Valeri Heavenly Merchandize

How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America
Core Textbook
ISBN: 978-1-4008-3499-0
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 360 Seiten

Heavenly Merchandize offers a critical reexamination of religion's role in the creation of a market economy in early America. Focusing on the economic culture of New England, it views commerce through the eyes of four generations of Boston merchants, drawing upon their personal letters, diaries, business records, and sermon notes to reveal how merchants built a modern form of exchange out of profound transitions in the puritan understanding of discipline, providence, and the meaning of New England.

Mark Valeri traces the careers of men like Robert Keayne, a London immigrant punished by his church for aggressive business practices; John Hull, a silversmith-turned-trader who helped to establish commercial networks in the West Indies; and Hugh Hall, one of New England's first slave traders. He explores how Boston ministers reconstituted their moral languages over the course of a century, from a scriptural discourse against many market practices to a providential worldview that justified England's commercial hegemony and legitimated the market as a divine construct. Valeri moves beyond simplistic readings that reduce commercial activity to secular mind-sets, and refutes the popular notion of an inherent affinity between puritanism and capitalism. He shows how changing ideas about what it meant to be pious and puritan informed the business practices of Boston's merchants, who filled their private notebooks with meditations on scripture and the natural order, founded and led churches, and inscribed spiritual reflections in their letters and diaries.

Unprecedented in scope and rich with insights, Heavenly Merchandize illuminates the history behind the continuing American dilemma over morality and the marketplace.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Valeri, Mark

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Religionssoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi

INTRODUCTION: Heavenly Merchandize 1

CHAPTER ONE: Robert Keayne's Gift 11

Keayne, the Merchant Taylors' Company, and Civic Humanism 14

Keayne and the Godly Community in England 26

CHAPTER TWO: Robert Keayne's Trials 37

Boston's First Merchants 39

Puritan Discipline in England 50

Discipline and Trade in Early Boston 57

CHAPTER THREE: John Hull's Accounts 74

Hull and the Expansion of New England's Market 76

Hull's Piety and Changes in Church Discipline 83

Jeremiads, Providence, and New England's Civic Order 96

CHAPTER FOUR: Samuel Sewall's Windows 111

Sewall's and Fitch's Problems with Money 114

The Politics of Empire 122

Political Economy, Monetary Policy, and the Justification of Usury 134

Merchants' Callings and the Campaign for Moral Reform 157

Religious Conviction in the Affairs of Sewall and Fitch 168

CHAPTER FIVE: Hugh Hall's Scheme 178

Hall and Boston's Provincial Merchants 181

Rational Protestantism and the Meaning of Commerce 200

Gentility, the Empire, and Piety in the Affairs of Hall 220

EPILOGUE: Religious Revival 234

Samuel Philips Savage, Isaac Smith, and Robert Treat Paine 235

Social Virtue and the Market 240

Conclusion 248

Notes 251

Index 321

Über Autor(innen)

Mark Valeri is the Ernest Trice Thompson Professor of Church History at the Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Virginia. His books include Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy's New England: The Origins of the New Divinity in Revolutionary America and The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 17: Sermons and Discourses, 1730-1733.