The Contest of Exchange: Space, Power, and Politics inPhiladelphia's Public Markets, 1770-1859 Open Access
Harrison, Candice Lynn (2008)
Published
Abstract
This dissertation maps the varied terrain of Philadelphia's open-air public markets over the course of the Revolutionary era to the early-nineteenth century, revealing a complicated narrative of shifting experiences and fierce contests for market space. Philadelphia's multiple open-air markets were abundant and relatively ordered worlds of vibrant tactile experiences, where a variety of sights, sounds, smells, and individuals blended into one stunning whole. Yet they were also violently contested zones of commercial exchange, struggled over by black and white vendors, residents, city officials, and state legislators. In addition, markets also served as popular arenas of political and social unrest, at times appropriated by new Americans as prominent stages to advance their impassioned agendas, and at other times, turned into fortresses in the midst of racial, religious, and class-based riots. Thus these spaces operated equally as critical centers of commerce and as sites where politics were made, where the city's social fabric became visible, and where Philadelphia's culture was defined and redefined.
The project spans the timeframe of 1770 to 1859, a period that encompasses the rise and fall of Philadelphia's open-air public market culture, as well as a host of volatile changes that shook the city as a whole. Exploring public market-places during this moment illuminates the critical linkages of political and economic democracy that rested at the very heart of these sites of exchange. It also offers a new lens with which to view the wide web of relationships that drew together the whole of one urban community and the shifting relations of power that threatened to divide it.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.......... ..................................................................................................1
CHAPTER 1: From Market Peace to Market Order: The Public Market in Revolutionary Philadelphia....................................................................................11
CHAPTER 2: "A Market of Brothers": The Republican Experiment Meets the Market .............................................................................................................61
CHAPTER 3: "One of the Most Interesting Sights Perhaps in the World": The Expanding Landscape of Market Exchange ........................................................104
CHAPTER 4: "This Ground Don't Belong to Them, It's Ours!": The Primacy Of Place in Antebellum Markets..........................................................................144
CHAPTER 5: "Another Great Municipal Revolution": The Fall of the High Street Market and the Fragmentation of Market Space .................................................190
BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................243
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