BOOK

America under the hammer : auctions and the emergence of market values

Hartigan-O'Connor, Ellen, author

2024

Overview

This title reveals how, through auctions, early Americans learned capitalism. 'America Under the Hammer' follows this ubiquitous but largely overlooked institution to reveal how, across the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, price became an accepted expression of value. From the earliest days of colonial conquest, auctions put Native land and human beings up for bidding alongside material goods, normalizing new economic practices that turned social relations into economic calculations and eventually became recognizable as nineteenth-century American capitalism. Starting in the eighteenth century, neighbours collectively turned speculative value into economic 'facts' in the form of concrete prices for specific items, thereby establishing ideas about fair exchange in their communities.

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Subject: Auctions United States History 18th century. / Auctions United States History 19th century. / Auctions Social aspects United States. / Fair value United States History 18th century. / Fair value United States History 19th century. / Industry. / United States Economic conditions To 1865.
• ISBN: 9781512826517

Item info:

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Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
HF5477.U62 H37 2024	1	BOOK	BUSINESS