Le Isole del lusso. Prodotti esotici, nuovi consumi e cultura economica europea,1650-1800

By Marcello Carmagnani

Subjects: Consumption (Economics), History, Economic history

Description: The Isles of Luxury. EXOTIC GOODS, NEW CONSUMPTION, AND EUROPEAN ECONOMIC CULTURE 1650-1800 This is a history about a cluster of American and Asian goods that enjoyed worldwide adoption and give birth to new collective behaviors and induces significant changes in the world economy after 1650. The first chapter describes the tenacity with which traditional moral values and common prejudices prevailed withholding the free flow of economic thought based on modern consumption sustained by economic freedom.. The second chapter illustrates the medical, theological and economic debate pertaining luxury as a need or as a consumer good, which revolutionized ideas and approaches towards diverse issues innovating economic ideas because the new economic order required new conceptual tools and new economic ethos. In the second half of XVIII century the first substantiated definition for consumption developed in political economy. Turgot, Pietro Verri , and Adam Smith, identifies people’s actions as the primary source of the relationship between production and consumption, and how this interaction will improve the population’s standard of living. The fourth chapter shows the relevance of American and Asian products in modern world’s consumption. I put forth the evidence of their introduction, economic debate and expansion in Occidental markets were accepted as a consumer good and not as luxury or extravagance. The fifth chapter deals with the impact of the consumption of calicoes imported from India and tobacco imported from the Americas created new European productions and introduced technological innovations which brought upon the industrial revolution. The sixth chapter illustrates the second wave of American and Asian imports, notably sugar, tea and coffee, that inaugurate a new social consumption season in Europe that transformed social ties and family conviviality, all important factors in developing public space, urban social meeting points. The last chapter show how the adoption of exotic goods modifies the relationship within economic, social, institutional and cultural dimensions and how the different consumer behaviors adjust their relatively fixed income in order to include the new consumption preferences.