Molly A. Warsh
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469638973
- eISBN:
- 9781469638997
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469638973.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter turns to pearl consumption practices in the seventeenth century and considers what they reveal about the overlap between personal and imperial approaches to the custodianship of value. ...
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This chapter turns to pearl consumption practices in the seventeenth century and considers what they reveal about the overlap between personal and imperial approaches to the custodianship of value. Drawing on personal correspondence of high-ranking diplomats, smugglers, widows, and children in Spain, as well as Inquisition records from Lima and Cartagena, the inventories of London goldsmiths, and Amsterdam-based Sephardic jewelers’ ledgers, it shows that the use and exchange of pearls among families, friends, and business associates reflected highly contextual assessments of value and worth. The personal political economies that pearls illuminated were often, if not always, at odds with official assessments of the jewel, which tried to remove them from their context and assign them arbitrary financial valuations. In art, pearls could be used to explore the supposed nature of different types of subjects, but in reality they figured in the socially embedded wealth husbandry practices of people of diverse backgrounds and means. The sixteen thousand smuggled pearls discovered in a small lead box that sank in 1622 with the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita illustrate the tremendous variety of the jewel, their subjective appeal, and their accessibility.Less
This chapter turns to pearl consumption practices in the seventeenth century and considers what they reveal about the overlap between personal and imperial approaches to the custodianship of value. Drawing on personal correspondence of high-ranking diplomats, smugglers, widows, and children in Spain, as well as Inquisition records from Lima and Cartagena, the inventories of London goldsmiths, and Amsterdam-based Sephardic jewelers’ ledgers, it shows that the use and exchange of pearls among families, friends, and business associates reflected highly contextual assessments of value and worth. The personal political economies that pearls illuminated were often, if not always, at odds with official assessments of the jewel, which tried to remove them from their context and assign them arbitrary financial valuations. In art, pearls could be used to explore the supposed nature of different types of subjects, but in reality they figured in the socially embedded wealth husbandry practices of people of diverse backgrounds and means. The sixteen thousand smuggled pearls discovered in a small lead box that sank in 1622 with the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita illustrate the tremendous variety of the jewel, their subjective appeal, and their accessibility.
Youssef Cassis and Philip L. Cottrell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198735755
- eISBN:
- 9780191799723
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735755.003.0003
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Finance, Accounting, and Banking, Business History
Chapter 2 considers the greater formalization, and concurrent growth, of private banking, aided by the establishment of the first quasi-central banks, such as the Bank of England, and the development ...
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Chapter 2 considers the greater formalization, and concurrent growth, of private banking, aided by the establishment of the first quasi-central banks, such as the Bank of England, and the development of capital markets with a more complete articulation. Its timeframe is set by the so-called English financial revolution on the one hand, and, on the other, the end of Amsterdam as a major international capital market, brought about by the invasion of French revolutionary forces. Formalized private banking developed in depth and width first within the British Isles, initially in London during the late seventeenth century, and thereafter within the provinces. This major financial advance, which had a multifaceted relationship with the onset of industrialization, is contrasted with the roles played by lawyer-bankers and financiers during the last century of the Ancien Régime in France, and by court bankers in the German states.Less
Chapter 2 considers the greater formalization, and concurrent growth, of private banking, aided by the establishment of the first quasi-central banks, such as the Bank of England, and the development of capital markets with a more complete articulation. Its timeframe is set by the so-called English financial revolution on the one hand, and, on the other, the end of Amsterdam as a major international capital market, brought about by the invasion of French revolutionary forces. Formalized private banking developed in depth and width first within the British Isles, initially in London during the late seventeenth century, and thereafter within the provinces. This major financial advance, which had a multifaceted relationship with the onset of industrialization, is contrasted with the roles played by lawyer-bankers and financiers during the last century of the Ancien Régime in France, and by court bankers in the German states.
