Plebeian Consumers
Global Connections, Local Trade, and Foreign Goods in Nineteenth-Century Colombia

An original tale of capitalism from the periphery, showing how Colombian plebeian consumers altered global processes from below.

Ana María Otero-Cleves (Author)

9781009435598, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 December 2024

278 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.1 cm, 0.54 kg

'Original, sophisticated and well-researched, this book makes an important contribution to transatlantic and global history as well as to the interplay between consumption and citizenship.' Frank Trentmann, author of Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

Plebeian Consumers is both a global and local study. It tells the story of how peasants, day workers, formerly enslaved people, and small landholders became the largest consumers of foreign commodities in nineteenth-century Colombia, and dynamic participants of an increasingly interconnected world. By studying how plebeian consumers altered global processes from below, Ana María Otero-Cleves challenges ongoing stereotypes about Latin America's peripheral role in the world economy through the nineteenth century, and its undisputed dependency on the Global North. By exploring Colombians' everyday practices of consumption, Otero-Cleves also invites historians to pay close attention to the intimate relationship between the political world and the economic world in nineteenth-century Latin America. She also sheds light on new methodologies and approaches for studying the material world of men and women who left little record of their own experiences.

Introduction: a global view on local consumption
1. Consumers, citizens, and the republican project
2. From ferias to tiendas: consumers and the import trade
3. Zarazas, Bayetas, and Bogotanas: adapting Foreign textiles to popular consumers' demands
4. Machetes, axes, and Foreign tools: demanding consumers, active citizens
5. Books, hats, and 'Foreign' coats: the paradoxes of cosmopolitan consumption
6. Soap, pills, and toiletries: domesticating foreign goods
Epilogue: a story of global capitalism from the periphery
Glossary
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]