With the assistance of Gustave Eiffel, Le Bon Marché boasted the first metal roof structure in the world, making it a monument of architectural innovation.

New industries in the late 19th century helped expand the market for consumer goods, which brought the economy out of stagnation by the end of the century. Overseas imperialism also opened new markets for European consumer goods. New forms of retailing and marketing appeared—department stores, chain stores, packaging techniques, mail-order catalogs, and advertising—which simultaneously stimulated and fed consumer demand.

A new way in which goods were being consumed was through the development and construction of department stores in the mid-19^th century.  Department stores, such as Le Bon Marché in Paris (apparently the first department store ever) sold a wide selections of consumer goods under one roof. These modern stores increased the economic pressure on small traditional merchants who specialized in selling only one kind of product. In a traditional shop, the retailer (who was also the producer) offered a single product—gloves, for example—in limited quantity at a fairly high price. Oftentimes, this price was not set and the customer would haggle with the shopkeeper until a price was agreed upon. “Browsing” was virtually unheard of— an individual who entered a shop was expected to make a purchase.

Department stores, however, made profits from a quick turnover of a very large volume of goods set at low prices. In order to stimulate sales, department stores sought to make shopping a very pleasant experience by offering well-lit expanses filled with alluring items, well-trained and friendly clerks, in-store reading rooms, and restaurants.

Middle-class women especially were encouraged to patronize these stores even though critics had charged that these stores turned sober housewives into irrational shoppers, who were wasteful of family resources and let their consumer fantasies run wild in a store like Le Bon Marché. Indeed, women were the ones who primarily participated in the vast expansion of consumerism and domestic comfort that marked the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century. Women filled their homes with manufactured items such as clothing, china, furniture, carpets, drapery, wallpaper, and prints. In these decades, women’s pursuit of fashion in their home furnishings seemed to lean towards imperial motifs as Empire began to increasingly invade the domestic spaces of the bourgeois household: Persian-inspired designs were seen on textiles, oriental carpets were laid across floors, wicker furniture was placed in drawing rooms, and Chinese porcelain was used at mealtimes. 

The transept from the Grand Entrance of the Crystal Palace, Souvenir of the Great Exhibition, William Simpson (lithographer), Ackermann & Co. (publisher), 1851.

With the rise and dominance of the bourgeoisie in the late 19th century, the relationship between imperialism, commerce, and consumerism begin to be celebrated in—what I call— “spectacles of Empire,” in which technological advancements and industrial growth were put on display in great exhibitions meant to communicate the “greatness” of Empire. The idea behind such exhibitions is that anyone—but really middle-class families— could buy tickets and “enjoy” the Empire on the weekend.

One of the most famous exhibitions of the 19^th century was the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, held in London in 1851, otherwise known as the Crystal Palace exhibition.  A monument of modern iron and glass architecture, the exhibition housed and displayed an abundance of goods from British colonies and other nations. Karl Marx himself even commented on the exhibition, saying that it represented the height of some sort of capitalistic fetishism of commodities.

New inventions were also crucial to the success of this exhibition. The Tempest Prognosticator, for example, was an ingenious little device that utilized leeches to predict storms.

frenchhistory:

Nicolas de LARGILLIERRE
Paris, 1656 - Paris, 1746

Le prévôt des marchands et les échevins de la ville de Paris
1689

@credits

The Provost of Merchants (prévôt des marchands), or Dean of Guild, headed the burgh council and the burgh’s merchant company

The merchant bourgeoisie painted in all of their glory. The rise of bourgeoisie as the dominant class in modern Europe has its origins with the development of a new class of merchant elites and their ability to exercise political power in their cities and towns. Because they were the first capitalists and thus the richest members of their urban communities, becoming part of the merchant elite afforded one with a whole host of opportunities. For example, holding political office (such as being part of the burgh council, as mentioned above) was contingent upon one’s membership to the merchant guild.

todayinlaborhistory:

Today in labor history, May 12, 1902:  Nearly 150,000 anthracite coal miners go on strike in Eastern Pennsylvania for higher wages, better working conditions, and recognition of their union:  the United Mine Workers of America.  After months of an extreme coal shortage, President Teddy Roosevelt intervened, a commission was set up, and the strike was called off after 163 days.

I would like to know a little bit more about where this cartoon was published. Of note, I think, is the common artistic motif of the laborer looking strong and virile and the bourgeois capitalist looking weak-chinned and ineffectual.

Chinese tea gained popularity in Europe in the same period as coffee rose to dominance; the expanding importation of tea to Europe was fostered by the mercantile relationship with China. Over the course of the 18^th century, the Chinese had a monopoly on the production of tea and, gradually, tea became from being an occasional drink of the bourgeoisie to a mass commodity consumed in both Europe and North America.

The cultural aspects of the introduction of tea to Europe contrasted with those of chocolate and, especially, coffee. Tea gardens and tea houses became popular in the 18^th century and were open to both men and women. The particular popularity of tea in Europe was associated with “civilizing” tendencies, and with the feminine. Tea gardens were associated with domesticity and the family, as opposed to the male, and very public, character of coffee and coffee houses.

The tea ceremony—afternoon tea—became strongly associated with elite femininity in northern Europe, and by the 1740s tea was an important meal in England, the Netherlands, British North America. The tea ceremony began to increasingly reflect the respectability of the bourgeois household.

The Chocolate Girl (known also as La Belle Chocolatière, or Das Schokoladenmädchen) is one of the most famous works by the Swiss artist, Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789), and depicts a pretty maid serving a tray of hot chocolate.

See my post here about coffee and coffee houses.

At first, the consumption of caffeinated drinks were used for medicinal purposes, but soon after their introduction into European life, they were drunk for pleasure, as we all know that caffeine tends to stimulate you quite a bit (ahem!). Caffeinated beverages also tend to stifle hunger, especially hot chocolate! Drinking chocolate was first introduced into Europe by way of Spain who were exposed to the wonders of the cocoa plant from their colonies in the New World. The drink was made by pulverizing the dried beans and boiling them in water with vanilla, cinnamon, or chili peppers.

The first chocolate-drinking establishments were set up in the 17^th century and were open to those who could pay the entrance fees. By the 18^th century, all European countries were consuming chocolate, but Spain had by far the highest consumption levels in Europe and it was, for some time, reserved for the elite primarily (i.e., the nobility and the bourgeoisie).

Anonymous Interior of a London Coffee House, 1668

The social institution of the coffee house, modeled on Arab practices, began to appear in Europe in the 17^th century, and mostly in large cities. These establishments were rather small— they reeked of tobacco smoke and were mostly populated by men.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, chocolate, coffee, and tea all gained widespread, and quite sudden, popularity throughout Europe. The timing of this introduction has more to do with patterns of European consumption than it does with the various ways these crops were encountered by Europeans through colonial expansion. The import of caffeinated goods into Europe such as tea, chocolate, and coffee had profound effects on European bourgeois consumption and and what, indeed, it meant to be bourgeois. The idea of fashion as a means of social discrimination created a market for luxury and exotic goods, and caffeinated drinks were essential to the visible demonstration of possessing the exotic and foreign.

Coffee houses started to appear by the thousands in the 18th century and became the focus of the emerging bourgeois class of urban professionals where politics could be discussed and business deals were made. Men of all social classes were welcomed in the coffee house, as coffee was seen as a drink that promoted sobriety and virtue. Women were not allowed to join in on the fun, even though they were not barred from working at these establishments.

Coffee houses were places in which news was shared between certain merchant and professional classes, and some coffee houses became associated with certain professions. London coffee houses, for example, became the birthplaces of such institutions such as Lloyd’s Insurance and the London Stock Exchange.

This fashion newsreel advertises the ‘The New Look’ of 1954, describing the alluring and feminine features of this ‘new’ fashion, which was first made popular by the Parisian fashion giant Christian Dior in the late 1940s. The postwar model for femininity was markedly different than the image of the austere and hard-at-work woman during World War II. Instead of being essential workers and heads of families in the absence of their men, postwar women were made to symbolize the return to normalcy—a domestic, nonworking, and definitely bourgeois norm—that prioritized their obligations to motherhood and homemaking.

‘The New Look,’ which dominated women’s fashion until the 1960s, featured pinched waists, tightly fitting bodices, and big, voluminous skirts. This restoration of (what was basically) the 19th-century female silhouette invited the renewal of clear gender roles, and this look was popularized in women’s magazines, which reinforced the message that women should return to the home and renew their commitment to their domestic obligations.

Excessive consumerism in the postwar era emphasized physical beauty available through cosmetics and clothing, and women were urged to buy things that would make them look good and their families, too. European women, however, continued to work outside the home after the war and mature women and mothers were working more than ever before—especially in the Soviet bloc. The female workforce was going through a profound revolution as it gradually became less youthful and more populated by wives and mothers who would hold down jobs for the rest of their lives despite being bombarded by images of 19th-century femininity.

Some interesting questions to think about while you’re watching the video: What does the newsreel emphasize as feminine? In which situations does the narrator imagine that women might wear these fashions?