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Heavenly Merchandize offers a critical reexamination of religion's role in the creation of a market economy in early America. Focusing on the economic culture of New England, it views commerce through the eyes of four generations of Boston merchants, drawing upon their personal letters, diaries, business records, and sermon notes to reveal how merchants built a modern form of exchange out of profound transitions in the puritan understanding of discipline, providence, and the meaning of New England.
Mark Valeri traces the careers of men like Robert Keayne, a London immigrant punished by his church for aggressive business practices; John Hull, a silversmith-turned-trader who helped to establish commercial networks in the West Indies; and Hugh Hall, one of New England's first slave traders. He explores how Boston ministers reconstituted their moral languages over the course of a century, from a scriptural discourse against many market practices to a providential worldview that justified England's commercial hegemony and legitimated the market as a divine construct. Valeri moves beyond simplistic readings that reduce commercial activity to secular mind-sets, and refutes the popular notion of an inherent affinity between puritanism and capitalism. He shows how changing ideas about what it meant to be pious and puritan informed the business practices of Boston's merchants, who filled their private notebooks with meditations on scripture and the natural order, founded and led churches, and inscribed spiritual reflections in their letters and diaries.
Unprecedented in scope and rich with insights, Heavenly Merchandize illuminates the history behind the continuing American dilemma over morality and the marketplace.
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xi
INTRODUCTION: Heavenly Merchandize 1
CHAPTER ONE: Robert Keayne's Gift 11
Keayne, the Merchant Taylors' Company, and Civic Humanism 14
Keayne and the Godly Community in England 26
CHAPTER TWO: Robert Keayne's Trials 37
Boston's First Merchants 39
Puritan Discipline in England 50
Discipline and Trade in Early Boston 57
CHAPTER THREE: John Hull's Accounts 74
Hull and the Expansion of New England's Market 76
Hull's Piety and Changes in Church Discipline 83
Jeremiads, Providence, and New England's Civic Order 96
CHAPTER FOUR: Samuel Sewall's Windows 111
Sewall's and Fitch's Problems with Money 114
The Politics of Empire 122
Political Economy, Monetary Policy, and the Justification of Usury 134
Merchants' Callings and the Campaign for Moral Reform 157
Religious Conviction in the Affairs of Sewall and Fitch 168
CHAPTER FIVE: Hugh Hall's Scheme 178
Hall and Boston's Provincial Merchants 181
Rational Protestantism and the Meaning of Commerce 200
Gentility, the Empire, and Piety in the Affairs of Hall 220
EPILOGUE: Religious Revival 234
Samuel Philips Savage, Isaac Smith, and Robert Treat Paine 235
Social Virtue and the Market 240
Conclusion 248
Notes 251
Index 321
Overview
Heavenly Merchandize offers a critical reexamination of religion's role in the creation of a market economy in early America. Focusing on the economic culture of New England, it views commerce through the eyes of four generations of Boston merchants, drawing upon their personal letters, diaries, business records, and sermon notes to reveal how merchants built a modern form of exchange out of profound transitions in the puritan understanding of discipline, providence, and the ...