The Right to Dress
Sumptuary Laws in a Global Perspective, c.1200–1800

Presents a global history of dress regulation and debates around how human life and societies should be visualised and materialised.

Giorgio Riello (Edited by), Ulinka Rublack (Edited by)

9781108469272, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 February 2020

523 pages
23 x 15.3 x 3 cm, 0.75 kg

'When did clothing become a crime? This collection of essays by leading experts shows how anxiety over expenditure and ownership is a long-standing global phenomena. Ranging across Europe and its colonies, and extending into the Chinese, Russian and Ottoman empires, this book brings to life the complexities of sumptuary laws and their application.' Evelyn Welch, King's College London

This is the first global history of dress regulation and its place in broader debates around how human life and societies should be visualised and materialised. Sumptuary laws were a tool on the part of states to regulate not only manufacturing systems and moral economies via the medium of expenditure and consumption of clothing but also banquets, festivities and funerals. Leading scholars on Asian, Latin American, Ottoman and European history shed new light on how and why items of dress became key aspirational goods across society, how they were lobbied for and marketed, and whether or not sumptuary laws were implemented by cities, states and empires to restrict or channel trade and consumption. Their findings reveal the significance of sumptuary laws in medieval and early modern societies as a site of contestation between individuals and states and how dress as an expression of identity developed as a modern 'human right'.

List of illustrations
List of figures
List of maps
List of tables
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
The Right to Dress: The World of Sumptuary Laws, c.1200–1800 Ulinka Rublack and Giorgio Riello
Part I. Sumptuary Laws in Medieval and early modern Europe: 1. The right to dress: sartorial politics in Germany, c.1300–1750 Ulinka Rublack
2. Playing by the rules? Dressing without sumptuary laws in the low countries from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century Isis Sturtewagen and Bruno Blondé
3. 'Outlandish superfluities': luxury and clothing in Scottish and English sumptuary law, fourteenth to the seventeenth century Maria Hayward
4. Regulating sumptuousness: changing configurations of morals, politics, and economics in Swiss cities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries André Holenstein
5. Dangerous fashion in Swedish sumptuary law Eva I. Andersson
Part II. Enacting Sumptuary Laws in Italy: 6. Sumptuary laws in Italy financial resource and instrument of rule Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli
7. Defending the right to dress: two sumptuary law protests in sixteenth-century Milan Catherine Kovesi
8. Against the sumptuary regime: sumptuary prosecutions in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Padova Luca Molà and Giorgio Riello
Part III. The European Maritime Powers and their Empires: 9. Luxury, novelty, and nationality: sumptuary legislation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain Amanda Wunder
10. Sumptuary laws in Portugal and its empire from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century Francisco Bethencourt
11. 'Splendour and magnificence': diplomacy and sumptuary codes in Early Modern Batavia Adam Clulow
12. Race, clothing and identity: sumptuary laws in colonial Spanish America Rebecca Earle
13. Sartorial sorting in the colonial Caribbean and North America Robert DuPlessis
Part IV. Early Modern World Empires: 14. 'Grandeur and show': clothing, commerce, and the Capital in early modern Russia Matthew P. Romaniello
15. Women, minorities, and the changing politics of dress in the Ottoman Empire, 1650–1830 Madeline Zilfi
16. Wearing the hat of loyalty: imperial power and dress reform in Ming Dynasty China BuYun Chen
17. Regulating excess: the cultural politics of consumption in Tokugawa Japan Katsuya Hirano
18. Sumptuary laws in precolonial West Africa: the examples of Benin and Dahomey Toby Green
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], General & world history [HBG]