
l’I.F.A.N, sér.B, 42, no. 4 (1980): 736.
21
22
Becker and Martin, “Mémoire d’Adanson,” 736–7.
Bernard Dupuy, an employee of a Bordeaux trading company. Anne Pépin returned

to her husband when the governor left. This story expresses the freedom of action
of this signare and her right to dispose of her body as she wished. This right to the
ownership of their bodies was shared by most of the signares, who freely chose their
companions.23 The notion of freedom was extremely strong for the signares. These
women seem not to have been interested in feelings of love. Indeed, the apparent
absence of marital emotions, which might be seen in their ability to remarry very
quickly after their husbands left for Europe, challenges our categorizations of action
and motivation. As the postings of the senior employees of the trading companies and
the French administrators was time limited, and with no hope of return, the signares
would remarry, often with their replacements. This desire to live with a European man
reinforces the idea that we are faced with actions in which it is difficult to discern what
was guided by economic interests and what by feelings rooted in true love.
When “Love” Becomes a Strategy: The Fortunes of the Signares
The signares lived from their economic activity and the help of their French partners.
For example, Bernard Dupuy, husband of Anne Pépin, was the subject of a letter of
denunciation addressed by the governor of Gorée, Boniface, to the Minister of the
Navy. He was accused of living with a Métis woman (the signare Anne Pépin) with
whom he was involved in the gum arabic and gold smuggling trade.24 Whatever else
they were, the liaisons between Europeans and signares were marriages involving
business, but in ways that are not easy to understand. Marriages à la mode du pays were
the fastest way for the signares, who inhabited a mercantile culture, to increase their
financial capital. Certainly, given an absence of evidence, it is difficult to determine with
certainty that these unions were based on mutual love. However, it is easier to prove
that they did involve strategic calculations. By marrying a European, a signare was
conscious of how her financial interests might be benefited in the short term. However,
the majority of the Europeans who worked for the trading companies did not stay long
in Senegal. Nonetheless, signares also enjoyed longer-run benefits after a European
partner departed; including from the knowledge of his language and culture.25 Not
only did the European husband bring immediate material benefits, but after his
departure he left behind a home, slaves, and capital to grow the signare’s trade. Thus,
with the help of their European husbands, the signares dominated the local trade in
cloth, gold, leather, and gum by the beginning of the nineteenth century and succeeded
in forming a bourgeois class in the towns of Senegal. However, it was also believed at
the time that, once married, the signare “believes herself honoured to share the bed of
a white man; she is submissive, faithful, grateful, and even to the slightest care; she does
everything in her power to captivate his benevolence and love.”26 This speaks not only
to contemporary prejudices but also the deep complexities of the situation.
23
Gueye, “Splendeurs et misères des Signares,” 30.
24
25
Alain Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal. Saint-Louis, Gorée, Dakar (Paris: Karthala-
Orstom, 1993), 33.
26
Jean-Baptiste-Leonard Durand, Voyage au Sénégal, 212.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the productive capital of the signares
consisted mainly of slaves, whose numbers were increasing daily, and who the signares
kept for their own use, rarely selling them to Europeans.27 Examples from the mid-
eighteenth century include Anne Fleury, who had forty-nine slaves, Marie Jacques
Arnaud and her sister Madeleine (fifty-two slaves), Louise Pindatica (forty-seven
slaves), and Anne Cécile (seventy-one slaves).28 At Gorée, in 1767, Caty Louette, the
signare of Captain Aussenac, had twenty-five male and forty-three female domestic
slaves, which made her the wealthiest woman on the island.29 According to Le Brasseur,
governor of Gorée and Senegal from 1773 to 1777, “The signares will treat negroes at
the coast and will not sell any of them. When they saw a negro for a month in their
huts, they no longer had the strength to detach themselves from them.”30 Signares lived
closely with their slaves, whom, it has been argued, they considered members of their
family. Many signares liked to walk with their female slaves adorned with gold jewelry
in the streets of Goree or St. Louis on feast days, to show their wealth and high social
status. It has also been claimed that the emotional ties between the signares and their
slaves were so strong that the company or the royal administration had little hope of
redeeming them and turning them into slaves for the American continent.
Domestic slaves thus contributed to the enrichment of the signares. The signares of
Saint-Louis rented their slaves to the Compagnie des Indes.31 The Company employed
the male slaves as laptots (sailors) onboard its boats making voyages to Galam, and
in the slave trade along the Senegal River. On board the ships, the women did many
tasks such as pounding millet, cooking, and washing clothes.32 The price of a slave
rented to the Compagnie des Indes for navigation on the Senegal River, to make lime
or to cut wood, was six pounds per month.33 During the voyage to the Galam country,
the Company allowed the slaves to bring with them two barrels of salt in the form of
a permitted port. The salt was exchanged for gold with the inhabitants of Galam. The
slaves could bring back to their mistresses, the signares, “fifteen, twenty and up to
thirty large gold barrels.”34 This gold was the basis of the wealth of the signares. It was
generally used in the manufacture of jewelry and in the local cloth trade.
By 1763, the management of the Senegal concession was in the hands of the French
royal administration. Thus, in Gorée, the signares rented their slaves to the French
administration, who used them in naval works and as laborers, masons, carpenters,
caulkers, or craftsmen for the works on the island.35 In 1769, their owners were paid
27
Guillaume Vial, Femmes d’influence, 126.
28
Nathalie Reyss, “Saint-Louis du Sénégal à l’époque précoloniale, l’émergence d’une société Métisse
originale 1658–1854,” PhD diss., University of Paris I Sorbonne, Centre de Recherches Africaines
T.2, 1983, 13–15
29
Knight-Baylac, “La vie à Gorée de 1677 à 1789,” 402–3.
30
Ibid., 404.
31
Pruneau De Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie (Paris, chez Maradan, 1789), 3.
32
Charles Becker and Victor Martin, “Détails historiques et politiques, mémoire inédit (1778) de J.A.
Le Brasseur,” BIFAN, Série B, T.39, no. 1(1977): 110.
33
De Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie, 2–3.
34
Ibid., 3–4.
35
Abbé David Boilat, Esquisses sénégalaises; physionomie du pays, peuplades, commerce, religions, Atlas
(Paris: Karthala, [1853] 1984), 8.
two bars per month for each slave.36 In 1783, this wage was increased to three bars, but
the Goreans found it too low.37 Thus, the wealth of the signares also depended on the
number of slaves they owned. The signares of Gorée and Saint-Louis further developed
the local economy thanks to their fleets of cotres, small vessels of up to six meters,
equipped with a triangular sail for sea freight and rowing boats for river navigation.38
They traded locally in cloth, gold, leather, ivory, and food.
In 1791, free trade was established in Senegal, signaling the end of the commercial
monopoly of the trading companies and enriching the signares.39 The latter, holders
of many slaves, continued to participate in economic life at least until emancipation.
In the composition of their fortunes, real estate and slaves played an important role,
but gold and jewelry, ships, and shares of the Compagnie de Galam40 also played
their part. It is in Saint-Louis that the largest fortunes were to be found.41 Indeed, the
essential commercial activities of the country were concentrated in the valley of the
Senegal River, where an important trade of gum, gold, slaves, and food was carried out.
The signares and Métis men of Saint-Louis in turn invested their fortune in the gum
trade, their main source of income. As for the signares of Gorée, they were the main
shipowners for local coastal freight and suppliers of trafficking products. However, the
inhabitants of Gorée “do not have, as in Senegal (Saint-Louis), an indigenous trade,
such as that of gum. The trade of negroes that they make on the whole coast, in the small
river of Saalum, in that of Gambia, and that they then sell to the French batimens who
pass by, forms all the trade of the inhabitants of Gorée.”42 In Gorée, as in Saint-Louis,
the signares had large warehouses in their houses where they stored their goods43.
In 1815, the Congress of Vienna abolished the slave trade in Senegal. The work of
their slaves had constituted, as we have seen, the bulk of the signares’ resources. During
the first half of the nineteenth century, the “gum century,” the town of Saint-Louis was
populated by European and local traders living solely from the gum trade. Many of the
signares had invested their fortunes by building or buying houses which they rented
to the French administration, civil servants, officers, and merchants.44 The European
population of Saint-Louis generated small domestic jobs for the benefit of the signares
who controlled the slave labor force. In 1844, Marie Fablot explained that her six
slaves, who were engaged in sewing, laundry, and ironing, provided her with an annual
36
The bar is a kind of fictitious currency. It was paid for in goods into which various trade goods
such as guinea coins, weapons, gunpowder and brandy were brought. It was the ideal currency for
trade in Senegambia. It seems that its face value has hardly changed over time. On the coast, it was
estimated in 1723 at £6, both in Senegal (Saint-Louis) and Arguin (Mauritania).
37
Knight-Baylac, “La vie à Gorée de 1677 à 1789,” 404.
38
39
Vial, Femmes d’influence, 47.
40
The “Compagnie de Galam” (1824–1848) traded in gum. It was made up of shareholders, most of
whom were merchants and traders from Saint-Louis.
41
Roger Pasquier, “Le Sénégal au milieu du XIXe siècle, la crise économique et sociale,” PhD diss.,
University of Paris Sorbonne (Paris IV), T. 5 (1987): 2277.
42
Jean-Gabriel Pelletan, Mémoire sur la colonie française du Sénégal: avec quelques considérations
historiques et politiques sur la traite des nègres (Paris: Chez la Ve Panckoucke, 1800), 26.
43
44
Roger Pasquier, “Les traitants des comptoir du Sénégal au milieu du XIXe siècle,” in Entreprise et
Entrepreneurs en Afrique XIXe et XXe siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, T.1 1983), 151.
income of 1,800 francs.45 A slave employed at the gum ports on the Senegal River
could earn 600 to 700 francs per gum trade campaign for his master, and a carpenter,
joiner, mason, or caulker between thirty and thirty-five francs per month.46 In this way,
many signares owed their fortune to the gum trade. We can cite the example of Marie
Labouré. She emerges as one of the richest, if not the richest, of the signares. Born in
1802 in Saint-Louis to a European merchant father, she died in 1856. She sent dealers
to the gum trade and official documents qualified her as a merchant. Her real estate
fortune can be roughly estimated at 35,000 francs, her slaves at 37,000 francs, and she
held 139 titles of the Compagnie de Galam, that is to say to the value of 33,800 francs.
Her total fortune was estimated at 200,000 francs.47 The fortune associated with the
dual culture and racial heritage (European and African) had made the Métis signares a
social class in their own right in a society dominated by Blacks.
The Signares: A New Social Class in a Black World
The signares occupied an important place in the predominantly Black-populated

trading towns from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. They managed to form
a social class with a dual culture: Senegalese and French. Wealth was for them a social
symbol of success in the pre-colonial capitalist world marked by globalization and
Atlantic trade, and the most important economic marker in the eighteenth century.
In pre-colonial Senegal, and everywhere in the French colonies (French West Indies
and America), the question of race and color was a prominent issue. Racial mixing
was a fundamental element that made it possible to distinguish the signares from the
free or slave Black women of Gorée and Saint-Louis. The signares become actors in
a society in which they combined the characteristics of Senegalese culture with the
dominant features of European culture.48 The social characteristics of the signares
evolved according to their fortunes. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, they
lived in straw huts. In the second half of the century, the fortunes amassed in trade and
matrimonial alliances with Europeans were one of the first criteria for distinguishing
signare identity. The signares built Provençal-style stone houses with tile roofs and
Italian-style staircases. In fact, their personal fortunes, due to the enrichment à la
façon du pays,49 and the influence of their families in France and England, allowed
them to bring in often enslaved master masons and carpenters.50 These luxurious
eighteenth-century French-style stone houses bear witness to the opulence in which
the signares lived. They were housed in much the same way as in France; their houses
were built of brick or stone, had only one floor and were well ventilated.51
45
Pasquier, “Le Sénégal au milieu du XIXe siècle,” T.2, 530–1.
46
Ibid., 531.
47
Ibid., 523.
48
Kane Lo, De la Signare à la Diriyanké sénégalaise, 13–14.
49
Enrichment “à la façon du pays” is an expression that alludes to marriage “à la mode du pays,”
meaning all the means used by the signares (trade, marriages with Europeans) to get rich.
50
51
Boilat, Esquisses sénégalaises, 5.
Signare society was divided into an association or assembly called in Wolof52

“mbotaye.” David Boilat explains:
All those of the same age, rank and usually from the same neighbourhood belong
to the same society. On meeting days, the mbotaye is convened in the house of one
of the members, where the ladies must spend the whole day rejoicing. In this case,
each member contributes to the cost of meals and refreshments. For weddings,
births and funerals of a member or a relative, the “mbotaye” is convened. It is also
at these meetings that the ladies consult each other when necessary and give each
other advice for their guidance.53
Generally, the mbotaye were not only important decision-making structures and
moments of social cohesion, sharing and solidarity, but also an opportunity for the
signatories, “richly dressed in embroidered mboubes (African dress) with finesse and
art; their necks, ears, arms and feet adorned with gold jewellery,”54 to display their power,
vulnerability, wealth, joy of living, anxiety, and sadness. The life of signares was not
simple, living under daily pressure due to the fear of losing the support of the Europeans
in their economic activities. Thus, it has been argued, they were compelled to be deferent,
caring, and cheerful towards the Europeans in order to keep their economic empire.
The signares were Catholics. In Gorée, as in Saint-Louis, the numerous Catholic
signares’ processions were called fanal, synonymous with carnival. According to Jean-
Luc Angrand, “at that time, the streets of Gorée and Saint-Louis were frequented by
signares who went to mass or weddings accompanied by their numerous richly decorated
servants, carrying large decorated lanterns and luminous kites.”55 Such processions were
special occasions, but the clothing and lifestyle of the signares had long been the subject
of comment among the populations of the Saint-Louis and Gorée trading posts. Indeed,
both the European and Senegalese imaginations conveyed stereotypical images of
these women. They were idealized and sometimes described as beautiful seductresses,
wealthy, powerful, and dominant businesswomen.56 Their status was further signaled
by signares balls and receptions they organized, better known as “folkars or folgars,”
which they inherited from their Portuguese ancestors, who had founded the leather
and cotton trades of Joal, Portudal, Rio Fresco (Rufisque) on the Petite-Côte.57 These
celebrations were symbolic moments when the signares displayed their joy of living and
other facets of their culture and social belonging through their clothing, headdresses,
and adornments. Pruneau de Pommegorge describes the elegant dress of the signares:
They wear a white handkerchief on their head, artistically arranged, over which
they place a small narrow black ribbon, or coloured ribbon, around their head.
A French-style shirt, trimmed, a corset of taffeta or muslin, a skirt likewise, &
52
Wolof is the language commonly spoken in Senegal. It is the “national language” of the country.
53
Boilat, Esquisses sénégalaises (1853), 5–6.
54
Ibid., 6.
55
56
Gueye “Splendeurs et misères des Signares”; Angrand, Céleste ou le temps des Signares.
57
Folkars is translated into French as folklore or festival. Angrand, Céleste ou le temps des Signares, 119;
Pruneau De Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie, 6.
similar to the corset, gold earrings, gold or silver foot chains, when they have no
other, with red morocco slippers at the feet; over their corset, they wear a piece of
two alder trees of muslin, the ends of which are thrown over their left shoulder.58
The signares’ clothing mixed European and African style, for they had very quickly
integrated these European contributions into the local clothing fashion, thus creating a
new social class, straddling two cultures. The headdress of the signares was influenced
by that of the country’s indigenous women, and by the papal tiara, symbol of their
power and social rank as Christians, and was thus the result of a cross-fertilization
between Europe and Africa (see Figure 5.2). Thus, through their clothing, the signares
Figure 5.2 A signare Source. Courtesy of the artist, Corentin Faye.
58
De Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie, 4–5.
sought to create their own cultural identity at the crossroads of African and European
cultures within the Black community of trading posts on the coast (Gorée, Saint-Louis,
Rufisque, Joal, Portudal) strongly influenced by Wolof culture.
The Signares: The End of Business Emotion or the Decline of a

Community of Successful Businesswomen
The Treaty of Vienna of 1815, which prohibited the slave trade, reduced Senegal to the
status of a poor region—at the very least it had a negative impact on some individuals
and groups within the community. Generally speaking, the economic situation of the
trading posts that were the pride of the Senegambian region could be summarized as
follows: in 1817, Gorée was reduced to the coastal trade of leather, gold, and morfil in
small quantities, whilst Saint-Louis could no longer count on its gum trade, which was
in steep decline.59
It has been claimed that the people of Senegal had difficulty adapting to legitimate
trades following the prohibition of the traditional “object” of trade, the enslaved. The
only remaining profitable economic activity was rubber. The traders all rushed into the
gum trade, the main object of exchange, which was losing more and more of its value.60
Indeed, in the first half of the nineteenth century, there was a considerable increase
in the number of contractors in Saint-Louis, precipitating the gum crisis in the early
1840s, which profoundly affected economic activity. According to Roger Pasquier,
“all Senegalese with capital have suffered very severely from the consequences of the
crisis. Traders have been swamped with debts and some of them have been forced into
bankruptcy. For them, as for others, their real estate assets have been mortgaged or
sold.”61 Naturally, many signares were also affected. Subsequently, slavery was abolished
in France and its colonies by the Decree of April 27, 1848, which considered slavery to
be “an attack on human dignity … by destroying the free will of man, it suppresses the
natural principle of right and duty … it is a flagrant violation of the republican dogma:
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”62
These twin events made the economic situation of the signares, who lived on
domestic slavery, difficult. This challenging economic context created a sense of fear,
anger, and sadness within the signare community, which had a strong emotional
and economic attachment to the role of slavery in their lives. The report of the
president of the commission of inquiry on the emancipation of slaves, dated April 20,
1844, emphasizes that the signares affected by the gum crisis who had to pay debts
preferred to sell jewelry, furniture, and even real estate, rather than part with their
slaves.63 The ongoing impoverishment of the signares initially provoked bitterness and
59
Georges Hardy, La mise en valeur du Sénégal de 1817 à 1854 (Paris: Emile Larose, 1921), 9.
60
Ibid., 34.
61
Pasquier, “Le Sénégal au milieu du XIXe siècle,” T.2, 560.
62
Decree of April 27, 1848, see http://expositions.bnf.fr/montesquieu/themes/esclavage/anthologie/
decret-du-27-avril-1848-abolition-de-l-esclavage.htm [accessed September 20, 2022].
63
Pasquier, “Le Sénégal au milieu du XIXe siècle,” 512.
discouragement, then when the crisis became more and more acute, ruining some,
forcing them to give up the gum trade, there was an explosion of anger.64 Embarrassed
by the fall in their income, the signares, allied with their brethren, the Métis traders
and Senegalese slave owners, were strongly against the emancipation of the slaves,
which would mean their economic decline. The French administration, fearing the
consequences of a possible popular uprising that would jeopardize the security of
the French of Saint-Louis and Gorée, refused to strictly enforce the decree of the
emancipation of slaves in Senegal.
France, experiencing rapid industrial expansion, needed raw materials and new
markets to sell its products. It therefore sought stable countries where security and
peace prevailed so that people could engage in agricultural activities.65 This new
economic policy, based on peanuts, rubber, cocoa, and cotton, had not formed part of
the economic vision of the signares of Saint-Louis and Gorée, who depended on the old
trading economy, where slaves and gum formed “cash crops.” The signares disappeared
from the economic chain as the main activity of the Senegalese economy, which had
been based on gum, became dominated by groundnuts. By 1850, colonial authorities
and the Bordeaux lobby (Maurel and Prom, Deves) had succeeded in reorienting
the export economy to the burgeoning peanut basin south of Senegal River.66 This
economic change brutally upset the world of the mixed-race bourgeoisie, of which
signares were a part. The Muslim merchants, who knew the Senegalese hinterland
better, were now used as relays for the French trading houses to the detriment of the
signares and others in Saint-Louis and Gorée. The official founding of the city of Dakar
in 1857 was a fatal blow to Gorée and Saint-Louis. These two cities, strongholds of the
signares, were gradually losing their strategic interest and privileged status. At the end
of the nineteenth century, the era of the comptoirs gave way to that of colonization.
The signares of the end of the nineteenth century, and especially their descendants in
the twentieth century, lived from renting property in the four communes of Senegal
(Dakar, Gorée, Rufisque, and Saint-Louis) where a strong French and mixed-race
community still lived. Moreover, colonial executives, who now more frequently
arrived with their wives, stopped mixing with Métis women in Senegalese cities,
contributing further to the decline of the signares, who no longer drew the attention
of wealthy Europeans.
Conclusion
Initially referring to the Black women of the Petite-Côte who fraternized with
Portuguese traders in the fifteenth century, the term signare came to be used to refer
to mixed-race women from unions between Portuguese men and Black women. In
the second half of the eighteenth century, into the nineteenth, the word signare was
64
Ibid., 593.
65
66
Hilary Jones, The Métis of Senegal (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2013), 60.
more often applied to Métis women from mixed-race relationships between French
or English men and Black women. The liaisons between Europeans and signares were
based on economic motivations as much as love, complicating conventional narratives,
often founded on European cases, of love and marriage sometimes supporting, but
always remaining essentially distinct from, economic activity and success.
At the same time, these relationships undoubtedly allowed the signares to amass
large fortunes which they invested in local commerce. The signares were genuine
entrepreneurs, businesswomen who traded in gold, ivory, cloth, and gum.67 They
owned slaves whom they rented to the Compagnies des Indes in the eighteenth
century and, in the nineteenth century, to the French royal administration, and traders
and dealers in gum along the Senegal River. Frequently described at the time as
beautiful, coquettish, and refined, the signares possessed a unique socio-cultural status
influenced by European and Senegalese culture, particularly Wolof. However, shifting
economic interests and the expansion of French colonial rule in Senegal impacted the
economic life of this urban community. Métis habitants bore the brunt of Gum Fever’s
end because of the extent of their investments in the trade, especially as gum was
replaced by groundnuts. The abolition of slavery in the colonies led to further greater
insecurity for signares and Métis women holding large numbers of domestic slaves.
The signares were slowly disappearing from the economic life of Senegal, increasingly
dominated by European trading houses and Muslim traders from Saint-Louis.
Today, the signares are present in the collective memory of the Senegalese people,
forming a kind of emotional legacy. The former President Léopold Sédar Senghor, a
follower of cultural cross-fertilization, wrote poems dedicated to the signares. Artists
and musicians like to remember the signares in their works, even going so far as to
exaggerate their beauty or to consider them as a symbol of Senegalese beauty and “the
representation of the Senegalese feminine ideal.”68 During national holidays, young
girls dress in signare fashion to show the face of Senegalese culture in the era of the
trading posts. The signare fashion (fabric, jewelry, headdresses, bracelets) flourishes
in Senegal, especially in Gorée and Saint-Louis, the two historical cities of the
signares, which today attract many tourists. Fanal, nocturnal parades to the sounds of
percussion and singing, and to the light of lanterns made by the inhabitants, are often
organized in Saint-Louis in the last week of December to remember the signares. These
lanterns were carried by the slaves to illuminate the route taken by the signares on
their way to Midnight Mass. However, in the Senegalese imagination, the signares were
also women of light sexual morals, soft, joyful, and sensitive. At the same time, the
signares were businesswomen who took advantage of their status as women favored
by Europeans to develop their trade networks. They certainly seized opportunities to
manufacture a social status and “signare identity” of their own, an identity that must
itself have brought emotional rewards. Thus, the imaginary in which the signares are
housed is sometimes biased and certainly complicated, including emotionally.
67
Brooks, “The Signares of Saint Louis and Gorée,” 19–44.
68
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124
6
“the commerce of affection”: Masculinity and

Emotional Bonds Among Boston Merchants
Laura C. McCoy, independent scholar
Introduction
Joseph Coolidge was a dreamer. Alone in Canton, China in March 1840, Coolidge
wistfully wrote to his friend and fellow merchant, Augustine Heard, in Boston. The
pair had just launched a new China trade firm, Augustine Heard & Co. From halfway
around the world, Coolidge laid out his dream for their shared future:
My friend, it is one of the great blessings of my life to have known you; and I look
forward to joining you again, with the same pleasure and happiness that I do to
once more being with my children … [Y]ou I hope will feel as [my wife and I]
do that, without binding ourselves never to part for a day, our happiness will be
promoted by living with each other as the members of one family.1
The profound emotional expression at the heart of Coolidge’s letter is striking—

though likely unsurprising to historians of masculinity who have documented the
loving language circulated among male friends in the early American republic.2
That male business partners exchanged such tender sentiments raises questions
about the emotional networks that structure business. Why would a merchant
expect that reuniting with his business partner would induce the same “pleasure
and happiness” as rejoining his own children? What advantages, emotional or
1
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, March 6, 1840, Heard Family Business Records [HFBR], Baker
Library at Harvard Business School, Boston, MA.
2
On affectionate friendship between men, see Richard Godbeer, The Overflowing of Friendship: Love
between Men and the Creation of the American Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2009); Karen V. Hansen, “‘Our Eyes Behold Each Other’: Masculinity and Intimate Friendship in
Antebellum New England,” in Men’s Friendships, ed. Peter M. Nardi (Newbury Park: Sage Publications,
Inc., 1992); E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the
Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993); Donald Yacavone, “‘Surpassing the
Love of Women’: Victorian Manhood and the Language of Fraternal Love,” in A Shared Experience:
Men, Women, and the History of Gender, eds. Laura McCall and Donald Yacavone (New York: New
York University Press, 1998).
economic, did colleagues seek in fantasizing about “living with each other as the
members of one family”?
This chapter contends that many mid-nineteenth-century American merchants
like Coolidge and Heard treated affective professional relationships as a critical
resource enabling them to navigate the emotional rollercoaster of commercial life.
Historian Scott Sandage has noted the increasing popularity in the 1840s and 1850s
of a false statistic; that ninety-seven out of one hundred merchants failed—a figure
that reverberated, Sandage contends, “because it conveyed not the economic but the
emotional magnitude of ubiquitous failure.”3 Fear of loss and failure persisted even
if that was not a trader’s material reality. To merchants, business was seductive and
capricious, ripe with fortune and peril. Their work was inherently speculative. Ships
could sink, taking profit—and lives—with them. War and politics could interrupt trade,
and repeated financial panics ensnared many a merchant’s fortune. As one writer in The
Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review put it in 1839, a merchant “can scarcely
move without danger. He is beset on all sides with disappointments, with fluctuations in
the current of business, which sometimes leave him stranded on an unknown bar, and
sometimes sweep him helpless into the ocean.”4 Amidst such stormy seas, affectionate
professional relationships—a reliable and reciprocal exchange of hope, optimism, and
sympathy with men who shared affective professional experiences—could be a lifeline.
Indeed, the constant, nagging specters of uncertainty, risk, and failure led many to
encourage merchants to forge a commerce of affection that could keep them afloat in
the volatile capitalist marketplace.5
Masculinity was at the heart of this venture. Merchants’ supportive emotional
economy rested partly on the language of compassionate brotherhood. “Home” guided
the market as merchants constructed professional networks through familial affection,
going into business with either male relatives or friends they thought of as “brothers.” In
speeches, magazines, and countinghouse chatter, merchants heard warnings that if they
failed to cultivate bonds of affection that could be mobilized in the economic realm, they
might not be able to withstand the economic and emotional volatility of the profession.
Merchant masculinity thus formed not just around independence and creditworthiness,
but also the ability to provide emotional support to one’s “fallen brothers.”6
3
Scott Sandage, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2005), 7–8. On merchants, see Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise:
Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1986); Rachel Tamar Van, “Free Trade & Family Values: Kinship Networks
and the Culture of Early American Capitalism” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2011). On the
“gloom” and “melancholy” expressed by the commercial class during the financial panics of the early
nineteenth century, see (among others) Sandage, Born Losers, esp. Chapters 1–3; Charles Sellers, The
Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), esp.
chapter 5.
4
Judge Joseph Hopkinson, “Lecture on Commercial Integrity.” The Merchants’ Magazine and
Commercial Review, Conducted by Freeman Hunt 1, no. 5 (1839): 372.
5
“Commerce of affection” is borrowed from Massachusetts lawyer Daniel Webster, who in 1807
referred to both wives and male friends as the “bank[s], in which [men] deposit [their] tender
sentiments.” “Mr. Webster to Mr. M’Gaw,” January 12, 1807, in The Private Correspondence of Daniel
Webster, vol. I, ed. Webster Fletcher (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1857), 223–4.
6
John Sergeant, “Mercantile Character,” Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine 3, no. 1 (July 1840), 17.
Masculinity and Emotional Bonds Among Boston Merchants 127
Merchants were not alone in laboring to produce and exchange sentiment

alongside goods and credit. By the early decades of the nineteenth century, many
Americans understood that attempts to procure credit and escape debt could produce
fear, anger, guilt, and sadness. Major financial panics regularly brought the nation’s
financial system to its knees, and a credit-based economy meant that individuals
faced sudden loss or failure at any time. The expansion of credit, banks’ inability to
maintain enough specie to fulfill that credit, widespread speculation, sudden debt
and bankruptcy—each of these factors made the early decades of the new nation
fraught with emotional anxiety across region, profession, and class.7 Consequently,
many Americans relied on affective—not just financial—strategies to mitigate the
unsettling consequences of an expanding capitalist economy.8 For many men, not
just merchants, male friendships helped assuage the anxieties and disappointments
of economic endeavor. The best support often came from understanding friends in
the same profession. For instance, historian Anya Jabour has unearthed a dynamic
network of emotional support among young lawyers in antebellum Virginia, who
turned to each other for professional advice and affectionate relief when their
professional and social status got them down.9
These bustling emotional economies should complicate how historians understand
separate spheres ideology. The ideal of separate spheres encouraged men to venture
into the competitive and potentially corrupting public sphere of politics and business,
and then recuperate at home—in women’s peaceful and loving domain.10 To combat
nineteenth-century middling-class socio-economic fears, home and family thus
became idealized corrective and protective buffers against growing moral threats. It
is not news that separate spheres was more ideology than reality, more prescriptive
than descriptive. Scholars of women’s history have been making this clear since
the 1970s at least, focusing on the many and varied ways that women acted as
7
On failure and fears of downward mobility in the early republic, see Edward J. Balleisen, Navigating
Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2001); Jessica Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the
Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Bruce
Mann, Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2002); Sandage, Born Losers.
8
Though this chapter focuses on free White men, it was not only White or only free or only male
Americans who used affective strategies to navigate the nineteenth-century capitalist landscape.
See, for instance, Erin Austin Dwyer, Mastering Emotions: Feelings, Power, and Slavery in the United
States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021).
9
Anya Jabour, “Male Friendship and Masculinity in the Early National South: William Wirt and
His Friends.” Journal of the Early Republic 20, no. 1 (2000): 83–111. For another example of men’s
professional affectionate networks in the first half of the nineteenth century, see Samuel J. Watson,
“Flexible Gender Roles during the Market Revolution: Family, Friendship, Marriage, and Masculinity
among U.S. Army Officers, 1815–1846.” Journal of Social History 29, no. 1 (1995): 8–106.
10
On separate spheres, see Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New
England, 1780–1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Linda K. Kerber, “Separate Spheres,
Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History,” The Journal of American History
75, no. 1 (1988): 9–39. On women’s emotion work as a key resource for mitigating capitalism’s ill
effects, see Laura C. McCoy, “In Distress: A Marketplace of Feeling in the Early American Republic”
(PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2020), esp. chapter two.
economic agents.11 However, historians have not yet accounted for another blurring
of supposedly gendered spheres of labor. The ideology of separate spheres suggested
palliative emoting was women’s duty, but the commerce of affection documented here
was constituted through men’s emotional labors and transactions. Documenting the
emotional structures of American business makes clear that both men’s and women’s
emotion work enabled the growth of early American capitalism.
This chapter documents the commerce of affection among Boston’s China traders
in the 1830s and 1840s, building to a close reading of the affectionate business
partnership of Joseph Coolidge and Augustine Heard.12 The study begins by exploring
how prescriptive literature such as Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine called for merchants
to produce and exchange emotion, especially sympathy. Interwoven throughout are
examples of China traders’ lived experience building and embodying this commerce of
affection, providing a glimpse into the emotional community in which Joseph Coolidge
and Augustine Heard lived and worked. The chapter concludes by demonstrating how
emotions enabled the pair’s successful business partnership, which began in 1840
when Coolidge was ousted as partner from Russell & Co., one of the leading American
firms in China. Humiliated, Coolidge capitalized on longstanding bonds of kin-like
affection to draw Heard into a new joint venture, despite Heard’s reluctance to return
to business in China. Augustine Heard & Co. thus provides a provocative example of
how the United States’ economic empire could be shaped—and frequently remade—by
embodied emotions. If emotion provided the motivation and means for what became
one of the most profitable American China trade firms in the mid-nineteenth century,
it is imperative that historians of American business consider the fundamental role
emotion played in early American capitalism.
11
See Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early
Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, The Ties That Buy:
Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2009); Alexandra J. Finley, An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic
Slave Trade (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020); Katie M. Hemphill, Bawdy
City: Commercial Sex and Regulation in Baltimore, 1790–1915 (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2019); Stephanie Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in
the American South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019); Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle
Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1981); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1986); Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based
on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990); Serena Zabin, Dangerous Economies:
Status and Commerce in Imperial New York (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).
12
On Augustine Heard & Co., see Stephen Lockwood, Augustine Heard & Co., 1858–1862: American
Merchants in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Tim Sturgis, Rivalry in
Canton: The Control of Russell and Co., 1838–1840 and the Founding of Augustine Heard and Co,
1840 (London: The Warren Press, 2006); Thomas Franklin Waters, Augustine Heard and His Friends
(Salem: Newcomb and Gauss, 1916). On American trade in China, see Jacques M. Downs, The
Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China
Policy, 1784–1844, 2nd edn (Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 2015); James R. Fichter,
So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Paul van Dyke, ed., Americans and Macao: Trade, Smuggling,
and Diplomacy on the South China Coast (Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 2012); Paul
Van Dyke and Susan Schopp, eds., The Private Side of the Canton Trade, 1700–1840 (Hong Kong:
University of Hong Kong Press, 2018).
Networks of Sympathy and Brotherhood
Merchants provide a particularly rich archive for understanding how and why certain
professions intentionally cultivated a commerce of affection. As voluntary associations
rose in popularity in the early decades of the nineteenth century, mercantile libraries
and societies emerged in northeastern cities to provide education, culture, and
community to young men embarking on commercial careers. The Mercantile Library
Association of Boston—established in 1820—was, according to its own records, the
first of its kind in the United States, though others soon followed in port cities like
New York and Philadelphia.13 Mercantile library associations hosted distinguished
speakers to lecture on a wide variety of topics, from necessary commercial skills
and knowledge, to slavery, to patriotism. These lectures were frequently printed in
commercial magazines such as popular New York-based Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine.
Sources written in the years surrounding the panics of 1819 and 1837 reveal a
determined effort to normalize the idea that it was manly and professionally responsible
to sympathize with fellow merchants during financial duress. Popular commercial
magazines such as Hunt’s frequently urged merchants to build affective professional
bonds that could help them overcome any financial hardship they might encounter.
In 1840, for instance, an article on “Mercantile Character” encouraged readers to
overcome any feelings of resentment or scorn when another trader needed help, urging
them to be “compassionate, not cruel”:
[L]et us beware how we suffer charity to be stifled by indignant feelings and harsh
judgment against a fallen brother … [I]f a brother has sunk under trials which we
have been permitted to escape, or have had strength given us to resist, we should
be thankful, not proud; compassionate, not cruel; see only the signal of distress,
and incline to its relief, rejoicing that we are enabled to give succor.14
By asking men to stifle indignation and harsh judgment when fellow merchants
requested help, publications like Hunt’s established compassion as a valued emotional
exchange within business networks.
By referring to struggling men as “brothers,” the essay emphasized that fraternal
feeling should guide compassionate engagements. For many merchants, this
terminology was literal. Since the colonial era, many Massachusetts firms had been
structured around kinship ties.15 Even as men’s labor moved further outside the
home in the early nineteenth century, family remained an important resource for
navigating commercial business—from partnering with brothers or cousins to
13
“History of the Mercantile Library Association,” in Catalogue of Books of the Mercantile Library
Association, of Boston, Together with the Acts of Incorporation and the By-Laws and Regulations
Adopted January 1848 (Boston: Dickinson Printing House, 1848), 3–6.
14
Sergeant, “Mercantile Character,” 17.
15
Among others, see Bernard Farber, Guardians of Virtue: Salem Families in 1800 (New York: Basic
Books, 1972); Betty G. Farrell, Elite Families: Class and Power in Nineteenth-Century Boston (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1993); Kenneth Wiggins Porter, The Jacksons and the Lees: Two
Generations of Massachusetts Merchants, 1765–1844 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1937).
relying on an uncle’s capital (economic and social) to enter trade. Many nineteenth-
century American firms in China formed around kin relationships and depended on
generational succession. Historian John Haddad has termed this strategy “meritocratic
nepotism”: China traders preferred to hire family and friends but only kept them in the
firm if they proved themselves to be trustworthy and beneficial to business.16 Trust was
enormously important when conducting business at great distances, so China trade
firms drew on pre-established networks of familiar relationships to pursue financial
interests abroad. In the words of China trade expert Jacques Downs, “Quite naturally
when an early American businessman needed an agent to operate at some distance
from the countinghouse, he chose first a relative and second a friend.”17
Carefully cultivated and expressed familiarity also enabled men to build economic
partnerships with men to whom they were not related by either blood or marriage.18
Joseph Coolidge tried to cultivate this brotherly relationship with Augustine Heard. “If
you are not a Brother in the usual sense of the term,” Coolidge once told him, “you are
more than one in deed and trust—and dearer to [my wife and I] both than any other
who bear that name.”19 Indeed, Coolidge repeatedly chose not to go into business with
his biological brother Thomas, whose idleness and poor judgment kept Joseph at arm’s
length. In an era that fostered fraternal feelings in many contexts outside the family,
Coolidge believed the true significance of brotherhood was not in blood but in action
(“deed”) and psyche (“trust”).20
Other merchants made the same distinction. Paul Siemen Forbes defined “brother”
as one who shares the same profession and is willing to “extend a helping hand.” Forbes
compared his relationship with his preacher brother unfavorably to his connection
with his merchant cousin, John Murray Forbes: “John’s pursuits & my own bringing
us so often in contact & affording him daily opportunities of extending a helping
hand he appears more like a brother, than my own of N. York with whose efforts to
save the soul of the wicked I have little sympathy.”21 For his part, John Forbes echoed
16
John R. Haddad, America’s First Adventure in China: Trade, Treaties, Opium, and Salvation (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2013), 36. Also see Downs, The Golden Ghetto; Van, “Free Trade & Family
Values”; Thomas H. Cox, “‘Money, Credit, and Strong Friends’: Warren Delano II and the Importance
of Social Networking in the Old China Trade,” in Van Dyke and Schopp, eds., The Private Side of the
Canton Trade, 1700–1840, 132–47. Downs’s extremely detailed volume describing the American China
trade in Canton even contains an appendix entirely dedicated to “commercial family alliances.”
17
Downs, The Golden Ghetto, 367, 233.
18
On familiarity, see Sarah M. S. Pearsall, Atlantic Families: Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth
Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
19
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, July 2, 1838, HFBR. Two years later, when trusting Heard to
decide whether his teenage daughter should join her parents in China, Coolidge emphasized the
deep faith he and his wife had in Heard by informing him that Ellen “relies on you like a Brother.”
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, January 29, 1840, ibid.
20
On the importance of fraternity to the political, economic, social, and cultural identity of the early
American republic, see Mark C. Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Mark E. Kann, A Republic of Men: The American Founders,
Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Dana
D. Nelson, National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Amy Pflugrad-Jackisch, Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal
Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia (Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 2010).
21
Paul Siemen Forbes to Robert Bennet Forbes, June 10, 1839, Forbes Family Business Records
[FFBR], Baker Library at Harvard Business School, Boston, MA.
this fraternal sentiment in ways that show how the familiarity, trust, and affection
connoted by the word “brother” had special meaning in the China trade. In 1842,
John used the language of brotherhood to recommend his cousin Paul to Houqua,
the leading Chinese merchant in Canton. Despite the fact that Paul had never worked
in the China trade and had recently failed in the South American trade, John asked
that Houqua favor Paul because John felt for him “the same regard as for a Brother.”22
Houqua acquiesced. In claiming friends and cousins as even closer kin relations,
merchants like Coolidge and the Forbes made clear that for them, the true value of
“brotherhood,” both economically and emotionally, lay in “deed and trust”—in short,
in a reliable commerce of affection with like-minded men.
The drive to establish a commercial brotherhood is especially clear in a speech
lawyer William Sullivan gave to the Boston Mercantile Association in 1832. Sullivan
presented a vision of mercantile fraternity that explicitly used the commerce of both
capital and affection to knit Boston businessmen together in a mutually supportive
and profitable class. He argued that businessmen “can do what no legislature can
do”—namely, save one another from losing everything (especially social status and
reputation) if one of their own encountered financial failure. Sullivan did not merely
consider the financial side of this mutual support. He also highlighted the emotional
effects. If a fellow merchant failed honestly and honorably, Sullivan urged his audience,
“You can pour a precious balm on his wounded spirit, and carry sympathy and
consolation to the innocent hearts of the wife and of the children, who must be partners
in his sorrows.”23 Sympathetic men could, of course, administer that “precious balm” by
offering financial relief. But the primary image Sullivan conjured was of men trading in
emotion, not just capital. Sullivan did not present sorrowful or sympathetic merchants
as feminized. Instead, he grounded his vision of merchant solidarity and power—and
thus effective merchant masculinity—in mutual emotional support. An honorable
man of business must know how to soothe his fellow merchants’ “wounded spirits.”24
Indeed, after experiencing the trials of merchant life—from long familial
separations to sudden and unexpected financial losses—many traders felt that the
commerce of affection was most valuable when it involved a man who had himself run
the mercantile gauntlet and could offer both sympathy and practical advice. In 1843,
N. M. Beckwith wrote to his fellow merchant and brother-in-law Paul Siemen Forbes
about their individual commercial struggles—Forbes in the process of bankruptcy in
22
John Murray Forbes to Houqua, December 31, 1842, ibid.
23
William Sullivan, A Discourse, Delivered before the Boston Mercantile Association, and Others,
Assembled on Their Invitation, on Tuesday Evening, February 7, 1832 (Boston: Carter & Hendee,
1832). For more on Sullivan’s speech, see Balleisen, Navigating Failure, 175. For more on the
meaning of failure for nineteenth-century American capitalists, see Sandage, Born Losers, chapter 2
“A Reason in the Man,” 44–69.
24
On merchants and masculinity, see Toby L. Ditz, “Shipwrecked; or, Masculinity Imperiled:
Mercantile Representations of Failure and the Gendered Self in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,”
The Journal of American History 81, no. 1 (1994). On masculinity and the rising class of clerks
(including merchants’ clerks, the position in which Joseph Coolidge began his career in the China
trade) in the early nineteenth century, see Brian P. Luskey, On the Make: Clerks and the Quest for
Capital in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: New York University Press, 2010); Michael
Zakim, Accounting for Capitalism: The World the Clerk Made (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2018).
South America, and Beckwith having just lost many trading clients in Canada and the
West Indies. Beckwith revealed that despite the physical distance between them, he
found solace in writing to Forbes. “In my distress I thought often of you and what you
must have suffered,” he mused: “there is alw[ays] that in you that makes me lean to
you, therefore I write freely: it is alw[ays] some relief.” Beckwith confessed that he had
thought of confiding in Forbes’s brother but demurred because he was a preacher, not
a merchant, and thus could not have offered the particular sympathetic relief Beckwith
sought. Beckwith quipped, “he could tell me the way to Heaven much better than how
to pay my notes!”25
Paul Siemen Forbes turned to other merchants for solace when he struggled with
the emotional sacrifices of working far from home for extended periods. During a
long stay in Rio de Janeiro, he urged his cousin, China trade merchant Robert Bennet
Forbes (brother of John Murray Forbes), “Do let me hear oftener from you—you
who can so readily appreciate the misfortunes of involuntary expatriation should
be the last to withhold your sympathy and add to their bitterness by continued
silence.”26 Over time, Bennett delivered a commerce of both affection and capital to
his struggling cousin. In 1839, he assured Paul that “all the affectionate and Brotherly
expressions are fully reciprocated,” and a few years after that, facilitated Paul’s entry
into the China trade to try to claw back financial stability after Paul’s failures in the
South American market.27 Bennett’s brother and business partner John Murray Forbes
also provided Paul with both hope and reminders that he must fight despondency.
“Pray keep your spirits up,” John urged Paul in 1842. “Believe that if you continue to
struggle … you will at last catch [Fortune’s] wheel at the right turn.”28 As these letters
suggest, networks of male relatives were crucial sources of invigorating sympathy,
especially when that affection was accompanied by financial relief. Hope and cheer
were valuable commodities, especially when offered by sympathetic male relatives or
friends bound to one another in an emotional community of mutual financial and
emotional support.
Being able to express cheerfulness in the face of financial anxiety was important for
merchants receiving sympathy as well as those offering it. Literature advertised bucking
up under misfortune as a central tenet of merchant masculinity. Hunt’s Merchants’
Magazine regularly urged merchants to be cheerful despite financial or social trials. An
1839 piece entitled “What Constitutes a Merchant,” noted, “A cheerful disposition, says
[David] Hume, is worth ten thousand a year. With decision of character and a cheerful
disposition, our merchant will be enabled to ward off envy and hatred.”29 Another
article the next year advised, “An hour’s industry will do more to beget cheerfulness,
suppress evil rumors, and retrieve your affairs, than a month’s moaning.” Explicitly
tying manhood to the ability to repress sadness, the article warned anxious indebted
merchants, “Beware of feelings of despondency. Give not place for an hour to useless
25
N. M. Beckwith to Paul Siemen Forbes, April 4, 1843, FFBR.
26
Paul Siemen Forbes to Robert Bennet Forbes, July 1837, ibid.
27
Robert Bennet Forbes to Paul Siemen Forbes, April 2, 1839, ibid.
28
John Murray Forbes to Paul Siemen Forbes, April 8, 1842, ibid.
29
Charles Edwards, Esq., “What Constitutes a Merchant,” The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial
Review 1, no. 4 (1839): 292–3.
and enervating melancholy. Be a man.”30 Sullivan’s entreaty that Boston merchants

should “pour a precious balm” on each other’s “wounded spirits” gained even greater
significance when tied to manhood in this way. The commerce of affection was all the
more critical if it helped stave off feelings of both melancholy and emasculation to
which aspiring capitalists were vulnerable. Merchants’ manhood and financial success
depended on this network of mutual sympathy and emotional support.
The Emotional Enabling of Augustine Heard & Co.
The business partnership of Joseph Coolidge and Augustine Heard provides an

enlightening example of how merchants forged, maintained, and relied on a commerce
of affection to support their business efforts. The pair had become friendly when both
worked for the prosperous and influential Russell & Co. in the early 1830s—Heard as
a partner and Coolidge, thirteen years his junior, as a clerk. Though the men were not
related by blood, the Coolidge family used the language of kinship to include Heard
in their emotional community. Heard himself was unmarried and childless, though he
kept close paternal watch over his nephews (with whom he allied professionally when
they came of age). When Coolidge began an extended trip abroad for Russell & Co. in
1834, he beseeched Heard to serve temporarily as his family’s patriarch. “My friend,”
Coolidge warmly requested, “I commend my family to your kind attentions … I like
to think of my oldest Boy walking by your side, with his hand in yours.”31 Anxious
about leaving his young family without a male head of household, Coolidge soothed
his fears by imagining Heard taking his place as a father figure, guiding and protecting
Coolidge’s children during his long absence. The Coolidge children did indeed
associate Heard with paternal affection. When Heard left Boston on a long voyage in
1838, Coolidge’s twelve-year-old daughter Nell wistfully informed him, “I shall think
very often of you and wish for your return, for next to my father and mother and my
little brothers I love you better than any-body else.”32
Both Joseph and his wife Ellen believed that the family feeling—the affection,
trust, and loyalty—they ascribed to Heard was enough to bind his financial interest
to theirs. This became especially clear in 1840, when Joseph found himself at loose
ends professionally after being expelled as partner from Russell & Co. Jacques M.
Downs has characterized Coolidge as “a mediocre merchant at best … rather lazy,
presumptuous, and sometimes tactless.”33 Coolidge had only become a partner in
Russell & Co. through Heard’s good graces. When Heard had fallen ill in China and
had to return home to Massachusetts, he recommended the firm promote Coolidge
to take his place. Russell & Co. partner John Murray Forbes remembered Coolidge
as “a gentleman in his manners, but had very crude ideas about commerce, believing
in show rather than in substantial management.” Forbes reported that, “wishing only
30
“Advice to Men in Debt,” The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review 2 (1840): 526.
31
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, October 10, 1834, HFBR.
32
Ellen (Nell) Randolph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, October 1, 1838, ibid.
33
Downs, The Golden Ghetto, 192–5.
peace,” he and the other partners “did the best [they] could to place [Coolidge] where
he would do the least mischief.”34
Beyond struggling to build trust with his Russell & Co. partners, Joseph Coolidge
also failed to join the wider emotional community of American merchants in Canton.
Augustine Heard’s nephew John, who accompanied his uncle to China as a clerk in
1841, remembered the merchant community in Canton as one of “kindness and good
feeling” where “residents were always ‘hail fellow, well met.’” But John pointed to his
uncle’s partner as an odd man out: “Some were unpopular and among them was my
respected ‘Taepen’ Mr. Coolidge. I never quite understood why, for, though rather stiff,
he was a very agreeable man.”35 By late 1839, the other Russell & Co. partners had
entirely lost faith in Coolidge, who had made unauthorized investments with funds
from a crucial Chinese business partner. Attempting to justify his mistake, Coolidge
erred again by showing clients some of the firm’s confidential documents. Any faith
the partners had in him evaporated. The partners determined that Coolidge was no
longer an appropriate member for the firm in either economic or emotional terms.
They wanted him out—of both the firm and its emotional community. Several partners
began a campaign to remove him as partner when the firm re-organized for the new
year. On January 1, 1840, Coolidge found himself in Canton without a firm to represent.
Coolidge had suspected he might be forced out even before heading to China in
1839. Before leaving Boston, Coolidge had secured Augustine Heard’s permission to
establish a new trading firm with both men as partners. Heard himself had no need or
desire to return to international trade. His finances were secure, and he certainly had
no inclination to return to China again at age fifty-five, after having left six years earlier
due to declining health. Heard even once told Coolidge that he “would rather live on
$300 a year, than come again to China.”36 Heard’s primary motivation in offering to
partner with Coolidge in a new firm was emotional: he wanted to support his friend.
Economic and emotional support often melded in Heard’s mind, and he appears to
have valued money for the emotional impact it might have for others. “Money was
worth acquiring,” Heard’s nephew John reported his uncle advising, “from the amount
of good which could be done by it, & he said that if I ever become worth a fortune, I
should find that I should derive more pleasure from being able to aid and aiding others,
than in any selfish gratification.”37 For Heard, financially supporting loved ones was a
valued emotional transaction that produced relief in friends and pleasure in oneself.
Emotional and economic concerns mingled when Heard got word that Coolidge
had announced a new firm, Augustine Heard & Co. Heard wrote to his friend to
express both frustration and resignation. He made it known that he would have much
preferred if Coolidge had either reconciled with Russell & Co. or simply joined another
existing firm. He was especially irritated that Coolidge had used only Heard’s name
34
John Murray Forbes, Reminiscences of John Murray Forbes, vol. I, ed. Sarah Forbes Hughes (Boston:
George H. Ellis, 1903), 194.
35
John Heard, “An Account of His Life and the History of Augustine Heard & Co.,” (1891), 31–2,
HFBR.
36
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, November 29, 1839, HFBR.
37
John Heard to Elizabeth Heard, November 6, 1841, Elizabeth Heard Papers, Baker Library Historical
Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA.
for the new concern, a complication that made Heard feel he had to head to Canton
despite Coolidge’s repeated declarations that Heard was free to simply lend his name
to the firm and remain in Boston.38 With Heard’s name on the figurative marquee, his
reputation was now on the line. His forbearance with Coolidge came in part from a
need for self-protection.
Coolidge apologized for the sacrifices he asked his friend to make, but assured
Heard that he had acted according to what he believed to be Heard’s best financial
and emotional interests. Coolidge explained that he had had “some vague idea” that
Heard’s property had diminished. More importantly, he insisted that he had been
sure Heard would approve of the new joint venture because Heard “had a sincere
regard for my wife, an interest in my children, and kindness for myself.”39 These words
pressured Heard, implying that any professional disapproval on his part would betray
the affection he shared with Joseph and his family. Coolidge’s wife Ellen explained her
husband’s motivations in similarly affective terms, confessing to Heard,
I fancied your interests so identified with ours that they had become one and the
same thing. Your attachment to Mr Coolidge and myself of which you had given
such noble, generous, touching proofs, your affection for our children and all that
you have done for them, your whole course in fact from the commencement of
your friendship for us gave me the ideas that your destinies were linked with ours
not to be separated.40
Joseph and Ellen believed that the emotional connection between their family and
Heard also bound together their financial interests, paving the way for their partnership
in Augustine Heard & Co. Emotion provided the means for establishing the new firm:
the Coolidges capitalized on familiar feeling between Heard and the entire Coolidge
family to justify uniting their financial interests.
The couple revealed that emotion provided the motivation for the new firm by
explaining Joseph’s actions through his emotional, not financial, needs. Being ousted
from Russell & Co. was a blow to Coolidge’s pride, manhood, and professional
reputation. He explained that his motivation for forming a new firm was not
financial: “I have yet 200,000 dls [dollars], but if I came home I should never be able
to hold up my head among business men,” he told Heard. “I must be true to myself,
and notwithstanding my own feelings, do that which is just to my own character.”41
Coolidge could easily have returned to Boston comfortably with that amount, but he
chose not to. Overwhelmed with frustration and indignation, he felt his reputation
was at stake, and wanted revenge. So, he used affective language to mobilize Heard’s
respected reputation (not to mention financial assets) for his cause.
Coolidge wrote lengthy, impassioned letters designed to evoke sympathy in Heard,
casting himself as unfairly emasculated and in need of his “Brother’s” help to recoup his
38
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, November 29, 1839, HFBR.
39
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, December 22, 1840, ibid.
40
Ellen Coolidge to Augustine Heard, January 30, 1842, ibid.
41
manhood and professional reputation. Both Joseph and Ellen reported that his former
partners had acted in an unmanly manner, far from the model merchant masculinity
that Coolidge saw as grounded in honor, integrity, and transparency (the very qualities,
it should be noted, that his Russell & Co. partners accused him of lacking, and not
without evidence). Coolidge labeled his former partners as “wanting … in common
courtesy,” and the ringleader of his ousting, John C. Green, as “a clever scoundrel”
whose devious plots against Coolidge showed “proofs of his injustice, meanness, and
dishonesty.”42 Coolidge depicted the other partners as fearful and cowed by Green,
unmanly in their inability to act independently of him.43 The only former partner with
whom Coolidge remained on fairly good terms was Robert Bennet Forbes, whom
Joseph repeatedly described as “manly,” “gentlemanlike,” and “honourable.”44 Ellen
supported her husband’s unfavorable depictions of his Russell & Co. partners. She
cast Joseph as “a man of honour” going up against “treacherous” and “vain” men of
“deadly malice” and “cold ingratitude” who made him feel “ill-used in a most unfair and
ungentlemanly manner.”45
The Coolidges claimed that these ungentlemanly men had unjustly attacked Joseph’s
merchant manhood. They had stamped him with “the brand of incompetence,” treating
him with pity and disdain, like “a poor creature” who “never ha[d] been good for any
thing.”46 Highlighting his feelings of emasculation, Coolidge worried that returning to
Boston after being expelled from Russell & Co. would make him look like “a whipped
schoolboy.”47 He also feared that his former partners publicly challenged his industry
and independence—two cornerstones of early nineteenth-century masculinity. Several
partners claimed that Coolidge was lazy and disruptive, and that he had not earned the
small fortune his partnership terms accrued to him. Such jabs at Coolidge’s parasitic
relationship with the firm created, in Ellen’s words, “his determination to prove to the
world that he is not the useless do-little that his partners represent him [as], fattening
on their labours.”48 Both Joseph and Ellen thus deployed gendered language to capture
his emotional state of embarrassment and shame, as well as anger and vindictiveness.
Lacking a commerce of affection with his former partners, Coolidge sought an
investment of sympathy and trust from Heard.
Historian Toby Ditz has argued that eighteenth-century merchants humiliated by
financial failure used letter-writing to try to reconstitute a more respectable self, “to use
the transaction between writer and reader to recuperate a fragile masculinity.”49 Though
42
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, January 5, 1840, ibid.
43
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, December 19, 1839 and January 5, 1840, ibid.
44
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, December 10 and 19, 1839, ibid. Also see Joseph Coolidge to
Augustine Heard, November and December 15, 1839, ibid.
45
Ellen Coolidge to Augustine Heard, January 31 and 2, 1840, ibid.
46
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, December 19, 1839, ibid.; Joseph Coolidge to Augustine
Heard, December 10, 1839, ibid.; Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, December 15, 1839, ibid.
47
48
49
Ditz, “Shipwrecked,” 79. Several of the gendered patterns Ditz identified among eighteenth-
century Philadelphia merchants also ring true in Coolidge’s conflict with Russell & Co. partners
in the 1830s, suggesting that gender (and manhood) remained an important character qualifier in
nineteenth-century merchant culture. This continuity suggests that emotion and manhood cannot
be disentangled when studying the business history of merchants.
he had not failed financially, Coolidge felt unmanned by his former partners’ actions and
accusations, and his letters to Heard similarly reflected an effort to reconstitute manly
qualities. He described his plans for Augustine Heard & Co. as a means of convincing
people that he was hard-working, independent, and creditworthy—a competent
merchant as well as an autonomous, respectable man. He wrote in militaristic terms
of preparing to “do battle” and “make a fight” against his foes at Russell & Co.50 Ellen
used similar language, writing that she tried to advise her husband “like a soldier’s
wife, trembling and cowardly, but not daring to advise an act of cowardice in her
husband.”51 For a brief moment, Coolidge even vengefully dreamed of creating a rival
firm with exactly the same name that would surpass his former partners in wealth and
influence. The spite behind this idea is clear in a letter he sent to Heard explaining why
he ultimately decided not to name their new firm “Russell & Co.” “[I]n a little time,”
he explained to Heard, “it would be known who was in each house, and the business
would be given to the men, and not to the name.”52
Despite this evidence of rash, foolhardy impulses, Joseph and Ellen took pains
to assure Heard that, notwithstanding Coolidge’s “impetuous” temper, his decision
to establish a new firm was not an unmanly fit of passion, but a reasoned and calm
attempt to recoup his manhood.53 Coolidge repeatedly assured Heard that during his
negotiations with Russell & Co., “I have never once lost my temper, or treated anyone
otherwise than in a gentlemanlike manner,” and “I have never for one moment, by
word or look, acted otherwise than with perfect calmness, respect, and temper.”54
Such assurances show Coolidge’s understanding that manly power—even, or perhaps
especially, when preparing to “do battle” with one’s professional enemies—was rooted,
in part, in emotional control. A fit of passion was not a sign of the honorable man he
so desperately wanted to prove himself to be. Coolidge’s insistence also underscores a
crucial point made by the editors of this volume: claims to reason and rationality in the
business realm are often affective performances in and of themselves.
Joseph Coolidge also took pains to demonstrate to Heard that he understood the
foolhardy emotional and economic consequences of his abandoned plan to create a
rival Russell & Co. He acknowledged, “it would produce bitter feelings of jealousy and
animosity” such that “a spirit of rivalry which would be injurious in a business point
of view, would exist where I wanted to have a friendly feeling, if possible.”55 To further
his business prospects, Coolidge knew he had to temper his anger and cultivate some
semblance of a commerce of affection with his former partners. Indeed, Coolidge’s
letters to Heard reveal he sought to prove that he belonged in the emotional economy
that publications such as Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine insisted merchants needed to
succeed professionally. Coolidge was not just starting a new firm with Augustine
Heard, he was constituting a new commerce of affection after being cast out of Russell
& Co.’s circle of trust.
50
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, December 19, 1839, HFBR.
51
52
53
Ellen Coolidge to Augustine Heard, exact date illegible, ibid.
54
Joseph Coolidge to Augustine Heard, December 10 and 19, 1839, ibid.
55
Ellen and Joseph Coolidge believed that evidence of the “unfair and ungentlemanly”
treatment Coolidge received at the hands of his former partners justified his choice
to strike up a new business in China, dragging Heard with him. How could Coolidge
bear to return to Boston if it meant living in anxiety and embarrassment, every day
facing people who believed he was not only an incompetent merchant, but a weak and
dependent man—“a whipped schoolboy,” no less? No friend and fellow businessman
could allow him to accept such a miserable fate. So, Coolidge asked Heard to “pour a
precious balm on his wounded spirit” by joining him in China—partners in business
and, Joseph hoped, life. Augustine Heard & Co. was thus born out of two gendered
emotional factors: Joseph Coolidge’s anger and anxiety over his wounded manhood,
and his affectionate, brotherly bond with Augustine Heard, which he mobilized
to gather the capital—both material and social—to begin a new firm. Without
considering masculinity and emotion, we cannot understand how and why Augustine
Heard & Co., one of the largest American firms in China in the nineteenth century,
existed at all.
Conclusion
Most historians treat Augustine Heard & Co. as a family firm, founded by Augustine
Heard and passed on to his nephews. While Joseph Coolidge is typically mentioned as
a founding partner, the extent of his early influence is almost always underplayed, if
not ignored—perhaps because he left the concern after only four years and, of course,
the firm did not bear his name. However, this means that historians have neglected
the firm’s roots in Coolidge’s emotional world, particularly his gendered anxiety. The
emotional roots of Augustine Heard & Co. suggest we need to consider the extent to
which emotion could be an enabling factor in early American capitalism. Augustine
Heard & Co. operated in Asia between 1840 and 1877, becoming one of the most
influential American firms in the region and, during its peak, turning profits of
$200,000 per year. Much of this came from trading opium to Chinese merchants in
exchange for tea, silk, porcelain, and other products that could be exported to the
United States. Historians must reckon with the fact that emotion—both masculine
anxiety and fraternal affection—was a fertile seed from which these ventures sprouted,
bringing profit and commodities to Americans but exacerbating the damaging effects
of opium on Chinese society.56
The particulars of Coolidge’s and Heard’s professional experience are certainly not
representative of all merchants in the 1830s and 1840s. Not all merchants faced the
56
On the United States and the opium crisis in China, see (among others) Downs, The Golden Ghetto;
Jacques M. Downs, “Fair Game: Exploitative Role-Myths and the American Opium Trade,” Pacific
Historical Review 41, no. 2 (1971); Fichter, So Great a Proffit; Haddad, America’s First Adventure in
China; John Lauritz Larson, Bonds of Enterprise: John Murray Forbes and Western Development in
America’s Railway Age (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001); Thomas N. Layton, The Voyage
of the “Frolic”: New England Merchants and the Opium Trade (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1997); Dael A. Norwood, “Trading in Liberty: The Politics of the American China Trade” (PhD diss.,
Princeton University, 2012).
specific kind of humiliation Coolidge felt when he was cast out of Russell & Co. Not all
merchants ventured to the far side of the globe to serve a friend’s emotional needs. And
yet, the emotions that drove Coolidge’s business strategy (anxiety, anger, shame, fear
of loss) and Heard’s support (brotherly affection, sympathy) were precisely those that
the Boston merchant community’s commerce of affection was cultivated to address.
Coolidge’s decision to turn in his time of need to a man whom he cared for like a
brother—and Heard’s choice to help his friend out of affection, not personal financial
need—reflect the same logic other merchants followed in less extreme situations. The
pair’s actions in fact reveal just how powerful ideals of merchant masculinity and the
need for a commerce of affection were, if merchants grasped for them to navigate
seemingly unusual situations. The pair’s relationship tellingly exemplifies what was
possible within the conventions of business, emotional expression, and manhood in
the first half of the nineteenth century.
Even more, the affective roots of Augustine Heard & Co. provide a compelling
example of how emotion, not just the unfeeling laws of supply and demand, drove early
American capitalism. As Mandy Cooper and Andrew Popp put it in the introduction
to this volume, “reason and rationality do not have borders beyond which lie the
disordered wilds of feeling.” Emotion in its prescriptive and embodied forms structured
early American business. Merchants were not alone in understanding emotional
entanglements as economic resources, and emotional production as economically
significant. Many Americans relied on emotions to understand the expanding economy
and their place within it.57 To see early American capitalism through the eyes of the
people who lived it, historians of business and capitalism must pay careful attention to
the complex and vibrant emotional economies that underpinned the material market
with which modern scholars are more familiar.
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7
From Scotland with Love: The Creation of the

Japanese Whisky Industry, 1918–1979
Alison J. Gibb, University of Glasgow, and Niall G. MacKenzie,
University of Glasgow
Introduction
This chapter tells the story of Rita and Masataka Taketsuru, a couple who through a
remarkable international marriage helped establish what we now know as the modern-
day Japanese whisky industry in the early twentieth century. From marrying against
the wishes of their parents, to becoming known as the mother and father of Japanese
whisky, their story has been subject to various popular treatments—a television series,
a play, numerous newspaper and magazine articles, and the basis of global marketing
campaigns for Nikka Whisky. Central to their story is an analysis of Rita’s experience
of life in Japan during a period of significant global upheaval, including the Second
World War and the advent of atomic warfare, when she found herself, in effect, behind
enemy lines in a country that had only relatively recently opened to Westerners. Letters
exchanged between Rita and her family throughout this period reveal the until now
hidden story of both the emotional rewards and trials of her marriage to Masataka and
the enabling role she played in the establishment and growth of Nikka Whisky and the
Japanese whisky industry.
Business historians have written extensively on business growth but have paid
less attention to the sometimes hidden factors that facilitate such growth, including
the personal costs, challenges, and relationship dynamics involved in establishing
and growing a business, family and non-family. As well as revealing insights into
emotions and personal relationships, these hidden dimensions also open up other
areas of enquiry. In related areas, such as family business studies, scholars have
identified the role of family members (particularly women) not officially employed
within the business as being critical to success,1 and social labor in the form of “unseen
work” has become a significant feature of many feminist critiques of economics and
1
Leona Achtenhagen, Kajsa Haag, and F. Welter, “The Role of Gender in Family-Business Research:
A Systematic Review of the Literature,” in Women Entrepreneurship in Family Business, ed. Vanessa
Ratten, Leo-Paul Dana, and Veland Ramadani (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 16–45.
work. However, business historians have been slow to pick up on these challenges.2
Similarly, the role of gender and feminist studies have in the past been identified as
underdeveloped in business history.3 In our analysis we address some of these issues
through the prism of emotions and offer insights into areas that business historians
have hitherto largely neglected.
Based on archive materials held at the University of Glasgow’s Scottish Business
Archive, including letters from Rita to her family in Scotland, we analyze the private
side of the Taketsurus’ relationship, uncovering how it affected and was affected
by Masataka’s business ambitions. In doing so, we demonstrate how, through her
work and the social connections she forged in her adoptive homeland, Rita was key
to the story of Nikka Whisky’s establishment and the development of the Japanese
whisky industry. Her support of Masataka in the early days of his Scotch whisky-
making apprenticeship in Scotland continued on their move to Japan where, despite
significant challenges of ill health and cultural adaptation, Rita provided her husband
with financing, employment opportunities, social connections, and emotional
encouragement. Rita’s role went beyond that of the encouraging wife. Instead, she was
a central character in enabling the early development and eventual success of Nikka
Whisky in what was, and remains, a heavily male-dominated industry.
A University Love Story
In December 1918, Masataka Taketsuru traveled to Scotland to enroll at the University

of Glasgow and the Royal Technical College (now the University of Strathclyde).
Masataka was working as a graduate chemist for Kihei Abe of the Settsu Shuzo
company (then the largest drinks company in Japan) and was dispatched to Scotland
to learn how Scotch whisky was made. At the age of twenty-four, he arrived in cold,
dark Glasgow, having visited several wineries in San Francisco en route. The son of
a sake brewer, Masataka was expected to follow into the family business, but he had
other ideas. Mr. Abe wanted Masataka to learn how to make Scotch whisky so he could
develop the company’s portfolio of offerings in Japan. Shortly after arriving in Glasgow,
Masataka met Ella Cowan, a medical student enrolled at the University of Glasgow
and Rita Cowan’s sister. The Cowan family had recently experienced the death of the
patriarch, who had run a medical practice in their hometown of Kirkintilloch and were
facing straitened financial circumstances as a result. By March 1919, Masataka was
lodging with the Cowans to help with their finances. Mastaka later wrote of his and
Rita’s meeting, saying: “I was attracted to Rita immediately. In Rita’s case, she later told
me that at first she felt compassion for me, studying on my own. Compassion which
later turned into romance.”4 During this time, Masataka enrolled in the University of
2
Gabrielle Durepos, Alan McKinlay, and Scott Taylor, “Narrating Histories of Women at Work:
Archives, Stories, and the Promise of Feminism.” Business History 59, no. 8 (2017): 1261–79.
3
Angel Kwolek-Folland, Incorporating Women: A History of Woman and Business in the United States
(New York: Twayne, 1998).
4
“Masataka Taketsuru: Rita and Campbeltown,” www.nomunication.jp [accessed September 20,
2022].
The Creation of the Japanese Whisky Industry 145
Glasgow’s 1919 summer chemistry program, as well as at the Royal Technical College,
studying part-time in organic and inorganic chemistry. Masataka spent much of his
time in the university library and the Mitchell Library translating into Japanese J.
A. Nettleton’s The Manufacture of Spirit as Conducted in the Distilleries of the United
Kingdom, which he would later use as an aid in developing whisky-making in Japan.
In the spring of 1919, whilst waiting for the summer course to start, Masataka
traveled to Elgin in Northern Scotland to seek an apprenticeship with Nettleton (the
author of the book he was translating) but found the cost too prohibitive. Instead, he
secured a five-day apprenticeship at Longmorn Distillery in Speyside, near Elgin, to
learn malt whisky production, as well as an apprenticeship at Bo’ness Grain Distillery,
in the Central Belt, with James Calder (a contact of Professor Forsyth Wilson, of the
Royal College of Technology) and at Gartloch Grain Distillery, to learn Coffey grain
whisky production.5 It is important to note that at the time Scotch whisky producers
were not particularly concerned about sharing the secrets of their production with a
foreigner—blended whisky was (and remains) the dominant category in the industry,
so learning how to make that was therefore off-limits to Masataka as a commercially
sensitive undertaking. Masataka attempted to secure apprenticeships at several
blending houses but was roundly rejected by each. The individual single malts that
were being produced on the other hand were still subject to the skill of the blender
in creating the final product and were not a product of particular economic value in
themselves at that time. Thus, his apprenticeships at individual distilleries became
the way he learned how to make single malt Scotch whisky and directly informed his
approach when he moved back to Japan.
In November of the same year, he journeyed to France to visit wineries, before
returning with a gift for Rita of a bottle of perfume. Rita reciprocated with a copy of
Robert Burns’ poetry, with an inscription reading “to my dearest Japanese friend, my
favourite poetical works.” Around the same time, Rita confided to Masataka that her
boyfriend, who had been posted to the Middle East during the First World War, had
died in Damascus.6 It is unclear whether this had any bearing on their relationship, but
the exchange of gifts and recognition of friendship in the letters suggests that if not a
couple at that point, they were certainly on the cusp of becoming so. Shortly after the
gift exchange, at Christmas, Masataka proposed to Rita. International marriages were
rare at this time, and even more so in Japan, where Masataka’s parents had arranged
several potential brides for him. Upon learning of his intention to ask Rita to marry
him, his mother sent him a letter:
No matter what happens, DO NOT marry a blue-eyed English. We quit the sake
business and passed it to relatives for you, and let you go to England. Now it’s
time to accept our request. There are plenty of decent choices for wives here, let
me know and I can immediately send omiai [matchmaking] pictures if you like.7
5
Masataka Taketsuru, On the Production Methods of Pot Still Whisky (Edinburgh: Zeticula Books,
2021), xii.
6
Olive Checkland, Japanese Whisky, Scotch Blend (Newbattle: Scottish Cultural Press, 1998), 21.
7
“Masataka Taketsuru: Grain Whisky & Marriage to Rita,” www.nomunication.jp [accessed September 20,
2022].
At the ages of twenty-five and twenty-three respectively, Masataka and Rita eloped
and married in the Calton registry office in Glasgow on January 8, 1920.8 Whether it
was youthful impetuousness or something else, their decision would change both their
lives in ways that neither likely foresaw.
Their wedding was not particularly well received and parents on both sides were
surprised and disappointed by this decision. The new couple did, however, receive
support from Ella, Rita’s sister, and Mr. Abe, who were both in favor of the union.
Indeed, Mr. Abe sought out Masataka’s parents and spent some time persuading
them to support the marriage, eventually succeeding. While Masataka’s parents
were concerned about him marrying a foreigner, Rita’s mother was concerned about
losing her eldest daughter to a life overseas. Such concerns and anxieties would later
characterize much of the correspondence between the two. Very soon after marrying,
Rita accompanied Masataka on another internship, at Campbeltown, on the west
coast of Scotland. In Campbeltown, Masataka apprenticed with Peter Margach Innes,
manager of the Hazelburn Distillery, who also taught him blending skills that were to
be critically important to his eventual approach to whisky distillation in Japan. During
this time Masataka spent most of his days at the distillery whilst Rita stayed at home—
later in her life Rita would look back on this time as the carefree early days of their
adventure together and as a relief from the negativity surrounding their wedding.9 In
Campbeltown, Rita and Masataka stayed in a small apartment next to the distillery
until May 1920, when they set off for their new life together in Japan, via the USA,
arriving in November of the same year.
Early Days in Japan
When Rita and Masataka disembarked in Kobe in late 1920, Japan was in a period of
modernization. Emperor Taisho had ascended to the throne in 1912 and was driving
a modern, more democratic agenda. In the university cities, like Tokyo, Western-style
clothes, café culture, music, film, and theater had taken hold, but many places still held
to centuries of tradition. The dinner held in their honor and to welcome them back
to Japan was Rita’s first experience of this evolving Japanese culture. Only one other
woman was present, wearing the traditional kimono. The rest of the attendees were
male, most wearing Western suits, but with some in traditional Japanese dress. The
dinner was held in a room of Western styling and a mix of Japanese and Western food
was served. Rita found the experience exhausting. At the time she spoke no Japanese
and the only other English speaker in the room was Masataka.10
Mr. Abe, who had traveled back to Japan with Rita and Masataka, arranged, via
telegram from the ship, a house for them in Tezukayama, Osaka. The house had
traditional Japanese features, but a Western-style toilet.11 On settling in Osaka, Rita
immediately began attempting to adapt to Japanese life, including changing her
8
GUAS ACCN 2102/2/28.
9
Checkland, Japanese Whisky. 26.
10
Ibid., 44.
11
Masataka Taketsuru, My History, trans. Graeme McNee (Tokyo: Nikkei, 1968).
behavior to become a Japanese wife. As advised by Masataka, she learned how to cook
Japanese food and immediately enrolled for and attended conversational Japanese
lessons, eventually becoming a very good Japanese speaker (albeit with a thick Osaka
dialect), although she could never read or write in Japanese.12 Over the years she would
often wear the kimono and she also quickly adopted a version of the Japanese tradition
of adding “san” as a polite ending to names, referring to Masataka as Massan from then
on and throughout their relationship.
Shortly after arriving in Osaka, Rita set about looking for work. She handwrote
her curriculum vitae, dated March 20, 1921,13 with the intention of teaching English
and/or piano at one of the local international schools. Not long thereafter she started
working at St. Andrews Middle School (now Momoyama University) and Tezukayama-
gakuin (now Tezukayama Gakuin University) in Osaka, teaching English, a result,
probably, of connections she had already made with other British ex-patriates. Whilst
in Osaka she had regular contact with British missionaries and the wives of wealthy
Japanese businessmen to whom she taught English. These social connections to
wealthy businessmen would prove critical to the development of what was to become
Nikka Whisky.
In his autobiography, Masataka details how he began working for Mr. Abe and
Settsu Shuzo, but the economic downturn led the company to reconsider its plans
to make authentically produced Scotch whisky in Japan, forcing Masataka to instead
produce a range of artificially flavored spirits. Moreover, Settsu Shuzo no longer had
the appetite to invest in a new venture to make malt whisky, meaning Masataka would
not be able to realize his dream with the company. Disappointed with this decision,
in 1922 Masataka resigned his position, with no job to go to and no plan.14 In his
autobiography, Masataka remembers this as a happy time, despite having given up
his dream of making malt whisky, adopting what he called the life of a “ronin”—an
old feudal Japanese term referring to a wandering samurai with no lord or master.15
Directionless and nursing what seemed to be a lost dream, Masataka relied on Rita’s
emotional and financial support during this period. Masataka recalls his decision
to resign as being “reckless,” as he had no other job arranged, but that Rita was his
“salvation,” in that she was still happy to be with him and supportive of his ambition.16
Rita had already taken work as an English teacher, as well as giving private piano
lessons, and it was through her close relationship with the wife of the principal of St.
Andrews school, where she taught, that Masataka secured a job as a chemistry teacher.
Rita’s enabling of Masataka’s ambitions was a consistent feature of their relationship.
In 1923 Masataka was approached by Shinjiro Torii, the president of a drinks company
called Kotobuki-ya that would later become Suntory. Kotobuki-ya was enjoying a
fertile period of growth thanks to its popular Akadam Port Wine, but much like Settsu
Shuzo before him, Torii had plans for diversifying into malt whisky production. Torii
had heard of Masataka’s training in making Scotch and wanted to produce a Japanese
equivalent. Masataka was excited at the prospect and signed a ten-year contract with
12
Checkland, Japanese Whisky, 50.
13
GUAS ACCN 2102/2/57.
14
Taketsuru, My History.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid.
Torii on an annual salary of 4,000 Japanese yen (around $2,000 in 1923 prices).17 Tasked
with the job of building the first whisky distillery in Japan, Shinjiro and Masataka
eventually settled on Yamazaki, halfway between Osaka and Kyoto, after Masataka had
investigated the location and water quality. Masataka was charged with every aspect of
the development of the new distillery, from sourcing equipment to the design of the
building. Masataka’s dream of being able to make Japanese whisky according to Scotch
principles was closer to being realized than ever before.
1924 was a year of mixed fortunes for the young couple. The ground-breaking
ceremony for the new distillery took place in April that year. During the planning
and construction of the new distillery, Masataka had been responsible for everything
himself, relying heavily on the notebooks he kept whilst studying in Scotland. This was
the start of many long hours he would spend making whisky, leaving Rita at home. Rita
and Masataka were to have no children of their own, and she experienced a miscarriage
in 1924, reportedly caused by the teaching work she was undertaking.18 Shortly
thereafter she quit her job to become a full-time housewife, supporting Masataka in
his endeavors to establish the new distillery. Rita returned to Scotland only twice after
she moved to Japan. First in 1925, when she initially traveled alone, remaining with her
family for eight months, before being joined by Masataka, who was in Scotland quality
testing his Japanese whisky with his Scottish tutors. Shortly after visiting Scotland both
Rita and Masataka wrote to her family in Scotland upon the news of her sister Lucy’s
wedding. Masataka recounted how hectic life had become for him, saying, “I am so
busy just now and my mind can’t settle for writing. That’s the reason I didn’t write till
now since I came back. Tell Mother that I’ll write nice letter soon.”19
In 1929 Masataka’s dream of releasing his own Japanese whisky made according to
the same principles of Scotch became a reality with Suntory’s first whisky Shirofuda
[White Label]. In 1930, Rita and Masataka adopted a baby girl, Fusako, who was given
the name Rima. Rita returned to Scotland for the final time in 1931, when she traveled
with Rima and introduced her to her Scottish family. Family photographs show a happy
Rita with her Japanese daughter sitting amongst her family in a traditional Scottish
living room, which must have been both familiar and yet also now alien to Rita, who
had immersed herself in Japanese culture over the previous ten years.
Taking Risks and Starting Again
By 1930 Masataka had been asked to run Kotobuki-ya/Suntory’s brewery operations in

Yokohama, which he considered a demotion from being a distiller. He and Rita, with
a shared clarity of purpose, decided Masataka was not a brewer but a distiller. By 1934
he had decided he had met his obligations in the ten-year contract he had signed and
quit to start his own business. This was yet another critical moment in the Taketsurus’
17
David Challis, Archival Currency Converter 1916–1940, https://canvasresources-prod.le.unimelb.
edu.au/projects/CURRENCY_CALC/.
18
Checkland, Scottish Whisky, 50.
19
Rita and Masataka to Lucy. 26/01/26, GUAS ACCN 2102/1/15.
lives together. The initial leap of getting married, moving across the world to Japan
together, then very quickly leaving the position with Settsu Shuzo, before getting the
opportunity to start again with Suntory, followed by the apparent demotion, might
have put off many from taking any further risks. It seems Rita and Masataka drew
considerable strength from their togetherness at this time.
Conscious of the risk of offending Shinjiro by too quickly attempting to become a
direct competitor, Masataka decided to start an apple juice/wine company in Hokkaido
on the North Island of Japan, where there was a plentiful supply of cheap apples (and a
remarkably similar climate to Scotland). The goal was to be able to sell the apple juice
products and, in the meantime, develop the business on its way to producing whisky.
Masataka established the Dai Nihon Kaju Kabushiki Kaisha (the Great Japan Juice
Company) in 1934, which would be renamed Nikka Whisky in 1952. The name Nikka
was derived from Ni-hon Ka-ju Ka-bushiki. Rita’s social connections were extremely
important to the new venture; her time teaching English to wives of wealthy Japanese
businessmen put her in contact with potential sources of investment capital—two of
three businessmen who initially invested in Masataka’s new venture were husbands of
the wives to whom Rita had taught English.20 Recognizing Masataka’s training, talent
and drive, they invested in his new business, granting him access to the capital needed
to establish a factory in Hokkaido, and helping him secure a loan of one million yen
from the Sumitomo Bank. Masataka later recognized Rita’s social connections in
his autobiography and wrote of how critical they were to getting Nikka Whisky off
the ground.21
The boundaries between business and personal lives were further erased with the
starting of the new venture. Working long hours to establish the new factory, Masataka
was often absent from home, which soon became the norm in their relationship. Rita
also faced the challenge of being a foreigner raising a Japanese daughter, often by
herself. Rita regularly wrote to her family in Scotland about her life in Japan and the
difficulties she faced integrating into a foreign culture and supporting her husband
and family. From a young age Rima became very aware that her foreign mother was
different, and this affected their relationship. In July 1938 Rita’s mother wrote to her:
“Rita, I’m not happy when I hear that you listen to uncomplimentary remarks when
with Rima … I suppose in all countries the foreigner has to suffer.”22
Such sentiments were to become a feature of many of the letters Rita exchanged
with her family about her experience of living in Japan. In her letters, Rita talked about
cooking Rima both Japanese and Western food, which Rima enjoyed, and how she
hated sending Rima to school in the deep snow in winter. Rima lived with Rita and
Masataka in Yoichi until 1950 when, aged twenty, she left to train as a nurse. The strain
in the relationship manifested itself after this in increasing distance—Rita reported
that Rima only contacted her and Masataka when she needed money.23 They would
reconcile towards the end of Rita’s life, and Rima lived with Rita when she was in Zushi.
20
21
22
23
Ibid., 50.
War broke out in Europe before Asia. Nonetheless, from 1939, Rita’s family were
very concerned. In late 1940 Rita received a letter from her younger sister, Lucy, urging
her to come home:
And what of you? It looks as if the whole world will be mixed up soon … I want to
tell you this that if you can possibly come home do; but come alone. You have more
than kept your side of the bargain. I admire you terribly but you say yourself that
Rima does not feel proud of you and so I want you to know that if you ever feel you
want to and you can manage it, come here. I am making enough now to support
you and anyway you would not need to be idle, you could help me.24
However, Rita remained, only to be cut off from her Scottish family completely when
the war reached Japan. Naturally, the outbreak of war was a particularly stressful time
for Rita. Still, despite being an alien from a belligerent nation, she was not subject to
the internments that many faced, probably due to a combination of being a naturalized
Japanese citizen, and Masataka being able to establish his company as a key industrial
partner of the Japanese army by providing them with spirits. However, she was subjected
to restricted movements. During this time Rita was allowed to stay at the family home
but was not allowed to send letters to her family in Scotland. As a result, her principal
connection with the outside world was a radio, which then became an item of suspicion
to Japanese authorities, who raided their home in Yoichi suspecting she was using it to
communicate with British intelligence services, much to both Rita and Masataka’s horror.25
The suspicion of Rita as a foreigner in Japan was not confined to wartime, however.
She recounts being shunned in shops, followed by the police when she went out, and
having xenophobic abuse shouted at her for being a white westerner. She bemoaned
that she did not look Japanese enough, despite strenuous efforts to fit in: “What’s wrong
with me? I became Japanese in my heart, I do wish that my hair and eyes were dark and
that my nose was smaller.”26
Rita faced much of this very largely alone. Masataka was busy with his new business,
which, after an initial false start with apple juice products, soon began to grow in size.
In 1940 he released his first whisky as a business owner—calling it Nikka Whisky. This
marked the first phase of the growth of Masataka’s whisky business into what would
become the second largest whisky company in Japan, after Suntory.
Letters Home from Post-War Japan, 1945–1961

As the war ended, Masataka was fifty years old, and Rita was forty-eight. Recognizing
that there was no immediate heir to the business, in 1945 they adopted Masataka’s
nephew Takeshi—a twenty-year-old engineering student and the son of Masataka’s
older sister.27 The adoption made a significant difference to Rita’s situation. Her
24
Ibid., 55.
25
26
27
Ibid., 81.
relationship with Rima was strained at the best of times, but Takeshi adored her, and
she him. He was a doting son who, whilst working with his father to grow the whisky
company, also took time to attend to his mother in ways that Masataka increasingly
did not. In an interview conducted in 1993, Takeshi recalls Rita as being a very kind
mother and telling him that they should have adopted him earlier.28
Rita’s mother passed away in 1956, which begat a series of insights into her reflections
on her life decisions via letters to her sister. She wrote in one letter that: “Of course I
said goodbye in my heart years ago but still I feel the world lonely without her.”29 She
talked longingly of missing her mother and of letters from her, and of how she retained
a trunk full of them. Rita keenly felt the distance from home in this period and became
more conscious of how disconnected she was from home, perhaps prompted by facets
of her life in Japan, including her health and the expectations of her as a Japanese
housewife. She wrote in one letter:
I have every letter she has written me since I came to Japan. She really was a
wonderful letter writer. She always wrote as if we were talking together and had
such a way of telling the small news which means so much when so far away.
If only I could have come home once more. Just there was the difficulty of a
Japanese family going to England and then the exchange made it impossible. The
planes are so expensive and boats not much better with tips added and so on.
I did make several attempts to save up but it is no good. Any how it is too late in
this world.30
Towards the end of her life Rita was beset by a multitude of health problems, including
liver disease, tuberculosis, and a benign tumor in her throat. In and out of hospital
in different locations in Japan, she wrote regularly to her sister on a series of matters,
from her thoughts on the political situation in Poland to her grandchildren. Her health
problems were serious, but not always given sufficient attention by Masataka, whose
focus was firmly on his rapidly growing business. Not only was Rita often left alone
with her health problems, but Masataka retained expectations of being served by Rita
when he was at home, with no thought to her illness:
Massan is expected home on 22 or 23 November [1956]. He has only been here for
ten days since Spring. Takeshi is worrying as I may have to get up as his cooking is
special and he makes no allowances for illness.31
And:
I was hoping to go to Zushi this month [April 1956] for more treatment and
Massan promised to take me. However he phones to say he was leaving on that
28
Interview with Takeshi Taketsuru, 24/09/93. GUAS ACCN 2102/1/15.
29
Letter from Rita to her sister Lucy, 20/11/56. GUAS ACCN 2102/1/15.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
evening’s plane and would bring me next time. It is always next time with him. It
makes Takeshi so mad. Last year the doctors said if I had gone 2 years sooner I had
a big chance of being cured.32
There was a stoic acceptance on Rita’s part of her health situation and lot in life, but an
acute sense of loneliness was ever present in the letters:
Thank you for your letter written on my birthday. I spent it here in hospital …
it was pickling season that finished me … doctors managed an x-ray here of my
worst lung was bad since 4 years ago [sic]. Now it has spread right down my back
so here I am. Today is Christmas and I have not heard from my family. I was
foolish enough to hope for a phone[call] but it is too late now.33
I had been in Zushi for my chest treatment since June but I always feel dog
tired and then I am alone. I am always alone. Massan was in Hokkaido. He was in
Hokkaido all August because of the heat here. It is a lonely business getting old,
but I try to remember that I made my own life. I am mainly always cheerful so
don’t imagine me down in the dumps. I am so thankful for Takeshi. He really is a
dear son.34
The loneliness Rita felt is clear from the above excerpts, but she was also contending
with a marriage that was increasingly strained. International marriage was a rare
occurrence when Rita and Masataka first met. However, on moving to Japan their
relationship started to settle into a highly patriarchal pattern, typical of Japan, but
also of many Western cultures and societies, with Rita occupying an increasingly
domestic role within the home in Yoichi, where she was expected to attend to
Masataka’s food and keep house while he worked across Japan developing and
growing his business. They spent a great deal of time apart, with their son Takeshi
similarly busy but still attentive to Rita. Rita, in the meantime, spent increasingly
more time with Takeshi’s wife, Utako, and the grandchildren. Rita wrote lovingly
about Utako, and in one letter discussed how the latter discovered Masataka’s
apparent infidelity:
She has to help Massan pack when he travels and lately when unpacking she found
a lady’s set of cream not new. It must have got in by mistake and Utako was quite
upset. I told her to put it back in and say nothing and it would land with the
owner next time Massan went on a trip … It’s so funny I know how things are
and he almost seems to hate me at times … Such is life. Do write when you can,
even ½ a page. I get so many letters that my heart always gives a jump when I see
your writing.35
32
Rita to Lucy, 26/04/56. GUAS ACCN 2102/1/15.
33
34
35
Rita accepted the discovery, more so than did Utako, who was upset on her behalf.
Again, Rita’s stoicism became apparent. By now her health was declining quite rapidly
and she appears to have become accustomed to Masataka’s absences. She was largely
unsurprised at the discovery of probable affairs, and instead focused on her health and
the challenges it brought her:
All doctors last two years say I do not have cancer … only it has gotten bigger and
is a nuisance when I swallow. The pains of the x-ray burns have gone off now and
I look and feel fine. Talking of an operation now before it gets bigger. Massan is
the nut in the machinery. He won’t agree to have it out. Massan has put a stop to
all visits so believe me the days are quite long and dull … Just now Massan is in
Hokkaido, enjoying himself with Takeshi, Utako, and the children.36
It is unclear why Masataka did not allow visitors while Rita was in hospital, but it is
clear that she was not in charge of her healthcare arrangements. The relationship with
Masataka appears to have become quite strained. She talked at length about how he
was rarely present, and when he was, how unhappy she was. For most of the later stages
of their relationship Masataka was an absentee provider. Rita wanted for very little
materially, but the more quotidian elements of a loving relationship were not present.
Massan has been home since the beginning of this month and I wish it were not
so but he upsets me always. His room is off mine and he bangs in and out and
yells things all the time. He plays mahjong nearly every evening and does not
come home until midnight and always drunk. He sleeps until late in the morning
and when he wakes he yells “stove” for us to light it … I can’t rest in peace. Since
Massan came home I have to be in the kitchen as he wants things which Utako
hasn’t cooked yet but she is learning.
I am glad your home is so nice. Wish I could see it. I always did hope to see
mum’s [home] again but I never could manage.37
Just now Massan is in Hokkaido. My doctor is a very quiet man but he is so
surprised at the way I get left on my own. He wanted me to have a nurse and was
quite upset at Massan’s going off just now and not talking things over with him.
Just Massan is in a hurry.38
The year 1959 was an eventful one for Rita. Her aunt passed away, leaving her and her
siblings a sum of money that Rita used to open a local kindergarten in Osaka (which
still exists today and is known as Rita’s Kindergarten). In May her sister Lucy visited
her in Japan, having used her share of her aunt’s estate to buy a plane ticket to Tokyo.
This was the first time the sisters had seen each other in twenty-eight years and Rita
was delighted to be reunited. Rita recalled Lucy’s stay in a letter in November that year
36
Rita to Ella and Lucy, 14/11/1957. GUAS ACCN 2102/1/15.
37
38
and how she enjoyed it, but that things had returned to normal since: “That is with all
the meals here and me in the kitchen.”39 It is unclear if Masataka was present during
Lucy’s visit, but he was not after she left. Rita wrote to her sister in December saying:
I have not seen Massan for two months. He phoned me on my birthday however.
He is very busy with his new factory in Osaka; last week they had 3 days of
entertaining notables from all over Japan. It is a very modern building.40
By 1960, Rita’s health was in serious decline and her suspicions about Masataka’s
affairs with other women had been confirmed. She found out via a friend that he had
a mistress whom he had brought to their house in the past. Again, she reassured her
sister not to worry about her and said it was something she had gotten used to. By now
she had been unwell for a long time and likely felt like she had no option but to stay
in Japan. She had talked in the past about not being able to save and being too unwell
to travel.
I haven’t been very happy recently as I have found out that Massan really has taken
Mr. Miyazaki’s sister. She is divorced as I told you. I always felt uncomfortable
when she came to our room and she and Massan drank and got rather chummy
or teased each other in a familiar way. Of course I know he has women but in the
same house it makes me feel worse. I am quite accustomed to this kind of thing so
don’t worry but I do wish it had not been so near home.41
This time I got a cold in February after [Masataka] left in January and was
quite ill until middle of March. Then on 20 March a phone came from Massan as
he was having an operation for piles in St. Luke’s Hospital and to bring Utako and
the children as he wanted to see them. He was the first patient to have whisky in
hospital, but the doctors said he was unmanageable and they let him have it. I felt
so lost when they had left especially Utako who had acted as a go between when
Massan had his fits of temper and help [sic] me a lot.42
There have been times when I keep telling myself to keep my head up and my
shoulders back … He doesn’t stay here much however. He stays somewhere in
Tokyo. If he catches a cold or feels ill we have the benefit of his company … This
time Takeshi was so busy that he didn’t have one supper even together. He had
parties every night and left at 7.30am most mornings. He got here nearly every
night at 12 o’clock. However he always came back so happy to be home and full of
love for his old Ma. We ate strawberries and ice cream every night, mainly at 1am.43
Rita intimated that Takeshi and Utako provided the emotional support she undoubtedly
needed during this time, with the latter in particular acting as a buffer between her and
Masataka in his fits of anger. Takeshi clearly doted on his mother throughout and in
39
40
41
42
43
many respects provided the love and affection she would otherwise have gone without,
given the condition of her marriage.
The last few letters that Rita sent to her sister provide further detail on Rita’s health
and the nature of her relationship with Masataka. She was demonstrably unwell and
told her sister that Masataka had bought an apartment in Tokyo after rejecting her
recommendation to do so for years. She talked about how nice the apartment was and
how it was exactly what she had been hoping he would do for them. It seems clear from
her writing that Masataka was able to compartmentalize their relationship and that he
now seemed to perceive her as more of a hindrance to him rather than as a loving wife,
even if he still felt loyalty to her. However, he did not tell her he had the apartment. She
again found out from a friend.
I was in St. Luke’s Hospital for 3 weeks before I came home as I had lost 2 stone
and was looking a fright. I was x-rayed and punched and pummelled. I swallowed
rubber tubes 3 times for tests on tummy … I have cut down on drinking. No more
beer for lunch and only two weak high balls in the evening.
Massan of course stayed in Sapporo Hotel for 2 nights. Did I tell you he has
rented an apartment in Tokyo? He says he is going to live alone there … I have
been trying to get him to get such a place for a long time as I would love to live
in a more convenient place [she is in Yoichi at this point], where one can go to a
picture once in a while or dine out without a long train journey. He always said it
was impossible to get an apartment … He took it without saying anything. I heard
about it from Mr. Takeda.44
In what appears to be her last letter to her sister, Rita talked about her home help and
how Masataka had taken a dislike to her, which she assumed was because she observed
something while Rita was in hospital:
Tsunecham is still here but there is some talk of her getting married. Massan has
taken a dislike to her for some reason … Sometimes I think Massan thinks she
knows too much as she seems to have heard and seen something when I was ill in
hospital.45
Rita Taketsuru died in Yoichi on January 17, 1961, aged sixty-four, from cirrhosis
of the liver. Masataka was not at her bedside when she died. By now he was more
successful than ever—the Crown Prince of Japan had visited his operations and
Nikka had become the second largest whisky producer in Japan. The day before Rita
died, Masataka wrote to Lucy, letting her know that her sister was close to death. He
mentions that he had got her the best care, but there was nothing more they could do:
I am very sorry to mention about Rita’s ill. She is very serious. First of all liver
trouble, inflamed. This morning she does not speak and all the time she sleeps.
44
45
I tried my best to recover, called the best doctor, but say that there is no more
treatment. If something happen [sic] I’ll telegram.46
It is clear from this letter, and Rita’s correspondence, that by this point in time
Masataka viewed his role in their relationship as a non-emotional provider—Rita was
financially secure, had support around the house, and the best medical care available.
It was a far cry from the lovestruck twenty-year-old partners who traveled together
from Scotland, chasing a dream of making Scotch whisky in Japan and of making their
lives together. However, he was not unaware of the situation Rita found herself in. In
his autobiography, Masataka was acutely aware of the personal cost Rita bore for her
decision to accompany him to Japan and her attempts to integrate herself into Japanese
society. He recounts her passing thus:
In 1961, Rita died suddenly. She married me while studying in the UK and came
all the way to Japan, an unknown country, and I could feel sorry for my wife’s fate,
she was younger than me and died before me. Nobody knows how deeply I feel
sorry for her. The thought that if she had been married to an Englishman, her
destiny would have been on a different path, squeezed my heart.47
In some respects, it might be hoped that a relationship that survived such tumultuous
conditions and challenges, underpinning the beginnings and growth of a very
successful company, might have warranted a happier ending. Certainly, the existing
narrative surrounding their relationship, developed and communicated around the
world by Nikka Whisky and many whisky writers, largely focuses on the early days
and happier outcomes of their marriage—the successful whisky company and brand,
the streets and nursery named after Rita, their graves side by side overlooking the
distillery in Yoichi, and the allure of an unusual couple’s love winning against the
odds.
Whilst Rita’s social labor and connections in supporting Masataka in his quest to
start a whisky company are recognized by the Nikka Whisky company in its archival
holdings and corporate story, the personal correspondence that Rita had with her
family members sheds light on the personal relationship challenges and emotional toll
Masataka and Nikka’s success took on Rita. Her letters reveal that towards the end of
her life they had little meaningful relationship together, with Masataka firmly focused
on his business and Rita alone in their homes in Yoichi or Zushi. An undated poem she
had neatly written out in her cookbook (held in the Nikka museum), likely towards the
end of her life, captures her thoughts on her life and situation in Japan:
I used to be brave
I used to be bold
I used to be pretty
At least so I’m told
46
Masataka to Lucy, 16/01/61. GUAS ACCN 2102/1/15.
47
But now I don’t want to be young

It’s good to be old
I want to be happy
That’s all.48
Conclusion
Running through our analysis of Rita and Masataka’s story is the emotional, social,
and cultural contexts in which an economic pursuit was undertaken. By looking at
the Taketsurus’ story in this way we seek to contribute to a more holistic approach to
business history that encompasses the rarely talked about emotional side to business,
and a more in-depth appreciation of transnational differences in business and the
social milieus in which it operates. In doing so, we demonstrate how, through her
own work and social connections in a foreign country, Rita was key in the story of the
early stages of Nikka Whisky’s development into the successful brand that it is today.
Her emotional and financial support at key junctures in their relationship enabled
Masataka’s business success, especially when it looked like hope was lost. However, by
the end of her life, her letters reveal the cost she had borne because of her life choices,
where she was emotionally constrained by the burden of her circumstances. The
emotional distance from her husband and detachment from her family back home,
whilst facing serious health challenges, underpinned all of Rita’s later years, resulting
in the clear stoicism present in her letters.
The loneliness Rita talked of throughout her letters had two manifestations. One
was her stoic refusal to return to Scotland, despite the exhortations of her sister and
mother. The other was how she threw herself into Japanese culture, embracing dress,
cooking, and lifestyle. Rita worked hard behind the scenes supporting Masataka’s
efforts to first establish the Yamazaki distillery, then when he struck out on his own,
forming what would become Nikka Whisky. It is vital to recognize the importance of
Rita’s emotional and social labor to the success of Nikka, as the company itself does
in its marketing and archival materials in its museum. It is unclear when their initial
closeness subsided, but the travails of life together were particularly pronounced for
them—living out an international relationship in a foreign country (for her) must have
been extraordinarily difficult, even more so when their countries were at war with
each, capped by the horror of the nuclear attacks on Japan. Nevertheless, Rita accepted
her situation and did not complain, act with bad temper, or seek revenge; her patience
and acceptance of loneliness, spousal infidelity, and poor physical health later in life
demonstrate how she faced these challenges alone and with no little courage.
Rita’s personal thoughts and challenges remain largely outside the prevailing
narrative of the Taketsurus. Rita’s letters offer key insights for our understanding of
business growth and its impact on the lives of those supporting and pursuing it. Folded
within the story and analysis presented in this chapter are the emotional, social, and
48
cultural contexts in which an unusual couple created a life, first together and then,
increasingly, apart. Rita’s thoughts reveal the emotional challenges of an outsider
confronting loss and homesickness while also still being in love with her husband and
wholly committed to their relationship at almost any cost. She moved across the world,
supported her husband’s business endeavors, lived through a world war, and remained
in a relationship that was increasingly distantly removed from its early promise. Whilst
Rita moved to Japan from Scotland with love, it was stoicism that kept her there until
the end of her life.
Archive materials
Collection reference: ACCN 2102. The Papers of Olive Checkland. Glasgow University
Archive Service, Scottish Business Archive.
Bibliography
Achtenhagen, Leona, Kajsa Haag, and F. Welter. “The Role of Gender in Family-Business
Research: A Systematic Review of the Literature,” in Women Entrepreneurship in Family
Business, ed. Vanessa Ratten, Leo-Paul Dana, and Veland Ramadani, 16–45. Abingdon:
Routledge, 2017.
Checkland, Olive. Japanese Whisky, Scotch Blend. Newbattle: Scottish Cultural Press, 1998.
Durepos, Gabrielle, Alan McKinlay, and Scott Taylor. “Narrating Histories of Women
at Work: Archives, Stories, and the Promise of Feminism.” Business History 59, no. 8
(2017): 1261–79.
Holt, Robin and Andrew Popp. “Emotion, Succession, and the Family Firm: Josiah
Wedgwood & Sons.” Business History 55, no. 6 (2013): 892–909
Kwolek-Folland, Angel. Incorporating Women: A History of Woman and Business in the
United States. New York: Twayne, 1998.
Nomunication website. www.nomunication.jp.
Popp, Andrew. Entrepreneurial Families: Business, Management and Life in the Early
Nineteenth Century. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012.
Taketsuru, Masataka. My History. Translated by Graeme McNee. Tokyo: Nikkei, 1968.
Taketsuru, Masataka. On the Production Methods of Pot Still Whisky. Translated by Ruth
Ann Herd. Edinburgh: Zeticula Books, 2021.
8
Malone’s on the Southside: Hearing a Telling of

Their Story
Andrew Popp, Copenhagen Business School
Malone’s1
Oh my gosh! My dad and mom used to stop at Malone’s, and we would fill brown paper
bags with rolls out of the bins. The rolls would still be warm and they could not be in
plastic, or my mom would have a fit because she liked them crispy! Once we got in the
car, I would grab a long roll, bite off the end, and start hollowing all the fluffiness out of
it. My mom would always say a mouse got at the rolls when she found my handiwork
later.2 They would load us up in the back of the third seat of the station wagon and head
south to visit our aunt and uncle in the city. My dad was raised in South Allentown
and moved us out to the country, when I was 9 months old in 1963. Going to the city
was a big deal for us. He would stop at Malone’s. Come walking out with a couple
sheets of pizza and a case of smaller rolls. Warm, fresh rolls out of Malone’s ovens and
break one off for each of us to enjoy for the next few blocks. Our family would grill,
eat, play board games, go to the park across the street to play the sport of the season.
Spend an entire weekend, visiting, laughing and enjoying the magic the city always
instilled in us.3 I’m the same, we are a family that used to live in Allentown and moved
about 100 miles away and every time that we would come back we would take Malone’s
bread and rolls with us. My father died years ago but I can remember him making his
famous hamburgers with those fantastic Kaiser rolls, they were the best.4 That’s true,
some remember the pizza and some remember the rolls, like how when my mother
1
The first two sections of this paper are a composite of comments made in reply to posts on the
Facebook page of Phillip Malone and Sons. Most of the words are those of the commenters, stitched
together with new short linking phrases and words. Some minor edits have been made to align it
with the style adopted in the rest of this book. Authors are acknowledged in a footnote at the end
of their words. The Malone’s Facebook page is open and all posts are public. Permissions have not
been sought. All three posts were accessed by the author on January 10, 2019, though time had been
spent reading the page before and subsequently. The page remains active. https://www.facebook.
com/MalonesBakery/?epa=SEARCH_BOX.
2
Susan Kohuth.
3
Stephanie Gerhardt.
4
Mike Lenner.
was in her last years we would have cheesesteak lunches around once a month. We
would get Landis steak meat, Tallaricos sauce, and I would always go direct to Malone’s
Bakery that day for rolls. I liked that weird little alley. I’d take all the stuff to her home.
She would make a perfect cheesesteak. The woman was talented. It always had to have
pickles, which set it off. They were some great moments in the midst of some difficult
days.5 I remember the alley too; parking in the alley for easy pick up. Always loved
seeing the geese waddling around in the front yard from S. 4th St. When you think of
the South Side you think of Malone’s!6
I also remember how we would wait in line in the alley. The wooden bins on the
wooden saw horses. The picture of Mr. Malone above the cash register. The old, smooth
concrete floors.7 My husband, on the other hand, remembers when Frank and his
friends from Wilson Elementary would walk down to Basin Street to fish. On the way
back home to Emaus Ave they would walk thru the alley behind the bakery and a roll
would be given or bought for a nickel.8 He remembers the whole family well. They’d sit
in the kitchen with Phillip and the boys eating cheese and bread and, of course, Phillip’s
great wine. The pizza was a duplicate to what my Nonna made and in her 70s when she
became ill, we replaced hers with Malone’s great pizza.9 I wish I could still run in that
store.10 And I’m old and my memories go back to the ’40s. We would stop on the way
home from mass, pick up bread and head to Nonna’s to dip in sauce.11
Me? I just remember Saturday family pizza day. Loved the big sheet size, all day
long. With a bottle of A-treat soda.12 I on the other hand remember how Grandmother
would attend late night bingo and bring home your pizza. We always had “bingo”
pizza when we visited. It was not just fantastic pizza, it was our childhood. After she
passed we would order your pies for our family functions to help bring back that
taste.13 And pizza made the same way all those years, never changing or skimping on
the ingredients. We all enjoyed it and made it a part of both our daily lives as well
as some personal family events.14 Some people talk about bingo pizza but we, on
the other hand, ate Malone’s pizza every Friday night. My family were immigrants
and it was the Italian way of eating that kept us all alive. It is also the Italian way
to always take care of others. We never were starving because good Italian people
eat wholesome food without spending a lot of money and we always share and help
others when unfortunate events happen. Never turn away an uninvited quest, always
have enough pasta to add to a meal in case someone shows up. Extend a healthy
meal by adding some pasta sprinkled with a little cheese. We were all starving during
5
Al Zuzic.
6
Teresa Lond Szajkovics.
7
David Emrich.
8
Mary Chapman Donchess.
9
Ronald Caciolo.
10
Tanya Sojtori Edelman.
11
Ronald Caciolo.
12
Dani Seip. A-Treat is another Allentown staple, founded in 1918. The announcement of its closure
in 2015 provoked a similar reaction on social media. The brand was rescued by another local family
business.
13
Sean M. Lamb.
14
Sherry Elias.
Malone’s on the Southside 161
the Depression except for the Italians. We all joined forces and helped each other.
God is always with us. Italians stand by each other and feed those who are hungry.
Imagine if the whole world could flourish the way Italians do, food, love for one
another, comradery [sic], helping each other, keeping it simple and always showing
compassion for each other.15
Malone’s Closing
We are losing so many of our “institutions,” places that bonded the valley together,
or that identified you as a valley resident even if you moved away, places like Yoccos,
Malone’s, Brass Rail, King George Inn, Tasty Kakes, Charles Chips, Snyder’s pretzels,
Mrs. Ts Pierogies, Gus’s etc. I’m so sad to be losing so many of these wonderful old
establishments, though I’m thankful for the ones that remain.16 But still, stuff like this
really depresses me. It was a blessing to have enjoyed you but terribly sad to see a little
piece of Americana fade into the forgotten corners of our past.17 That’s right, first the
Emmaus Bakery, now this one. Aren’t many left; Egypt Star and Vallos maybe?18 Still, I
can hold onto the memories: the memories I have of going there with my dad are some
of my favorites! It’s amazing how just walking in there I can feel my dad is with me,
watching me eat pizza and fresh bread and cheese sandwiches with uncle Ernie! There
really is no better place! I can’t wait to bring Max and Sofia!19
I too could go on forever with my great memories of Malone’s, their family and
fun I’ve had visiting the bakery for the last seventy years.20 You say that but I’m a little
younger and it still matters to me. In fact, I was introduced to Malone’s rolls and pizza by
my Nan and Pop-Pop in the seventies. My grandparents owned The Hotel Grand. Nan
made the best cheese steak sandwiches with Malone’s rolls. The Grand had an excellent
lunch business back in the day when downtown Allentown businesses thrived.21 I
know exactly what you mean, we in the Lehigh Valley have grown up with Malone’s.
It is not just pizza; it is the flavor of the valley! It is not just pizza, it is a constant and
for a single moment we are taken back to our childhood.22 And now Brass Rail steak
sandwiches will never be the same.23 And the Super Bowl won’t be the same without
a Malone’s!24 It’s the simple things, isn’t it? I will treasure the memory of the aroma of
your bread baking on the South Side, walking to St. Paul’s school, and as a child staring
at the blind man bagging bread at the wooden table after church.25 Another childhood
15
Nancy D’Annibale.
16
Lori Sheirer.
17
Thomas Mantore.
18
Lori Sheirer.
19
Jillian Jenkins.
20
Ronald Caciolo.
21
Mike Wiest.
22
Sean M. Lamb.
23
Peggy Burnet Yorgey.
24
John Henning.
25
Sue Sesko.
business, now a lifetime memory.26 To lose an icon business that actually cared about
there [sic] workers, customers and neighbors.27 I don’t know what to say.
So, I just want to say thanks for being a member of every South Side family.28 For
now though, tears are running down my face. The Allentown that I know has changed
so dramatically. I’m sure this next generation coming up will think that it’s for the
better but there was nothing like growing up in the sixties, seventies and eighties, in
Allentown Pennsylvania NOTHING NOWHERE NO HOW!!!!!!29 Finally then, I just
want to say thanks, Malone’s, for all the wonderful memories of those loving family
days and ways.30 I refuse to believe this is the end.31
The Southside
Until it closed in 2018, after a little over a hundred years, Malone’s Bakery stood on
South Fourth Street, Allentown, PA. Out back of a modest white clapboard home, a
series of low buildings lining an alley formed the bakery. Even before the bakery closed
the Malone family began collecting memories. In a Facebook post of September 5,
2015 they asked:
What are some of your memories of the Bakery, the Family and anything associated
with our Pizza & Rolls? This could be as simple as why you buy, who you knew,
gatherings you’ve had or friendships with the family you made! We hope to keep
this post going, strike up some conversations, hear a telling of our history from
those that have kept us going!32
The clinching question was deceptively simple: “What has Malone’s meant to your
life, big or small?!”33 In a post of June 29, 2018 Malone’s announced their closure. The
announcement paid tribute to the business, to the family, and to the community:
The Southside of Allentown has been our home since the beginning and we want
to thank its residents for allowing us to touch your lives like you touched ours …
The 40s, 50s 60s and 70s was a booming time for us when businesses relied on
our Italian bread and pizza to feed their hungry customers … while making new
memories with others who made our product a staple in their lives.34
26
Susanne Marie.
27
Chuck Deprill.
28
Anthony Amici.
29
John Crevin. Crevin acknowledged that he had never been to Malone’s.
30
Stephanie Gerhardt.
31
Robert Singley.
32
Phillip Malone and Sons.
33
Accessed by the author January 10, 2019.
34
Accessed by the author January 10, 2019. The bakery was already temporarily closed, due to
bereavements and ill health. This announcement confirmed that the closure was permanent. A
subsequent post, of July 31, announced that “As promised, this page will become a repository for
the History of Malone’s Bakery! Please feel free to message us stories you would like us to share and
photos you have of the Bakery and Malone family!”
The Southside of Allentown is a working- and middle-class neighborhood. South

Fourth Street is lined with chain and local businesses, fast food outlets, Mexican
restaurants, and auto repair shops. There’s a shopping plaza, where most of the units
are occupied. To the east of South Fourth Street are quiet streets of modest one- and
two-storey family homes. Mostly they are decent and well maintained, the streets tidy
and trim.
Allentown was first laid out in 1762, but the Southside is a creation of the twentieth
century. Initially Malone’s was located outside the city boundaries, in a semi-urban
area demarcated to the west and north by the Little Lehigh Creek, separating
the emerging Southside from the historic heart of Allentown.35 To the south, the
neighborhood was and remains hemmed in by South Mountain. Growth was driven
by industrial development. Mack Trucks, founded in Brooklyn, NYC, in 1900, opened
their first Allentown works in an old foundry on the Southside in 1905. Two years
later the Brooklyn facility was closed, and production concentrated in Pennsylvania,
the Southside becoming indelibly associated with Mack. Emmaus Avenue led over the
mountain and down into the southside of Bethlehem, home of Bethlehem Steel, where
many Southside residents made a good living.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw dramatic population growth,
from a little over 25,000 in 1890 to nearly 52,000 in 1910 and 73,500 in 1920. Malone’s
was born in this upswing as the city pulled in newcomers—American and immigrant—
attracted by economic opportunity. Earlier generations of German immigrants had
played a prominent role in colonizing this part of Pennsylvania, but they were now
joined by new ethnic groups: Irish, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, and others. Population
growth continued across the twentieth century, but also experienced periods of
decline. Indeed, in the 1970s the population contracted a full 5 percent as a wave of
deindustrialization hit. By 2020, the population of the state’s third largest city stood
at a relatively modest 125,845. The city not only grew but changed. As late as the
1970s Allentown was an overwhelmingly White city; now non-Hispanic whites barely
make up a third of the population. Whereas the city’s downtown is overwhelmingly
Hispanic, the Southside is still in the process of undergoing demographic change and
doorbells display a wide mix of names: German, Polish, and Italian but also Spanish
and others. The demographics of the neighborhood and of the commenters are now
only a partial match and many commenters also noted they no longer live on the
Southside. Meanwhile, Bethlehem Steel closed for good in 2001. As for Mack, though
manufacturing still takes place in the region, the company is now foreign owned and
headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina. Like a lot of places in America, you can
do ok and lead a good life here, but it is changing too.
Increasingly, there might be disagreements about what a good life looks like.
Nicholas Dames argues that as the study of nostalgia has moved “past an inquiry into
35
Hurley describes “a pronounced shift in diner geography as new diners gravitated to a zone of
transition between inner-city neighborhoods and mass-produced suburbs: residential communities
on the fringe of cities that were experiencing an influx of upwardly mobile, middle-income families
of recent European extraction.” This well captures Malone’s location. Andrew Hurley, “From Hash
House to Family Restaurant: The Transformation of the Diner and Post-World War II Consumer
Culture.” Journal of American History 83, no. 4 (1997): 1292.
essences—what nostalgia is—toward studies of uses, purposes and circumstances,” it

increasingly demands that we confront the “complex emplotment of nostalgic yearning
in discrete historical and political circumstances.”36 Malone’s closure took place one and
a half years into the presidency of Donald Trump. Trump had won in 2016, in part, by
leveraging divisions over who had a right to the American good life.37 It was a campaign
saturated in a nostalgic call to “Make America Great Again,” a slogan containing both
an implicit critique of America today and a yearning for an America past, rooted in
a nagging sense that things had somehow gone wrong. The “MAGA” slogan, and its
performance at rallies and embodiment in merchandise, lacked specificity, but that
gave it an emotional capaciousness that perhaps made it even more effective. Your
neighborhood bakery closing might be part of what was going wrong. At the same
time, in reaction, many liberals found themselves looking forward to getting back to
“normal,” explicitly framed as a time before. The emotional heft of the call to “Make
America Great Again” (and counter-responses to it) undoubtedly formed an important
element of the emotional climate that summer.38
A History of Nostalgia
Nostalgia has been positioned as “coeval with modernity.”39 Nostalgia might also have
a geography. Susan Matt has painted American nostalgia as a permissible emotion, as
against homesickness. In such a vast, mobile country, to desire or attempt to return
home carries a “social stigma,” attracting “shame and disapproval. What earlier
36
Nicholas Dames, “Nostalgia and its Disciplines: A Response,” Memory Studies 3, no. 3 (2010): 270.
37
Lehigh County, which contains Allentown, gave Hilary Clinton a winning margin of nearly
5 percent over Donald Trump in 2016, and Joe Biden a winning margin of nearly 8 percent in 2020,
but is bordered by counties that voted for Trump in both elections.
38
Evidence of support for Trump (such as yard signs) can be found across the southside, a socially,
racially, and politically mixed neighborhood. However, overt politics are effectively absent from
posts on the Malone’s page. For reasons of space, complexity, and sources this chapter cannot
deeply engage the politics of this case. Nostalgia is often seen as “prone to instrumentalization by
conservative strata of the society, striving to legitimate their privileges and to impede social changes”
(Olivia Angé and David Berliner, “Introduction: Anthropology of Nostalgia—Anthropology as
Nostalgia,” in Anthropology and Nostalgia, ed. Olivia Angé and David Berliner (NYC: Berghahn,
2015), 4). That belief can be easily transmuted into an assumption that all nostalgia is inherently
politically reactionary and conservative, with all nostalgias “reified into an essentialized object with
a given and stable content” (ibid., 7). As Angé and Berliner observe, some scholars have argued
against “the idea of retrospective yearnings as politically regressive and emotionally disturbed” and
“that similar forms of longing carry very different meanings depending on the political agendas
in which they were enmeshed” (5, 7). Thus, Maya Nadkarni and Olga Shevchenko warn us that
contextual “resemblances” can too easily “facilitate key misrecognitions of nostalgic practices”
(Maya Nadkarni and Olga Shevchenko, “The Politics of Nostalgia in the Aftermath of Socialism’s
Collapse: A Case for Comparative Analysis,” in Anthropology and Nostalgia, ed. Olivia Angé and
David Berliner (NYC: Berghahn, 2015), 63). Critically, they argue, analyses of “nostalgia must thus
guard against two temptations: reading politics into nostalgia (that is, assuming inherent political
meaning or implications to specific nostalgic practices) and reading nostalgia into politics (assuming
that every reference to the past is indeed a nostalgic one)” (63). I have sought to avoid both of these
temptations. Nonetheless, my silence here about politics does not mean I believe the case is devoid
of politics.
39
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), xvi.
generations interpreted as a love of home and family, contemporary Americans

consider dysfunctional.” Nostalgia, perhaps because it carried the “recognition
that it is impossible to turn back time,” has settled into a role as a “less potent and
socially disruptive emotion.”40 Matt dates this divide to the late nineteenth or early
twentieth centuries, a period of intense processes of industrialization, urbanization,
and immigration, driving a “a tempo of change so rapid and inexorable that it made the
past utterly different from the present.”41 Nonetheless, this leaves open the questions of
how and under what conditions nostalgia is experienced
Nadia Atia and Jeremy Davies argue that “Nostalgia is always suspect,” requiring we
keep “a sceptical distance from its illusions.”42 Nostalgia acts as a seduction; inauthentic
or sentimental. In diagnostic mode, scholars of nostalgia (first named by a physician)
have sought to isolate its essence, often characterizing it as a peculiarly modern disease,
as in Peter Fritzsche’s exploration of nostalgia in Europe following the rupture of the
French Revolution.43 However, scholarship has now moved past what nostalgia is and
toward what it does. I derive three functions from the literature: bridging; binding; and
as critique.44
Bridging is temporal. Nostalgia has always represented a “desire to bridge past
experience and present conditions.”45 Atia and Davies emphasize how “nostalgia serves
as a negotiation between continuity and discontinuity: it insists on the bond between
our present selves and a certain fragment of the past, but also on the force of our
separation from what we have lost.”46 In doing so, nostalgia “correlates place, time, and
desire.”47 This bridging is often rooted in a collective or communal voice, becoming “a
form of cultural identity.”48 Dames too identifies an “appeal to a communal sharing of
nostalgic recollection.”49 Nostalgia has been charged with enervating political energies,
spreading a “gangrenous passivity throughout our sense of the past.”50 However,
emphasizing the bridging function of nostalgia might reveal it as a “way of shaping
and directing historical consciousness,” and a “a potent form of … subaltern memory”
that is “more mobile, more active, and more self-aware” than typically allowed.51 More
than simply highlighting its critical potential, reframing nostalgia thus reveals how it
can function “in productive, surprisingly therapeutic ways.”52
40
Susan Matt, “You Can’t Go Home Again: Homesickness and Nostalgia in U.S. History.” Journal of
American History 95, no. 2 (2007): 471.
41
Ibid., 497.
42
Nadia Atia and Jeremy Davies, “Nostalgia and the Shapes of History.” Memory Studies 3, no. 3
(2010): 181.
43
Peter Fritzsche, “Specters of History: On Nostalgia, Exile, and Modernity.” American Historical
Review 106, no. 5 (2001): 1587–618.
44
Angé and Berliner note that “nostalgic discourses” can “bond diverse categories of actors and
constitute a source of mnemonic convergence.” Anthropology and Nostalgia, 9
45
Matt, “You Can’t Go Home Again,” 471.
46
Atia and Davies, “Nostalgia,” 184.
47
Ibid.
48
Dames, “Nostalgia and Its Disciplines,” 273.
49
Ibid., 270.
50
Ibid., 274.
51
Atia and Davies, “Nostalgia,” 182, 181.
52
Dames, “Nostalgia and its Disciplines,” 274.
Food is a frequent focus of nostalgia. Observing the United States, Matt notes
how “Foreign immigrants and internal migrants surround themselves with a variety
of consumer goods—from tamales and tortillas to sushi and soul food—that remind
them of home.”53 But though the relationship between food, memory, and nostalgia
may begin in the sensual world, beyond that initial visceral moment there extends
a more far-reaching set of connections. Specifically, we can discern elements of
bridging, binding, and critique in studies of food-centered nostalgia. Several studies
of the relationship between food and nostalgia focus on the diner, perhaps because
of the “melancholy, luminous and utterly precise vision of Americana that only a
diner can signify.”54 Bridging is prominent in Andrew Hurley’s history of the diner
and US consumer culture, with the diner positioned at several junctures: geographic;
ethnic; scale; and class. Hurley argues “purveyors of consumer commodities
finessed and exploited emergent social dislocations in the drive to expand and
diversify markets.” However, at the same time, in “transforming the diner, builders
and proprietors created a borderland, a place where cultures intersected, clashed,
and sometimes fused.”55 They also created temporal bridges, being “transitional
institutions … between the corner saloon and the fast-food restaurant.”56 Moreover,
because they “cultivated a constituency from varied ethnic backgrounds,” diners
were “sites of cultural amalgamation.” Elizabeth Hirschman also characterizes the
diner as a “simultaneously communal, yet liminal, space.”57 Stacey Denton identifies
similar concerns in Richard Russo’s depiction of the (fictional) Empire Grill in his
novel Empire Falls.58 Rather than capturing some “regressed return to some idealized
past,” the “diner represents the history, perseverance, decline and even the hopes of
the town; it is a place of community.”59 Lily Kelting uncovers in the “new” Southern
cooking a cultural movement that “creates identity and solidarity based on a sense
of regional trauma, insularity, or loss.”60 In considering the nostalgia that grew up
around New Orleans’ foodways, Ashley Young likewise identifies the catalyzing effect
of experiences of “remembrance, loss, and spectacle.” However, she also analyzes this
“codification” of Creole cuisine as “an act ripe with power” in which often wealthy,
White New Orleanians “had the power to influence the identities of the people who
imagined themselves in relation to it.”61
53
Matt, “You Can’t Go Home,” 497.
54
Elizabeth Hirschman, “Foodsigns on the Highway of Life: the Semiotics of the Diner.” Advances in
Consumer Research 33 (2006): 609.
55
Hurley, “Hash House,” 1283–4.
56
Ibid.
57
Hirschman, “Foodsigns on the Highway of Life,” 609.
58
Acknowledging the fictionality of the Empire Grill, I argue that it is the cultural discourse around
food, diners, and nostalgia that matters. Stacy Denton, “Nostalgia, Class and Rurality in Empire
Falls.” Journal of American Studies 45, no. 3 (2011): 503–18.
59
Ibid., 514–5.
60
Lily Kelting, “The Entanglement of Nostalgia and Utopia in Contemporary Southern Food
Cookbooks.” Food, Culture & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 19, no.
2 (2016): 7.
61
Ashley Young, “Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in Nineteenth-Century America”
PhD diss., Duke University, 2017, 209, 199.
However, Kelting claims, “New Southern food is uniquely concerned with an

imagined future that transcends the political exigencies of the present.”62 Denton
argues, in Empire Falls, that nostalgia “helps this working-class small town assert
its perspective in relation to the postwar and present mainstream that places it in
some nostalgic past,” opening up “larger cultural norms to criticism through its very
difference.”63 Likewise, Hurley has argued that “class remained the fundamental social
category around which the diner oriented its appeal,” fostering a male, blue-collar
solidarity.64 The intersections of nostalgia, class, and politics are complex then and the
democratizing potential of nostalgia vulnerable to co-optation.
Still, Matt has suggested that “today Americans take the fast pace of change for
granted. The past is past, and by and large, contemporary Americans do not … mourn
it, as earlier generations did.” If this is so, where do we place the story of Malone’s in the
history and geography of nostalgia?65
Locating Malone’s
As a public, retail business, Malone’s operated as a bridging space, theoretically

democratic and open to all, where differences of race, religion, gender, class, and politics
were absent. Everyone’s money is good when you have enough to buy bread or pizza.66
Yet this was also a family home, and the public spaces carried with them much of
the intimacy of the home, for family members, employees, customers, and neighbors.
The lines separating neighborhood, from street, from alley, from bakery, and from
home, seem faint and blurred, constantly crossed by members of the community as
they moved around the city and the neighborhood. People entered not simply to buy
bread, but also to talk, to sit, to eat, and to share homemade wine. The life and world of
the bakery also spilled outwards—not least in the form of the smell of baking bread—
and you could enter its space simply by passing through the alley to the rear, where
children would often be handed a warm roll for free.
However, space is structured by more than its physical elements. It was not
simply the material structure of the bakery that had endured through time, but also
the multitude of memories and associations that circulated around it. These too had
shown remarkable durability, and commenters shared memories that went back
almost eighty years, to the 1940s. The bakery thus bridged time.67 However, whilst
open and public, not everyone could share the intimacies associated with the bakery
to the same degree. Several posters noted direct, if sometimes distant, connections
62
Kelting, “Entanglement,” 4.
63
Denton, “Nostalgia, Class and Rurality,” 506, 510.
64
Hurley, “Hash House,” 1286.
65
Matt, “You Can’t Go Home,” 497.
66
As Young says, “Everyone [eats] regardless of demographic categories of age, race, ethnicity, gender,
sexual orientation, or socio-economic status.” “Nourishing Networks,” 191.
67
Young argues that the history of New Orleans’ public markets “reveals the organizing power of
food distribution—a force that not only served as a catalyst of community development, but also
sustained a sense of belonging over generations.” “Nourishing Networks,” 133.
between the Malone’s and their own families, whether through marriage, cousinhood,
or similar. These posters quite often used just first names in writing about past
members of the Malone family, even when familial links appeared quite tenuous. It
is hard not to read some posts as claims to an intimacy with the family and the space
of the bakery not afforded to all, even though the Malone family appears to have been
prodigious in its friendships. But the bakery was also accommodating enough to
contain other intimacies, particularly those of friendship, and beyond that, of ethnicity
and of belonging to the neighborhood, city, or region. As an emotional space, the
bakery contained many nested circles, structuring the gradations between open and
closed, public and private, inclusive and exclusive. Thus, though located in a physical
environment, locatable on a map, Malone’s was also subject to processes of mental and
emotional mapping.
Nostalgia’s Coordinates
Nostalgia is typically characterized as a longing for a lost past or a lost somewhere.

As such it is organized around two inseparable coordinates: time and place. We can
see these as intersecting axes: running from here (this place) to there (that place),
and from now (this time) to then (that past time). Their interactions demarcate four
zones: there/then; there/now; then/here; and here/now. There/then, in which we are
severed from both here and now, is a zone of loss. It was into this zone that those
commenting on Malone’s social media posts crowded most readily, their voices a
babble of laments. There/now is a zone of uncanny, unsettling dislocation, in which the
here in the present is rendered strange and unfamiliar. Then/here is a zone of desired
or longed for persistence—to bring the then we have lost back into the here we still
inhabit. Here/now is a zone of realized and satisfying persistence, most often through
deliberate acts of remembering, as when Malone’s elicited their customers’ memories.
It is, after the experiences of loss, dislocation, and longing, a space of recovery.
Individual commentators found themselves occupying multiple zones simultaneously,
or transiting through them. Moreover, the comments also revealed the existence of a
fifth zone—the future, albeit a future defined by absence, by what it would not be.
Expressions of loss dominated reactions to news of Malone’s closure in the summer
of 2018. In a curious act of double removal, one commentator was startled to find that
“Another piece of my past is gone.”68 Another found it “terribly sad to see a little piece
of Americana fade into the forgotten corners of our past.”69 It seemed the bakery was
passing not only from life but from memory, experiencing a kind of second death,
capturing the emotions experienced within this zone, as made clear in the statement
that the closure meant that “Another icon of childhood and Allentown [is] gone.”70
Rendered as iconic, Malone’s came to stand for an era and an entire city, both now
unreachable. People felt things coming apart as they experienced the process of “losing
68
Mark Kennet.
69
Thomas Mantore.
70
Glenn Geist.
so many of our ‘institutions,’ places that bonded the valley together, or that identified
you as a valley resident.”71 Identity stood uncertainly on shifting sands, the bridging
and binding functions the bakery had performed falling away.
If there/then is a zone colored by the loss of place and time, there/now performs
peculiar operations, in which the here of now is rendered into an unrecognizable
there.72 Place is lost to the present, so that “Brass Rail steak sandwiches will never be
the same.”73 These are emotions driven by processes of dislocation, warping apparently
solid geographic continuities: the “Allentown … I know has changed so dramatically,”
noted one poster.74 Malone’s themselves observed that that the Southside, the whole
valley, “won’t be the same without Malone’s Bakery.”75 There was an uncanniness to
this zone, a sense of the haunted. One commenter admitted “I still find myself looking
for the steak rolls”76 in a restless search for that which was no longer to be found. In
comparison, the past had been a better place, “when it was so simple back then.”77
Then/here is a space of yearning. It possesses some consolations, but largely goes
unrequited. Posters craved for the bakery to reopen and often seemed puzzled that
this was not going to happen. Many of these pleas to bring the then into the here,
bringing about an impossible reconciliation of temporal discontinuities, were quite
straightforward, such as the simple “a holiday didn’t pass, without Malone’s bread and
pizza. It’s still something I miss every day.”78 Others believed they could help make it
happen, proclaiming “Please come back!! I would do anything to help you get back on
your feet.”79 Some, however, recognized the impossibility of their desires, exclaiming,
“Oh how wonderful a Malone’s pizza would be right now,”80 whilst others hankered
for one, final piece—“Sad I can’t have a slice.”81 But the time had passed, leaving
Patrice Illigasch lamenting, “It’s hard to believe I’ll never have another Malone’s roll.”82
Nonetheless, for some, remaining traces lingered in consoling ways. Thus, one was “so
sad to be losing so many of these wonderful old establishment,” but still managed to be
“grateful for the ones that remain.”83 Steve Milinchuk was sad to know he would never
have another slice, but he was also “happy I’ve had hundreds in my life.”84 Some of the
bridges held.
71
Lori Sheirer
72
Ketling describes the “Southern culinary ethos [as] ‘homesick for the place in which we still live’”
(“Entanglement of Nostalgia and Utopia,” 7). Young captures the same process when she argues that
“Time … played a crucial role in making New Orleans feel foreign” (“Nourishing Networks,” 244).
Nadkarni and Shevchenko suggest that under modernity “remaining in one’s native place could no
longer prevent the experience of displacement” (“The Politics of Nostalgia,” 64).
73
Peggy Burnet Yorgey.
74
John Crevin.
75
76
Ilona Golden.
77
Donna Barbara Ammaray.
78
Ronald Caciolo.
79
Aidan Quinn Tapler.
80
Paula Barron.
81
Steve Milinchuk.
82
Patrice Illigasch.
83
Lori Sheirer.
84
Steve Milinchuk.
Finally, here/now is a more positive realm in which deliberate acts of remembering

were able to provide consolation. Indeed, this had been Malone’s intention in soliciting
memories, acknowledging that “We know this is sad, but we hope you can remember
the good times … the best times … that we had over these long, beautiful and of
course delicious 100 years.”85 The effect was deeply felt. Douglas Kellogg, for example,
recounted how “I worked at the bakery for about 8 years & on and off … Great people,
wonderful food, tough and rewarding work. Malone’s will always be a part of who I’ve
become.”86 Another poster confessed that though “this post made me cry,” they were
“so thankful for the flood of memories!”87 Thankfulness was the dominant emotional
note in this zone: to have experienced Malone’s, to have tasted the bread and the pizza,
to have worked there, to have known the Malone family, and, most of all, thankfulness
and well wishes to the remaining members of the family. In the end, it was a “blessing
to have enjoyed you.”88
And the absent future? This was a future denied to the “so many people [who] will
never know the joy of having the wonderful products that they poured their hearts
and souls into,”89 and to those who “never imagined it would stop being made.”90 This
imagined future had been timeless, never changing. Now, it had been cut off, so that
the “ABSOLUTELY UNMATCHED” pizzas of Malone’s “will sadly remain so.”91
Nostalgia’s Contents
Time and space structured the memories and nostalgia around Malone’s. Time and
space also provide some, but far from all, of their content. The post announcing the
final closure of the bakery contained many important elements of the content of the
nostalgia:
Many members of our family have worked at the bakery at one point during their
lives, whether it was their first job, helping out during holidays or a way to get back
up on their feet. They thanked their lucky stars that they always had a place to go,
bread to eat, and pizza to devour! We, as many of you, included our family’s pizza
and bread at parties, baptisms, picnics, Fridays during Lent and virtually at any
gathering we could think of where others needed food. This food was the lifeblood
of many of our happiest moments, childhood memories and brought us so many
wonderful friends and customers over the years.92
85
86
Douglas Kellogg.
87
Kristy Kratzer Strobl.
88
Thomas Mantore.
89
Barry Kuntz.
90
Ilona Golden.
91
Robyn Achey.
92
We have encountered much of the emotional content of the memories that flowed
in response to the closure in the opening sections of this chapter. Here I briefly
consider that content thematically. Often the stuff of people’s nostalgia gave greater
consolation than did reflections on time and place because it tended to focus on happy,
positive memories. Unsurprisingly, many respondents’ most powerful and important
memories originated in childhood and were anchored to family. Memories of family
and childhood carried particularly strong positive associations, casting a flattering
light across the past, captured in one recollection of how “Our family would grill,
eat, play board games, go to the park across the street to play the sport of the season.
Spend an entire weekend, visiting, laughing and enjoying the magic the city always
instilled in us.”93
Malone’s spoke explicitly of “our community.” Thus, family was encircled by
community.94 Here the bridging and binding functions were very strong. For some, it
may simply have been that “the family friendly atmosphere of the folks at the bakery
was always warm & welcoming.”95 The Malone family were “part of the history I grew
up with,”96 or that the Malone family “will always have a special place in my heart!”97
For some, it was literally true that “The Malone family has been part of my family my
whole life.”98
Malone’s, family, and community were further bound together by rites, rituals,
and ceremonies, both public and private, shared and individual, religious and secular.
Buying, sharing, and consuming Malone’s bread and pizza marked time, whether that
was bingo night, monthly steak sandwich dinners, or annual events such as religious
events, sporting spectacles, birthdays, or periodic trips to enjoy the magic of the city.
For some, Malone’s became integral to how they counted off the days, the weeks, the
months, the years. It did so in ways that were both profound and mundane: “I ordered
endless amounts of pizzas for baptisms, holiday parties” and “just lazy Saturday’s [sic]
at home.”99 But whatever the occasion, in their use to mark time, Malone’s products
bound family member to family member, and family to community. Making Malone’s
part of your life and your family’s life confirmed you as a Valley resident, even for
those who had long ago left. Malone’s products most often were consumed in very
mundane ways, grabbed in a hurry when hungry, consumed unthinkingly as part of a
steak sandwich at Zandy’s or the Brass Rail, but it was not only in remembering that
there occurred a process of sacralization.100
93
Stephanie Gerhardt.
94
We recall Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of emotional communities. See Emotional Communities in
the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).
95
Kathy Marushok Hoffman.
96
Rocco Galluci.
97
Nancy Baier.
98
Jody Thomas.
99
Kristy Kratzer Strobl.
100
Young places a similar emphasis on the importance of the ritualistic nature of even the most ordinary
food provisioning, purchasing, and consumption, arguing that “daily interactions between vendors
and customers forged bonds among community members, who then solidified those bonds through
rituals of consumption” (“Nourishing Networks,” 7).
Of course, this sacralization involved an act of consumption. Unsurprisingly, the

world of Malone’s, in real life and in memory, was heavily sensory and embodied—
aroma, taste, touch. Remembering the taste and smell of Malone’s products was a
prominent theme. Time and again, posters proclaimed Malone’s “the best.” At the
same time, posters seemed to relish the ordinariness of what they were remembering;
just pizza. The sensory—texture and sound as well as aroma and taste—were part of
the process by which family was bound to community, to place, to region, to time, to
identity. We have encountered Nancy D’Annibale’s extended meditation on food and
Italian culture and identity. Robyn Achey compressed so much of this into two short
sentences: “The love, tradition, and feeling of familia that you put into your baking
shone even above the magic of the taste. One’s heart became as full as one’s belly.”101
Finally, memories also situated Malone’s as part of a landscape of other businesses—
“Yoccos, Malone’s, Brass Rail, King George Inn, Tasty Kakes, Charles Chips, Snyder’s
pretzels, Mrs. Ts Pierogies, Gus’s etc.”102 Together they formed an ecosystem of local
enterprises that provided an important source of valley identity and pride. In terms
of making sure provisioning and consumption took place, many of these businesses
also relied on each other in sating residents’ appetites. Thus, the Brass Rail103 and
Zandy’s104 steak shop were the most prominent in this roll call; both restaurants had
for decades bought Malone’s bread for their sandwiches. The Brass Rail and Zandy’s
remain open, but many others were already long gone—Paulie’s, Palladino’s, The Hotel
Grand. Nor was Malone’s the only bakery in the region to have closed; Emmaus Bakery
also shuttered in the summer of 2018, after more than eighty years in operation, the
Easton Baking Company followed in fall of the same year, after close to fifty years. For
now, Vallos and Egypt Star Bakery survive. Feelings of loss amongst residents were
not ill-founded; this was something they were experiencing. They could no longer get
the bread or the pizza their families had for years enjoyed. Their world was changing.
Conclusions: Malone’s and Life on the Southside
As Hurley argues, something “as prosaic as eating lunch has rarely been considered
important by historians.”105 What had Malone’s meant in people’s lives? It is evident
that it meant a great deal to many people, even if parts of that meaning, the weight
of it, were constructed in retrospect, in the aftermath of closure. Amidst processes of
change, Malone’s and memories of Malone’s anchored people in a sensory and material
world; of the smell and texture of warm bread, the sensation of smooth concrete
floors; the sight of a blind man bagging rolls on Sundays, the bells of mass fading
away in diminishing echoes. Malone’s took their money, in an exchange of pennies for
101
Robyn Achey.
102
Lori Sheirer.
103
The Brass Rail was founded by Italian immigrant Philip Sorrentino in 1931. It is currently run by the
founder’s grandchildren.
104
Zandy’s, also family owned, was founded in 1940.
105
Hurley, “Hash House,” 1283.
pizza (generating profit), but in doing so it anchored them to the generations of their
families, and of the families they knew, including the Malones themselves. Indeed,
that it was a monetary exchange may even have reinforced the bond, for the “power to
purchase … created a fairly egalitarian economic environment [in which to] exercise
agency and foster community through economic transactions.”106 In turn, Malone’s
anchored residents to the rituals and routines of those families, their communities,
and their city: Friday night pizza, Saturday night pizza, Kaiser rolls for Dad’s cookouts,
and steak rolls for aging mothers to make cheesesteak with. Rolls on the way home
from school or mass or on the way to fish or to go to the park on rare trips back into
the city. It anchored them to other local businesses and to the whole of the Southside,
to Allentown, to the Lehigh Valley. And it was nothing much really; an Italian bakery
that made rolls and square trays of pizza that people enjoyed. If memories of Malone’s
located people in a place it also anchored them in time. The good times were located in
the same place, but before, often at several decades remove from the present. Malones
themselves framed the 1950s–1970s as the good years, the boom times, economically
as much as culturally, tapping into a disillusionment with the present that continues to
propel developments in American culture and politics.
Malone’s anchored posters amidst processes of loss and change—personal and
communal—that evoked and framed the nostalgia they felt and expressed. As Atia
and Davies argue, nostalgia “insists … on the force of our separation from what we
have lost.”107 In doing so, memory and nostalgia reinserted Malone’s back into lives as a
source of meaning. As Malone’s and other local businesses had helped construct lived
everyday experience in the past, so it now helped construct emotions in the present.
Malone’s had been a constituent part of the life-worlds of the residents of the
Southside of Allentown. In both the past and in memory, Malone’s formed part of an
affective landscape of the everyday, one traversed physically and emotionally. Mannur
has described nostalgic narratives as creating a “form of affective citizenship.”108 Thus,
memories of Malones were part of a process that reconfirmed membership of this
affective citizenry. Belonging to an affective landscape was integral to claims to affective
citizenship. Atia and Davies argue that to indulge nostalgia is to “run the risk of
constricting our ability to act in the present.”109 But, perhaps, to express nostalgia is to act.
In memory and feeling, Malone’s continued to bridge and bind. To express an emotion
is to make a claim, not only on the past but also on the present and the future. It is to
propose alternatives, even if they are no longer accessible, cut off from us by the flow of
time, but nonetheless still reflecting a “an imaginative … radical subjectivity.”110 Critique
lies in the acknowledgment of loss, an acknowledgment that may also deliver resilience.111
106
Young, “Nourishing Networks,” 141.
107
Atia and Davies, “Nostalgia,” 184.
108
Anita Mannur, “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora.” MELUS 32, no. 4
(2007): 13.
109
Atia and Davies, “Nostalgia and the Shapes of History,” 181.
110
Fritzsche, “Specters of History,” 1589.
111
Young argues that food could be a “mode through which disenfranchised Americans participated in
the political culture: those without the vote claimed a voice through their role in the country’s food
culture and economy” (“Nourishing Networks,” 2).
Nostalgia is often condemned as inauthentic, vulnerable to manipulation by the

powerful, a script to be performed. This might be especially true regarding business,
which, being driven by profit motives (or so it is believed), can be suspected of
producing simulacra of “real” emotions. But on what grounds should we distrust the
connections—across time, space, and community—enabled by the emotions generated
around Malone’s closure? And so, if not strictly subaltern, the memories and emotions
around Malone’s were certainly memories and emotions from below, unironically
conscious of their ordinariness, celebratory in their thrust, and redeeming amid loss.
Bibliography
Angé, Olivia and David Berliner. “Introduction: Anthropology of Nostalgia—
Anthropology as Nostalgia,” in Anthropology and Nostalgia, ed. Olivia Angé and David
Berliner, 1–16. New York: Berghahn, 2014.
Atia, Nadia and Jeremy Davies. “Nostalgia and the Shapes of History.” Memory Studies 3,
no. 3 (2010): 181–6.
Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Dames, Nicholas. “Nostalgia and its Disciplines: A Response.” Memory Studies 3, no. 3
(2010): 269–75.
Denton, Stacy. “Nostalgia, Class and Rurality in Empire Falls.” Journal of American Studies
45, no. 3 (2011): 503–18.
Fritzsche, Peter. “Specters of History: On Nostalgia, Exile, and Modernity.” American
Historical Review 106, no. 5 (2001): 1587–618.
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Hurley, Andrew. “From Hash House to Family Restaurant: The Transformation of the
Diner and Post-World War II Consumer Culture.” Journal of American History 83, no.
4 (1997): 1282–308.
Kelting, Lily. “The Entanglement of Nostalgia and Utopia in Contemporary
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Mannur, Anita. “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora.” MELUS
32, no. 4 (2007): 11–31.
Matt, Susan. “You Can’t Go Home Again: Homesickness and Nostalgia in U.S. History.”
Journal of American History 95, no. 2 (2007): 469–97.
Nadkarni, Maya and Olga Shevchenko. “The Politics of Nostalgia in the Aftermath of
Socialism’s Collapse a Case for Comparative Analysis,” in Anthropology and Nostalgia,
ed. Olivia Angé and David Berliner, 61–95. NYC: Berghahn, 2014.
Rosenwein, Barbara. Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
Young, Ashley. “Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in Nineteenth-Century
America.” PhD diss., Duke University, 2017.
Part Three
Unruly Emotions
Conventional wisdom states that change in a capitalistic system is driven by innovative

firms and entrepreneurs. The market, meanwhile, has occasional bursts of irrationality
whose tentacles reach into the corners of society and culture, generating change as
they move along. The only place for emotions, then, is in the individual and collective
responses to these market-driven transformations, evolutionary and revolutionary. If,
for example, a bubble bursts, then people react with fear and anxiety. Right?
This is a compelling and common narrative; shuffling emotions off to the margins
of the business realm, keeps things within the margins. And, people, communities,
businesses, and society in general do typically have emotional responses to changes
that occur within the business realm. After all, a rise in the market generates feelings
of happiness and joy, just as a drastic fall generates anxieties and fears. However, it is
not that simple.
This section deconstructs that narrative, showing that even in the most dramatic
of circumstances, through bursts of seeming irrationality and amidst a plethora of
crises, emotions are neither marginal responses nor marginal stimuli to the economic
sphere. Emotions discipline and constrain our engagement with the market while
also enabling us to enter the market and gather resources to successfully compete. If
emotions are present in the market in these formative ways, then what about moments
of change and crisis? Can the urgency of fear shape strategy? Or can pride be used to
create a market, as with many “Made in the USA!” strategies? What about feelings of
solidarity? Can they not influence consumers to support particular endeavors over
others? Might not emotions themselves lead to those moments of change and crisis,
just as they so clearly respond to them?
Emotions do not simply respond to the market’s sporadic bursts of irrationality,
as this section clearly shows. Rather, they rush in, creating, manipulating, and, yes,
responding to the volatility and change in the market. Wild and disturbing, riotous
and anxious, fearful, and prideful, emotions intrude (sometimes quite dramatically,
sometimes more quietly) into the very heart of the market, shaping and driving
economic, political, social, and cultural change.
176
9
The Worst Business in the World? The Emotional

Historiography of the Arms Industry
Catherine Fletcher, Manchester Metropolitan University
Introduction
In John Le Carré’s 1993 novel The Night Manager, the villain Richard Roper, an arms
dealer, is characterized as “the worst man in the world.”1 The arms industry attracts
strong emotions. From sixteenth-century descriptions of guns as diabolical to present-
day campaigns against the arms trade, the production and circulation of lethal
weaponry has been highly contentious. Many businesses engage in unethical practices,
whether misleading marketing, environmental destructiveness, or exploitative labor
relations. Arms companies, however, fall into a category of firms the very existence
of which is subject to criticism on ethical grounds. Underpinning these critiques are
cultural ideas such as the description of the last days in the Book of Isaiah, in which
people “shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”2
These have had a deep impact in Christian societies. In the sixteenth century, papal
governors objected vehemently to the impiety of weapons.3 From the seventeenth
century, albeit somewhat inconsistently, Quakers held that their members should
reject war, though many participated in arms production and trading until the issue
came to a head in the late eighteenth century.4
This is, however, a case of divided “emotional communities.” Arms manufacturers
have argued that their business is no different from any other. In 1895, amid a dispute
on the supply of weapons to India, the trade publication Arms and Explosives observed,
“We cannot look on trade in munitions of war as being specially reserved from the
general conditions of ordinary trading.”5 More recently, states have actively sought
1
John Le Carré, The Night Manager (London: Penguin, 2013), 36.
2
Isaiah 2: 4.
3
Robert C. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke,” in The Renaissance World, ed. John Jeffries
Martin, 398–411 (London: Routledge, 2008), 404–7.
4
Priya Satia, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Richmond, UK:
Duckworth, 2018), 303–15.
5
Arms and Explosives, May 1895, cited in Philip Noel-Baker, The Private Manufacture of Armaments
(3 vols., London: Gollancz, 1937) vol. 1, 108.
to reduce both governmental and personal arms purchasing. Nonetheless, the arms
industry remains a significant sector with the top 100 arms-producing and military
services firms securing global sales of $531 billion in 2020, even in pandemic conditions
a year-on-year increase of 1.3 percent.6
This chapter will investigate the variety of emotions that have attached to the arms
industry and its products over five hundred years. These include unruly, negative
emotions such as fear, hatred, and contempt, but also more positive ones such as
affection, pride in local industrial achievements and patriotic attachments in the
context of civic and national defense. Early modern historians are in general wary
of assuming that business relationships were strictly “rational.” In his study of price
formation in sixteenth-century Ferrara, for example, Guido Guerzoni made clear
that commercial transactions “must be analysed as part of the complex tangle of the
personal ties, social connections, political implications and mutual obligations in
which they were embedded.”7 By taking a longue durée approach, it is possible to
see how premodern emotions about the sale of arms and armaments have persisted
over time and, furthermore, how these emotions continue to influence scholarly
research on this topic. Drawing on a wide range of sources, ranging from fiction and
drama to travel narratives and government documents, the chapter begins with an
exploration of guns and emotions in early modern Europe, the context in which small
arms first became a significant technology for both military and civilian use. It then
turns to investigate how, from the nineteenth century, studies of arms production have
engaged with questions of emotion. Building on these discussions, the chapter assesses
the challenges of writing a business history of the arms industry, paying particular
attention to researcher positionality and questions of objectivity. Scholarly writing has
often (though not invariably) avoided emotion in favor of “objective” interpretation.
Yet in the case of the arms industry, an absence of emotion may be perceived to
disregard the understandable passions provoked by this contentious subject. The
chapter concludes by considering how future research might best approach emotion
in the history of the arms industry.
Guns and Emotions in Early Modern Europe
It is rare to hear directly from designers of weapons about the emotions their
creations might provoke, but important testimony comes from a letter of Leonardo
da Vinci (1452–1519). Although Leonardo is now predominantly known for his art,
in his lifetime he was also a sought-after military engineer. In the 1480s, pitching his
services to the duke of Milan, he wrote: “I have also plans of mortars most convenient
6
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, https://sipri.org/media/press-release/2021/
business-usual-arms-sales-sipri-top-100-arms-companies-continue-grow-amid-pandemic
[accessed January 10, 2022].
7
Guido Guerzoni, “The Social World of Price Formation: Prices and Consumption in Sixteenth-
Century Ferrara,” in The Material Renaissance, ed. Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2007), 85.
Emotional Historiography of the Arms Industry 179
and easy to carry with which to hurl small stones in the manner almost of a storm; and
with the smoke of this cause great terror to the enemy and great loss and confusion.”8
Here is evidence not only that the potential to evoke terror was a key element of
what a designer of armaments could offer, but that this featured in the promotion of
services. Leonardo gave an even more emotionally evocative account in his prophecy
Of Metals:
These shall come forth out of dark and gloomy caves; that which will put the whole
human race in great anxiety, peril, and death. To many that follow it, after many
sorrows it will give delight, but whosoever does not side with it will die in want
and misfortune.9
Whether Leonardo is speaking of money or weapons is ambiguous, perhaps deliberately

so. They are linked in his prophecies by their common emergence from below ground.
In a prophecy on money and gold Leonardo described how “Out of cavernous pits a
thing shall come forth which will make all the nations of the world toil and sweat with
the greatest torments, anxiety and labor, that they may gain its aid.”10 Discussing “great
guns, which come out of the pit and mold,” he described “that which with its terrific
noise will stun all who are near and with its breath will kill men and destroy cities
and castles.”11 It is clear that in relation to metal, money, and weapons the associated
emotions for Leonardo were anxiety, sorrow, and terror. Their underground origins
also associate them more subliminally with the classical Underworld or Christian
Inferno, and thus with another contemporary idea about guns: that they were, in
Erasmus’s phrase, “weapons of hell.”12
More than the arms industry, from the early days of firearm proliferation, it has
been guns themselves to which historians and writers have attributed emotion or the
ability to provoke emotional states: among these the fear and terror of the battlefield
predominate. Benvenuto Cellini wrote (in the context of war) of the “fury of the
guns”; and also of how (in the context of a dispute over an apartment) by attacking the
property with “rocks, pikes and arquebuses” he had “put so much fear in them that no-
one was willing to come and help him.”13 Miguel de Cervantes summed up the literary
hostility, contrasting the “happy” times of the past with the “horrifying fury of the
diabolical instruments of artillery.”14 However, other emotions may also be discerned
8
Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, selected by Irma A. Richter, ed. Thereza Wells (Oxford: Oxford
9
Ibid., 236–37.
10
Ibid., 237.
11
Ibid.
12
Desiderius Erasmus, “The Complaint of Peace,” in The Essential Erasmus, trans. J. P. Dolan (New
York: New American Library, 1964), 187, cited in Paul Chilton, “Humanism and War in Rabelais
and Montaigne,” in War, Literature and the Arts in Sixteenth-Century Europe, ed. Margaret Shewring
and J. R. Mulryne (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), 120.
13
Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography, trans. George Bull (London: Penguin, 1998), 62, 297.
14
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Edith Grossman (New York: Harper Collins, 2003),
332–33, cited in Sheila J. Nayar, Renaissance Responses to Technological Change (Cham: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2019), 113.
in the sources. Blaise de Monluc, a sixteenth-century French military commander,

described guns and bullets as “unhappy” or “wretched.”15 The German soldier
Leonhard Fronsperger, later captain of the ducal armory in Munich, commented on a
more mundane emotion attached to firearms: worry.
Even when we don’t have the enemy in our lands any more, no one can think that
he is safe from the horrible firearm on his own field or land, but he must always
worry that someone will shoot at him from inside a bush.16
Michel de Montaigne wondered if familiarity with small arms might temper the threat,
leading the pistol (which given its unreliability was only really useful for threatening
people) to become “a weapon of small effect.”17
On the other hand, some gun users discussed their weapons with affection. In
1538, Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino, thanked the duke of Mantua for
the gift of a gun barrel, which, he said, was “very dear.”18 Cellini, in his customarily
provocative style, referred to the “music of the guns”19 as he shot from the besieged
Castel Sant’Angelo during the 1527 Sack of Rome; described “a splendid little gun that
I kept for hunting”; and referred to the “great pleasure” he took in fowling.20 Not all
references to pleasure in guns, however, were complimentary. An English proclamation
of 1528 referred to the “newfangle[d] and wanton pleasure that men now have in using
crossbows and handguns.”21
Family and dynastic pride were evident in the decoration of firearms. Among
the weapons of Duke Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence in 1561 was a handgun worked
with gold and silver, with an ivory and black stock featuring the ducal arms.22 A later
combination ax-pistol, first recorded in the 1589 inventory of Grand Duke Ferdinando
de’ Medici, also incorporated the family’s arms in its decoration.23 Dynastic images
were likewise to be found on the Emperor Charles V’s double-barreled pistol, which
featured the double-headed eagle and the Pillars of Hercules, as well as his motto “Plus
15
Blaise de Monluc, Commentaires et lettres, ed. Alphonse de Rable (5 vols., Paris: Renouard,
1864–1872), vol. 1, 52.
16
Leonhard Fronsperger, Kriegsbuch (3 vols., Frankfurt, 1573), vol. 1, CLXXIIa, cited in Brugh,
Gunpowder, 77.
17
Michel de Montaigne, “XLVIII. Of Steeds, Called in French Destriers,” Florio’s Translation of
Montaigne’s Essays, Book 1 (1603) (Eugene: University of Oregon Renascence Editions, 1999), cited
in Nayar, Renaissance Responses, 127.
18
Antonio Bertolotti, “Le arti minori alla corte di Mantova nei secoli XV, XVI e XVII.” Archivio storico
lombardo ser. 2, vol. 5, year 15 (1888): 583.
19
Cellini, Autobiography, 66, cited in Stephen Bowd, Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers
during the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 188.
20
Cellini, Autobiography, 36, 42.
21
Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, eds. Tudor Royal Proclamations (3 vols., New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1964–1969), vol. 1, 121, cited in Lois G. Schwoerer, Gun Culture in Early Modern
England (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016), 48.
22
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Guardaroba Medicea 43, fol. 23. Possibly a similar weapon to the gun
dated 1544 now in the collection of the Konopiště castle outside Prague. Le armi degli Estensi: La
collezione di Konopiště (Milan: Fabbri, 1986), 115.
23
Metropolitan Museum of New York, accession no. 2002.174a, b, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/
collection/search/25098 [accessed May 30, 2022].
Ultra.”24 Other weapons displayed imagery aimed at inspiring courage or religious

devotion. A pistol belonging to Ferdinand II, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna, for example, was adorned with a depiction of the Crucifixion and one of
Mucius Scaevola (a Roman youth famed for his attempt to assassinate an Etruscan
general and bravery when captured), alongside more prosaic imagery of foliage and
hunting.25 A 1548 German wheellock pistol now in the Odescalchi collection featured
the prayer, “Lord God protect me and save me from my enemies.”26
Hale argues that the imagery of gunpowder weapons played a role in “domesticating”
them among the elite.27 It did so in part through the evocation of emotion. Presented
as gifts, these guns might have been intended to inspire affection towards the giver;
they may also have engaged givers and recipients in a process of competitive one-
upmanship. As we will see, participants in contemporary civic shooting contests were
encouraged to train with a spirit of pride, and so the inclusion of coats-of-arms and
family mottos on these weapons served as a prompt for dynastic pride. They also
drew attention to more routine courtly activities, such as hunting, in which the user
might be expected to take pleasure. While rather little is known about the specific
commissioning processes for these weapons, or the extent to which producers had an
input into the design, it is reasonable to infer that in a context where their products
were often objects of suspicion or hostility, they had an interest in promoting more
positive emotional responses to firearms.
Emotional effects were also discussed by European observers in early imperial
contexts. Pieter de Marees, a traveler to the West African coast (possibly a Flemish
migrant to the Netherlands), observed in the 1570s that while “[the Africans] are
greatly afraid of the shooting of big Guns or Muskets, nevertheless they enjoy hearing
gunfire”; this was in the context of shipboard gun salutes.28 Samuel Brun, another
European traveler to West Africa, observed that the people of the Congo were “terribly
frightened of muskets or guns.”29 We should be wary, however, of assuming that
the ability to inspire terror was the primary reason for gun use: as David Silverman
observes in relation to Native American adoption of firearms, users were well aware of
their relative lethality when compared with other weapons.30 Still, in combination with
lethality, fear was a particularly important emotion in relation to certain gun uses: the
highway robber’s threat “your money or your life” functions by inculcating the fear of
24
Metropolitan Museum of New York, accession no. 14.25.1425, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/
collection/search/22387 [accessed May 19, 2022].
25
Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, A 525, https://www.khm.at/objektdb/
detail/372927/ [accessed May 19, 2022].
26
Antiche armi dal sec. IX al XVIII già Collezione Odescalchi, ed. Nolfo Di Carpegna (Rome: De Luca,
1969), p. 76: Cat. No. 466, Inv. No. 1518.
27
Hale, “Gunpowder,” 131–2.
28
Pieter De Marees, Pieter de Marees: Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of
Guinea (1602), ed. and trans. Albert van Dantzig and Adam Jones (Oxford: British Academy for the
Oxford University Press, 1987), 92.
29
German Sources for West African History, ed. and trans. Adam Jones (Wiesbaden: Frankz Steiner,
1983), 63.
30
David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016), 8.
death into the victim. It is not necessary for the gun to be fired for the emotion to be
evoked: the inherent threat of lethality is sufficient.
A rare sixteenth-century reference to emotion relating to the arms trade comes in
an anonymous Italian treatise, datable to the mid-1570s, which addressed the question
of arms control. Proposing the death penalty for arms producers, the author argued
that customs and border controls should be implemented to prevent “any foreign
merchant” bringing illegal weapons into the Papal States, “placing them under pain
of death in such a way that they fear to cross us.”31 On the whole, the early sources
have significantly less to say about the industry than about its end product. We can,
however, glean something of how early firearms manufacturers were understood in
emotional terms from the contemporary reports of the Venetian rectors of Brescia on
the people of Gardone Val Trompia (the single most important arms-producing area
of Italy, then as now, and a subject territory of Venice on which the Venetians relied
for a regular supply of guns). The Gardonese are typically discussed as a group, which
was in part a matter of convention in these reports (which often include comment on
national or civic character) but also reflects the fact that in their negotiations with the
Venetian rulers the representatives of the valleys appear (from the limited sources) to
have operated collectively.32 In some cases the language used focuses on temperament
rather than emotion, reflecting contemporary humoral theory that characterized
individuals as sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic, and thus predisposed to
different emotional states.33 Writing in 1554, Marino Cavalli observed that the people of
Gardone were “reckoned more ferocious and more bellicose than all the rest,” while the
year before Cattarino Zen, in the context of concerns about both firearm proliferation
and religious radicalism, had them down as “a bad breed, untameable, overbearing
Lutherans.”34 Cavalli also, however, raised an important point about Gardonese loyalty
towards Venice, characterizing the people of the valley as “most affectionate” towards
the ruling city.35 An earlier report, from Marc’Antonio de Mula, in 1547, had described
Val Trompia, along with two other valleys, as “most devoted” to Venice.36 For Venice,
which relied on the Gardone producers for a secure supply of firearms, these feelings
of affection and devotion mattered. A disaffected arms industry might opt to sell its
products elsewhere; its individual masters might migrate to other cities (Venice tried
to limit both exports to hostile states and emigration, but was not always successful).
This was not, at least in Cavalli’s view, purely a matter of financial interest or Venetian
power: it was a relationship between state and industry with an emotional element.
31
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Miscellanea Medicea 39, inserto 15. The proposal was not far distant
from actual legislation that provided in some circumstances for producers to be sent to the galleys.
Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke,” 406.
32
For further discussion see Catherine Fletcher, “Agents of Firearms Supply in Sixteenth-Century
Italy: Rethinking the Contractor State,” in Shadow Agents of Renaissance War: Suffering, Supporting
and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond, ed. Stephen Bowd, Sarah Cockram, and John Gagné
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming).
33
Nancy Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1990), 104–6.
34
Relazioni dei Rettori Veneti in Terraferma. XI, Podestaria e Capitanato di Brescia, ed. A. Tagliaferri
(Milan: Giuffrè, 1978), 49, 41.
35
Relazioni, 49.
36
Ibid., 34.
The Firearms Industry and Its Historiography
That emotional element of patriotism was also to be found, albeit in a somewhat

different form, in subsequent historical accounts. The earliest modern study of the
arms industry in Gardone, a short pamphlet published in 1845, was written by Marco
Cominassi [Cominazzi], who described himself as an artisan in the Gardone arms
factory. Cominassi gathered together recollections and notes on the industry’s history,
hoping “to contribute to this aspect of the glory of the fatherland and to make even
better known the fame that the Fabbrica d’armi in Gardone enjoyed at all times.”37 This
was, then, an early and promotional business history, written by an insider with a self-
declared sense of patriotism and an implicit pride in his work and, moreover, in the
context of the Italian Risorgimento (the political and social movement that led in the
nineteenth century to national unification). In the years following Italian unification,
Angelo Angelucci, whose book on the history of shooting contests was published in
1865, dedicated his volume to Italians who did not like to seek the origins of national
institutions in foreign countries, explaining that he had collected his documents “for
the glory of the fatherland.”38 Its title page proclaimed his credentials as a captain of
artillery. Following up, in 1869, with the first of what was intended to be a series of
volumes collecting together documents on the history of firearms, Angelucci was still
more explicit: he wanted “to show the world how great our Italy has been in all manner
of firearms inventions since the most distant times.”39 Cesare Quarenghi, described
on the title page of his 1880 book as an official of the Italian army, likewise produced
a self-consciously patriotic account of the history of Italian firearms for the newly
unified nation, asserting Italian mastery and precedence over other nations in the
production of guns.40 There was no pretense at Rankean objectivity here.
Yet if the Italian national context was new, the patriotic sentiment was not: from
the earliest days of firearm production these weapons, even while being condemned
as diabolical and unchivalrous, had been associated with civic pride in the Italian city-
states. In Lucca, for example, shooting contests aimed at improving the citizens’ skills
for civic defense were heralded in 1520 with rhetoric about the risk to their “dear liberty
and the reduction of their fatherland to servitude.”41 These broad associations of the
industry, its product and its history with ideas of civic and national pride continued.
Skipping forward to the twentieth century, an anthology of essays on the history and
culture of Gardone Val Trompia opened its chapter on “The Citadel of Arms” with a
discussion of the present-day state of this “luminous tradition,” noting the spectacular
expansion of the industry in the twentieth century as well as the “crises, difficulties” of
reconverting to production for hunting and defense in the aftermath of wars. By 1968,
37
Marco Cominazzi, Cenni sulla fabbrica d’armi in Gardone di Valtrompia (Milan: Sentinella,
1845), 16.
38
Angelo Angelucci, Il tiro al segno in Italia dalla sua origine sino ai nostri giorni (Turin: Baglione,
1865), unpaginated dedication.
39
Documenti inediti per la storia delle armi da fuoco italiane, ed. Angelo Angelucci (Turin: Cassone,
1869), xiii–xiv.
40
Cesare Quarenghi, Tecno-cronografia delle armi da fuoco italiane (2 vols., Naples: Nobile, 1880–1881), 4.
41
Angelucci, Il tiro, 43–4.
the Gardone area was producing 62 percent of Italy’s hunting weapons and 80 percent
of its pistols.42 The book listed the “famous names” of the industry and their dates of
operation, including two, Beretta and Bernardelli, that were still in business.43
The twentieth century, however, had seen much wider criticism of the arms
industry across the Western world, with a growing characterization of arms traders
as “merchants of death.”44 (Manufacturers, as opposed to traders, were sometimes
conceded a necessary role in national defense.) The archetype of this image was the
character of Andrew Undershaft, villain of George Bernard Shaw’s 1905 play Major
Barbara, which addressed the question of whether charitable institutions like the
Salvation Army (of which Barbara, Undershaft’s estranged daughter, is a major),
should accept philanthropic gifts from the industry. Undershaft characterizes the “true
faith of an Armorer” as:
To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of
persons or principles: to aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist
and Socialist, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man,
white man and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths,
all follies, all causes and all crimes.45
Undershaft, moreover, regards himself as “the government of your country … you

will do what pays us. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it
doesn’t.”46
If Major Barbara set the tone, the major interventions on the evils of the industry
came in the period following the First World War, and especially from the 1930s.47
Shortly before the war, Fenner Brockway had written his own play critical of the
arms trade, The Devil’s Business. (Even in this more secular society the diabolical
associations of early firearms had not disappeared.) He found it first subject to cuts,
then banned and destroyed on the order of a magistrate.48 In 1933 Brockway returned
to the topic with a book called The Bloody Traffic, a blunt indictment of the trade
against the background of the “horror,” “tragedy,” and “slaughter” of the First World
War. Acknowledging that some may object to his title, he wrote: “I mean it to be
nasty. The traffic is nasty. It’s the filthiest and bloodiest of trades.”49 It was deliberately
emotional language but, according to its critics, the arms industry was also engaged
in the manipulation of emotion. Engelbrecht and Hanighen claimed: “They excite
governments and peoples to fear their neighbors and rivals, so that they may sell more
42
Antologia gardonese (Brescia: Apollonio, 1969), 170.
43
Antologia gardonese, 174.
44
H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armaments
Industry (1934. Reissued Abingdon: Routledge, 2021).
45
George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara (1905), available online at https://standardebooks.org/
ebooks/george-bernard-shaw/major-barbara/text/single-page [accessed January 10, 2022].
46
Shaw, Major Barbara.
47
Cindy Cannizzo, ed., The Gun Merchants: Politics and Policies of the Major Arms Suppliers (New
York: Pergamon, 1980), 1.
48
Fenner Brockway, The Bloody Traffic (London: Gollancz, 1933), 11–12.
49
Ibid., 13.
armaments.”50 Basil Zaharoff, an arms dealer whose career prompted some of the most
speculative and lurid writing of the 1930s, was alleged to have said: “I make wars so
that I can sell arms to both sides.”51
Among the more scholarly works of these years was Philip Noel-Baker’s The Private
Manufacture of Armaments. Making the case for a government monopoly on arms
production,52 Noel-Baker noted the significance of emotion to the arms industry.
“The agents of Armaments Firms,” he wrote, “have on occasion started panics by the
dissemination of false rumors … as the result of which armament orders have been
increased.”53 Concluding, he observed: “As long as [private armament interests] foment
unrest in other countries, inflame passions and nourish fears, so long shall we be
menaced by the genuine dangers which these fears and passions themselves create.”54
In other words, arms manufacturers depended on emotion for sales.
For much of the later twentieth century, the historical profession was working in
the political context of first an arms race and then debates about arms proliferation,
albeit focused initially on nuclear weapons rather than small arms. The first Treaty
on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed in 1968. Some scholars
addressed this environment directly. Carlo Cipolla began the preface to his Guns, Sails
and Empires (1965) with the words “I am an inveterate pacifist since while I recognize
that wars and revolutions are one way of settling human affairs I am inclined to believe
that they are neither a rational nor a polite one.”55 John Hale, writing on “Gunpowder
and the Renaissance” observed that it was
natural for modern historians, sickened by the arms race of their own day, to
look back in nostalgia to an age when there is literary evidence to suggest that the
race could be slowed by an appeal to men’s better nature. This nostalgia, alas, is
misplaced.56
Cipolla and Hale diverge in their rhetoric, the former appealing to rationality, the latter
conceding more emotion with the idea that historians might be “sickened.” What is
evident, however, is that for both the fraught context was worthy of comment.
The 1970s saw several studies of the arms industry and trade, including that of
Basil Collier, who sought to debunk what he argued was the “erroneous belief ” that
underpinned the interwar critiques.57 Journalist Anthony Sampson, in a more popular
50
Engelbrecht and Hanighen, Merchants, unpaginated online edition, ch. 1.
51
For examples of the Zaharoff biographies, see Guiles Davenport, Zaharoff: High Priest of War
(Boston: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1934); Robert Neumann, Zaharoff: The Armaments King,
trans. R. T. Clark (London: Allen & Unwin, 1935). The quotation is in Neil McKendrick, “General
Introduction: In Search of a Secular Ideal,” in Clive Trebilcock, The Vickers Brothers: Armaments and
Enterprise, 1854–1914 (London: Europa, 1977), xxxiii.
52
Noel-Baker, Private Manufacture, vol. 1, 15–17.
53
Ibid., vol. 2, 390.
54
Ibid., vol. 3, 559.
55
Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European
Expansion 1400–1700 (New York: Pantheon, 1965), 5.
56
Hale, “Gunpowder,” 136.
57
Basil Collier, Arms and the Men: The Arms Trade and Governments (London: Hamish Hamilton,
1980), xii.
history, acknowledged that his was “an emotive subject,” but also stressed that it had been
his “special aim to convey the feel of the business, as experienced both by the dealers
and the makers of arms, and by those charged with controlling them.”58 One of the most
striking discussions of emotion in his book comes from Dany Chamoun, who purchased
arms for Lebanese Christian militia in the early years of the civil war of 1975–1990.
Chamoun, son of the country’s former president, told Sampson: “The Lebanese love to
buy guns. They buy guns to impress each other, and they take pride in their guns, more
than in their nation. People here will never give up their personal weapons—it’s like
losing their wife.”59 True or not, Chamoun’s observation provides important testimony
of his own perception, as an arms buyer, of the feelings that might attach to firearms.
Published the same year, 1977, but rather less engaged with questions of emotion
was Clive Trebilcock’s business biography of Tom and Albert Vickers, the founders of a
major British armaments firm. In an introduction, the series editor, Neil McKendrick,
argued that the attention accorded to Basil Zaharoff had inhibited serious study of the
company: “What attention they did get tended towards the sensational and unsavory.
The popular emotional response was predictably hostile, and the academic response
predictably cool.”60 McKendrick was not the only scholar of this generation to imply
that public emotion was a problem when it came to serious study of the arms trade.
Cindy Cannizzo hoped that current limited policies of restraining arms sales might
“buy time” to persuade “governments, publics and industries alike … that something
must be done to control the trade at the arms bazaar.” She added: “Let us hope such
a point will be reached before there is another major war using transferred arms that
would usher in an emotional hysteria like that of the ‘slander and control’ period,”
that is, the interwar years in which arms manufacturers came in for so much public
criticism.61 Here, the gendered word “hysteria,” with its links to women’s supposed
irrationality, is used to contrast a supposedly excessive public response to Cannizzo’s
implicitly more rational approach.
A rare historical perspective with the explicit endorsement of an arms manufacturer
arrived in 1980. The Beretta firm had expected to mark its 300th anniversary that year,
but research for a commemorative history book revealed that the firm was, in fact,
more than 450 years old. The authors, Marco Morin and Robert Held, were given access
to the private family archive. In an opening dedication to the volume they produced,
Giuseppe and Carlo Beretta observed that
the collaboration of Marco Morin and Robert Held has proved invaluable: they
have condensed in this book their researches and experiences of decades, reaching
conclusions we feel to be all the more respectworthy for being authored by
historians, not by hagiographers.62
58
Anthony Sampson, The Arms Bazaar. The Companies, the Dealers, the Bribes: From Vickers to
Lockheed (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977), 8.
59
Ibid., 21.
60
McKendrick, “Introduction,” in Trebilcock,Vickers, xxv; see also xxxiii–xxxiv.
61
Cannizzo, Gun Merchants, 190.
62
Marco Morin and Robert Held, Beretta: The World’s Oldest Industrial Dynasty (Chiasso: Acquafresca,
1980), 7.
Perhaps in line with that attempt to present the firm as willing to engage with
expert historical scrutiny (implicitly, of the traditional, objective variety), there was
relatively little discussion of emotion in the text. The exceptions are at the start
and finish. The dedication by the Berettas refers to the firm enjoying “health and
vigor—and a flare of youthful spirit too, in spite of its venerable age,” and places
this in the context that a “long life is a happy life only if accompanied by good
health.”63 The idea that a firm, like individuals, might in the right circumstances
be “happy” gives an intriguing insight into internal perceptions of the company.
Morin and Held’s conclusion refers to the “traditions that harken back nearly five
centuries … and that are now daily reaffirmed with pride in every quarter of the
globe.”64 The firm’s very longevity thus becomes a source of emotion and, perhaps
not coincidentally, one that echoes the sentiments of civic and national pride in
earlier Italian histories.
In contrast stand studies of the contemporary arms trade emerging from the context
of Peace Studies. Jurgen Brauer and J. Paul Dunne’s 2002 collection was dedicated “with
appreciation and affection to our activist friends in the worldwide peace movement.”65
Here by expression of positive sentiment towards opponents of the arms trade, the
editors implicitly convey their hostility towards their subject: this is later made more
explicit via the inclusion in the collection of an essay from Tony Kempster, an anti-
arms trade campaigner, characterized in the introduction as a “research user,”66 who
situates the issue in emotional terms:
The two flames of anger and hope which historically brought social justice and
democracy to the Western world are at work today in developing countries. People
in these countries are striving to escape poverty, dependency, and insecurity. We
are morally obliged to assist them by removing the burden of arms purchases our
society places on them.67
Such an emotional engagement with research was a clear negative for some scholars.
Paul Levine and Ron Smith, introducing a 2003 collection, noted that “The ultimate
driver of demands for arms is war or the fear of war.”68 Yet their contributors Keith
Hartley and Stephen Martin observed that their topic was “an area dominated by
myths, emotion and special pleading,” implicitly contrasting this to “sensible, informed
debates and public choices.”69
63
Morin and Held, Beretta, 7.
64
Ibid., 243.
65
Jurgen Brauer and J. Paul Dunne, eds. Arming the South: The Economics of Military Expenditure,
Arms Production and Arms Trade in Developing Countries (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), v.
66
Ibid., 3.
67
Kempster, “Arms sales,” 415.
68
Paul Levine and Ron Smith, eds. The Arms Trade: Security and Conflict (London: Routledge,
2003), 2.
69
Keith Hartley and Stephen Martin, “The Economics of UK Arms Exports,” in Levine and Smith,
The Arms Trade, 5.
New Approaches
More recently scholars have begun to engage in more detail with the culture of firearms
and, sometimes, with the emotions that attach to them. Different brands of firearms
carry with them their own connotations. Christopher Carr’s Kalashnikov Culture
provides testimony to the persistent emotional associations of firearms, citing the
“aesthetic pleasure” taken in guns by young men in Hyderabad, and a description from
Baluchistan of rifles as “dearer than a son.”70 These emotional attachments have policy
implications for disarmament campaigns: “Even when a high level of autonomy and
security can be guaranteed … the attachment to the gun may override any confidence
in a peaceful existence that the owners of the arms might have at that time.”71 Matthew
Ford has shown how the marketing of small arms, particularly to elite regiments
in a position to shape taste, plays to soldiers’ sense of status and professionalism.
Manufacturers target their efforts on Special Forces (which typically have more
independence to select their weapons) as a means of influencing the influencers.72 The
emotions at work here include pride, but also anxiety, and specifically status anxiety.
Other work has explored the conceptualization of guns as relatively unemotional,
impersonal objects when compared with weapons used in close fighting such as knives.
Priya Satia has argued that in the eighteenth century, guns allowed for “less emotionally
motivated violence,” precisely because they could be fired from a distance (and were
more accessible to the unskilled than bows).73 This made them attractive for use in the
defense of property, which prompted less emotional engagement than the defense of
life. In the years after the French Revolution, which had “pivotally exposed the dangers
of a cult of feeling and grounded British national character in the practice of emotional
restraint,” guns could be socially acceptable for gentlemen, because they functioned
“outside the domain of the passions.”74 There were critiques that sought to highlight
the cruelty of guns, but they were few.75 Emotion came into it in the sense that guns
prompted (as they had from the start) fear and terror, while allowing the user to remain
relatively calm. Whether this shift in attitudes to firearms entailed a complete loss of
the sense of pleasure that earlier users reported (or were accused of taking) remains an
open question. If so, it seems to have revived later. That said, the focus of Satia’s study is
the role of firearms in the making of the Industrial Revolution, and not the emotional
engagement of regular gun users with their weapons, nor the deployment of emotion
in the marketing of arms. That last issue, however, seems crucial to understanding
how users, both contemporary and historical, engage with guns. Smith et al., treating
firearms violence as a public health problem, found a relationship between the type
70
Christopher Carr, Kalashnikov Culture: Small Arms Proliferation and Irregular Warfare (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 2008), 4, citing Oskar Verkaaik, Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban
Violence in Pakistan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 128.
71
Ibid., 5; see also discussion, 106.
72
Matthew Ford, Weapon of Choice: Small Arms and the Culture of Military Innovation (London:
Hurst, 2016), chapter 7, especially 169.
73
Satia, Empire, 234–5.
74
Ibid., 255.
75
Ibid., 257–9.
of guns sold in a given year and those recovered in the context of crime the following
year; their study noted, however, that “Further research is needed to determine
whether industry marketing is contributing to a change in the demand for firearms
and the cultural perception of guns in society.”76
In so far as this question has been addressed, it has often been by investigative
journalists, whose professional conventions concerning off-the-record discussions
grant them more freedom to engage with anonymous sources, albeit at the cost of
other researchers subsequently being able to check facts. The Hollywood Reporter and
Economist have explored the industry’s engagement with Hollywood film-making. It
is commonplace for firearms in the movies to be given real brand names, whether or
not product placement is paid for. (A 2016 article in the Economist judged that direct
payment was relatively rare.77) Even while arms dealers and/or manufacturers remain
popular movie villains, from superhero movies (Iron Man, 2008), through drama
(Jackie Brown, 1997), to more direct explorations of the industry (Lord of War, 2005,
loosely based on a real individual), the industry has a “lucrative relationship” with US
movie makers.78 While research remains scarce, there is certainly a perception that
association with the film industry can help sales: the Economist cites Clint Eastwood’s
on-screen use of a Smith & Wesson pistol and the expansion of Glock following
the appearance of one of their weapons in Die Hard 2.79 Similar promotional tactics
were visible in the 2020 Olympics. In the men’s trap shooting final, three of the six
finalists (Jorge Martin Orozco Diaz, Mexico; Yu Haicheng, China; Jiri Liptak, Czech
Republic) displayed Beretta logos on either clothing or guns, while Mark Coward-
Holley (Great Britain) shot with a gun from another Brescian firm, Perazzi.80 Through
this sponsorship, arms companies associate themselves with sporting success, victory,
and national pride.
Conclusion
Emotion matters to the arms industry. Key to the practical use of firearms is their
ability to inspire fear, and the same is true on a larger scale too: the ownership of the
latest weapons or arms systems may inspire fear in rival nations (or among rival gangs)
that if they do not obtain similar, they will be vulnerable to attack. Yet fear and terror
are not the only relevant emotions here. National and civic pride are significant and so,
76
Victoria M. Smith, Michael Siegel, Ziming Xuan, Craig S. Ross, Sandro Galea, Bindu Kalesan, Eric
Fleegler, and Kristin A. Goss, “Broadening the Perspective on Gun Violence: An Examination of the
Firearms Industry, 1990–2015.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 53 (2017): 590.
77
B. H., “How Guns Get Into Films: More Bang for Your Buck,” The Economist, October 19, 2016,
https://www.economist.com/prospero/2016/10/19/how-guns-get-into-films [accessed January 5,
2022].
78
Gary Baum and Scott Johnson, “Locked and Loaded: The Gun Industry’s Lucrative Relationship
with Hollywood,” Hollywood Reporter, 2015, https://features.hollywoodreporter.com/the-gun-
industrys-lucrative-relationship-with-hollywood/ [accessed January 7, 2022].
79
B. H., “How Guns Get Into Films”.
80
Observed in broadcast July 29, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09pjvnj?seriesId=
b00cmh07–431-day-2 [accessed August 8, 2021].
across time, has been affection. From 1530s Italy to twenty-first-century Baluchistan,
guns can be “dear” to their users. Strategies of influencing and sponsorship help to
reinforce such positive emotional attachments. On the other hand, there have been
contexts in which the unemotional character of guns has come to the fore in public
discussion: this is equally a characterization of interest. While this chapter has cited
multiple examples, often these are mentioned in passing in broader studies of firearms,
their production and associated cultures. Future research might explore the change (or
lack of change) in the emotional dynamics of weaponry, assessing how and why certain
emotional associations have changed, or become contentious, while others have not. It
might investigate the emotions of different actors in the industry (producers, buyers,
traders) or the emotions of state actors and their publics. It might analyze the emotions
of weapons users, in both military and civilian contexts: some who may be choosing to
use guns, some of whom may have little option but to do so.
In terms of understanding attitudes and emotions within the arms industry, the
source base is often a challenge. Chris Corker’s doctoral thesis on the early twentieth-
century Sheffield armaments industry noted that many of the key sources were only
partially cataloged at best.81 Public commemoration of the individuals involved often
emphasizes their philanthropy rather than potentially controversial business interests.82
Contemporary historians, meanwhile, have often depended on government or judicial
inquiries for their sources, especially in relation to arms trading of questionable
legality, including in the UK the Scott Inquiry into arms sales to Iraq (which began in
1992 and reported in 1996) and a 1999 parliamentary investigation into civil servants’
complicity in embargo-breaking activities by British mercenaries in Sierra Leone (the
so-called “Arms to Africa” affair). These inquiries gave an unusual degree of publicity to
an often-secretive industry and provided detailed documentary evidence that could be
scrutinized by experts. As Davina Miller observed, the papers were “carefully crafted or
sanitized,” and excluded informal elements of the processes described; although they
gave an “unprecedented” level of access to the industry’s decision-making processes,
that did not necessarily include the nuance that might most interest a historian of
emotions.83 The difficulties of the source base should also be a warning to historians of
the need to read between the lines, or to look creatively, beyond industry archives, for
material that might provide clues to its emotions.
Equally important to the study of emotions and the arms industry is the role of
emotion in debates about the industry’s place in society, including scholarly ones.
Here, critics of the arms industry or trade frequently deploy emotionally evocative
imagery, while on the other side of the argument the idea that some arms production
is necessary or inevitable in human society is presented as rational, pragmatic, or
sensible. The idea that historical study should be objective and dispassionate, however,
has long been the subject of critique. It is possible to be emotionally engaged with one’s
81
Christopher Corker, “The Business and Technology of the Sheffield Armaments Industry
1900–1930,” PhD diss., Sheffield Hallam University, 2016, 7.
82
Christopher Corker, “The Armaments Past of Mark Firth.” History Matters, 2018, http://www.
historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk/armaments-mark-firth/ [accessed May 19, 2022].
83
Davina Miller, Export or Die: Britain’s Defence Trade with Iran and Iraq (London: Cassell, 1996), 2.
subject and still write good analysis. I would also suggest, however, that historians of
armaments production, and of weapons more generally, need to engage thoughtfully
with the positive emotions that attach to the industry, whether the pride of arms factory
workers in their skilled production, or the enthusiasm of gun users. These emotional
communities sustain the arms industry: to understand it, we need to understand them.
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194
10
Making Sense of Financial Crises in the

Netherlands: The Emotional Economy of Bubbles
(1637–1987)
Inger Leemans, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Joost Dankers, Utrecht University
Ronald Kroeze, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Floris van Berckel Smit, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Introduction: The Role of Emotions in Financial Sensemaking
What the devil is he doing? This question might have occurred to people at the
Amsterdam stock exchange in 1720, bumping into a New Year’s Gift pamphlet that
presented a satyr as the “prince of stock jobbing” making love to goddess of money,
Pecunia (Figure 10.1). Their courtship is explained: the Scottish “tail man”—obviously
a reference to John Law, the presumed architect of the 1720 South Sea Bubble—has
arrived from hell without money. With horse turds covered in rolled gold he has
seduced nymph Pecunia, bewitching her calculating eyes. Through her love, a treasure
of coins rains down upon the satyr. Sex between this investor prince and his money
nymph is, financially, a very fertile affair. As the poem beneath the cartoon states, the
affair attracts new “lievelingen” (“lovers,” as well as amateurs) to the stock market, who
will probably soon fall into despair. The anonymous engraver and poet of this cartoon
thus presented the speculation wave of the 1720s in terms of emotions: love, sexual
desire, hope, and despair drive the stock market forward. While the cartoon characters
perform these economic emotions, the emotional economy of the reader probably
entailed balancing curiosity and joy (satire) with concern.
How do societies cope with financial crises and what role do emotions play in
these processes? The banking crisis of 2007–2008 and the consecutive Euro-crisis of
2010 caused a global outcry, followed by an intensive, ongoing sensemaking process.
International news coverage, but also cartoons, movies, theater plays, infographics,
tweets, and other cultural sources tried to explain the crisis, pondering the economic,
political, social, and moral causes and consequences. Emotions ranged from
excitement to anxiety, fear, rage, and shame. This is a historical phenomenon. Since
Tulipmania in 1637, financial bubbles have been accompanied by cultural bubbles.
Figure 10.1 Nieuw-Jaars Geschenk / Lauwmaand herdenking, in Het Groote Tafereel der
Dwaasheid (1720). Courtesy of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-83.573.
In these sensemaking processes emotions played an important role. News articles,

poems, plays, cartoons, and later also movies covered and commented upon what was
happening in the stock market, describing market dynamics in terms of the passions:
excited traders, wishes and hopes, irritable markets, greedy merchants in love with
money, the sadness of the losers.
This chapter describes the sensemaking processes of financial bubbles, analyzing
the role passions and feelings played in the stock market and how this was perceived
Financial Crises and Public Sentiment 197
by the public.1 Our work aligns with the recent cultural-history approach to financial
and business history, paying more attention to cultural sources to understand the
role of narratives and sentiments in sensemaking processes.2 We build on a growing
body of literature that has broadened the scope of economic theory and the history of
finance and business to the cultural realm. Since Schumpeter it has been acknowledged
that capitalism is a highly dynamic system in which change is a constant and
volatility is never very far away. Studies of the long history of financial manias have
underlined that bubbles should not be perceived as independent, “freak” events, but
as “evergreens,” “natural” occurrences, symptomatic of the irrationality of (financial)
markets.3 Recent studies have focused on the devastating consequences of bubbles for
different groups and sectors of society, viewing bubbles and the unruly emotions they
were accompanied by in their social context and global connectivity.4 Relatedly, the
history of finance has taken more interest in media coverage of financial crises and
other economic events, observing an increase in press coverage during such periods.
Moreover, we subscribe to recent pleas to take a comparative and long-term approach
(moving away from the emphasis on specific moments), as well as to broaden the scope
beyond the question whether press coverage was correct or (un)critical.5 Furthermore,
recent studies showed that the cultural coverage of financial bubbles should not (solely)
1
Research for this chapter was conducted in the context of the project “Banking on Financial History,”
supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). A pilot paper was presented at the 23rd Annual
EBHA Congress, Rotterdam, The Business History of Creativity, August 29 and 31, 2019. News is
covered through https://17202020financialcrises.wordpress.com.
2
Per Hansen, “Business History: A Cultural and Narrative Approach.” Business History Review 86, no.
4 (2012): 693–717; Ronald Kroeze and Jasmijn Vervloet, “A Life at the Company: Oral History and
Sense Making.” Enterprise and Society 20, no. 1 (2019): 33–46; Ronald Kroeze and Sjoerd Keulen.
“Leading a Multinational is History in Practice: The Use of Invented Traditions and Narratives at
AkzoNobel, Shell, Philips and ABN AMRO.” Business History 55, no. 1 (2013): 1–23; Inger Leemans,
“Verse Weavers and Paper Traders: Speculation in the Theatre,” in The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance,
Culture, and the Crash of 1720, ed. William N. Goetzmann, Catherine Labio, K. Geert Rouwenhorst,
and Timothy G. Young, 175–190 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
3
Joseph Schumpeter, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist
Process (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Comp, 1939); Robert Z. Aliber, and Charles P. Kindleberger,
Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises 7th edn (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015); Marius van Nieuwkerk and Cherelt Kroeze, Bubbles: Spraakmakende Financiële Crises uit
de Geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Sonsbeek Publishers, 2007); Cihan Bilginsoy, A History of Financial
Crises: Dreams and Follies of Expectations (New York: Routledge, 2014); The concept of “bubbles”
has long been a topic of debate in economic theory, see e.g. Eugene F. Fama, “Efficient Capital
Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work.” The Journal of Finance 25, no. 2 (1970): 383–417;
J. Tirole, “On the Possibility of Speculation under Rational Expectations.” Econometrica 50 (1982):
1163–82; Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000);
Markus K. Brunnermeier, “Bubbles,” in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, ed. L. Blume and
S. Durlaug, 578–82 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Peter Garber, Famous First Bubbles: The
Fundamentals of Early Manias (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).
4
Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial
Folly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); William Quinn and John D. Turner, Boom and
Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Anne
L. Murphy, The Origins of English Financial Markets: Investment and Speculation before the South Sea
Bubble (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
5
Anya Schiffrin, “The Press and the Financial Crisis: A Review of the Literature.” Sociology Compass
9, no. 8 (2015): 639–53; Julien Mercille, The Political Economy and Media Coverage of the European
Economic Crisis: The Case of Ireland (New York: Routledge, 2015); Steve Schifferes and Richard
Roberts, The Media and Financial Crises (London: Routledge, 2014).
be regarded as responses after the fact, but that they often played a significant role in
bubble processes and should be considered essential sources for studying the dynamics
of finance as an integral part of society.6
With regard to emotions, traditionally passions were considered to play an important
role in sensemaking processes. However, for a long time, as also explained in the
introduction to this volume, the history of business and science of financial bubbles have
either ignored the passions, or described emotions in one-dimensional terms as irrational,
highlighting the “madness of crowds” to draw a sharp line between the rational, efficient
market and the heated passions of the “greater fool.”7 On the other side of the spectrum,
historians of emotions have started to pay more attention to the economics of emotional
culture. The concepts of emotional or affective economies are used to describe the variety
and balancing of emotions in individuals (seeking for instance to balance hatred with
joy), and communities (for instance with the “rise” of empathy in the eighteenth century,
connected to the demise of honor as an essential emotion),8 and to analyze the role
emotions play in commercial practices, and in the history of capitalism.9
This chapter is informed by these developments, showing that cultural bubbles
played an important role in financial processes through representation and analysis
of the stock market as an emotional economy. We underline the proposal made in the
introduction to this volume to remove the conceptual boundaries between rationality
and sentiment. In former centuries emotions could be perceived as important
components of assessment and action taking, and as essential (although sometimes
too unruly) drivers of market behavior. For our research, we focus on the Netherlands,
known for its vibrant stock market going back to the seventeenth century, offering an
exemplary case and ample source-material. Moreover, we take a long-term approach
(1637–1987), focusing on three case studies: the early modern bubbles (specifically
1720 and 1763), the crisis of 1929, and the crisis of 1987, considered among the most
serious financial crises before 2008, but never studied in a comparative way with a
focus on sensemaking. For the crises of the early modern period, we study a range
of cultural sources, including cartoons, poems, theater plays, and pamphlets. For the
twentieth-century crises, we focus on the dominant form of financial sensemaking:
newspaper coverage. We show how journalists and the general public made sense of
6
Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007); William N. Goetzmann, Catherine Labio, K. Geert
Rouwenhorst, and Timothy G. Young, eds., The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture, the Crash
of 1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); Arnaud Orain, La politique du Merveilleux: une
Autre Histoire du Système de Law (1695–1795) (Paris: Fayard, 2018); Hansen, “Business History”;
Florence Magnot-Ogilvy, “Gagnons sans Savoir Comment: Représentations du Système de Law du
XVIIIe Siècle à Nos Jours” (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017); Inger Leemans, “The
Amsterdam Stock Exchange as Affective Economy,” in Early modern Knowledge Societies as Affective
Economies, ed. Inger Leemans and Anne Goldgar, 303–30 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021); Robert J.
Shiller, Narrative Economics. How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events (Cambridge,
MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017).
7
Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (Oxford: Infinite Ideas
Ltd., [1841] 2009).
8
Ute Frevert, Emotions in History: Lost and Found (Budapest: Central European University Press,
2011).
9
Inger Leemans and Anne Goldgar, Early Modern Knowledge Societies as Affective Economies
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2021).
speculation and crises, and that emotions played an important role throughout the
entire period, in a much more sophisticated way than traditional narratives of the
“irrational” stock market suggest.
Cultural and Financial Bubbles in the Early Modern

Dutch Republic
The Netherlands provides an interesting case study for the relationship between
financial and cultural bubbles and the perception of stock trading in terms of
emotional economy. After the invention of share trading in the Dutch Republic in
the early seventeenth century, the stock market evolved rapidly, showing recurring
instances of speculation and price fluctuations.10 The Dutch financial market was
relatively open, one in which citizens from different layers of society could participate.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, thousands of people were involved in share
trading.11 This may help to explain the extraordinary public interest for share trading
in the Dutch Republic.12
From the outset, the Dutch public and the press showed ample interest in the new
financial developments. Not only did the Dutch press cover the world of trade through
news articles, plakkaten (edicts), and listings of prices, it also produced a more general
cultural coverage through engravings of the stock exchange building, cartoons of stock
jobbers, and poems that praised the virtues of commerce. Sharp price fluctuations
were often accompanied by series of pamphlets, in which traders, politicians, and
other interested parties expressed their opinion about the matter.13
In 1688 the now famous “investor hand book” Confusión de confusiones was
written by the Spanish-Jewish-Dutch author Joseph de la Vega.14 De la Vega combined
different knowledge domains—physics, theology, mythology, and meteorology—
to grasp the natural laws of the stock market. Many “laws” De la Vega describes
consider the passions analyzed as essential, albeit also disturbing, drivers of the stock
10
Lodewijk Petram, The World’s First Stock Exchange (New York: Columbia University Press,
2014); M. F. J. Smith, Tijd-affaires in effecten aan de Amsterdamsche beurs (Den Haag: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1919); Ludwig Samuel, Die Effektenspekulation im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Ein Beitrag zur
Börsengeschichte (Berlin: Spaeth & Linde, 1924); Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic. Its Rise,
Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
11
On first issuing shares, the VOC joint stock company attracted 1,143 tenderers, who almost
immediately started to sell their shares to third parties. The success of the undertaking (VOC shares
rose from 180 points in 1630 to 470 in 1643 (more than 250 percent)) attracted new investors
looking for a secure investment, or an easy gain. Petram, The World’s First Stock Exchange.
12
Extensive public interest in finance should be understood against the background of the booming
Dutch creative industries, providing a fruitful ground for a diverse, constantly innovating cultural
production. Claartje Rasterhoff, Painting and Publishing as Cultural Industries: The Fabric of
Creativity in the Dutch Republic, 1580–1800 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017);
Leemans, “Verse Weavers and Paper Traders.”
13
For example, N. Muys van Holy, Relaes en Contradictie op de motiven, om het kopen en verkoopen
van Oost- en West-Indise actien, die niet getransporteert werden … te bezwaeren met een Impost
(Amsterdam, S.l., s.n., s.a. [1687]).
14
Smith, Joseph Penso de la Vega; Jonathan I. Israel, “Een merkwaardig literair werk en de Amsterdamse
effectenmarkt in 1688: Joseph Penso de la Vega’s Confusión de confusiones.” De zeventiende eeuw 6
(1990): 159–64.
market. Trading is regarded as a system of affective checks and balances.15 No wonder

that the 1720s cartoons—like the one reproduced at the beginning of this chapter
(Figure 10.1)—picked up on the idea of love and lust as commercial driving forces.
Bulbs, Wind Trade, and Bankruptcies

Although the three most famous early modern crises—1636/37, 1720, and 1763—can
be viewed as financial bubbles showing heightened trade activity, a steep price rice and
sudden collapse, they were actually quite different in nature. The Tulipmania bubble was
based on the trade in goods (tulips) sold through term contracts.16 The trade scene was
limited to a few Dutch cities. The “Windhandel” (Wind Trade, the “Dutch South Sea
Bubble”) of 1720 was part of an international wave of financial speculation, with Paris and
London as the major centers. It was primarily a “paper trade”: speculation in shares and
derivatives of joint stock companies. In the Netherlands, option trading seems to have
gained momentum from the 1650s onward. Because options were cheaper than shares,
more people could participate, causing much anxiety with the public: who were all these
people, trying to get rich overnight?17 To add to this, the phenomenon of mushroom
companies dealing in fairly new financial products, such as insurances, caused anxieties
and concerns.18 Like the 1720 crisis, 1763 was a transnational phenomenon occurring
specifically through the interlinking markets of Holland, Hamburg, and Berlin. This
crisis was partly based on financial innovations that provided new opportunities for
market development, but also encompassed risks. The crisis of 1763 was focused more
on banking, triggered by political events (the Seven Years’ War), credit shortage, weak
balance sheets, and the contagious effects of failing banks.
The impact of the three crises also varied. Tulipmania and the 1720 Windhandel
seem to have had a limited economic impact. Most rich merchants and skilled
craftsmen could take a blow.19 The banking crisis of 1763, however, had a high impact
15
De la Vega discussed the “caresses” of Fortuna, seeing prudent traders get caught by traders heated
by desire, like the wife of Potifar who threw herself upon Joseph: “Shares indicate evil lust, for those
who have begun to enjoy her favors, cannot untangle themselves from her embrace.”
16
Goldgar, Tulipmania; Garber, Famous First Bubbles; Arie Ruysch, De tulpenhandel of de dwaasheid
der 17e eeuw (Middelburg: J. C. & W. Altorffer, 1846); Earl A. Thompson, “The Tulipmania: Fact
or artifact?” Public Choice 130, no. 1–2 (2007): 99–114; Rik G. P. Frehen, William N. Goetzmann,
and K. Geert Rouwenhorst, “New Evidence on the First Financial Bubble,” NBER Working Paper
No. 15332 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2009); Joost Jonker and
Oscar Gelderblom, “Mirroring Different Follies. The Character of the 1720 Speculation in the
Dutch Republic,” in The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture, and the Crash of 1720, ed. William
N. Goetzmann, Catherine Labio, K. Geert Rouwenhorst, and Timothy G. Young, 121–40 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
17
For an overview of the techniques in use in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century, and a glossary
of terms, see Petram, The World’s First Stock Exchange; Inger Leemans and Wouter de Vries, “Why
Wind? How the Concept of Wind Trade Came to Embody Speculation in the Dutch Republic.”
Journal of Modern History 94 (2022).
18
Christiaan Hendrik Slechte, “Een noodlottig jaar voor veel zotte en wijze”: de Rotterdamse windhandel
van 1720 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982); Frehen, Goetzmann, and Rouwenhorst, “New
Evidence on the First Financial Bubble.”
19
For 1720, no convincing evidence exists for a profound bubble crisis with a marked rise in
bankruptcies of the established firms and merchant families. Gelderblom and Jonker, “Mirroring
Different Follies.”
on the Dutch economy. Some major trade houses went bankrupt, drawing smaller
firms with them in the fall. The episode was also instrumental in the waning position
of Holland as an international center of finance.20
Although their structure and impact differed, all three financial bubbles were
accompanied by waves of media attention, which were so significant that we could
call them cultural bubbles. The largest cultural bubble in terms of quantity was clearly
1720. Tulipmania and 1763 each produced around forty pamphlets.21 In 1720 the
cultural production skyrocketed. The famous compilation of jobber broadsheets, The
Great Mirror of Folly (1720), holds around seventy-five cartoons, and several letters
and songs, testifying to the quantity of the cultural response: the public apparently
needed guidance in keeping up with the number of publications on the topic.22 In
the meantime, the Amsterdam theater had attracted a sizable number of visitors
(merchants, policy makers, and the general public) by staging stock jobbing plays. In
total ten stock jobbing plays were performed.23
The diversity in the reactions to all three crises is stunning: consolation letters,
mock share price lists, catechisms, burial scenes for stock jobbers, theater plays
(farces, tragedies, and allegorical plays), bawdy songs, paintings, cartoons, emblems,
logos, satirical dialogues. Again, 1720 produced the most diverse output, inventing
new visual concepts, stock jobbing plays, bubble playing cards, porcelain plates with
mocking stock jobber scenes, and a stream of cartoons with clever combinations of
image and text. The 1763 bubble continued this line of production with cartoons,
theater plays, and a series of satirical letters, bundled in a compilation: a marketing
strategy the printers learned from The Great Mirror of Folly.24
In 1763, we begin to see rising newspaper coverage. In 1720 newspapers mostly
limited their coverage to factual news and (occasionally) price lists. In 1763, national
and regional newspapers wrote more comprehensively about the world of finance,
adding leaflets with satirical texts.28 A couple of years after the crisis, a journal De
Koopman [The Merchant] was founded, specifically for business news coverage. In the
nineteenth century, the serial press would become dominant in covering the world
of finance. By the twentieth century, newspapers covered financial news on a daily
basis. Although financial journalism seemed to become more factual and objective,
emotions were never far away in times of crises.
20
Isabel Schnabel and Hyun Song Shin, Foreshadowing LTCM: The Crisis of 1763 (Mannheim:
Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim, 2002). However, the Amsterdam notary archives do bear witness
to dozens of complaints from nonprofessional investors (some of them women) who tried to recover
their money from trades they had engaged in in Holland, England, and France.
21
Frans Mensonides, http://www.fransmensonides.nl/tulp/; Posthumus 1926, Krelage 1942, Goldgar,
Tulipmania.
22
In 1721 a new compilation with a different selection was put on the market: Verzameling tot
waarschouwinge voor de nakomelinge.
23
Some of these plays were also included in the Great Mirror of Folly. Inger Leemans, “‘New Plays
Resemble Bubbles, We Must Own’: Staging the Stock Market—1719/1720,” in Pieter Langendijk’s
Quincampoix, or the Wind Traders and Harlequin Stock Jobber, ed. Joyce Goggin and Frans De
Bruyn, 181–203 (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2020).
24
[Anonymus], Het Wissel- en Wondertoneel, van den Jaare 1763. Of Verzameling der Geschriften,
Welke over de Veelvuldige Bankroeten zyn in ‘t Licht gekomen (S.l.: s.n., 1763); Sautijn Kluit, De
Amsterdamsche Beurs.
The Affective Roadmap of Financial Bubbles

These early modern cultural bubbles should not be regarded as “comments after the
fact.” Historians have shown that the Tulipmania pamphlets started before the peak of
the financial bubble.25 Also, the cartoons and texts did more than satirize and shout out
in dismay. They were, for instance, actively involved in heightening trader enthusiasm.
They did so by explaining the complex elements of stock jobbing in lay terms (for
instance in a song in a theater play), so new players could enter the game. The public
was kept informed by new print runs of updated cartoons.26 The famous Bernard
Picart print Monument consacré à la postérité en mémoire de la folie incroyable de la
XX. année du XVIII. siècle (Figure 10.2) went through several print runs, adapting the
information contained. At a certain point, mushrooms appeared, with the names of
the new joint stock companies. The text named these mushrooms “bubbels.”27 Thus,
the cartoon helped the public understand the new concept of mushroom companies,
Figure 10.2 Mushrooms (“Bubbels”) with the names of Dutch joint stock companies.
The short poem calls out to people to curb their enthusiasm and desire. Detail of Bernard
Picart, Monument consacré à la postérité en mémoire de la folie incroyable de la XX. année du
XVIII. siècle. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-P-1908–2355.
25
Goldgar, Tulipmania.
26
Two cartoons The Wind Sellers Paid in Wind and The Wind Buyers Paid in Wind are very similar, but
the first print presented a list of twenty-one joint stock companies that people could invest in, the
second version updated the list to twenty-seven companies.
27
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam RP-P-OB-51.222.
indicating that these joint stock companies could grow through the “lust en drift’”
(enthusiasm and desire) of the traders.
The cartoon, showing an exited, mixed, international crowd, men and women, of
different social classes and cultural backgrounds, is a display of market tensions and
unruly emotions, seeking to depict the affects that drive the traders (Figure 10.3a–e).
It is important to note that emotions are depicted as embodied: we read them from
Figure 10.3a–e The emotional economy

of the 1720 Wind Trade. Details of Bernard
Picart, Monument consacré à la postérité
en mémoire de la folie incroyable de la
XX. année du XVIII. siècle. Rijksmuseum
Amsterdam, RP-P-1908–2355.
facial expressions, signs and bodily movements. Investors raise their hands in hope
and expectation; embracing others intimately. Again, trading and love making seem to
be connected. The heightened passions spiral out of control, leading to agony, despair,
and pure rage.
This analysis of the stock market in terms of emotions continued in the crisis of
1763. Then, theater plays were a more dominant medium than cartoons for cultural
sensemaking.28 These plays presented a fine-grained understanding of trading as an

emotional process, displaying certain patterns. First, the severity of the crisis was
“measured” in terms of its emotional impact: merchants are in tears, households are
in disarray, widows and orphans (who relied on charity and a prosperous economy)
in despair, the stock exchange weeps, Mercury complains. The plays described how
self-interest, which was considered to be a positive market driver as long as it was
controlled and socially embedded,29 could develop into a more passionate desire. This
desire was still an impulse with market value, as it could help to prevent volatility
spiraling out of control into lust (with more sexual undertones), greed, and vulturine
excesses (stopping at nothing to get personal profit).30 Elsewhere, traders—specifically
their families—moved from a mild state of worry, to a more dejected state, described
in terms of weight on the soul, and expressed through exclamations (och! ach!), and
sighing. Here, denial stops the characters from facing the truth (ik twyfel daar ook aan,
ik kan het naauwelyks gelooven—I doubt it, can hardly believe it), but will probably
be followed by depression and despair.31 The level of (de)pression was used to show
the state of the market and the awareness of what is going on.32 We could continue,
describing the transition from being moved to sadness, from concern to alarm, wonder
to joy, anxiety to fear, fright, and shock, expressed through the shaking, freezing and
collapsing of the body. The texts provide an emotional “roadmap” to provide the general
public with means how to “read” the market. While this perception of emotions as
important drivers of financial processes and crises might have been discredited in the
dominant economic theories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it would find
new interest, as the bubbles of 1929 and 1987 show.
Affective Reactions to the 1929 Crisis and Its Aftermath
The crash that hit the New York stock exchange in October 1929 made a deep and
lasting impression on public memory. Pictures of mobs frantically trying to enter the
Stock Exchange, of stockbrokers and jobbers on the floor watching the prices tumbling
in despair, and the myth of traders committing suicide by jumping from skyscrapers,
all testify to the serious and broad wave of emotions this crash caused.33 After years of
economic euphoria, on October 24 the rise of stock prices came to a sudden halt. Trade
28
Some examples: [Anonymous], De Duizend Vreezen, of De eerlykheid onder de voeten: Blyspel der
Bankroetiers (S.l.: s.n., 1763); [Anonymous], De Makelaar of het ontmomde wisselcongres. Kamerspel
(S.l.: s.n., 1763); [Anonymous, “A.B.C.D.”], De Bankbreeker door List. Kamerspel (“Cuilenborg”: “Fop
Fopper,” 1763); Cornelis van Hoogeveen, De misleide Kooplieden, of De gewaende rijkaerts: Blijspel
(Leiden: Cornelis van Hoogeveen, 1763).
29
Inger Leemans, “Commercial Desires in a Web of Interest,” in Historicizing Self-Interest in the
Modern Atlantic World: A Plea for Ego?, ed. Christine Zabel, 141–63 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021).
30
One play describes a merchant “die zeer gierig en schraapzuchtig was, en niemand verschoonde als
hy hem trektrekken kon.”
31
“O Droevige tyd! wie drommel kan men hedendaags vertrouwen? ydereen bedriegt me, ik weet geen
raad och, och, ik ben een bedorve Man!”
32
“Ik geloof aan u zugten dat gy ‘t al zoo goed weet als ik.”
33
Galbraith stated that it was uninformed and greedy speculators that caused this crisis. J. K. Galbraith,
The Great Crash, 1929 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).
was running so fast the ticker could not catch up and traders panicked on what was
called “Black Thursday.” When, after the weekend, the five largest US banks made clear
that they would not back up the prices by buying stocks, the stock market crashed on
“Black Tuesday,” October 29.34 Symbolically these days of grave crisis on the market
were referred to with the color of death, bereavement, and mourning. In the months
that followed the crisis spread to Europe. For several years, economic activity declined
worldwide and unemployment peaked everywhere.
Because the Dutch economy was strongly connected to international trade and
finance, it did not take long for the crisis to hit the Netherlands.35 On the Amsterdam
stock exchange, prices reacted strongly. Although they had hardly profited from the
boom in the US, stock prices were nevertheless dragged down in the months after the
crash in the New York, which was widely commented on in Dutch newspapers and was
compared to preceding events that shocked the markets.
Indicating the Atmosphere at the Stock Market

In the 1920s, Dutch newspapers could build on a long tradition of financial specialism
in which newspapers provided information on the movements of the financial market.
However, in general, reporting on finance was still rather detached, limited to factual
information. The same was true for the first stages of the crisis in 1929. Most Dutch
newspapers, especially those connected to the world of finance and business like Nieuwe
Rotterdamsche Courant, Algemeen Handelsblad, and De Telegraaf, limited themselves
to factual reports in which the calmness of the Amsterdam market was stressed. For
international news the journalists mostly relied on press releases of international
offices. Only a small number of newspapers had reporters in international markets,
and it was only when these reporters started to cover the events in New York and
London that descriptions became more vivid.
In the first days of the crisis in New York, Dutch news coverage expressed relative
calm. This is not surprising because the London and Amsterdam stock exchanges were
not immediately impacted after Black Thursday. On Monday October 28, four days
after Wall Street had been closed, the London correspondent of the Dutch newspaper
De Telegraaf wrote: “the force that ended the prolonged boom at Wall Street has not
for a second deafened the London exchange.”36 The London market even seemed
somewhat proud that the crisis was triggered by the British decision to raise the interest
on discount loans. This decision, according to Dutch journalist in London, was seen as
the direct cause for “the burst of the bubble that was blown up too far by speculation.”37
In fact, this was the only example of a newspaper referring to the crisis as a “bubble.”
34
Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts, The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall
Street Crash of 1929 (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2014); Ali Kabiri, The Great Crash: A
Reconciliation of Theory and Evidence (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Maury Klein, “The
Stock Market Crash of 1929.” Business History Review 75, no. 2 (2001): 325–51.
35
For an overview of the development of the Dutch financial sector in this period see J. L. van Zanden,
“Old Rules, New Conditions, 1914–1940,” in A Financial History of the Netherlands, ed. Marjolein ‘t Hart,
Joost Jonker, and Jan Luiten van Zanden, 142–51 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
36
De Telegraaf, October 28, 1929.
37
Ibid. (“het uiteenspatten van de te ver opgeblazen speculatie-zeepbel”).
This term, and similar expressions such as the Dutch word windhandel, were apparently
earmarked for more distant crises, such as Tulipmania or the South Sea Bubble.
Even more remarkably, words like “crash” only occurred in a couple of articles, and
“bankruptcy” was only used when foreign cases of swindle or falsehood were covered.
However, as in the early modern period, a meteorological metaphor was used to
measure the pressure of the stock market. In 1927 the newspaper De Telegraaf innovated
in its financial news coverage with the Beursbarometer (Figure 10.4a–b), published as a
weekly infographic to analyze the atmosphere of the stock market. The barometer captured
the prices for goods (e.g., tobacco, textiles, rubber), sectors (e.g., shipping, oil, banks), and
countries (e.g., America). Stable or rising prices were listed as “Firm,” “Very firm,” or
“In demand.” When they went down, the market was described as “Divided,” “Weak,”
or “Under pressure.” “Depressed” was the most negative indication on this weatherglass.
There were no categories for “Disappointing,” “At a loss,” or “Sell!” nor did the barometer
have a scale for the panic with which the stock market met in October 1929.
The barometer was not only inaccurate, it was also quite slow in capturing the
pressure of the stock market. While a barometer is expected to predict the weather, the
Beursbarometer actually took quite some time to adapt to changing market conditions.
Two days after Black Tuesday, the Dutch barometer still indicated that the American
motor company Ford, and business sectors such as oil and margarine were “firm” and
“in demand.” It was only after nearly two weeks that the barometer started to show
Figure 10.4a–b The “Beursbarometer,” a weekly infographic used to take the atmosphere
of the stock market, published in De Telegraaf, October 31 and November 11, 1929.
that stock prices were not performing optimally and “America” was listed as “divided.”
However, important sectors of the Dutch economy such as tobacco, oil, and sugar still
were “Firm”; only margarine was listed as “Faint.” While in 1720, the stock market
was depicted as stormy, in 1929, for some time the barometer kept listing the financial
atmosphere as “Firm,” “Steady,” or—at worst—“Faint.”
A Delayed Debacle on the Stock Exchange

While most Dutch newspapers were displaying calm weather, both for the international
and national markets, this positive mood was not shared by all. The social-democratic
newspaper Het Volk [The People], for instance, wrote in its headlines on October
30, 1929: “Death bell tolls for Damrak.” The Damrak, home of the Amsterdam stock
exchange, was, according to this paper, not the safe haven of the financial world the
Dutch press projected. According to Het Volk, the Damrak was in shock at the news
of the debacle of New York, and traders were panicking. The reporter gave a vivid
description of traders anxiously waiting at the entrance of the stock exchange for the
opening hour. Inside, on the bourse floor, they were busily gesticulating, chewing their
cigarettes, with stunned faces, their eyes bewildered. The spacious hall of the stock
exchange was filled with people
running, yelling and tossing about, no one walking calmly. They pop out of a
telephone box and start to yell as if they had a terrible accident. At once others
gather around and for one moment they seem to start fighting, their screams
resounding in the building. Suddenly as if they were naughty boys, caught by a
police officer, they run off and ten meters away a new uproar begins. People shout
and roar like madmen.38
This description of panic at the exchange might be caused partly by the fact this
reporter was not experienced with the usual habits of trade. But his description of the
chaotic scenes at the stock exchange formed a clear exception to the largely detached
news coverage in these hectic days. Most Dutch newspapers copied press releases from
the German Reuters office on declining stock prices, rising unemployment, insolvent
banks, and even suicides in New York. The situation was mostly described in a rather
quiet way: London was in a “weak mood,” Amsterdam took a “firm position,” and
exchange rates were “offering resistance” when the stock exchange opened.39 While the
general reaction in Amsterdam, according to most newspapers, seemed to be rather
composed, the events on Wall Street were tracked with awe and disbelief. The crash was
considered to be “excessive” and Wall Street seemed to be “completely demoralized.”40 It
was only when the crisis continued, that newspapers started to express more concerns.
On November 10 the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant depicted the events as “days of
huge catastrophe,” with prices that were “incessantly crumbling.” Nearly two weeks
after Black Tuesday, the newspaper concluded that it had been “a debacle.”41
38
Het Volk, October 30, 1929.
39
Algemeen Handelsblad, October 30, 1929.
40
Ibid.
41
Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, November 10, 1929.
The newspapers then also started to look for preceding crises that might give more
context. In a historical overview of historical financial crises, published by Algemeen
Handelsblad, the South Sea Bubble was given a prominent role. The 1720s crisis,
known for its bubble companies, was described as caused by “excessive speculation”
and “spoilage of means.”42 De Telegraaf referred to 1720 to remind the public that there
had been severe crises before. The article also relived some of the older terminology
and imagery, such as the early modern expression: he (a stock jobber) is “on the
bankruptcy wagon to Vianen” (traders who used to flee to the free city of Vianen, to
avoid bankruptcy and settling debts).43 The 1720s saying “Wind is the beginning, wind
is the end” was printed in this article along with one of the old cartoons of the Great
Mirror of Folly (Figure 10.5).
Figure 10.5 Reprint in De Telegraaf (November 6, 1929) of the 1720s cartoon “Wind is the
beginning, wind is the end,” originally printed in The Great Mirror of Folly (1720).
42
Algemeen Handelsblad, November 3, 1929.
43
De Telegraaf, November 6, 1929. Citations in Dutch: “Op den bankroetierswagen naar Vianen”;
“Wind is ‘t begin, wind is ‘t end.”
Dutch newspapers in general perceived the crisis as caused by excessive speculation

on the American stock exchange. Already on October 29 Algemeen Handelsblad pointed
to the banks in the US being happy to finance every expansion in industry and in that
way contributing to heavy inflation. This became even more dangerous because most
of the stocks were bought by the public with borrowed money. A minor decrease of the
prices could thus cause a panic on the stock market, forcing many to sell their shares.
A week later, chief editor Heldring published his explanation of what had gone wrong.44
Heldring, descendant of a famous family with roots in banking and business, pointed
out the crisis was not caused by speculation. Speculation, in his view, was an essential
element of the stock market. It was the “people that threw themselves on the market
recklessly” that caused the crisis. They did not take the necessary precautions, but
were “led by the spirit of the gambling table.”45 This was an old and well-known trope
also used, as we saw, in earlier crisis. In the eighteenth century, stereotyping others
as speculators, gamblers, and courtiers was a powerful way of stigmatizing people as
unreliable, while at the same time enhancing the standing and integrity of the author.46
This morally tainted message was echoed the same day in a Roman Catholic newspaper.
It explained the crisis by emphasizing psychological factors: a growing number of people
were seduced to take risk by the rising prices on the stock market, and by the appealing
stories of high gains. People did not listen to warnings, and when the prices started
to go down, panicked easily, and were forced to sell, in order to pay their debts.47 This
explanation led to scapegoating the inexperienced, rent-seeking speculators in the US
who gave the boom on Wall Street its unprecedented swing.48 They were facilitated in
their speculative behavior by banks and other financial institutions which had extended
their credits. Consequently, the financiers also were to be shamefaced for the crisis.
However, although most newspapers agreed that it was the amateur speculators who
caused the crash, these gamblers were also seen as the victims of the crisis.
Thus, it was only after it became clear that Amsterdam would also be hit hard,
and the market would not recover shortly, that the press started to look for causes.
As in previous crises, this resulted in “emotional othering,” mocking rent-seeking
amateurs who were seduced and outplayed by greedy bankers. The wave of emotional
sensemaking, however, seems to have been relatively short lived, and quite limited to
the newspapers. As Anbeek has shown, both the 1929 crash and the economic crisis
which followed, causing enormous unemployment and social stress in the Netherlands,
hardly echoed in novels or other literary texts.49
44
The article was not signed but it was probably written by the chief editor A. Heldring himself.
45
Algemeen Handelsblad, November 4, 1929.
46
Koji Yamamoto, Taming Capitalism Before Its Triumph: Public Service, Distrust and Projecting in
Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Stefan Condorelli and Daniel
Menning, Boom, Bust, and Beyond: New Perspectives on the 1720 Stock Market Bubble (Berlin;
Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019).
47
Het Centrum, November 4, 1929.
48
De Telegraaf, October 28, 1929: “de kleine volstrekt onervaren en speculant die een ongekenden
omvang aan den boom in Wallstreet heeft gegeven.”
49
Anbeek concludes that the scarce literature depicting these frugal years did not become part of the
canon of Dutch literature. Only the gloomily titled In de schaduwen van morgen [In the shadows
of tomorrow], by the historian Johan Huizinga, caught the spirit of the times. It sold widely and
was translated into several languages. The crisis did inspire artists, such as painter Carel Willink, to
depict the world in a gloomy and threatening atmosphere. Ton Anbeek, “Doemdenken in de Jaren
Dertig. De Crisis in de Nederlandse Literatuur.” De Spectator 22 (1993): 249–59.
Black Monday: The Crisis of 1987
The crisis of 1987 encompassed an immense and sudden drop in stock prices on
October 19, 1987 (“Black Monday”), and in the days thereafter.50 In financial history
studies, 1987 is generally described as having the characteristics of a bubble, the years
before witnessing a sharp increase in stock prices,51 part of a longer history of “ups and
downs, bubbles and busts, manias and panics, shocks and crashes.”52 The crisis of 1987
witnessed collapse in multiple markets, testifying to the fact that share trading had
become ever more of a global phenomenon.53 Other specificities relate to the macro
level, especially how the growing trade deficit of the US, in particular with Japan and
West Germany, pushed interest rates and lowered trust in the value of the dollar,
making money more scarce and more expensive, creating distrust in the potential of
the economy and undermining trust in the stock market. This “psychological factor”
is often contrasted with the highly technical and supposedly “impersonal” character
of the stock market, accelerated through the use of computers and algorithms.54 At
the time, the risk-hedging algorithm called “portfolio insurance” was rather new but
had become popular rapidly. It was promoted as insurance against expected future
drops in prices: when markets started to decline, the algorithm required selling assets
to prevent losses. So, in 1987, once prices started to drop, investors “automatically”
began selling stocks on a massive scale, as they all made use of portfolio insurance
strategies.55
In Dutch newspapers, the events of 1987 were widely debated in an urge to make
sense of this “shock,” “drama,” “bubble,” and “crisis,” but—strikingly—1987 has received
little attention from historians so far.56 The following analysis of 1987 confirms findings
established above, supporting claims that a long-term analysis shows how emotions
and narratives play recurrent roles in sensemaking in financial crises.
“Self-Evident” Fundamentals versus “Irresponsible” Passions?

In the Netherlands the stock price started to drop late on Monday October 19, 1987. The
next day, the Dutch stock market was in full crisis. “Rational” explanations informed
by American press coverage were dominant at first in clarifying the crisis. Newspapers
listed macro developments, with much emphasis on the US, suggesting “things were
different there,” as in 1929. They pointed at the panic caused by the increase of interest
50
Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (New York: Penguin Press,
2008), 165.
51
Aliber and Kindleberger, Manias, Panics and Crashes, 18; Aliber and Kindleberger do not regard
1987 as a real bubble, for it was too “small” and the recovery too soon.
52
Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, 342.
53
Aliber and Kindleberger, Manias, Panics and Crashes, 44.
54
Ibid.
55
See Berekeley Haas, https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/prof-emeritus-mark-rubinstein-financial-
engineering-pioneer-passes-away/ (Accessed October 2022).
56
“Experiment wijst uit: onervaren handelaren schuld aan beurscrisis,” Trouw, November 20, 1987.
1987 is not mentioned at all in the overview of the development of the Dutch financial sector in
this period by Jaap Barendregt and Hans Visser, “Towards a New Maturity, 1940–1990,” in Financial
History of the Netherlands, ed. Marjolein ’t Hart, Joost Jonker, and Jan Luiten van Zanden, 152–94
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
rates in the US, failed attempts to reduce the US trade deficit, and the Iran–Iraq war
(1980–1988), which raised concerns about the oil supply. These problems of supposedly
predominant American origins had “dragged Amsterdam down” too.57
Besides American and macro developments, the psychological and passionate
behavior of traders, including in Amsterdam, was seen as a cause. “Crash is Result of
Psychological Factors. Words Can’t Describe What is Happening,” as one newspaper
noted on October 21.58 Computers contributed to the psychological stress as they
“haunted” traders and seemed to have taken over the floor.59 The unexpected role of
algorithms in trading, as well as the psyche and passions of the trader were contrasted
with the presumed predictability and rationality of the economic fundamentals and
statistics. As one financial expert claimed, there was no material basis for the huge drop
in prices, as the “economic fundamentals” looked good. But as one newspaper stated,
“as psychological arguments play an important role next to economic arguments, it is
difficult to predict how serious the consequences will be.”60
This difference was further emphasized by suggesting that institutional financial
specialists, such as banks, operated on facts (“the fundamentals”) while amateurs
and, especially, traders acted upon irrational passions. The response of traders was
often characterized in the media as one of “panic,” that showed they were “nervous,”
resulting in “bloodshed,” emotions traders also used for self-description. “It was
yelling … it was one big mess,” according to trader Arie van Os in an interview
looking back on 1987. It was shocking for him that fourteen billion guilders were lost
on the Dutch stock market, that many computers crashed because of the volume of
transactions, that the screens could not provide up-to-date trade information, and
that there was a delay of two hours to take care of every order.61 But Van Os also
stressed that inexperienced, “hot-tempered” traders and irresponsible “cowboys” on
the Dutch trading market had aggravated the crisis.62 Another Dutch newspaper,
referring to American research, suggested that it was young inexperienced traders
who had “panicked,” while more experienced traders could fall back on their
knowledge of past events.63
At first sight, it seemed as if indeed everyone was panicked immediately and made no
efforts to calm down. However, those active on the stock exchange also expressed how
they tried to stay “calm.” After the first shock, small improvements in stock prices were
embraced as signs that things were not too bad after all. But when the stocks continued
to drop, even those who had tried not to panic suffered dramatic losses and had to sell.
The picture that accompanied the article portrayed three traders in different dramatic
positions and the caption stated: “Desperation (‘wanhoop’), joy (‘vreugde’) and despair
57
“Beurskrach Wall Street sleurt Amsterdam mee,” De Volkskrant, October 20, 1987.
58
“Crash is het resultaat van psychologische factoren. Woorden kunnen niet beschrijven wat er
gebeurt,” Nieuwsblad van het Noorden, October 21, 1987.
59
De Volkskrant, October 20, 1987.
60
“Dit is klap waar markt op zat te wachten,” Nederlands Dagblad, October 21, 1987. The analysis of
psychological arguments was based on comments provided by AMRO-bank.
61
Andere Tijden, https://anderetijden.nl/aflevering/534/De-beurskrach-van-1987 [accessed September 21,
2022].
62
Interviews with former Dutch traders: Andere Tijden; See also Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, 165.
63
“Experiment wijst uit: onervaren handelaren schuld aan beurscrisis,” Trouw, November 20, 1987.
Figure 10.6 Emotions at the stock exchange (from left to right): “Desperation (‘wanhoop’),
joy (‘vreugde’) and despair (‘vertwijfeling’).” “Rotterdamse studenten op beurs ervaring
rijker.” “Na de krach wilden we een kroeg beginnen.” Het Vrije Volk, November 14, 1987.
(‘vertwijfeling’) have alternated in recent weeks on the stock exchange. And it will be
some time before the nail-biter can switch to a pair of scissors”64 (Figure 10.6). As in
the early modern period, the emotion analysis of the trade floor focuses on stages of
emotional anxiety, taking the temperature of the stock market through the affective
responses of the investors.
Taking Lessons From the Past: The “Hit” That Could Be Expected?
Another way contemporaries tried to make sense of what happened was by taking
lessons from the past. Whereas in 1929 people referred to the seventeenth-century
crisis, in 1987 Dutch newspapers made ample comparison between 1987 and 1929.
A reader in an open letter in the Dutch daily Trouw stated: “the panic of the last few
days reminded us all of the panic of 1929.”65 Initially, the stock price drop in 1987 was
perceived as even more devastating than in 1929, but soon the analogy served to restore
trust and optimism.66 After several weeks the Dutch minister of Finance, Onno Ruding,
in public debates and interviews, tried to (further) calm investors, traders, politicians,
and the Dutch public by arguing that Black Monday 1987 was not as severe as 1929.
But there were other differences between the twentieth-century crises. In
September 1986 an article in a Dutch daily on the American stock market had
64
“Rotterdamse studenten op beurs ervaring rijker.” “Na de krach wilden we een kroeg beginnen.” Het
Vrije Volk, November 14, 1987.
65
Trouw, October 24, 1987.
66
“Woorden schieten bijna tekort.” Nederlands Dagblad, October 21, 1987.
warned that computerization in combination with “rumour” (geruchten) could easily

“scare” (doen schrikken) traders, make them “nervous” (nerveus), and cause them to
massively sell their stocks. This was “not the only paradox” the newspaper noticed.
For example, good economic forecasts that one would expect to lead to optimism on
the trading floor, strikingly caused stress as analysists and traders feared inflation
and thus decline. Although the article started by optimistically stressing the great
improvements since 1929, its conclusion expressed uncertainty: “Indeed, it is a double
paradox and something is not right. What exactly is wrong and what relations can be
established between the paradoxes mentioned and the program trade, the future will
have to tell.”67
This narrative that “something had been wrong for long” was recalled once the
crisis broke out. For example, on October 21, a representative of the Dutch AMRO-
bank argued: this was “the hit the market had expected”—the increase in stock
prices just could not continue.68 Emotional othering remained a powerful strategy of
sensemaking.
Conclusion
Emotions played a major role in sensemaking processes around financial bubbles in

the Netherlands, and in a more subtle way than the one-dimensional depictions of
financial crises as irrational behavior might suggest. By taking a long-term approach
to the Dutch case, we uncovered recurring trends and differences. Major financial
crises were accompanied by sensemaking processes, cultural bubbles that, just as the
financial bubbles themselves, varied in intensity, duration, and diversity. There is no
one-on-one relationship between the two: for instance, while the economic impact
of 1720 seems to have been limited, the cultural outcry was extensive, while for 1929
it seems to have been the opposite. Over the run of the centuries the media diversity
of cultural bubbles was limited, with newspapers becoming dominant instruments of
sensemaking in the twentieth century.
We found that emotions played an important role in the recurrent scripts and
imaginaries of cultural bubbles over the centuries. To describe processes of sensemaking
through emotion narratives we used the concept of “emotional economies,”
highlighting the fact that emotions were often perceived not as disconnected from
the market, but as essential driving forces. Describing the stock trade as an emotional
realm helped the general public relate to the phenomenon and understand its
dynamics. This could be done in binary oppositions (emotional othering of “the greater
fool”), or through more fine-grained emotion scales and imaginative “infographics,”
such as the Beursbarometer, used to measure pressure on the market.
The rise of economics as an academic discipline pushed the passions out of the
ideal of the efficient market. This dominant economic model also impacted public
interpretations. We see this in the 1929 crash, when emotions were mostly perceived
67
“Beurs houdt beter koers dan in 1929.” Algemeen Dagblad, September 20, 1986.
68
“Dit is klap waar markt op zat te wachten.” Nederlands Dagblad, October 21, 1987.
as disturbances to the market, and journalists reported calm weather as long as

possible. Interestingly, it seems to have been the 1987 crash, when computers and
algorithm trading started to interact with human trading, that revived a more nuanced
interpretation of the market as an emotional economy. Hence, this chapter has
underlined the fruitfulness of taking a long-term perspective with a focus on emotions
when researching stock markets in their cultural-historical context.
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11
Waiting for Fevers to Abate: Contagion and Fear

in the Domestic Slave Trade
Robert Colby, University of Mississippi
Introduction
As the year 1848 closed, the slave trader Samuel Browning helplessly watched his
business prospects collapse. In the preceding weeks, he had traveled to Milliken’s Bend,
Louisiana—a plantation community nestled in a curve of the Mississippi River—
anticipating that its aspiring cotton nabobs would clamor for the men and women he
brought with him for sale. Though inoculated by avarice against the moral disorder
of slavery, enslavers remained highly susceptible to another kind of pestilence, one
capable of stymying Browning’s traffic altogether, and one at that moment making its
way up the river: a devastating outbreak of cholera. Steamboat landing by steamboat
landing, the disease ascended the Mississippi, driving before it a wave of fear bordering
on panic. Already, enslavers were avoiding Browning, possibly seeing him and the
people he drove before him as agents of contagion. Others, suspecting that newly
purchased human property would prove particularly vulnerable to the sickness, were
disinclined to buy. And business was likely to get worse. Once the cholera actually “gets
in the country,” Browning worried, “it will be impossible to sel[l] a negro at any price.”1
The mania for cotton and slaves that antebellum Southerners had long exhibited—a
“fever dream,” in one scholar’s phrasing—had been arrested by an epidemic and its
emotional externalities.2
Even as they paralyzed apprehensive Southern communities, such outbreaks also
brought opportunity for those unscrupulous enough to exploit them. Once the cholera
had passed, Browning swiftly returned to his old game. During the ensuing summer,
he urged his North Carolina purchasing partner to acquire “likely young fellows” and
“stout girls the same and black”—young, conspicuously healthy people for whom
enslavers would pay the highest premiums. He did so knowing that slaveholders would
1
Samuel R. Browning to Archibald Boyd, December 19, December 29, 1848, Archibald H. Boyd
Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University (Duke).
2
Joshua D. Rothman, Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of
Jackson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012).
have the previous year’s outbreak fresh in their minds. For, having “lost a great many
negroes” to cholera, they would “have to replace them,” and would do so with an eye to
their perceived resistance to disease. Browning was not alone in comprehending this
reality; a newspaper in Richmond, Virginia (the Upper South’s largest slave trading
hub) encouraged its readers to withhold enslaved people from the market for the
moment. By doing so, the Examiner argued, they could ensure that they entered the
slave trade at a moment when “the price … must be very high for two reasons: first,
the ravages of the cholera; and secondly, the high price of cotton.”3 Both Browning
and the Examiner knew the devastating effect epidemic diseases could have on the
enslaved; both also sensed that enslavers’ greed would eventually overcome their fear.
For, as Browning put it “cotton was arising,” all but guaranteeing that slave capitalism’s
siren song would issue forth again.4
Both contemporary witnesses and scholars of American bondage have long
emphasized the crushing emotional toll slave commerce inflicted upon the enslaved.
Relatively few historians, however, have probed the broader emotional history of this
traffic; instead, they have focused on the essential rationality of its practitioners. That
they have done so is unsurprising. For nearly a century, historians of American slavery
depicted the institution more as a set of semi-feudal race and class relations than as a
modern business enterprise. In response, students of the slave trade—who have been
in the vanguard of those critiquing this interpretation—have centered its profitability,
its rationality, and its market-oriented nature.5 To the degree that they have pressed
the emotional components of the business of slavery, they have focused on the role of
exuberance and the (often literal) rapacity of slave dealers as market capitalists (most
notably in Edward Baptist’s treatment of slave dealers’ routine sexual abuse of enslaved
3
Quoted in Alrutheus A. Taylor, “The Movement of Negroes from the East to the Gulf States from
1830 to 1850.” The Journal of Negro History 8, no. 4 (1923): 377.
4
“Extract from a Letter to the Editor,” Mississippi Free Trader, May 23, 1849; Samuel R. Browning to
Archibald Boyd, August 23, 1849, Boyd Papers.
5
John David Smith, A New Creed for the Old South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865–
1918 (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008). Dominant works emphasizing
slavery as a pre-capitalist enterprise include Ulrich B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery: A Survey of
the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (New
York: D. Appleton & Company, 1918) and Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves
Made (New York: Vintage Books, 1974). Proponents of an economically rational slavery include,
among others, Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American
Negro Slavery (2 vols., Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1974); James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of
American Slaveholders (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982); Anthony E. Kaye, “The Second Slavery:
Modernity in the Nineteenth-Century South and the Atlantic World.” Journal of Southern History 75,
no. 3 (Aug. 2009), 627–50. On the slave trade, see, among others, Michael Tadman, Speculators and
Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989);
Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1999); Robert Gudmestad, A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the
Interstate Slave Trade (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003); Steven Deyle, Carry Me
Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Calvin
Schermerhorn, The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2015); Daina Ramey Berry, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of
the Enslaved from Womb to Grave in the Building of a Nation (Boston: Beacon Books, 2017); Caitlin
Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2018); Joshua D. Rothman, The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped
America (New York: Basic Books, 2021).
Contagion and Fear in the Domestic Slave Trade 221
women as emblematic of commodity fetishism).6 But other emotions shaped slave

dealers’ practices, and fear stood salient among them.7
The anxieties slave brokers weighed were myriad. They feared their captives, who
could rise against them at any moment. They feared credit crunches and economic
collapses. And—constantly, persistently—they feared the unseen maladies that
permeated their jails, inhabited their vessels, and stalked the coffles in which they
marched the enslaved South.8 As William Wells Brown, a formerly enslaved man
forced into serving a slave dealer, noted, those bound for the slave entrepots of the
Deep South could “look … for the appearance of the yellow-fever, small-pox, or
cholera” with “as much certainty … as the Londoner does for fog in the month of
November.”9 Diseases not only menaced slave traders’ lives and persons as they
transited the South’s epidemiological landscape but required them to gamble with the
human property they had purchased at such great expense. Contagions also shaped
6
Edward E. Baptist, “Cuffy, ‘Fancy Maids,’ and ‘One-Eyed Men’: Rape, Commodification, and the
Domestic Slave Trade in the United States.” American Historical Review 106, no. 5 (Dec. 2001):
1619–50; Rothman, Flush Times and Fever Dreams. See also Alexandra Finley, An Intimate Economy:
Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2020).
7
The literature on the history of fear in the United States focuses most extensively on the twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries. See Peter Stearns, American Fear: The Causes and Consequences of
High Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 2006); Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (Emeryville,
CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005); Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2006).
8
While little literature exists exploring disease in the domestic slave trade, there is expansive discussion
of sickness and mortality in Atlantic slave commerce. See Philip D. Curtin, “Epidemiology and the
Slave Trade.” Political Science Quarterly 83, no. 2 (1968): 190–216; Joseph Miller, The Way of Death:
Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977):
314–442; Herbert S. Klein and Stanley L. Engerman, “A Note on Mortality in the French Slave Trade
in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic
Slave Trade, ed. Henry S. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn (New York: Academic Press, 1979), 261–
72; Richard B. Sheridan, “The Guinea Surgeons on the Middle Passage: The Provision of Medical
Services in the British Slave Trade.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 14, no. 4
(1981): 601–25 and Doctors and Slaves: A Medical and Demographic History of Slavery in the British
West Indies, 1680–1834 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Suman Seth, Difference and
Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2018); Manuel Barcia, The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the Nineteenth-Century
Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020); Jim Downs, Maladies of Empire:
How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2021). A growing literature highlights health and medicinal practices of enslaved people in
the US and the Caribbean. See Todd L. Savitt, Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care
of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978); Kenneth F. Kiple, The
Caribbean Slave: A Biological History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Sharla M. Fett,
Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2002); J. R. McNeill, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater
Caribbean (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and
Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Jim Downs,
Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Justin Roberts, Slavery and the Enlightenment in the
British Atlantic, 1750–1807 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 161–201; Rana A.
Hogarth, Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780–1840 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).
9
William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United
States (London: Partridge & Oakey, 1853), 203.
the ways in which prospective clients received them. In the wake of an epidemic, slave
coffles could be welcomed by enslavers who had lost portions of their workforces. They
could also, however, be rejected as potential vectors for infection. Fear of disease, in
short, profoundly shaped the business of human trafficking.
Slave brokers confronted their fears of disease in ways shaped by their cultural and
temporal contexts. As Peter Stearns and Timothy Haggerty have noted, while “fear is
an intrinsic human response to certain stimuli and the emotional basis for flight,” it
must also be understood as “a cultural construct.”10 In the nineteenth century (James
Farrell has argued), a growing scientific mindset made death seem more rational, even
more predictable, than it had in previous eras.11 Neither traders’ fears over the toll
diseases took on the enslaved nor concern for their own wellbeing led them to question
their dealings in humanity. But it did lead them to pursue mitigation measures in a
manner they deemed rational. In a moment when slave traders were modernizing
their own businesses, they applied similar impulses to the problem of disease. For, as
numerous studies of the domestic slave trade have revealed, the traffic was indubitably
a highly efficient business, one populated by entrepreneurs who exploited an array of
innovative tactics and easily adopted new technologies and practices.12
Prominent among these practices were a web of tightly integrated trading networks,
alliances of agents and brokers bolstered by personal and professional ties that
helped traders navigate often volatile slave markets. As Calvin Schermerhorn notes,
“Success as an interstate slave trader meant leveraging knowledge of local and distant
markets”; successful dealers were “nimble in response to changing conditions of
markets, technology, and routes of travel, from which they sought to gain competitive
advantages.”13 These changing conditions also included the presence and movement
of diseases, both among the chattels borne southward for sale and in the urban
markets where traders purchased and sold them. In a practice both functional and
emotive, dealers in different cities and traders on the move exchanged information
regarding on-the-ground health conditions—down to the level of specific slave trading
facilities—that kept market makers in major hubs abreast of the epidemiological and
emotional state of individual localities and itinerant traders informed about where
10
Peter Stearns and Timothy Haggerty, “The Role of Fear: Transitions in American Emotional
Standards for Children, 1850–1950.” American Historical Review 96, no. 1 (1991): 63–94.
11
James J. Farrell, Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830–1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1980). Jean Delumeau makes a similar argument in Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western
Guilt Culture, 13th–18th Centuries, trans. Eric Nicholson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). On
slavery and scientific knowledge, see Eric Herschtal, The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders
Became the Enemies of Progress (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021).
12
See Kenneth G. Noe, Southwest Virginia’s Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1994), 80–3; William G. Thomas, The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil
War, and the Making of Modern America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 32–6; Steven
Deyle, “Rethinking the Slave Trade: Slave Traders and the Market Revolution in the South,” in
The Old South’s Modern Worlds: Slavery, Region, and Nation in the Age of Progress, ed. L. Diane
Barnes, Brian Schoen, and Frank Towers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 104–19;
Calvin Schermerhorn, “Capitalism’s Captives: The Maritime United States Slave Trade, 1807–1850.”
Journal of Social History 47, no. 4 (Summer 2014): 897–921 and The Business of Slavery; Rosenthal,
Accounting for Slavery; Rothman, The Ledger and the Chain.
13
Tadman, Speculators and Slaves; Deyle, Carry Me Back; Baptist, “Cuffy, ‘Fancy Maids,’ and ‘One-
Eyed Men,’” 1619–50; Schermerhorn, The Business of Slavery, 12 (quotation).
to proceed next. While providing specific information, these letters also implied an
ability to mitigate the emotional distress disease-based uncertainty created.14 Slave
traders thus relied on their networks to create a sense of proximate knowledge of
the epidemiological terrain, deploying the information they obtained (however
imperfect) to manage their own fears of disease and to exploit the emotional states
of their potential clients. In doing so, they built emotion into their business methods,
implicitly weighing in their letters and ledgers the feelings of all involved in their trade
except for those upon whom it centered: the men and women whose hopes and fears
were held as captive as their bodies.
Sickness and Slave Trading in the Antebellum United States
As enslavers expanded cotton and sugar cultivation in the early nineteenth century,
they forced more and more enslaved people into a region and a labor regime rife
with infectious diseases.15 While never sufficient to stifle the impulses of Mammon,
the existence of endemic and contagious disease exercised a profound effect on all
their decisions. Enslaved people represented an enormous capital investment; as a
result, enslavers weighed exposure and (perceived) susceptibility to disease heavily in
determining when, where, and whether to purchase. Indeed, per some proponents of
scientific planting, doing so was absolutely essential.16 In contemplating the acquisition
of a plantation, for example, one Mississippian noted that while a site in a swampy
lowland would likely prove exceptionally fertile, “if there is much fatal sickness there
is some probability that we may loose [sic] more in negroes than the difference in the
cotton crop would justify.”17
This was hardly an unfounded fear. On one Louisiana plantation, an outbreak
reportedly killed thirty-nine out of forty enslaved inhabitants; on another, whooping
cough and cholera carried off twenty-one people, including at least eleven children. In
Texas, a planter reported the loss of thirty more enslaved individuals to an unnamed
malady.18 Even the threat of an outbreak could ruin a crop; one enslaver reported that
14
On emotives, see William Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 105–11.
15
See, among others, John Duffy, “The Impact of Malaria on the South,” in Disease and Distinctiveness
in the American South, ed. Todd L. Savitt and James Harvey Young (Knoxville, TN: University of
Tennessee Press, 1988), 32, 40; Savitt, Medicine and Slavery, 2, 219–46; Ari Kelman, A River and Its
City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003),
87–118; Benjamin H. Trask, Fearful Ravages: Yellow Fever in New Orleans, 1796–1905 (Lafayette,
LA: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2005): 8–9, 39; Kathleen
Olivarius, “Immunity, Capital, and Power in Antebellum New Orleans.” American Historical Review
124, no. 2 (2019): 425–55 and Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom
(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2022).
16
“Agriculture,” The Sunny South (Aberdeen, MS), August 5, 1858.
17
J. W. W. Kirkland to William Otey, October 29, 1860, Wyche and Otey Family Papers, Southern
Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (SHC).
18
“Fearful Mortality,” The Mississippi Creole, May 25, 1849; Report of James Wilson, undated [1854],
John Bisland and Family Papers, Series I: Selections from the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi
Valley Collections, LSU, Part 4, RASP; “From Texas,” Lancaster Gazette (OH), August 23, 1850.
when cholera appeared in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, many others fled their holdings,
“leaving there [sic] crops and camping out in the Pine woods with what negroes they
have left alive.”19
Such a threat, in turn, shaped enslavers’ and traders’ purchasing patterns. Some
slaveholders targeted enslaved people they considered more likely to survive the Lower
South’s disease regime. Upon acquiring a cotton plantation near Natchez, for example,
John Knight desired to “buy some ten or a dozen prime hands from the traders” as
soon as he could to ensure that they could “get used to” the diseases endemic on
his holdings. In the coming fall he hoped to add “some fifty or more” brought from
Maryland’s Eastern Shore. “As I learn,” Knight proclaimed, “negroes from that quarter
are much more valuable for the swamps of Louisiana, being more easily acclimated, and
with less sickness and danger, than those from the more healthy regions of Maryland
or Virginia.”20 Such tactics ultimately proved of limited effect; within a short time after
their arrival, Knight reported that a large number of the people he had purchased had
been “very sick,” and that at least three had died.21
A Louisiana planter seeking enslaved people in Richmond, meanwhile, accounted for
the cycles and presence of diseases in his purchasing strategy. He sought, for example,
to determine from friends at home when and whether “the cholera [had] done much
damage in New Orleans?” Having purchased a group of enslaved people, he made plans
for their removal South. On the one hand, he hoped to avoid the riverine ports in which
diseases flourished; on the other, he aimed to ensure that, on account “of diseases of all
sorts,” the men, women, and children he had purchased would not have to linger for an
extended period in a trader’s jail.22 Another enslaver even had agents transfer an arriving
cargo of enslaved people directly from their ocean-going vessel to a steamboat so that
they would spend as little time as possible in New Orleans’ deadly disease climate.23
While not as deadly as its Atlantic counterpart, the conditions traders created in
the United States’ domestic slave trade were extraordinarily virulent. In the Upper
South, where traders hoarded human property in dank, crowded jails, poor sanitation,
close quarters, and substandard nutrition paved the way for outbreaks. In 1859, for
example, the trader Philip Thomas arrived in Richmond flush with cash, but after
several days of successful trading, disease brought his endeavors to an abrupt halt.
“I tell you,” he wrote a fellow dealer, “that no one cannot conceive the amo[un]t of
sickness here.”24 Robert Lumpkin’s jail, a sodden, creek-bottom facility nicknamed
19
Rachel O’Connor to David Weeks, June 16, 1833, David Weeks and Family Papers, Series I: Selections
from LSU, Part 6, RASP.
20
John Knight to William Beall, January 27, 1844, John Knight Papers, Series F: Selections from
the Manuscript Department, Duke University Library, Part 1, RASP. To increase his likelihood of
success, Knight was willing to not only shatter families (rejecting the oldest and youngest slaves),
but to target “jet black” enslaved people in a bid to capitalize on racialized understandings of health.
See Knight to Beall, February 7, 1844 in same.
21
John Knight to William Beall, August 12, 1844, John Knight Papers, RASP.
22
David O. Whitten, “Slave Buying in 1835 Virginia as Revealed by Letters of a Louisiana Negro
Sugar Planter.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 11, no. 3 (1970):
238–9.
23
John Knight to William Beall, May 9, 1844, John Knight Papers, RASP.
24
Philip Thomas to William A. J. Finney, January 30, 1859, William A. J. Finney Papers, Series F,
Part 3, RASP.
“the Devil’s Half Acre,” proved particularly deadly. Only a few years earlier, the famous
fugitive Anthony Burns had found this Shockoe Bottom jail “more foul and noisome
than the hovel of a brute,” filled with “loathsome creeping things” that “multiplied and
rioted in the filth.” Captives were regularly “immured … in a narrow, unventilated
room beneath the heated roof of the jail,” with only “the nauseating contents of a pail
that was replenished only once or twice a week” to drink.25 It is little wonder, then, that
Burns himself fell ill, nor that by the time of Thomas’s arrival, at least five people had
perished in Lumpkin’s jail, with dozens more suffering from an unspecified malady.
Thomas halted his purchasing to allow the plague to pass, but such outbreaks regularly
menaced Southern slave jails.26 In 1863 alone, for example, twelve children perished in
Robert Clarke’s Atlanta facility.27
Even after departing these carceral facilities—whether by land or sea—enslaved
people remained susceptible to sickness. They traveled, ate, and drank in close quarters
even as the physical hardships of the journey weakened them.28 As one observer who
encountered a coffle on the march reported, the “coarse provisions,” inadequate
shelter, and fatigue involved in a journey covering several hundred miles rendered “the
slaves … subject, while on their journeys, to severe sickness.” Traders tried to offset this
reality, he conceded, “but even sickness does not prevent them from hurrying their
victims to market. Sick, faint, or weary, the slave knows no relief.”29
And when the enslaved reached the Cotton Kingdom, slave brokers again installed
them in slave prisons, exposing them once more to the diseases that proliferated
therein—a change compounded by the shift in climate, which traders and planters
alike understood to be deadly.30 As one New Orleans paper noted, “the large majority”
of those lost to cholera in an 1849 outbreak “were unacclimated persons—immigrants
recently arrived,” including “many negroes … coming from other States.”31 When an
enslaved boy died of dysentery near Natchez, a judge suggested that the “change of
climate” stemming from her recent sale from Virginia “might have produced a more
rapid development of a disease which had previously been lurking in the system, or it
might have produced the disease which occasioned the death.”32 Indeed, many enslavers
25
Charles H. Corey, A History of the Richmond Theological Seminary, with Reminiscences of Thirty
Years’ Work Among the Colored People of the South (Richmond: J.W. Randolph Company, 1895),
75–7; Charles Emery Stevens, Anthony Burns, A History (Boston: John P. Jewett and Company,
1856), 189–90.
26
Philip Thomas to William A. J. Finney, January 30, 1859, William A. J. Finney Papers, Series F, Part
3, RASP.
27
Wendy Hamand Venet, A Changing Wind: Commerce and Conflict in Civil War Atlanta (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 2014), 96.
28
Schermerhorn, The Business of Slavery, 138–43, 146–8; Deyle, Carry Me Back, 106–7, 110–11.
29
Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in
the United States of America; Being Replies to Questions Transmitted by the Committee of the British
and Foreign Anti-slavery Society, for the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade throughout the World
(London: Thomas Ward and Co., 1841), 58.
30
“Mississippi Intelligence,” New Orleans Daily Crescent, May 24, 1859.
31
“New Orleans Board of Health-Cholera,” New Orleans Daily Crescent, March 12, 1849.
32
James v. Herring, W. C. Smedes and T. A. Marshall, eds., Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in
the High Court of Errors and Appeals for the State of Mississippi. Volume XII. Containing All the Cases
for January Term, 1849 (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1849), 341.
saw susceptible enslaved people caught up in both the domestic and international
slave trades as potential vectors for the introduction of disease into a community.
One widely circulated report warned that trans-Atlantic slavers might bring plague
to American waters from an outbreak in the Canary Islands.33 Similarly, what little
information circulated about illegal slavers like the Echo or Wanderer highlighted the
sickness rampant aboard those vessels.34
The lone, meager grace given those ensnared in the domestic slave trade was that
its seasonal rhythm skirted the peak of the South’s disease cycle. Traders generally sold
slaves from the Upper South during the late fall and winter, with Deep South planters
looking to purchase them in the winter and very early spring. As a result, they largely
avoided being sold during the summer, when yellow fever and malaria generally
peaked. The agricultural cycle dictated this pattern (with slaves dealt after one harvest
concluded and purchased before planting for the subsequent season began) more than
did consideration for enslaved people’s health; had summer slave trading brought
traders greater returns, they certainly would have seized them.35 Prices, however,
stagnated in the same months when disease escalated; one slave trader testified in 1839
that “the prices of negroes … vary very little during the summer,” erasing the margins
on which traders depended.36 Some traders institutionalized further measures against
the risk of disease. New Orleans’ Walter Campbell (who, with his brother Bernard
purchased slaves in Baltimore for sale in New Orleans) not only had a physician
examine people before purchasing them but held them on his Mississippi farm to
acclimate (or “season”) them to the Deep South’s disease climate before offering them
for sale—measures which, he hoped, maximized their market value.37
Slave dealers became infamous for their focus on infectious disease and their desire
to minimize its effects on their business. They placed such an emphasis on this end
that hawkers of patent medicines frequently targeted them with their wares. One cure
claimed to cure “scrofum, foul humors, secondary syphilis, or any mercurial taint … by
purifying the blood” even as it allegedly improved the appearances of enslaved people
offered for sale. “No negro trader should be a day without this article,” its sellers argued,
for it would “advance their value fifty per cent.”38 Other planters sought additional
quack remedies, including heavy doses of red peppers.39 Promoters of miracle cures,
meanwhile, regularly touted their ability to raise the value of enslaved people by
restoring them to soundness.40 Some dealers were confident, moreover, in their ability
33
“The Plague,” Semi-Weekly Camden Journal (SC), October 21, 1851.
34
“The Rescued Africans of the Echo,” Holmes County Republican (Millersburg, OH), December 23,
1858; “A Bad Speculation,” Richmond Daily Dispatch, February 12, 1859.
35
Deyle, Carry Me Back, 57; Duffy, “The Impact of Malaria on the South,” 32–3.
36
William Rice, Reports of Cases at Law, Argued and Determined in the Court of Appeals and Court of
Errors of South Carolina, From December 1838 to May 1839, Both Inclusive (Charleston: Burges &
James, 1839), 186.
37
Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in the Old South (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1996), 317; “Sale of Negroes,” New Orleans Daily Crescent, May 8, 1861; Deyle, Carry Me Back, 136.
38
“Planters, Look to Your Negroes,” Clarksville Chronicle, January 11, 1861; “Planters, Look to Your
Negroes,” Memphis Daily Appeal, January 8, 1862.
39
“Pepper,” Canton Madisonian, May 16, 1850.
40
See “Special Notice to the Afflicted,” Fayetteville Observer (TN), April 7, 1853; “The World never
before saw,” Lynchburg Republican, December 30, 1852.
to offset the deleterious effects diseases had on the prices offered for the enslaved. In
at least one case, a slave trader actively sought out less healthy slaves, including those
who had endured bouts with a range of diseases. If purchased cheaply in Kentucky,
he hoped, these could be quickly sold for substantial profits in New Orleans.41 In
1841, meanwhile, a Richmond doctor advertised for “diseased negroes, such as are
considered incurable”—presumably for the purpose of medical experimentation.42
Mobilizing Networks, Mitigating Fears
As men who constantly moved with large groups of people between the Upper and
Lower Souths, slave dealers were particularly well acquainted with the ravages the
region’s epidemiological landscape could inflict. They were also adaptable businessmen,
eager to adopt the latest technological and organizational strategies to maximize profits.
In the 1830s, this manifested itself in the emergence of a growing class of professional
traders located in larger Southern cities. These men cultivated expansive networks of
agents; their proxies fanned out into the hinterlands of cities like Baltimore, Richmond,
Alexandria, and Charleston, purchasing people for sale in urban markets. These
traders also, however, developed partnerships with colleagues in Lower South slave
depots, connections that provided them with up-to-date information on the demand
for and prices of enslaved people in these markets. These links also provided a ready-
made conduit for other information shaping traders’ actions, including local disease
conditions—information that could (if deployed correctly), either allay traders’ fears
or alert them to prospective opportunities.43
Such a network can be seen clearly at work in the response of Franklin & Armfield—
the largest extant American slave trading firm—to the catastrophic cholera epidemic
that broke out in the early 1830s. Upon arriving in New York in the summer of 1832,
the disease spread from the city along the arteries of trade—eventually including the
Mississippi River.44 By November, a Tennessee enslaver braced himself for its arrival
in Nashville; given the disease was ascending the Big Muddy even as it descended the
Ohio, its arrival was only a matter of time.45 A “terrible panic,” meanwhile, pervaded
New Orleans, with many fearing that “all the boats from there have more or less sickness
aboard.”46 The deadly consequences were soon apparent. Some downplayed the risk (a
paper attributed one enslaved woman’s death to a longer history of illness), but such
41
J. Winston Coleman, “Lexington’s Slave Dealers and Their Southern Trade” Filson Club Historical
Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1938): 17–18.
42
“Botanico Medical Practice,” Richmond Enquirer, March 26, 1841.
43
Deyle, “Rethinking the Slave Trade: Slave Traders and the Market Revolution in the South,” 104–19.
For an example, see Joshua D. Rothman, “The American Life of Jourdan Saunders, Slave Trader.”
Journal of Southern History 88, no. 2 (May 2022): 227–56.
44
Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849 and 1866 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962), 15–39.
45
Robert Woods to Henry Edmundson, November 17, 1832, Correspondence of Henry Edmundson,
Series C: Selections from the VHS, Part 2, Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries.
46
John Knight to Frances Beall, June 11, 1833, John Knight Papers, RASP.
illusions soon proved fleeting.47 “The cholera is bad at the landing,” one Louisiana
enslaver reported. “Several negroes has died within a few days with it.”48
The panic sent shockwaves through the domestic slave trade, and the partners in
Franklin & Armfield dispatched letters across the country to determine the best course
of action. In doing so, they not only weighed their own fears of the disease against
the opportunities it created but sought to assess the deterrent effect it might have
on their clientele. Rice Ballard, head of the firm’s Richmond outpost, wrote to Isaac
Franklin (a founding partner and their man in Mississippi) advising the latter against
panicking. “My opinion,” Ballard stated, “is that we had best hold on the more negroes
lost in that country the more [enslavers] will be wanting if they have the means of
procuring them.”49 But even as Ballard’s letter sped south, Franklin reported dire news.
Not only were Louisiana and Mississippi planters “so much alarmed that they would
not purchase,” but cholera had struck the firm’s Natchez slave jail—and the people
held there were dying at an alarming rate. To hide the effects of the plague from the
local citizenry, Franklin had begun smuggling out corpses under the cover of darkness
and burying them in shallow graves in a nearby ravine. “The way we send out Dead
Negroes at night and keep dark,” he mused, “is a sin to Crocket.”50 When horrified
Natchez residents discovered this, they forced the city’s slave dealers to remove to a
location on the outskirts of town at what would become known as the Forks of the
Road.51 Perhaps watching the cholera’s ravages on Franklin’s jail, many other traders
exited the business; Franklin reported that they were so “alarm[ed] that they sold out
at cost.” For his own part, he remained unwilling to “give up the ship,” and as “the alarm
begins to subside I am in hopes we will be able to do something soon.”52
Like Franklin and Ballard, traders throughout the South turned to networks
of colleagues to allay their fears and to navigate the unpredictable outbreaks that
devastated the region. Such networks provided essential advance intelligence of the
epidemiological landscapes into which they bore their human property. In late 1833,
for example, R.C. Puryear had congratulated his partner, Isaac Jarratt, on a successful
trading season. “Fortune,” he lauded Jarratt, “seems to have prospered your designs and
undertakings and nothing but a strange riverse [sic] can prevent you from enjoying
all that a man can reasonably ask in this world.” At the same time, Puryear signaled
Jarratt as to one potential source of such a setback. Rumors of “Pleurisy, Scarlett fever,
Measles, and bad colds” circulated in his vicinity, and had inflicted “considerable losses”
on the enslaved people awaiting sale.53 By keeping Jarratt informed of local disease
47
“Cholera Report,” Woodville Southern Planter, November 3, 1832.
48
Rachel O’Connor to David Weeks, June 9, 1833, David Weeks and Family Papers, RASP; Paul Kelton,
“Pandemic Injustice: Irish Immigrant, Enslaved African American, and Choctaw Experiences with
Cholera in 1832.” Journal of Southern History 88, no. 1 (February 2022), 73–110.
49
Rice Ballard to Isaac Franklin, December 2, 1832, Rice C. Ballard Papers, SHC.
50
Isaac Franklin to Rice Ballard, December 8, 1832, Rice C. Ballard Papers, SHC.
51
“Outrage,” Natchez Weekly Courier, April 26, 1833; “The Public Meeting,” Natchez Free Trader, April
26, 1833; Robert Gudmestad, A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave
Trade (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 93–6; Rothman, The Ledger and the
Chain, 1–2.
52
Isaac Franklin to Rice Ballard, December 8, 1832, Rice C. Ballard Papers, SHC.
53
R. C. Puryear to Isaac Jarratt December 29, 1833, Jarratt-Puryear Family Letters, Series F, Part 3,
RASP.
conditions, Puryear projected knowledge and a sense of control, aiming to mitigate

what fears his partner might possess while simultaneously protecting the pair’s fortune
against just such “sudden reverses.” Similarly, in 1834, the year following the outbreak
of 1832–1833, a Halifax County, Virginia, trader urged his traveling counterpart to
sell the slaves in his possession speedily based on reports that cholera was once again
“raging in Louisiana & Miss. and destroying a great number of negroes belonging to
traders.” Failure to do so, he warned, meant “you will certainly lose upon them.” On
what this outbreak, or these forced sales meant for the enslaved, he was silent—as were
virtually all traders virtually all the time.54
As the slave trade professionalized during and after the 1830s, such communications
proliferated. By the time a trader operating in Mississippi in 1858 wrote back to
Virginia that there was “some sickness throughout the state” (including cases of yellow
fever in Vicksburg and Jackson), he could count on that information shaping the
actions of other traders following in his wake.55 Long-term partnerships spawned clear
communications. In order to ensure ongoing shipments of slaves, for example, New
Orleans’ John B. Smith assured his Richmond contacts that he had “only one case of
measles on hand,” which he believed would be the last of the 1855 trading season.56
Approaching the disease-ridden Crescent City more cautiously, an itinerant trader
warned Virginia’s A. J. Finney that “if I went to New Orleans I certainly would have
the Negroes insured.”57 Meanwhile, Richmond’s E. H. Stokes urged his nephew, who
was out trading in the Deep South, to avoid remaining in any one place too long, as
he considered doing so responsible for the disease that had claimed many slaves the
previous trading season.58 Correspondence networks, then, kept slave traders aware of
the risks diseases posed to their human cargoes.
Slave traders also kept colleagues informed of outbreaks of disease within their
coffles. Even minor illnesses among slaves in transit did not escape traders’ notice;
one operating in the fall of 1857 reported a handful of colds amongst his chattels, but
nothing more.59 Another repeatedly wrote back to Virginia to assure others that the
enslaved in his hands remained “all well” despite the journey.60 Lynchburg, Virginia’s
Seth Woodroof recorded venereal disease in slaves he was shipping and on that basis
advocated delaying their sale; N. C. Trowbridge wrote from Augusta, Georgia reporting
the presence of mumps.61 Such assessments abounded in slave traders’ correspondence,
54
Francis Royall to Abner C. Shelton, April 3, 1834, Halifax County (VA) Chancery Causes, 1753–1913.
(Admx. Of Abner C. Shelton, etc. vs. Francis L. Royall, etc., 1857–010). Local Government Records
Collection, Halifax County Court Records. The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.
55
A. L. Brown to John M. Hooker, September 2, 1858, Dickinson, Hill & Co. Records and
Correspondence. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University.
56
John B. Smith to Dickinson, Hill & Co., March 5, 1855, Slavery in the United States Collection,
American Antiquarian Society (AAS).
57
Philip Thomas to Jack Finney, November 26, 1859, William A. J. Finney Papers, Duke.
58
E. H. Stokes to “Dear Thad,” November 1, 1859, Slavery in the United States Collection, AAS.
59
John M. Hooker to “Dear Raj[?],” October 25, 1857, Dickinson, Hill & Co. Records and
Correspondence, Tufts.
60
William Waller to “My Dear Son,” October 19, 1847, William M. Waller Papers, Virginia Historical
Society (VHS).
61
Seth Woodroof to Richard H. Dickinson, February 28, 1850; N.C. Trowbridge to R. H. Dickinson
March 26, 1850, Dickinson, Hill & Co. Records and Correspondence, Tufts.
and served to keep their correspondents abreast of localized disease outbreaks and of
the effects of the trade on the health of their investments. This correspondence could
not help but stoke many traders’ fears; simultaneously, however, it offered concrete
information about outbreaks in progress, thereby imposing a sense of rationality onto
a fundamentally unpredictable situation. Doing so offered some insulation against that
which they feared, alleviating their concerns and affirmatively shaping future business
decisions.
Commission merchants similarly kept traders informed about outbreaks within
the Upper South markets where slaves accumulated for sale South. When E. H. Stokes
journeyed south in the winter of 1859–1860, his colleagues assured him that the slaves
aggregated in Richmond enjoyed “uninterrupted good health.”62 Shortly thereafter,
however, an associate at Dickinson, Hill & Co. warned a New Orleans trader that there
was “plenty of small pox in Richmond.”63 In 1836, Richmond’s Bacon Tait reported a
possible case of measles in his slave jail and inquired of a trading partner as to whether
the exposed slaves should be dispatched with the rest of those he had purchased.64
In the winter of 1854, South Carolinian A. J. McElveen, responding to rumors of
smallpox in Charleston, sought direction from commission merchant Ziba Oakes on
whether to risk recently purchased slaves there. Months later, McElveen again sought
information from Oakes, this time after hearing of a yellow fever outbreak. The
disease raged into October 1854, forcing McElveen to alter his trading patterns and
sell to a Richmond trader instead of to Oakes. These disease-driven changes, however,
cost him money against what he had hoped to make in Charleston, and led him to
complain, “I hope the fever will soon Abate and business commence.”65 Information
thus allowed traders to tailor their operations in response to epidemics as well as to
individual cases, and while its imperfections demonstrate the illusory nature of the
control it allegedly offered, such emotive practices nevertheless underpinned their
business.
If slave brokers feared the impact infectious diseases might have on their profits, the
enslaved experienced fears of an entirely different kind upon hearing reports of diseases
circulating in their intended destination. As Joanna Bourke has argued, “the ability or
inability to ‘neutralize or flee’” the source of one’s fear “is a question of power relations
within historical communities—not a fundamental difference between the object or
state causing an emotional response.”66 Lacking autonomy over their movements—
and, in most cases, their bodies—the enslaved could neither insist upon treatment nor
dictate the course of any remedies applied to them. If, as scholars have suggested, fear
of disease broadly diminished in the nineteenth century due to an emerging sense of
62
John Fraser to E. H. Stokes, December 30, 1859; J. J. Price to E. H. Stokes, February 10, 1860,
Cornelius Chase Family Papers, Library of Congress (LC).
63
Thomas E. Matthews to S. R. Fondren, March 9, 1860, Cornelius Chase Family Papers, LC.
64
Bacon Tait to Rice Ballard, August 2, 1836, Rice C. Ballard Papers, SHC.
65
Edmund L. Drago, ed., Broke by the War: Letters of a Slave Trader (Columbia, SC: University of
South Carolina Press, 1991), 66, 92, 96–9, 129.
66
Joanna Bourke, “Fear and Anxiety: Writing about Emotion in Modern History.” History Workshop
Journal 55 (2003): 127.
control over outcomes, the enslaved people caught up in the trade lacked whatever
small comfort this might have lent them.67 Cut off from their communities, abstracted
from traditional and communal sources of healing, and placed under the lash of men
who saw them only as property, their options were severely limited.68
It is unsurprising, then, that when Solomon Northup learned of an outbreak of
smallpox on the vessel carrying him from Richmond to New Orleans, he reported
that he and his fellow captives were “panic-stricken.” The death of one enslaved man—
Robert—combined with the “presence of the malady,” he recalled, “oppressed me
sadly,” not least because their occurrence at a critical juncture helped foil an escape
attempt. Upon reaching Theophilus Freeman’s slave pen, Northup helped diagnose
a little girl with smallpox, which, when confirmed by a doctor, caused “much alarm
throughout the yard.” Northup himself caught the disease, at which point Freeman
had him and other enslaved people—including Eliza, Emmy, and Harry—removed
from his facility and taken to a hospital on the city’s exterior, where they joined a host
of other sick captives (perhaps a quarter of those sent to the city’s slave hospitals were
people imported by slave dealers, who sought to preserve their investments). When
they had recovered, they returned to the pen bearing smallpox scars on their persons.
Northup believed these marks depreciated their value; it is possible, however, that in
the perverse logic of the slave trade, these emblems of natural immunity might actually
have enhanced it.69
Enslaved people confronting the epidemiological dangers of slave commerce
certainly felt fear. But outbreaks of disease could stir other emotions as well. Watching
as the initial waves of cholera broke over the United States in the early 1830s,
Henry Box Brown and Frederick Douglass found them terrifying, but also potential
harbingers of hope. Brown took the epidemic to be evidence that “the day of judgment
was not far off ”; in response, he focused on strengthening his faith. Douglass shared
Brown’s interpretation of the cholera’s cosmic significance but followed it to a strikingly
different conclusion. Viewing the disease’s advance through the lens of Nat Turner’s
recently suppressed uprising, Douglass determined “that God was angry with the
white people because of their slaveholding wickedness, and therefore his judgments
were abroad in the land.” He drew encouragement from this reality, which he saw as
paralleling the emergence of a militant anti-slavery movement in the United States; “it
was impossible,” he recalled, “for me not to hope much for the abolition movement
when I saw it supported by the Almighty and armed with DEATH.”70
67
Delumeau, Sin and Fear.
68
On enslaved people’s attitudes toward healthcare, see Fett, Working Cures and McCandless, Slavery,
Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry.
69
Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York,
Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 (Auburn: Derby & Miller, 1853), 72,
83–4; Stephen C. Kenny, “‘A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy’? Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum
South.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 65, no. 1 (2010): 32–43.
70
Henry Box Brown, Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery Enclosed in a Box 3
Feet Long and 2 Wide. Written from a Statement of Facts Made by Himself (Boston: Brown & Stearns,
1849), 40; Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself (Boston:
DeWolf & Fiske, 1892), 110.
In the end, neither God’s impending judgment nor the cholera would halt the
domestic slave trade—not, at least, until three more decades had passed, decades in
which Brown lost his wife to the slave trade and Douglass only narrowly avoided
sale.71 In the meantime, slave brokers refined the means by which they confronted
their fears of cholera and the host of other deadly diseases that haunted slave
commerce, threatening the lives of the enslaved and the investment slave brokers
had made therein. Through robust communication networks, strategic sales, and
other measures, slave brokers addressed and channeled fear by limiting their risk and
exposure, even as their participation in the slave trade continued to endanger the lives
of their human chattels.
Conclusion
In her recent book, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh, Daina Ramey Berry details
the multitude of ways in which enslavers wrung value from the bodies of those they
enslaved. Noting that even death did not end their commodification, she coins the
term “ghost values” for compensation paid on the lives and bodies of the enslaved who
perished under the peculiar institution.72 “Ghost values” were not the dividend slave
traders preferred; attuned as they were to money markets and slave prices, they knew
the enslaved were always far more valuable to them alive than dead. But their constant
attention to the disease climate of the South, and their careful recordkeeping regarding
the ailments suffered by the enslaved reveals their knowledge of how quickly a slave’s
market price could become a “ghost value” as well as their willingness to risk the latter
to gain the former. More than anything else, then, their correspondence reveals the
mortal peril in which slave trading always placed the enslaved. However much slave
brokers feared the South’s endemic diseases, and whatever measures they undertook
to limit their effects, to constrain exposure to the omnipresent risks they posed, and
to mitigate the stresses they faced as a result, in the end, traders remained undeterred
from risking enslaved lives to line their own pockets.
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72
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238
12
Selling Out or Staying True? Fear, Anxiety, and

Debates About Feminist Entrepreneurship in the
1970s Women’s Movement
Debra Michals, Merrimack Collage
Introduction
In 1973, a group of self-identified feminist entrepreneurs published a collection of essays

defending their role as business owners. Entitled Dealing with the Real World: 13 Papers
by Feminist Entrepreneurs, the booklet was a response to the hostility these women
experienced months earlier at the National Association for Women (NOW) National
Conference in Washington, DC. According to the essays in the booklet, other feminists
at the event promoting women’s equality had ostracized the entrepreneurs, questioning
whether their engagement with capitalism made them disloyal to feminism. Frustrated
and hurt, the women held a retreat where they decided to respond in print to the
“shoddy treatment” they received, and to later share their booklet with other feminists
and feminist entrepreneurs.1 Each of the essays not only defended the connection
between feminism and business but also, importantly, discussed the emotional impact
of having to defend being business owners—seemingly not the only time they had
to do so. What happened at the NOW convention, the feminist entrepreneurs noted,
“pointed up what each businesswoman had heretofore been suffering alone: the
ambivalence and frequent hostility of movement women toward feminist business.”2
Because of such anger toward them by other members of the women’s movement, the
booklet’s authors said, feminist entrepreneurs were “plagued by self-destructive fear
and guilt about making profits.”3
Their experience was hardly unique. When Gloria Steinem and colleagues launched
Ms. Magazine in 1972, they—especially Steinem—were similarly skewered by other
feminists for being co-opted, and for potentially co-opting feminism for their financial
1
Dealing with the Real World: 13 Papers by Feminist Entrepreneurs (New York: Feminist Business
Association, 1973), 1.
2
Ibid.
3
Susan Sojourner, “Profit—That Nasty, Ugly Word,” in Dealing with the Real World, 1, 4.
gain.4 Members of the Detroit-based Feminist Economic Network faced heated

criticism when they bought a building in 1973 and three years later launched the
largest and most publicly visible feminist venture to date, the Feminist Women’s City
Club.5 Worse, members of the lesbian feminist recording collective, Olivia Records,
received angry letters in 1976—including death threats—from other feminists when
they hired a transwoman as a recording engineer.6 Critics not only felt entitled to shape
policy at Olivia, but they justified their outraged and violent response in the name
of feminism, claiming that a transwoman was not a “real” woman and therefore her
hiring was anti-feminist.7
Feminists, including many lesbians and lesbian separatists and socialists,
launched thousands of businesses across the US in the late 1960s and 1970s as
cooperatives, partnerships, or individual ventures in a wide range of categories from
health to publishing to restaurants and bookstores. As feminist entrepreneurship
grew and became highly visible within the movement and in the mainstream media,
beginning around 1973, it elicited a range of emotional responses and ultimately
angry infighting within the women’s liberation movement. On one side were those
elated by the revolutionary potential of women’s ventures for both those involved
and the wider feminist movement. Champions of business ownership were excited
by what they saw as feminist enterprises’ collective ability to produce social change
by bringing feminist and woman-centered products and services to the commercial
market. “For the first time, we would be able to put out good quality products
that were non-oppressive and non-sexist,” wrote one feminist.8 On the other side
were critics who angrily denounced feminist forays into enterprise, arguing that
business and feminism were fundamentally incompatible. They saw engagement
with capitalism as a betrayal of feminist principles and women’s liberation as
a movement.
Why did the notion and practice of feminist entrepreneurship provoke deeply
passionate emotional responses, pro and con, within the women’s liberation movement
in the 1970s? While business has often been regarded as entirely rational and devoid
of emotions, in reality and historically, the engagement with business has produced an
array of emotions for those involved and for those observing from the outside. That
has especially been true for women entrepreneurs throughout history, where business
4
Mary Thom, Inside Ms.: 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement (New York: Henry Holt
& Co., 1997).
5
Joshua Clark Davis offers a detailed account of the controversy about the Feminist Women’s City
Club. Joshua Clark Davis, From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 129–30.
6
Bonnie Morris, “Olivia Records: The Production of a Movement.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 19, no.
3 (2015): 299–300; Sandy Stone, discussion with author, September 29, 2020.
7
Eli R. Green, “Debating Trans Inclusion in the Feminist Movement: A Trans Positive Analysis.” Journal of Lesbian
Studies 10, no. 1/2 (2006): 231–48. Kai Lukas Samuel Schweizer, “A Criticism of Trans Exclusionary Radical
Feminism.” https://www.academia.edu/29755063/A_Criticism_of_Trans-Exclusionary_Radical_Feminism
[accessed September 25, 2019].
8
Helaine Harris and Lee Schwing, “Building Feminist Institutions.” The Furies: The Final Issue 2, no.
3 (1973): 2.
Fear About Feminist Entrepreneurship 241
ownership often conflicted with societal expectations and gender norms, as Mandy
Cooper’s essay on civil war businesswomen in this volume clearly shows. Feminist
entrepreneurs of the 1970s likewise struggled with notions of gender roles—even as they
sought to defy them—but these stresses were compounded by questions from within
the movement about whether such ventures aligned with movement goals and ideals.
To be sure, not all women who identified as feminist linked their ventures to social
revolution; for some, it was about exerting a right to be self-supporting or to follow a
personal dream. But for activist entrepreneurs, the hope was to 1) launch ventures that
promoted feminist ideals, 2) infuse cash from the ventures into the movement, 3) help
individual feminist women earn a living doing meaningful, potentially activist, work,
and 4), probably most optimistically, use business as a means to transform capitalism
from within and create a feminist culture. No matter where their motivations fell
on the political spectrum, however, feminist business owners increasingly faced
angry responses, harsh criticism, and monitoring of their ventures from within the
movement. Carried out on the pages of feminist magazines, newsletters, pamphlets,
and at meetings like the NOW event, debates about business ownership conveyed
anxiety about the future of feminism, suspicions about the motives of those starting
ventures, disappointment with and a sense of betrayal by those seen to be “sell-outs”
to movement principles, and even jealousies about the financial successes of some
feminist entrepreneurs.
At the core, however, were tensions among feminists about the need to safeguard a
kind of ideological purity, to control who would speak for and represent the feminist
movement and guide the course of the revolution. Related to this were fears about
engagement with capitalism, specifically the potential for co-optation and “star-
making” of some feminist entrepreneurs by patriarchal capitalism and the dilution of
whatever revolutionary potential might exist for feminist ventures once they engaged
with and attempted to survive and thrive within the broader economic system and its
emphasis on the profit motive. While activist entrepreneurs believed their ventures
advanced the movement, feminist critics saw business as a distraction from politics and
activism, and they were highly skeptical of feminist businesses’ power to change society.
Rather, they confidently and angrily averred, it was far more likely that capitalism
would transform feminist entrepreneurs—and possibly feminism (the movement)
as well. The debates became so intense that feminist entrepreneurs like those at the
NOW conference began to internalize shame about their endeavors, while at the same
time, joining their critics in surveilling the motives of other women entrepreneurs.9
Most of the thirteen essays in the Dealing with the Real World addressed the emotional
issues of guilt, self-defensiveness, and self-deprecation that the authors experienced
as a result of movement disavowal of entrepreneurship. Their essays conveyed their
9
Several of the essays in Dealing with the Real World discuss the motives of feminist entrepreneurs and
the way even the authors in this collection wanted to make sure that other feminist entrepreneurs
had ethical and activist intentions for their ventures. See Anne Pride, “Underpricing Our Own
Work—Devaluing Women’s Work,” and Marjory Collins, “Why Do We Feel Guilty Doing Work We
Enjoy? Why Do Other Women Resent or Envy Us?” in Dealing with the Real World.
belief that business enterprise was an act of feminism because, collectively, they were
staking a claim for all women, and especially feminists, in the traditionally male realm
of business ownership—and had to overcome their own inexperience and insecurities
to do so.10
The Economic History of 1960s Feminism

This growing tension aside, in truth, the feminism that emerged in the 1960s had always
focused on the economy as the visible site of inequality. The President’s Commission
on the Status of Women, assembled by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, not only
comprised leading women’s rights proponents, but the groundbreaking report they
produced two years later, The American Woman, also addressed the discrimination that
blocked women from advancing in the workplace.11 Even Betty Friedan’s 1963 best-
selling tome, The Feminine Mystique, with its declaration of women’s imprisonment
behind suburban white picket fences, was angrily pointing to the lack of opportunities
available to women—particularly educated White, middle- and upper-class women
like herself—and the economic dependence such a state created.12 The first piece of
legislation to come out of the PCSW was the 1963 Equal Pay Act, a landmark law that
sought to guarantee equal pay for equal work, even if at the time few women held the
same jobs as men.13 A year later, when Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed
with the word “sex” added—a move women’s rights activists and allies in Congress
ensured was successful—that, too, spoke to women’s quest for greater economic parity.
Title VII barred discrimination in employment on the basis of race, sex, religion, and
national origin and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to
keep tabs on business compliance. And in 1966, when Friedan, lawyer and civil rights
activist Pauli Murray, and union organizer and activist Aileen Hernandez formed the
National Organization for Women (NOW), the impetus was to ensure enforcement
of Title VII and to end sex-segregated and discriminatory “help wanted” employment
advertising in major newspapers.14
NOW became the leading women’s organization in rapid time, growing from
fourteen chapters and one thousand members in 1967 to three hundred chapters
with more than forty thousand members in 1974.15 While NOW promoted itself as an
10
The following essays in Dealing with the Real World address the inexperience and insecurities
feminist entrepreneurs had to overcome when they launched businesses. Nancy Borman, “Being
Afraid to Owe Money”; Mary Jane Walters, “Why Can’t Women Decide?”; Jane O’Wyatt, “Work
Image Identity Problem”; Joyce Hartwell, “Woman as the Martyred Mother in Economic Exchange”;
and Nancy Borman, “Haunted by General Negativity.”
11
American Women: Report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women (U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1963); Jo Freeman, “Political Organization in the Feminist Movement.” Acta
Sociologica 18, no. 2/3 (1975): 222.
12
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 20th Anniversary Edition (New York: Dell, 1983), 15–16, 282.
13
Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (New
York: Viking, 2000), 68, 71.
14
Ibid., 75, 78–9.
15
Freeman, “Political Organization,” 229.
organization for all women—and women of color were NOW founders and members—
its agenda was driven by what White educated women defined as equality, specifically
gaining the rights and privileges that White men in US society enjoyed. NOW’s
Statement of Purpose promised to “break through the silken curtain of prejudice and
discrimination against women in government, industry, the professions … the labor
unions, in education, science, medicine, law … and every other field of importance in
American society.” NOW took aim at the “double discrimination” of race and sex that
women of color faced.16 Later defined by those on the left as “liberal feminists,” these
women wanted access to the existing system; they had no critique of its structure and
no desire to overturn it.
That vision would come from the younger, more radical feminist contingent that
would emerge in 1967.17 Harshly critical of the system, radical feminists created
thousands of small groups nationwide to address their and other women’s experiences
of inequality—among them, New York Radicalesbians, Cell 16, Redstockings, Chicago
Women’s Liberation Union, and The Furies.18 Many leftist feminists had been students;
some were lesbians who had been shunned by mainstream society and liberal feminists
like Friedan, who disdained them as the “lavender menace”19 and a destructive force
within her White, middle-class, heteronormative feminism. The majority of radical
feminists were also White, a large percentage from middle-class backgrounds. Some
attacked economic oppression via street “zap” actions, as when WITCH (Women’s
International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) put a hex on Wall Street as the site of
patriarchal power.20 While groups varied strategically, their members found in radical
feminism a powerful sense of community, identity, and purpose.
Collectively and individually, radical feminists were prolific and passionate writers
who produced manifestoes about social revolution, which for some included embracing
collectivism and socialism and for many meant replacing patriarchy and capitalism with
a new, more humane and empowering system for those on the margins, particularly
women. A good deal of their writing focused on the perils of capitalist patriarchal
oppression and pointed to the promise of socialist feminist models. Published in
feminist newsletters, magazines, or as pamphlets, their work addressing capitalism—
or capitalism and socialism—included such titles as, “Class and Feminism,” “Socialist
16
National Organization for Women, “Statement of Purpose,” 1966. https://now.org/about/history/
statement-of-purpose/ [accessed January 13, 2021].
17
Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement, ed., Feminist Revolution: An Abridged Edition
with Additional Writings (New York: Random House, 1978); Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical
Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 85, 382–3;
Alice Echols, “Nothing Distant about It: Women’s Liberation and Sixties Radicalism,” in The Sixties:
From Memory to History, ed. David Farber (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994),
149–74.
18
Anne Enke, Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2007), 2.
19
Karla Jay, Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation (New York: Basic Books, 1999);
Stephanie Gilmore and Elizabeth Kaminski, “A Part and Apart: Lesbian and Straight Feminist
Activists Negotiate Identity in a Second-Wave Organization.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 16,
no. 1 (2007): 95–113; Anne M. Valk, “Living a Feminist Lifestyle: The Intersection of Theory and
Action in a Lesbian Feminist Collective.” Feminist Studies 28, no. 2 (2002): 307.
20
Robin Morgan, Saturday’s Child: A Memoir (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001), 258–9.
Feminism,” and “Sex and Caste.”21 Socialist feminists of the late 1960s and 1970s, as
historian Linda Gordon has pointed out, saw capitalism and sexism as sites of women’s
oppression and therefore stressed the need for a class consciousness among women
(women as a class or caste) and the creation of alternative institutions.22 “What we as
socialist feminists need are organizations which can work for our particular vision,
our self-interest in a way that will guarantee the combined fight against sexism and
capitalism,” wrote the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union in 1972. That included,
CWLU noted, both “wresting control of the institutions which now oppress us” and
creating “counter-institutions” that could “provide services which meet the needs of
women now” and prove what was possible in a future feminist world. At the same
time, they feared that these “institutions” could “foster false optimism about change”
and become a distraction from activism.23 And herein lay both the opening for what
would become feminist activist entrepreneurship as well as the anxieties and anger that
feminist ventures would come to inspire.
Feminist Business as a “Counter-Institution”
For feminists, “counter-institutions” was a broad term, open to interpretation, and

could be anything from health centers (an example CWLU specifically gave) to legal
aid, domestic violence crisis centers, and alternative child care.24 So, as they began to
seek ways to create the world they envisioned, some feminists went into business, often
in the form of collective, cooperative, or communal ventures. Both liberal and radical
feminists started businesses, but those on the left understood their ventures as part of
creating a new culture, one inspired by feminist—and sometimes socialist—ideas that
provided goods and services they believed women needed or wanted and that were
produced in a non-capitalist way. The definition of “non-capitalist” would vary but for
almost all, it ultimately centered on eliminating the profit motive. Coupled with this
were differing interpretations of how to end women’s oppression. Ginny Z. Berson noted
21
Charlotte Bunch and Nancy Myron, eds., Class and Feminism: A Collection of Essays from THE
FURIES (Baltimore: Diana Press, 1974); Casey Hayden and Mary King, “Sex and Caste” (1965),
in Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement, ed. Rosalyn Baxandall and
Linda Gordon (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 21; Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, “Socialist
Feminism” (1972), in Dear Sisters, ed. Baxandall and Gordon (New York: Basic Books, 2000),
96–7; Zillah R. Eisentein, ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1979); Evelyn Reed, “Women: Caste, Class or Oppressed Sex” (1970);
https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed-evelyn/1970/caste-class-sex.htm [accessed November 20,
2020].
22
Linda Gordon, “Socialist Feminism: The Legacy of the ‘Second Wave’,” New Labor Forum: A Journal of
Ideas, Analysis and Debate (September 2013), https://newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2013/09/30/socialist-
feminism-the-legacy-of-the-second-wave/#_edn11; Baxandall and Gordon, Dear Sisters, 273.
23
Hyde Park Chapter, Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, “Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the
Women’s Liberation Movement,” 1972, http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/chisocfem.
html [accessed January 21, 2021]. See also Barbara Ehrenreich, “What is Socialist Feminism?,”
1976, https://www.cwluherstory.org/classic-feminist-writings-articles/what-is-socialist-feminism
[accessed January 21, 2021].
24
Harris and Schwing, “Building Feminist Institutions,” 3.
that her group, The Furies—whose members would launch several feminist businesses
in the 1970s—believed that “sexism is the root of all other oppressions. Lesbian and
woman oppression will not end by smashing capitalism, racism, imperialism, and
all other forms of domination.”25 These viewpoints, too, made ideological space for
engaging with entrepreneurship, albeit in a distinctly feminist way.
With revolutionary zeal, feminist entrepreneurs launched thousands of businesses.26
They started feminist presses that published women’s works and lesbian themes when
mainstream publishers did not, among them, the path-breaking Rubyfruit Jungle, by
Rita Mae Brown. In fact, one source reported that from 1968 to 1973, there were
560 new feminist publications.27 Activist entrepreneurs created feminist credit
unions—ultimately eighteen across the country and a few in Canada with deposits of
upwards of $3 million28—that would lend money to women when traditional lenders
were legally free to, and typically did, discriminate against them (before and even
after passage of the 1974 Equality Credit Opportunity Act, and for women business
owners, as late as 1988). There were feminist galleries, art centers, and bookstores
(as many as 130 nationwide) that doubled as community and education centers for
women who wanted to know more about women’s issues, feminism, or who sought
feminist connections.29
Many of the feminist businesses were cataloged by scholars Kirsten Grimstad and
Susan Rennie in a popular 273-page 1973 book that spent a week on the New York
Times’ best-seller’s list, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog. In their introduction,
they shared their observations about the excitement and immense potential of the
25
Ginny Z. Berson, Olivia on the Record: A Radical Experiment in Women’s Music (San Francisco: Aunt
Lute Books, 2020), 38.
26
Lois Gould, “Creating a Women’s World,” New York Times, 2 January 1977, 141, https://www. nytimes.
com/1977/01/02/archives/creating-a-womens-world-the-feminists-behind-daughtersinc-a.html
[accessed July 19, 2020]; Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog: A
Woman Made Book (New York: Primary Information, 1973).
27
Anne Mather, “A History of Feminist Periodicals, Part One.” Journalism History 3, no. 3 (1974):
82–85, as cited in Thom, Inside MS., 4; Martha Shelley, “Voices of Feminism Oral History Project,”
Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, interview with Kelly Anderson, October 12, 2003, San
Francisco, CA.
28
Debra Michals, “The Buck Stops Where? 1970s Feminist Credit Unions, Women’s Banks, and the
Gendering of Money.” Business and Economic History Online 16 (2018), https://thebhc.org/buck-
stops-where-1970s-feminist-credit-unions-womens-banks-and-gendering-money\; “Feminist Credit
Union.” Her-Self, 2, no. 5 (1973): 3, as cited in Enke, Finding the Movement, 202, 319; “Feminist
Theory and Economic Practice.” Sistershares: The Newsletter of the Massachusetts Feminist Federal
Credit Union 2, no. 3 (1976): 3; Janis Kelly, Fran Moira, and Tanya Temkin, “Money on the Line.” off
our backs 6 no. 1 (1976): 10–11. A collection of primary sources on women and credit can be found
in the NOW papers at Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. See NOW papers,
#72–25–79-M262; m106, Carton 21, Folder “General – Old Credit Stuff.” Cynthia Harrison Papers,
Carton 2, 83-M238 Folders 7, 13, and 25. Pamphlets and other material from the Feminist Federal
Credit Unions exist among the papers of the Feminist Economic Alliance at the Special Collections
Department, William R. Perkins Library, Duke University.
29
Jill Diane Zahniser, “Feminist Collectives: The Transformation of Women’s Businesses in the
Counterculture of the 1970s and 1980s,” PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1985, 34–6; Kristen Hogan,
The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2016), xv, 33–45.
businesses they encountered “which, unlike women’s businesses and enterprises that
have existed all along, are aimed explicitly at the development of an alternative women’s
culture.”30 Feminists saw business as a tool, and they were joyful about its potential,
noted Grimstad.31 “Heaven is earning your living as a feminist,” wrote Paula Kassell,
founder and editor of New Directions for Women in New Jersey, a feminist newspaper
that existed from 1972 to 1993 and grew to a circulation of 65,000.32
For feminists who had been shunned by the mainstream movement, such as
lesbians, or who left because of its acceptance of the system as is, business-as-counter-
institution provided a way to create community and jobs for a group who experienced
widespread employment discrimination. In fact, lesbian feminists were a major force
behind the notion of business-as-vehicle for creating a feminist culture. According to
Grimstad, many of the approximately five hundred businesses in The New Woman’s
Survival Catalog were owned by lesbians or lesbian collectives.33 Some expected that
not only would these “institutions” be controlled by members of the movement, but
that “preference in hiring would be given to lesbians, lower and working-class women,
Third World women, and women in need.”34 That was part of the utopian dream that
made activist entrepreneurs swoon. “We decided to do a record company because we
thought we could change the world through music,” noted Judy Dlugacz, cofounder
of Olivia Records, adding that she saw herself as an activist first; entrepreneur second.
The “world” she was changing was one in which women’s music—and themes women
cared about—were recorded and readily available at affordable prices.35 As a lesbian
collective, Olivia’s members lived and worked together in Los Angeles and later
Oakland, California. Olivia’s founders had belonged to The Furies, a lesbian collective
that began in Washington, DC. The Furies published a newspaper during the DC
years (1971–1973); afterward, some members moved west to start Olivia, and others,
notably Charlotte Bunch and Coletta Reid, remained on the East Coast, launching a
new feminist publication, Quest: A Feminist Quarterly (1974–1984) and a publishing
collective, Daughters, Inc.36
30
Grimstad and Rennie, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog, 7. Alix Nelson, “Including a Pink Male
Chauvinist Pig Pillow: The New Woman’s Survival Catalog,” New York Times, January 6, 1974, 354,
https://www.nytimes.com/1974/01/06/archives/the-new-womans-survival-catalog-a-womanmade-
book-edited-by-kirsten.html [accessed July 29, 2020].
31
Kristin Grimstad (co-author of The New Woman’s Survival Catalog), discussion with the author,
March 18, 2021.
32
Paula Kassell, “The Feminist Movement as a Business—Earning One’s Living as a Feminist,” in
Dealing with the Real World, 6; Betsy Wade, “Paula Kassell Always Took Women in New Directions,”
Women’s eNews, December 6, 2002, https://womensenews.org/2002/12/paula-kassell-always-took-
women-new-directions/ [accessed March 18, 2021].
33
Grimstad, discussion with author.
34
Harris and Schwing, “Building Feminist Institutions,” 3.
35
Judy Dlugacz, Interview, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fsjXsw4NJY[accessed February
16, 2021].
36
Julie R. Enzer, “The Whole Naked Truth of Our Lives: Lesbian-Feminist Print Culture from 1969
to 1989,” PhD diss., University of Maryland, College Park, 2013, 55; Berson, Olivia on the Record,
33–35; Davis, From Head Shopts to Whole Foods, 137–8; Echols, Daring to Be Bad, 272–3; Gould;
“Creating a Women’s World”; Papers of Charlotte Bunch, 1967–1985; Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe
Institute, https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/8/resources/5025.
Feminist entrepreneurs recognized that business itself could only be the “counter-
institution” CWLU discussed if entrepreneurs never lost sight of the larger revolutionary
purpose of their ventures. Not surprisingly, such lofty goals triggered constant anxiety
among feminist entrepreneurs and movement observers that they prove they were in
it for the revolution and not for personal gain. Furies member Coletta Reid, a proud
proponent of activist entrepreneurship and owner of Diana Press, explained it this way:
“Feminist businesswomen are those who see their business as part of a multi-faceted
strategy for gaining economic power for women as a group … They are different from
female capitalists who accept basic structures of capitalism as good but want women to
be involved at higher levels.”37
Running a Business, Feminist Style
Feminist observers shared their expectations for and anxieties about feminist
businesses in women’s liberation newsletters, magazines such as off our backs, and
other movement literature. Even mainstream publications such as the New York
Times picked up the question of feminism and enterprise. For starters, feminist
entrepreneurs believed that the profit motive must be suspended, replaced with
socialist feminist and communitarian ideals about everything from how work was
organized (non-hierarchically) to salary structures to the prices charged for the
goods they produced. Feminist businesses disdained job titles and the ranking of
assignments; members shared equally the creative and the mundane tasks.38 Some
also eliminated the boundaries between home and work, with children a welcome
presence in the workplace. Children were often at the offices at Ms. In its early years, so
much so that they were dubbed “Ms. Kids.”39 Even what constituted a legitimate work
week was reshaped: “business meetings (were) on Tuesdays; political discussions on
Thursdays,” noted one collective.40 Salaries, when these small and struggling ventures
were able to offer them, were based not on education or experience but on the needs
of the individual women.41 Women with children earned more than single women,
for example, and collectives pooled their income from all sources to ensure everyone’s
economic survival.42
The issue of prices and profits went hand-in-hand for feminist entrepreneurs.
With an anti-profit ethos, the goal was to keep prices low enough so that the widest
number of potential female consumers could afford to purchase their books, record
37
Coletta Reid, “Taking Care of Business.” Quest 1, no. 2 (1974): 8, 16. I discuss this in my dissertation.
See Debra Michals, “Beyond Pin Money: The Rise of Women’s Small Business Ownership,
1945–1980,” PhD diss., New York University, 2002.
38
Bill Hieronymus, “For Some Feminists, Owning a Business Is Real Liberation.” Wall Street Journal,
April 15, 1974, accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
39
Thom, Inside Ms., 52, 53.
40
“Olivia Records Talks About Collectivity—Part II,” in the records of the Lollipop Power Press,
Special Collections Department, William R. Perkins Library, Duke University.
41
Harris and Schwing, “Building Feminist Institutions,” 2–3.
42
Grimstad and Rennie, The New Woman’s Survival Catalogue, 23.
albums, foods, or whatever else was being sold—thereby expanding their outreach and
ultimately creating a feminist culture. For many of those involved with these ventures,
the commitment to the feminist mission often meant working for little or no money
and picking up a part-time job on the side to pay the bills.43 It also meant not only self-
scrutiny but swift rebuke by other feminists when prices seemed high or profit seemed
to be generated. Olivia Records faced questions about the prices they charged for
their records; the issue of pricing publishers and other feminist businesses also came
up for. “There’s always somebody who says you shouldn’t profit from doing good—it
should be pure, not tainted by money,” said Stephanie Marcus, owner of Liberation
Enterprises, which produced feminist clothes, jewelry, and novelty items.44 The more
profitable a feminist venture was, the more observers questioned the true motives of
entrepreneurs—i.e., did they deep down want to be capitalists and gain acceptance
from the larger system?
Insiders and Outsiders
Scholars have written about the protectiveness that social movements develop about
insiders and outsiders and retaining the purity of ideology and mission, particularly
among the social movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.45 Jo Freeman, a
member of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, in 1976 published a now famous
essay about the “trashing” that existed within the movement whenever women
seemed to fall short. She, and other feminists such as Anselma Dell’Olio, exposed
the ways such intensive criticism and shaming led them and others to feel ostracized
and in response, to turn away from the movement. Shared Freeman, “I learned …
years ago that women had always been divided against one another, self-destructive
and filled with impotent rage … I never dreamed that I would see the day when
this rage, masquerading as a pseudo-egalitarian radicalism would be used within the
Movement to strike down sisters singled out.”46 The insider/outsider question led to a
rigidity many did not expect when they joined movements that promised liberation.
While neither Freeman nor Dell’Olio were speaking about feminist entrepreneurs,
their words addressed what many feminist business owners were experiencing.
In a resignation letter from the movement that Dell’Olio read publicly at the 1976
43
Molly Lovelock and Shane Snowdon, “In Celebration of New Words Bookstore’s First Decade.”
Sojourner: The Women’s Forum 9, no. 8 (1984): 18.
44
Joshua Clark Davis, “Liberation Enterprises: We Were Giving Visual Voice to Women: Stephanie
L. Marcus,” The VFA Pioneer Histories Project, Veteran Feminists of America, https://www.
veteranfeministsofamerica.org/vfa-pioneer-histories-project-stephanie-marcus/ [accessed March
30, 2021].
45
Joshua Gamson, “Messages of Exclusion: Gender, Movements, and Symbolic Boundaries.” Gender
& Society 11, no. 3 (1997): 178–99; Suzanne Staggenborg, Social Movements (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016), 31–8; Verta Taylor and Nancy Whittier, “Collective Identity in Social
Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization,” in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory,
ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carol M. Mueller (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 104–29.
46
Jo Freeman, “Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood,” Ms., April 1976, 49–51, 92–8, https://www.
cwluherstory.org/classic-feminist-writings-articles/trashing-the-dark-side-of-sisterhood.
Congress to Unite Women, she pointed out, “And who do they attack? … If you
are in the first category (an achiever), you are immediately labeled a thrill-seeking
opportunist, a ruthless mercenary, out to make her fame and fortune over the dead
bodies of selfless sisters who have buried their abilities and sacrificed their ambitions
for the greater glory of Feminism.”47
Given their visibility and growing numbers, feminist entrepreneurs were easy
targets for the trashing Freeman and Dell’Olio described. The critiques could get
quite hostile and addressed everything from racism and classism to profiting from
the movement or being infiltrated by outsiders. For example, feminist credit unions
were often angrily accused of being classist and racist, even as their mission was to
provide access to loans for women who mainstream banks would typically reject. Their
only criteria: borrowers and members had to join a feminist group and pay $5 per
year in membership dues to the credit union.48 They funded many feminist ventures,
including bookstores such as Old Wives Tales in San Francisco, as well as legal fees for
women who wanted a divorce or needed the money for other personal reasons.49 The
criticism: credit unions were more aligned with middle-class women who could be
their largest depositors, and middle-class women were more likely to receive loans as
well, especially when, after a large number of loan defaults, some credit unions, such
as the Detroit Feminist Federal Credit Union, changed their lending policies to ensure
women had the ability to repay.50 Other criticisms, particularly those about issues of
race and the invisibility of women of color to White feminists, uncovered a blind spot
to be sure. Barbara Smith launched Kitchen Table Press in 1980 because, as she said,
“As feminist and lesbian of color writers, we knew that we had no options for getting
published except at the mercy or whim of others—in either commercial or alternative
publishing, since both are white dominated.”51
Activist entrepreneurs—especially those who focused on instilling feminist, anti-
racist and anti-classist values in their businesses—buckled under the unrelenting
pressure and scrutiny of other feminists. As Olivia founder Ginny Berson wrote
in a letter to the feminist publication off our backs, “Sometimes we feel that oob
holds Olivia responsible not only for being perfect at all times, but also for making
everyone else in the world perfect. We are doing our work—which we have defined
47
Anselma Dell’Olio, “Divisiveness and Self-Destructiveness in the Women’s Liberation Movement,”
in CWLU Newsletter via: Linda Quint, and Joreen “CWLU NEWS,” CWLU NEWS (July 1, 1970),
1–8, https://jstor.org/stable/community.28035359. See also Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time:
Memoir of a Revolution (New York: Dial, 1999).
48
Celine, “fen, credit unions, & the capitali$t system,” off our backs 6, no. 6 (1976): 4; Tanya Tempkin,
“Chicagoland Credit Union,” off our backs, 6, no. 1 (March 1976), 11, http://www.jstor.org/
stable/25784160 [accessed February 2, 2018]; Michals, “The Buck Stops Where?”
49
Elizabeth Sullivan, “Carol Seajay, Old Wives Tales, and the Feminist Bookstore Network:
Historical Essay,” https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Carol_Seajay,_Old_Wives_Tales_
and_the_Feminist_Bookstore_Network&scrlybrkr=cf51fd4e; Hogan, The Feminist Bookstore
Movement, 70–5.
50
Celine, “fen, credit unions, & the capitali$t system,” 4.
51
Barbara Smith, “A Press of Our Own: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press.” Frontiers: A Journal of
Women Studies 10, no. 3, Women and Words (1989), 11–13; Julie R. Enszer “‘The Black and White
of It’: Barbara Grier Editing and Publishing Women of Color.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 18, no. 4
(2014): 362–3.
very clearly over and over again, in the feminist press, in concerts, in articles, on
records, in radio interviews.”52
One of the more visible and successful feminist enterprises, Olivia was often the
target of criticism, but the group, like most feminist entrepreneurs, was self-critical
too. As a collective comprised largely of White, educated women, they embraced
lesbian separatist anti-racist, anti-classist politics and sought greater inclusivity in
both their music and their membership. While the label did record some women of
color, the collective itself lacked diversity and, to remain true to their politics, they
recruited more working-class women and women of color to join them.53 Their
openness to welcome women who shared their revolutionary vision and feminist
ideology also sparked the ire of other feminists when they hired Sandy Stone, a
transwoman, as a recording engineer. Stone had an impressive resume, having
worked with such musicians as Jimi Hendrix, the Velvet Underground, and the
Grateful Dead, and as Olivia was planning more ambitious recording projects, the
collective needed someone with her experience.54 As they did with all new members,
Olivia was deliberative in deciding whether to include Stone—whether her politics
and experiences aligned with those of this lesbian collective. Stone later recalled that
they had several meetings over the course of a year before finally inviting her to join
Olivia. In 1976, however, transwomen were often cast to the margins of gay liberation
and feminism. Radical feminists embraced lesbians as woman-identified-women but
many were not as accepting of transwomen and instead recognized as “women” only
those assigned so at birth (so-called “biological women”).55 They argued that if the
point of feminist entrepreneurship was to provide jobs for lesbians and other women,
then Olivia betrayed the movement by hiring Stone, who they insisted was not and in
their eyes could never be a woman.
The attacks on Sandy Stone and Olivia also conveyed feminist fear of infiltration
of the movement by “men” who might then work to ensure its demise.56 Olivia, and
especially Stone, began receiving an influx of angry letters from other feminists urging
her firing, including death threats. The debate about Stone’s hiring also played out
on the pages of feminist publications. One woman wrote: “I feel raped when Olivia
passes off Sandy … as a real woman. After all his male privilege, is he going to cash
52
Berson, Olivia on the Record, 211–12; Letters, off our backs (April 1978), 16.
53
Berson, Olivia on the Record, 210–12.
54
Ibid, 181.
55
Radicalesbians, “The Woman Identified Woman” (Pittsburgh: Know Inc., 1970). Hogan describes
a debate about exclusion of transwomen at the West Coast Lesbian Conference in 1973, The
Feminist Bookstore Movement, 2. Jerome Rodnitsky, Feminist Phoenix: The Rise and fall of a Feminist
Counterculture (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999) 62, 70–71. Bonnie Morris, “Olivia Records: The
Production of a Movement.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 19, no. 3 (2015): 290–304; “The Michigan
Womyn’s Festival: The Historic Radfem vs. Terf vs. Trans Fight,” The Terfs, September 2, 2014,
http://theterfs.com/2014/09/02/the-michigan-womyns-music-festival-the-historic-radfem-vs-
terf-vs-trans-fight/ [accessed October 2, 2019]; Green, “Debating Trans Inclusion,” 231–48; Sally
Hines, “The Feminist Frontier: On Trans and Feminism.” Journal of Gender Studies 28 no. 2 (2019):
145–57.
56
Robin Morgan, “Lesbianism and Feminism: Synonyms or Contradictions?,” in Robin Morgan,
Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist (New York: Random House, 1977), 174.
in on lesbian feminist culture too?”57 In response, Olivia defended its decision in a

1977 article in Sister:
Because Sandy decided to give up completely and permanently her male identity
and live as a woman and a lesbian, she is now faced with the same kinds of
oppression that other women and lesbians face … If she is a person who comes
from privilege, has she renounced that which is oppressive in her privilege? …
Is she open to struggle around class, race, and other aspects of lesbian feminist
politics? … We felt that Sandy met those same criteria that we apply to any woman
with whom we plan to work closely.58
Ultimately, faced with ongoing hostility, Stone resigned rather than put the collective at
risk or distract it from its core work of recording women’s music.59
Co-optation, Infiltration, and Feminist Anxiety
Issues of co-optation remained a major source of anxiety regarding feminist

entrepreneurship and also revealed tensions about who would represent the movement
and jealousies about success. When Gloria Steinem and a group of feminists in New
York decided to launch a mass media feminist magazine called Ms., the venture raised
more than a few eyebrows. Feminists feared that a million dollars of start-up money
for Ms. came from Warner Communications, a major corporation that in exchange
would own 25 percent of Ms., a worrisome sign that what might follow in the magazine
would be watered down feminism. It made critics dubious that the entire venture
was merely to enrich its founders. Steinem, who some feminists dubbed “a wimpy
moderate,” also suffered from the critique that she had been named a feminist leader by
mainstream (male-controlled) media and not by the movement itself, a charge leveled
rather visibly in major newspapers and notably by Betty Friedan.60 In addition, as the
popularity and visibility of Ms. grew—and with it Steinem’s—feminists who embraced
the notion of “leaderlessness” (that in egalitarian movements, there are no leaders;
everyone is a leader) were increasingly uncomfortable. The fear was that the patriarchy,
which controlled all social institutions, would make stars of women they found least
objectionable, and these stars could be used to undermine the movement.61
Joanne Parrent and members of the Feminist Economic Network (FEN) suffered
from similar accusations with their endeavor to launch a feminist hub of sorts in
57
Raymond as quoted in Sandy Stone, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,” (1987),
Creative Commons, 4.
58
Cristan Williams, “TERF Hate and Sandy Stone,” Trans Advocate, August 16, 2014, http://www.
transadvocate.com/terf-violence-and-sandy-stone_n_14360.htm [accessed November 12, 2018].
59
Sandy Stone, discussion with the author, September 29, 2020. Stone contributed to Olivia’s
importance as a pioneer of the women’s music movement. In its history, Olivia produced forty
albums, and sales in 1988 hit $250,000. The company transformed itself in the 1990s into Olivia
Travel, a lesbian cruise/travel company with Judy Duglacz, the remaining founder at the helm.
60
Thom, Inside Ms., 33, 41, 51–2.
61
Valk, “Living a Feminist Lifestyle,” 317, 319.
the Feminist Women’s City Club in Detroit in 1976. The 1924 building had formerly
been a women’s club, and Parrent and her cohort saw potential to not only restore
it but also bring together in one space women’s businesses and services, as well as
a club—complete with swimming pool—where feminists and feminist entrepreneurs
could meet, share resources, and find community. FEN was originally established as
a sort of umbrella organization for feminist credit unions, where they could combine
as necessary and establish policies for or provide assistance to individual members.
Some critics saw the purchase of a building beyond the scope of FEN’s mission and
questioned the ethics of FEN principals such as Joanne Parrent and Valerie Angers who
were also the building’s owners. Criticisms were swift: some labeled it elitist because
of the $100 annual membership fees for the club facilities, others accused its founders
of co-opting the mission of FEN and using it to enrich themselves.62 What’s more,
when Parrent and Angers ended their relationship, their breakup became entangled in
the very public debates in feminist magazines. Parrent was emotionally wounded by
claims that she was co-opting the movement, which she also believed were motivated
by jealousies about the scale and success of the Feminist City Club and the attention its
founders received.63 Ultimately, Parrent left FEN and the DFFCU, and FEN dissolved.
In Defense of Feminist Entrepreneurship
Feminist entrepreneurs on the receiving end of criticism, however, did not always
remain silent, despite the deep rejection, defensiveness, and insecurity many felt.
They fired back in the feminist press and elsewhere. Some challenged the idea that
they were supposed to accept a “vow of poverty” (i.e., not make money from their
businesses) to be loyal feminists—and that, like Dell’Olio—they saw this as devaluing
women’s work and achievements, much as the patriarchal capitalist system had.64
But feminist entrepreneurs’ defenses also revealed the more complicated emotional
struggle of juggling two worlds and worldviews, feminism and business. “We are
torn by our two positions,” wrote Susan Sojourner, owner of First Things First. “As
businesswomen, we’re tired of constantly being questioned about our profit (dirty,
ugly word) motivations and our ‘credentials’ (how much free movement work are
we doing?) Yet, as feminists we often look at other businesswomen with the same
movement-protective attitudes: Why is she in this? Is she a movement woman? Or just
in this for the money?”65
They worried, too, that the disavowal of profit was merely a reflection of the
devaluation of women more broadly, leading to missed opportunities for both the
62
Fran Moira, “FEN: Do the Facts Speak for Themselves?” off our backs 6 no. 6 (1976): 5, 15; Kathie
Barry, “F.E.N,” off our backs 6 no. 10 (1977): 16–17. See also Davis, From Head Shops to Whole
Foods, 129–30; C. Corday, Kana Trueblood and Sonny Tufts, “Feminist City Club: FEN Fatale,” Fifth
Estate no. 272 (May 1975), https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/272-may-1976/feminist-city-club/
[accessed March 18, 2018].
63
Joanne Parrent, discussion with the author, July 9, 2021.
64
Pride, “Underpricing Our Own Work,” 9.
65
Sojourner, 4.
entrepreneurs and the movement. “Were we truly pricing our material at a price
every woman could afford,” wrote Anne Pride, principal of the Pittsburgh feminist
publishing company, Know Inc., “or are we purposely keeping our prices as low as
possible because we, in fact, were not completely convinced that anything we, as
women, could produce was worth a higher price?”66 Put more definitively, Marjory
Collins, another feminist entrepreneur, noted, “The only way to turn these attitudes
around is for us, as feminist entrepreneurs, to present ourselves to the movement and
the rest of the world for what we really are: the cutting edge of economic independence
for all women. We are the pioneers.”67
Conclusion
In 1979, Ginny Z. Berson, one of the original members of the Olivia Records collective,
decided to leave the business. After years in an activist enterprise, Berson determined,
“We could not be a revolutionary political/cultural organization and a successful
business.”68 Many feminist businesses similarly struggled not only with balancing
revolutionary ideals and the pressures of a capitalist marketplace but also with a
complex web of unruly emotions that increasingly shaped and added new layers of
difficulty to how they approached their ventures. These emotions ranged from the joy
feminist activist entrepreneurs experienced in their mission to create an alternative,
woman-centered economy to the anxiety, guilt, defensiveness, and self-doubt triggered
by growing criticisms from within the women’s movement. Even as they linked their
ventures to ideals beyond the business realm, feminist entrepreneurs were nonetheless
surprised to see how much emotions (their own and those of others) crept into and
infused their businesses and decisions. Ultimately, the combined pressures pushed
many to rethink their ventures. Most of those who held fast to socialist, feminist, anti-
profit imperatives ultimately failed or decided that the pressure to conform to the
marketplace was not for them. Those who remained in business became nonprofits
or, as with Olivia’s shift to a lesbian travel company, reinvented themselves in ways
that tempered the rigid political fervor, keeping core ideals (i.e., serving a lesbian
clientele and donating large sums of money to support lesbian and feminist causes)
while also seeking the profits needed to sustain and grow a business. Although feminist
entrepreneurs did not see their vision of using business to create a new woman-
centered culture materialize, their ventures nonetheless provided energy, excitement,
and visibility for the movement. As such, the study of feminist activist entrepreneurs
reveals much about not only the intersection of the movement and the marketplace but
also about the ways in which business and emotions are always intertwined. Feminist
businesses and the debates about them raised important questions about whether
business can be about more than enriching its founders—ideas that continue to infuse
social entrepreneurship today.
66
Pride, 9.
67
Collins, 5.
68
Berson, Olivia on the Record, 249.
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Index
Italic page numbers indicate figures.

accounting practices affect theory 50
boundaries of 38–40 Aikman, Margaret 38–9
as cause of conflict 39–40 Allentown 162–3
charitable giving 41–3 Americanization of advertising in Cold
community relations and 41–4 War Turkey 91–5, 93, 94
credit and debt relationships 42–3 Angé, Olivia 164n38
as daily ritual 36 Angelucci, Angelo 183
as ethical practice 35–6 Angrand, Jean-Luc 117
family relations and 38–40 antebellum service sector
gift giving and 41–3 attitudes towards services 66–8
hybrid forms of 40 black-run barbershops 74
importance to middling families 32 buying and selling trust 74–8
negotiations between family members confidence as obsession 75–6
39 emotional labor 68–71
perfect equality, marriage and 31–2 emotional strategies used 59–60
quantified self as enabled by 33, 34–7 hotels and restaurants 72–4
research sources 33–4 trust 66–8, 72–5
selectivity of 36–7 see also Civil War era of US,
texts on 34–5 businesswomen in
variety of 36 anxiety
Adanson, Michel 112 in advertising 85–90, 87, 89
Adolphs, Ralph 71n16 credit and debt and 127
advertisements feminist entrepreneurship in the 1970s
Americanization of in Cold War 251–2
Turkey 91–5, 93, 94 arms industry
emotional strategies shown in 57–9 arms control 182
families, use of in 92–5, 94 Beretta firm 186
fear, anxiety and pride in Cold War brands, connotations associated with
Turkey 85–90 188
multi-emotional 92 contemporary 187
political parties 93, 93–4 disarmament campaigns 188
Advertising Council 91 early modern Europe 178–82
affective economies 198 fear 189
Netherlands, financial bubbles in 202, film industry, association with 189
202–5, 203, 204 future research 190
New York stock exchange 1929 crisis guns 179–82, 188–9
205–10, 207, 209 historiography 183–7
affective professional relationships see imperial contexts 181–2
emotional bonds among Boston’s knives compared to guns 188
China traders manufacturers, attitudes towards 182
Index 261
as merchants of death 184 brotherly business relationships see

patriotism 183–4 emotional bonds among Boston’s
place in society 190 China traders
pride 183–4, 189 Brown, Henry Box 231
source base for research 190 Brun, Samuel 181
sports events, association with 189 burnout 14
strong emotions as attracted to 177–8 business communities 5
unrest excited by 184–5 business history/historians
Atia, Nadia 165, 173 literature 3–15
view of emotions 1–3, 2
Balleisen, Edward 72 business strategy, love as 113–16
Barrett, Lisa Feldman 71 buying and selling, trust and 74–8
Beattie, James 39
Beckwith, N. M. 131–2 Cailluet, Ludovic 1, 7
Bell, Daniel 67 Cannizzo, Cindy 186
Benson, Susan Porter 69–70 capitalism 29
Beretta firm 186 Carr, Christopher 188
Berliner, David 164n38 Cavalli, Marino 182
Berson, Ginny Z. 244–5, 249–50, 253 Cellini, Benvenuto 179
black-run barbershops 74 Cervantes, Miguel de 179
Blight, David 55 Chamoun, Dany 186
boarding house keepers emotional charitable giving, accounting practices
strategies of 57–9 and 41–3
Boddice, Rob 1, 2–3, 16 Cipolla, Carlo 185
Boilat, David 117 Civil War era of US, businesswomen in
bonds among Boston’s China traders see advertisements 57–9
emotional bonds among Boston’s boarding house keepers emotional
China traders strategies of 57–9
bookkeeping see accounting practices couverture 50n4
Boorstin, Daniel 72 cries used by in the market 49–50
Boston’s China traders, emotional bonds emotional communities 52
among emotional labor 59–60
anxiety re. credit and debt 127 emotion as business strategy 50
building 129–33 emotives 52
Coolidge, Joseph, business partnership era defined 50
with Augustine Heard 125–6, 130, finding emotional strategies 53
133–9 literature on women’s work 50–1
as critical resource 126 mantua-makers, emotional strategies
drive for 131 of 57
family as important resource 129–32 market women, emotional strategies
fear of loss and failure 126 of 54–6
library associations 129 milliners, emotional strategies of 56–7
masculinity and 126, 132–3 non-emotion as emotional strategy 60
separate spheres ideology 127–8 nostalgia, trading on sense of 54–6
Bourke, Joanna 230 praline vendors 55–6
Brauer, Jurgen 187 schools and academies emotional
Braverman, Harry 67, 70, 70n11 strategies of 59
Bremmer, Fredrika 54 services industries, emotional
Brockway, Fenner 184 strategies used 59–60
262 Index
similarities and differences 53 Coolidge, Joseph, business partnership

stock investment 60 with Augustine Heard 125–6, 130,
see also antebellum service sector 133–9
class, signares as new social class 116–19, Corker, Chris 190
118 counter-institution, feminist business as
Cobble, Dorothy Sue 70 244–7
Cold War Turkey courage in advertising 85–90, 87, 89
advertising 85–99, 87, 89, 93, 94, 97, 99 couverture 50n4
American goods, advertising of 96–9, creativity paradox 13–14
97, 99 credit and debt, anxiety and 127
Americanization, advertising and cultural analysis 16
91–5, 93, 94 cultural bubbles 195–6
consumption of American goods 95–9, Dutch Republic 201–5, 202, 203, 204
97, 99 New York stock exchange 1929 crisis
families, use of in advertising 92–5, 94 205–10, 207, 209
fear, anxiety and pride in advertising sensemaking of financial bubbles
85–90, 87, 89 201–5, 202, 203, 204
political parties, advertisements for cultural scripts 16
93, 93–4 Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth 73
Soviet threat 85–90, 87, 89 Curti, Merle 13
Colinson, Robert 35
Colli, Andrea 15 Damasio, Antonio 71n16
Collier, Basil 185 Dames, Nicholas 163–4
Collins, Marjory 253 Davidoff, Leonore 32
Cominassi, Marco 183 Davies, Jeremy 165, 173
community relations, accounting practices debt, anxiety and 127
and 41–4 decision-making 13
competencies, emotions as 7 De la Vega, Joseph 199
conflict, accounting practices as cause of Delcourt, André 111
39–40 Dell’Olio, Anselma 248–9
consumers, firms’ relationships with 7–9 Denton, Stacey 166, 167
contractual marriages between signares De Pommegorge, Prunella 117–18
and Europeans de Vries, David 12
abolition of slavery 119–20 disciplinary emotions 17, 18–19
associations of signares 117 capitalism and 29
balls/receptions given by 117 see also accounting practices;
clothing of signares 117–19, 118 antebellum service sector; Civil
conditional love 110–13 War era of US, businesswomen in;
decline of signare community 119–20 Turkey during the Cold War
freedom, signares and 113 Ditz, Toby 136
gum trade 115–16 Dlugacz, Judy 246
houses lived in 116 Douglass, Frederick 231
new social class, signares as 116–19, Downs, Jacques 130
118 Dunne, J. Paul 187
origin of signares 109–10 Durand, Jean-Baptiste-Leonard 111
processions of signares 117 Dutch Republic
signares, background to 107–8, 109 early modern, financial bubbles in
slaves of signares 114–16 199–205, 202, 203, 204
strategy, love as 113–16 see also Netherlands
Index 263
economic history of 1960s feminism emotional regimes 4–6, 21

242–4 created by emotional labor 75
Edwards, Laura F. 50n4 emotional strategies see Civil War era of
Ehrenreich, Barbara 67, 69n10 US, businesswomen in
Elias, Norbert 3n8 emotionology 4
emotional bonds among Boston’s China emotion(s)
traders as constructed term 5
anxiety re. credit and debt 127 defined 3–4
building 129–33 link to other forms of knowing 6
Coolidge, Joseph, business partnership as neurologically constructed 71,
with Augustine Heard 125–6, 130, 71n15
133–9 and reason as intertwined 6
as critical resource 126 emotion work/management, distinguished
drive for 131 from emotional labor 68–9
family as important resource 129–32 emotives 4
fear of loss and failure 126 Civil War era of US, businesswomen
library associations 129 in 52
masculinity and 126, 132–3 employees, emotional enlistment of
separate spheres ideology 127–8 10–11
emotional communities 5, 21 enabling emotions 17, 19–20, 105
Civil War era of US, businesswomen see also accounting practices;
in 52 contractual marriages between
emotional economies 198, 214–15 signares and Europeans; nostalgia;
Netherlands, financial bubbles in 202, Taketsuru, Rita and Masataka
202–5, 203, 204 Engelbrecht, H.C. 184–5
New York stock exchange 1929 crisis entrepreneurs
205–10, 207, 209 emotion and 11
emotional expression 5 of trust 66
emotional labor 6, 10–11, 51–2 see also feminist entrepreneurship in
antebellum service sector 68–71 the 1970s
Civil War era of US, businesswomen entrepreneurship of trust 77
in 59–60 equality, marriage and 31–2
distinguished from emotion work/ Eustace, Nocole 6
management 68–9
emotional regimes created by 75 failure, fear of, Boston’s China traders and
trust 66, 74–5, 77 126
emotional marketing family/families
Americanization of advertisements in as important resource for Boston’s
Cold War Turkey 91–5 China traders 129–32
consumption of American goods in relationships, accounting practices and
Cold War Turkey 96–9, 97, 99 38–40
families, use of in advertising 92–5, use of in advertising 92–5, 94
94 family firms 11–12, 14–15
gender and 98 see also accounting practices
political parties, advertisements for fear
93, 93–4 about feminist entrepreneurship in the
Soviet threat in Cold War Turkey 1970s 241–2
85–90, 87, 89 in advertising 85–90, 87, 89
emotional refuge 21 arms industry 189
264 Index
of loss and failure, Boston’s China Fronsperger, Leonhard 180

traders and 126 future research 22
see also slavery/slave trade
Febvre, Lucien 3, 3n8 gender
feminist entrepreneurship in the 1970s emotional marketing and 98
anxiety over co-optation and emotions and 9–10, 11
infiltration 251–2 see also Civil War era of US,
counter-institution, feminist business businesswomen in; contractual
as 244–7 marriages between signares
defense of 252–3 and Europeans; feminist
economic history of 1960s feminism entrepreneurship in the 1970s
242–4 gift giving, accounting practices and
emotional responses to 239–42 41–3
fears about 241–2 Grimstad, Kirsten 245–6
hostility of women’s movement Gross, Daniel 71n16
towards 239–42 Guerzoni, Guido 178
insider/outsider question 248–51 guns see arms industry
lesbian feminists 246
motivation of 241 Habermas, Jurgen 72–3
radical feminists 243–4 Haddad, John 130
running a business 247–8 Haggerty, Timothy 222
transwomen 250–1 Hale, John 181, 185
types of businesses 245 Hall, Catherine 32
unruly emotions, dealing with 253 Hanighen, F.C. 184–5
Feminist Women’s City Club, Detroit happiness, consumption of American
252 goods in Cold War Turkey and
Fiedenson, Patrick 2 95–9, 97, 99
financial sensemaking Hartley, Keith 187
cartoon 195, 196, 200 Heard, Augustine, business partnership
1987 crisis 211–14, 213 with Joseph Coolidge 125–6, 130,
cultural bubbles 195–6, 201–5, 202, 133–9
203, 204 Held, Robert 186–7
cultural-history approach 197–8 Heywood, George 31–2, 34
Dutch Republic, early modern Hirschman, Elizabeth 166
199–205, 202, 203, 204 history/historians of business
emotions and 196, 198, 199–200, 202, literature 3–15
202–5, 203, 204, 208, 210, 212–14, view of emotions 1–3, 2
213 history of emotions 16
New York stock exchange 1929 crisis contribution to 3
205–10, 207, 209 framework for 4
firearms industry see arms industry literature 3–15
Forbes, John Murray 130–1, 132, 133–4 theoretical approaches 3–5
Forbes, Paul Siemen 130–2 Hochschild, Arlie Russel 51–2, 68–9,
Forbes, Robert Bennet 132 70n11
Ford, Matthew 188 hotels, trust and 72–4
fraternity, mercantile see emotional bonds Huizinga, Johan 3n8
among Boston’s China traders Hunt, Margaret 32
Freeman, Jo 248 Hurley, Andrew 163n35, 166, 167,
Frigidaire Appliance Company 98, 99 172
Index 265
identity, accounting practices and 33 consumption of American goods

Innes, Gilbert 33–4, 36, 39–40 in Cold War Turkey 96–9, 97,
insider/outsider question in feminist 99
entrepreneurship 248–51 emotional, Soviet threat in Cold War
Turkey and 85–90, 87, 89
Jabour, Anya 127 emotions and 8–9
Japanese whiskey industry, creation of families, use of in advertising 92–5
emotional and social labor by Rita market women, emotional strategies of
Taketsuru 149, 157 54–6
first whisky 150 marriage
new distillery 147–58 perfect equality and 31–2
training in Scotland 144–5 see also contractual marriages between
see also Taketsuru, Rita and Masataka signares and Europeans; Taketsuru,
Rita and Masataka
Kassell, Paula 246 Martin, Stephen 187
Kelting, Lily 166, 167 masculinity, emotional bonds among
Kempster, Tony 187 Boston’s China traders and 126,
Koç, Vehbi 96 132–3
Matt, Susan 3n8, 164, 165, 166, 167
Lauer, Josh 72 McKendrick, Neil 186
leadership, reason and emotion and 11 Mihm, Stephen 72
Leonardo da Vinci 178–9 Miller, Davina 190
lesbian feminists 246 milliners, emotional strategies of 56–7
library associations 129 Monluc, Blaise de 180
Lipartito, Kenneth 2, 15–16 Montaigne, Michel de 180
loss, fear of, Boston’s China traders and 126 Morin, Marco 186–7
Lost Cause narrative 55 Ms. (magazine) 251
love Muldrew, Craig 33
as strategy 113–16 multi-emotional advertisements 92
see also Taketsuru, Rita and Masataka
Nadkarni, Maya 164n38
Major Barbara (Shaw) 184 National Organization for Women
“Make America Great Again” slogan 164 (NOW) 242–3
Malone’s Bakery Netherlands
closure of 161–2 1987 crisis 211–14, 213
contents of nostalgia 170–2 early modern, financial bubbles in
coordinates of nostalgia, time and 199–205, 202, 203, 204
place as 168–70, 173 New York stock exchange 1929 crisis
locating 167–8 and 206–10, 207, 209
memories of 159–62, 167–8, 172–3 networks, business 12
management burnout 14 slavery/slave trade 222–3, 227–30
Mannur, Anita 173 see also emotional bonds among
mantua-makers, emotional strategies of 57 Boston’s China traders
Marcus, Stephanie 248 New York stock exchange 1929 crisis
Marees, Pieter de 181 205–10, 207, 209, 213–14
market as disciplining force 29 Nikka Whisky see Japanese whiskey
marketing industry, creation of
Americanization of advertisements in Noel-Baker, Philip 185
Cold War Turkey 91–5 Northup, Solomon 231
266 Index
nostalgia radical feminists 243–4

affective citizenry 173 rationality/reason
changes in study of 163–4 as affect 16, 18
closure of Malone’s Bakery 161–2 as borderless 16
contents of 170–2 as chosen 29
coordinates of, time and place as and emotion(s) as intertwined 6
168–70, 173 reason see rationality/reason
diners 166–7 Reddy, William 4, 52, 70
food as focus of 166–7 Reid, Coletta 247
functions of 165–7, 171 relationships
locating Malone’s Bakery 167–8 accounting practices and 33
“Make America Great Again” slogan see emotional bonds among Boston’s
164 China traders; networks, business;
Malone’s Bakery, memories of 159–62 Taketsuru, Rita and Masataka
memories of Malone’s Bakery 167–8, Rennie, Susan 245–6
172–3 research
politics and 164n38 future 22, 190
Southside of Allentown 162–3 sources 21–2
stigma of 164–5 resources
as suspect 165 emotions as 7
trading on sense of 54–6 needed for business 105
restaurants, trust and 72–4
objectivity, affectation of 1 Rosenwein, Barbara 5, 70
Oldenburg, Ray 73, 73n22
Olegario, Rowena 72 safety, Americanization of advertisements
Olivia Records 246, 249–51 in Cold War Turkey and 91–5, 93, 94
organizational forms and behaviors, Sampson, Anthony 185–6
emotions and 11–13 Sandage, Scott 126
Satia, Priya 188
Parrent, Joanna 251–2 Schermerhorn, Calvin 222
Pasquier, Roger 119 schools and academies, emotional
patriotism, arms industry and 183–4 strategies of 59
perfect equality, marriage and 31–2 Schumpeter, Joseph 105
Pfefferman, Talia 12 Scranton, Philip 2
political parties, advertisements for 93, security, Americanization of
93–4 advertisements in Cold War Turkey
Pope, Susanna 34 and 91–5, 93, 94
praline vendors 55–6 selling
pride emotions and 7–9, 10
in advertising 85–90, 87, 89 trust 74–8
arms industry and 183–4, 189 Senegal, contractual marriages between
Pride, Anne 253 signares and Europeans
professional relationships see emotional abolition of slavery 119–20
bonds among Boston’s China associations of signares 117
traders; networks, business balls/receptions given by 117
clothing of signares 117–19
quantified self, accounting practices as conditional love 110–13
enabling 33, 34–7 decline of signare community 119–20
quantitative self 37 freedom, signares and 113
Index 267
gum trade 115–16 Sojourner, Susan 252

houses lived in 116 Southside of Allentown 162–3
new social class, signares as 116–19, 118 Spring, Dawn 91
origin of signares 109–10 Stearns, Carol 3–4, 70
processions of signares 117 Stearns, Peter 3–4, 70, 222
signares, background to 107–8, 109 Steinem, Gloria 251
slaves of signares 114–16 stock markets 12
strategy, love as 113–16 see also financial sensemaking
sensemaking of financial bubbles Stone, Sandy 250–1
cartoon 195, 196, 200 strategy, love as 113–16
1987 crisis 211–14, 213 strategy in business, emotion as see Civil
cultural bubbles 195–6, 201–5, 202, War era of US, businesswomen in
203, 204 Sullivan, William 131
cultural-history approach 197–8
Dutch Republic, early modern Taketsuru, Rita and Masataka
199–205, 202, 203, 204 adaptation by Rita to Japanese ways
emotions and 196, 198, 199–200, 202, 146–7
202–5, 203, 204, 208, 210, 212–14, apple juice business 149
213 arrival in Japan 146–7
New York stock exchange 1929 crisis challenges of being a foreigner 149, 150
205–10, 207, 209 death, Rita’s 155–6
separate spheres ideology 127–8 death of Rita’s mother 151
services industries, emotional strategies early relationship and marriage 144–6
used 59–60 emotional and social labor by Rita
see also antebellum service sector Taketsuru 149, 157
share trading see financial sensemaking health problems, Rita’s 151–7
Shevchenko, Olga 164n38 impact of successful business on
signares, marriages with see contractual relationship 156
marriages between signares and infidelity, Masataka’s 152–3, 154
Europeans new distillery 147–58
Silverman, David 181 post-war Japan 150–7
slavery/slave trade Rima, adopted daughter 148, 149
abolition of 119–20 Second World War 150
agricultural cycle and 226 set-back for whisky ambitions 147
cholera epidemic, impact of 219–20 social connections of Rita 149, 157
decision, impact of disease on 223–4 strains in the marriage 152–7
domestic trade, impact of disease on Takeshi, adopted son 150–1
224–6 training in Scotland 144–5
emotional components of 220–1 visits to Scotland by Rita 148
fear of disease, slave traders’ 221–3 Tranel, Daniel 71n16
networks and alliances of trade 222–3, transwomen 250–1
227–30 Trebilcock, Clive 186
patent medicines offered 226–7 Trump, Donald 164
purchasing patterns, impact of disease trust
on 224 ability to trust 65
signares as slave owners 114–16 as an emotion 71n16, 74–5
slaves, fear of disease and 230–2 antebellum service sector 72–5
Smith, Victoria M. 188–9 buying and selling 74–8
socio-emotional wealth 15 decline of government’s policing role 76
268 Index
emotional bonds among Boston’s consumption of American goods

China traders 130 in Cold War Turkey 95–9, 97,
emotional labor 66 99
entrepreneurship of 77 see also Civil War era of US,
entrepreneurs of 66 businesswomen in; slavery/slave
failures of 65–6 trade
hotels and restaurants 72–4 unruly emotions 17, 20–1, 175
service sector 66–8 see also arms industry; feminist
theories of 71–5 entrepreneurship in the 1970s;
ways to build 77, 77n37 sensemaking of financial bubbles;
Turkey during the Cold War slavery/slave trade
advertising 85–99, 87, 89, 93, 94, 97, 99
advertising of American goods 96–9, weapons see arms industry
97, 99 whiskey industry in Japan, creation of
Americanization of advertising 91–5, emotional and social labor by Rita
93, 94 Taketsuru 149, 157
consumption of American goods 95–9, first whisky 150
97, 99 new distillery 147–58
end of WWII 83 training in Scotland 144–5
families, use of in advertising 92–5, 94 see also Taketsuru, Rita and Masataka
fear, anxiety and pride in advertising Whyte, William 13
85–90, 87, 89 Wickberg, Daniel 5–6
political parties, advertisements for Wilson, William Julius 67
93, 93–4 women see Civil War era of US,
Soviet threat 85–90, 87, 89 businesswomen in; gender
Turner, Thomas 41–4 women’s movement see feminist
entrepreneurship in the 1970s
Undershaft, Andrew (fictional character) Woods, Michael 6
184
United States Young, Ashley Rose 54, 166, 171n100
Americanization of advertisements in
Cold War Turkey 91–5, 93, 94 Zaharoff, Basil 185
269
270
271
272
273
274

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The Business of Emotions in

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo

First published in Great Britain 2023

Copyright © Mandy L. Cooper and Andrew Popp, 2023

Mandy L. Cooper and Andrew Popp have asserted

For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xiv constitute

Cover image © 1940, London, UK. Business as usual at a bakery

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-6249-2

Series: History of Emotions

Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

Part One Disciplinary Emotions

Part Two Enabling Emotions

5 Marriage à la mode du pays: When Identity and Contractual Love

Part Three Unruly Emotions

9 The Worst Business in the World? The Emotional Historiography of the

Select Bibliography 257

I.1 A trader. Courtesy of Getty Images 2

10.5 Reprint in De Telegraaf (November 6, 1929) of the 1720s cartoon

Robert Colby is an assistant professor of History at the University of Mississippi.

Mandy L. Cooper is a lecturer of history at the University of North Carolina at

Joost Dankers is associate professor and manager commissioned research at Utrecht

Catherine Fletcher is professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University,

Semih Gökatalay is a PhD candidate in History at the University of California, San

Ronald Kroeze is associate professor of Political History and director of studies

Inger Leemans is professor of Cultural History at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and

Niall G. MacKenzie is professor of Entrepreneurship and Business History at the

Laura C. McCoy is an independent scholar and equity advocate based in Chicago,

Andrew Popp is professor of History at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

Daniel Levinson Wilk is professor of American History at SUNY-Fashion Institute of

Figure I.1 A trader. Courtesy of Getty Images.

into any domain of historical research certainly involves difficulties of methods

Economic theory portrayed humans as calculating engines and strategic actors,

Similarly, Philip Scranton and Patrick Fridenson identify an over-reliance on

a kind of fourth-estate practice of keeping other disciplines honest, in part by exposing

Reviewing the Literature

rarely exposed these divides or distinctions—emotion/reason, affect/affectless—to the

economy, and—second—to propose that a cultural analytical lens might provide

Firms and entrepreneurs operate in highly complex systems requiring intricate

structure behind account books, if we consider “rational” as an emotive, an expression

Reddy William M. “Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions.”

Wissinger Elizabeth. “Always on Display: Affective Production in the Modeling Industry,”

Accounting for the Middling Sorts: Emotions and

In 1815, George Heywood, an English grocer, reflected on his lengthy courtship of

growing importance of the companionable marriage placed greater weight on the

Significantly, accounting practices not only bolstered the claims of middling

Account Books and the Quantified Self

Metricizing the Family

Accounting for Community

charitable causes, particularly during traditional periods of giving like Christmas.42

Emotional Strategies: Businesswomen in

Beeeeeelles calas—Beeeeeelles calas—Aaaaaa!

knowing which emotions to express or to elicit in potential customers in particular

emphasized women’s prominent role in the household economy, as well as their

Whether a woman was enslaved or free, investing in stock or managing

emotion in women’s investment decisions—highlighting the studied non-emotional,

Travelers in nineteenth-century New Orleans often commented on the character of

Archival and Manuscript Sources

Periodicals, Newspapers, and Websites

Evening Star (Washington, DC)

Selling Trust in the Antebellum Service Sector

The Service Sector

Through the nineteenth century, writings on commodified services tended to discuss

manufacturing-based economy and contempt for the expanding economy of services.

Part One Disciplinary Emotions

Part Two Enabling Emotions

Part Three Unruly Emotions

Select Bibliography 257

I.1 A trader. Courtesy of Getty Images 2