by BEVERLY LEMIRE
Fashion is political — today as in the past. As Britain’s Empire dramatically expanded, people of all ranks lived with clothing and everyday objects in startlingly different ways than generations before.
The years between 1660 and 1820 saw the expansion of the British empire and commercial capitalism. The social politics of Britain’s cotton trade mirrored profound global transformations bound up with technological and industrial revolutions, social modernization, colonialism and slavery.
As history educators and researchers Abdul Mohamud and Robin Whitburn note, the British “monarchy started the large-scale involvement of the English in the slave trade” after 1660.
Vast profits poured in from areas of plantation slavery, particularly from the Caribbean. The mass enslavement of Africans was at the heart of this brutal system, with laws and policing enforcing Black subjugation in the face of repeated resistance from enslaved people.
Western fashion reflected the racialized politics that infused this period. Indian cottons and European linens were now traded in ever-rising volumes, feeding the vogue for lighter and potentially whiter textiles, ever more in demand.
My scholarship explores dimensions of whiteness through material histories — how whiteness was fashioned in labour structures, routines, esthetics and everyday practices.
Whiteness on many scales
Enslaved men and women were never given white clothes, unless as part of livery (servants’ uniforms, which were sometimes very luxurious). Wearing white textiles became a marker of status in urban centres, in colonizing nations and in colonies. Textile whiteness was a transient state demanding constant renewal, shaping ecologies of style. The resulting Black/white dichotomy hardened as profits from enslavement soared, with a striking impact on culture.
The Conversation for more