Comparative reading activity : tracking everyday economic life in governmental documents in the eighteenth-century British empire

Author / Creator

Bains, Tiraana, author

Available as

Online

Summary

This is an activity focused on introducing students to British commerce in the eighteenth century and its entanglement with imperial expansion. Students will engage with documents produced in the c...

This is an activity focused on introducing students to British commerce in the eighteenth century and its entanglement with imperial expansion. Students will engage with documents produced in the course of everyday economic transactions such as invoices as well as lists of goods, services, prices, ships, and currencies. While such materials may initially appear to merely enumerate what was being bought and sold and thus foreclose further analysis, this activity is designed to invite further reflection on what seemingly straightforward and even mundane sources can tell us about histories of the economy as well as empire. Tracking the commodities traded by merchants and officials affiliated with institutions such as the English East India Company reveals patterns of global production, circulation, and consumption across the eighteenth-century world. Consequently, even a list of commodities points to what people located in every different parts of the world ate, wore, and spent money on. In other words, how individuals of varying socioeconomic backgrounds personally experienced global trade and imperialism. Equally, tracking such commodities offers a map of the geographies transformed by British imperial ambition and investment. Students will learn about the primary sources that constitute the building blocks of economic history as well as explore how they themselves might contribute to histories of trade and economic change by drawing upon such materials.

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