"The Right to Purchase Is as Free as the Right to Sell": Defining Consumers as Citizens in the Auction-house Conflicts of the Early Republic
This article explores the commercial turf war over auction houses in the 1820s, a dispute which inadvertently altered how Americans imagined the civic rights and obligations of consumers. Beginning in 1817, east coast merchants embarked on a self-interested crusade to convince Congress to tax auction houses out of existence. As the auctioneers retaliated, this private conflict over profits escalated into a public debate on the state of the nation's political economy. Seeking public sympathy, both sides quickly focused on the needs of purchasers, arguing that their business alone upheld the rights of the consumer in a chaotic and corrupt marketplace. But this strategy failed as the choices and desires of individual shoppers forced both sides to reformulate their understanding of the consumer. As Americans continued to flock to shops that stocked goods bought at auction, merchants in particular conceded that championing the consumer did not serve their cause. Abandoning hope that a tariff would curb the success of the auction-house, the merchants began to argue that consumers must regulate themselves for the good of the nation. By 1828, this argument hardened into a new understanding, that placed the "right to purchase" alongside a set of new obligations, ones that made consumer choice and taste a requirement of good citizenship.
American Trade Restrictions during the War of 1812
For more than six years, from 1806 to 1812, trade restrictions were at the heart of American foreign policy. Although the Jeffersonian Republicans always defended the restrictive system as an alternative to war-as a peaceful means of upholding the nation's rights in the face of European encroachments-they refused to abolish the system even after war had been declared against England in 1812. On the contrary, the record shows that they steadily expanded the system as the nation's military fortunes waned. Indeed, most Republicans regarded trade restrictions not as an alternative to war, but as an indispensable means of prosecuting the war. The restrictive system, in other words, played a central role in Republican strategy for winning the war. The restrictive system had its origins in the era of the American Revolution. In the 1760s and 1770s, the American colonies had employed nonimportation and nonexportation against the mother country in an effort to force the British to change their tax and trade policies. Although these measures had little impact on British colonial policy, Republican leaders like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison interpreted history otherwise. Convinced that American trade was crucial to British prosperity, they tried to secure congressional approval for economic sanctions in the 1790s. At first their aim was to extract a favorable commercial treaty from Britain, but, after the outbreak of the wars of the French Revolution, they also sought greater respect for American rights. Although Federalists blocked these measures, Republican leaders achieved national power in 1801 and thereafter were in a position to put their views on economic coercion to a full test, not only against England but against France as well. The restrictive system was launched in Jefferson's second administration in response to Britain's stepped-up war on neutral trade and her impressment of American seamen.' The first measure to become law was the partial non-
Capturing Crime in the Antipodes: Colonist Cultural Representation of Indigeneity
This chapter adopts a Southern criminological lens, which allows the authors to explore how colonialism has been constructed and depicted in museums within both regional and urban Australia. By studying spatial and historical silences in Australian museums, this chapter offers a consistent frame to chronologically chart Anglo-Australian depictions of Indigeneity, imperialism and violence wielded by the state. As this chapter will argue, museums can often reflect Westernized (white) conceptualizations about Indigeneity and the state violence involved in colonization, which actively re-enforces popular views and influences sociopolitical visions of identity, the state and justice.