Broken Chains and Subverted Plans: Ethnicity, Race, and Commodities

“Creatively drawing on archaeological, architectural, and documentary evidence, this book explores the dynamic strategies employed by German Americans and African Americans in the nineteenth-century American frontier to navigate the exclusionary, exploitative, and insidious forces of the emerging world capitalist system.”—Frederick H. Smith, author of The Archaeology of Alcohol and Drinking

Using two case studies from different frontier regions in nineteenth-century America, this book reveals how marginalized ethnic and racial communities resisted the attempts of governing officials and investors to control them through capitalist economic and government frameworks.

In backcountry Virginia, immigrants from Germany opted to purchase ceramic wares produced by their own local communities instead of buying manufactured goods supplied by urban centers like Washington, D.C. In Illinois, free African Americans in the town of New Philadelphia worked to obtain land and produce agricultural commodities, defying structural racism that was meant to channel resources and economic value away from them. These small choices and actions had large ripple effects. Looking at the economic systems of these regions in relation to transatlantic and global factors, Christopher Fennell offers rare insight into the development of America’s consumer economy.