Gentlemanly capitalism and Britain's Colonial American Empire
Colonial America does not loom very large in the work of Cain and Hopkins, which is perhaps rather surprising in view of the extent to which historians have been inclined to portray members of the North American elite as archetypal gentlemanly capitalists.
This might be held to represent something of a lost opportunity to locate gentlemanly capitalist influences at the outer edge of the eighteenth-century empire. Certainly, North American elites, like their provincial British counterparts, were active agents of anglicization and played the leading role in the establishment of the core-periphery links that secured for the colonies increasingly extensive levels of participation in the changing world of metropolitan etiquette, fashion, goods, news, ideas and learning. The gathering strength of metropolitan influence at the periphery was facilitated by better communications and improved levels of economic integration within the Atlantic trading world, and it found expression in the way that many of the material benefits associated with the consumer revolution were brought to bear upon North American society. As a result, an increasing sense of civility, improvement and order characterized many parts of the colonies by the middle of the eighteenth century, and this had an important bearing upon the lines of development followed by local elites. Different elites were able to confirm and reinforce their status in society through the purchase of a wide range of fashionable and luxury goods, and, in the absence of formal titles, ranks and privileges of the type found in contemporary Britain and Europe, 'conspicuous consumption' assisted with the demarcation of boundary lines within the social hierarchy. At the same time, elites were also able more sharply to define their sense of group identity and belonging by developing genteel, polite and well- mannered lifestyles similar to those that had emerged within metropolitan elite circles. Indeed, from a broader perspective, the all-pervasive influence of the metropolis can be seen to have contributed to a process, recently described as 'international gentrification',21 which helped to establish a common pattern of social and cultural behaviour within the upper echelons of all Britain's imperial possessions. If the view that the 'spread of gentility created in America a conscious class of gentlemen united by common standards across colony lines' is broadly acceptable,22 the extension of such an argument suggests that all elites across the entire British overseas empire were drawn together, united, and given a sense of identity by the same standards and codes of behaviour. They formed a transoceanic imperial elite and, although the members of this elite were, to varying degrees, rooted in quite different British colonial contexts, they nevertheless followed similar lifestyles, displayed many of the same characteristics, and developed a range of interests and associations that transcended local and regional frontiers. Drawing them together, and helping to establish a set of common social and cultural benchmarks, was their adherence to the English gentlemanly ideal, or at least to an adapted form of that ideal.By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the North American colonies had moved beyond the initial uncertain stages of settlement and living standards had begun to improve. As this happened, members of the elite became enthusiastic participants in the various cultural, economic and social processes that helped to establish and sustain Britain's wider gentlemanly empire, and it is possible to identify many reasons why they became dedicated to what has been called the 'pursuit of fashion'.23 However, although a strong case can be made for placing colonial elites within a general behavioural and cultural framework defined by metropolitan terms of reference - similar lifestyles, social activities, patterns of consumption and so on - it is nevertheless important that close attention is paid to the precise form taken by what Cain and Hopkins call the 'imprint' of the English gentleman in the overseas setting.
There are a number of reasons for this. First, as Richard Bushman and others have argued, American elite lifestyles were founded upon rather more than the simple imitation or replication of British types of behaviour. Instead, cultural trends on both sides of the Atlantic belonged to what Bushman describes as the 'single integrated process' affecting all Britain's provinces. This enabled colonists to respond almost as quickly as those in the outer regions of the metropolis to behavioural and material influences emanating from London.24 Second, the overseas elite never became unthinking clones of the metropolitan elite. Some were capable of displaying an independence of mind and action, and some were prepared to condemn those aspects of English culture they considered inappropriate or unsuited to their own particular environment.25 Ian Steele has remarked that elites were capable of displaying a 'fascinating ambivalence' towards Britain.26Although they needed and indeed welcomed the many advantages that London bestowed upon them, they could at the same time demonstrate a deep suspicion and hostility towards key aspects of British economic and imperial policy, as of course was amply demonstrated during the events leading up to the American Revolution. Thirdly, whatever the strength of the influences exerted by the metropolis, other factors always played a very large part in shaping elite lives, experiences, and outlooks, with the result that local customs could find a place within adapted forms of genteel culture.27 Kevin Sweeney stresses this in his recent exploration of these issues, and he makes the important point that 'the lifestyles of the colonies' social and economic elite were shaped by local conditions and vernacular traditions as well as by English goods and the pursuit of gentility'. Members of some elites did not possess the financial resources that were necessary to secure full-scale participation in the world of fashionable goods while others remained, through inclination and disposition, committed to the pursuit of a modest and simple lifestyle. As a result, the colonial pursuit of gentility could be both limited and, in certain contexts, 'selective'.28It has, of course, long been acknowledged that the English gentlemanly ideal played a central role in the definition of elite status within the American colonies, and historians have often extended and, indeed to a degree, formalized this connection by making use of the terms 'aristocracy' and 'gentry' when describing quite different groups of individuals within colonial society. By doing this, and by using an English model of aristocratic or gentry behaviour, they have drawn comparisons, either explicitly or implicitly, between the lifestyles of their subjects and those of the landed and titled elements within contemporary British society. This is quite understandable because, with the exception of the important part played by slave ownership in helping to define gentlemanly status in the Chesapeake and the South,29 the standard criteria that contemporaries had long applied to the definition of a gentleman in the North American colonies were much the same as those used in Britain. In particular, the possession of landed wealth and the accompanying personal qualities associated with civility, gentility, social responsibility and a sense of honour were all taken to represent the hallmarks of the colonial gentleman.30 Yet, by the middle of the eighteenth century, it was increasingly possible to define a gentleman without narrow reference to land and birthright. Lifestyle, behaviour and manners could all help to secure entry into the world of the gentleman. In Britain, the exclusive associations between the landed gentry and the descriptive title of 'gentleman' had been broken before the beginning of the eighteenth century and the non-landed gentleman had come into being. Whereas all the gentry called themselves gentlemen, not all who called themselves gentlemen were members of the landed gentry. As a result, merchants, traders, financiers, and professionals of different types joined the gentlemanly ranks.31 Similarly, changing perceptions and applications ensured that in the American colonies the term 'gentleman' could be used in a loose and flexible way to describe an increasing number of individuals who held little in terms of landed wealth but who were able to purchase the goods and possessions that had traditionally been associated with elite status.32 In these cases, as in metropolitan society, consumerism advanced hand in hand with gentility, causing a redefinition of gentlemanly images and characteristics,33 and it helped to ensure that the term 'gentleman' became associated with a wider range of occupations, qualities and characteristics than had hitherto been the case.34 The effect of this was, in practice, to extend the boundaries of the gentlemanly order beyond those whose economic and social position was based entirely upon landownership.
The colonial non-landed gentleman came into being and this ensured that the upper echelons of colonial society acquired some degree of the differentiation and diversity evident within the contemporary British elite.On the face of it, therefore, it would seem that there are strong grounds to support the emergence of a colonial American form of gentlemanly capitalism, not least because the form taken by elite culture helped to establish and then cement a strong relationship between the advance of gentility and the development of capitalist or entrepreneurial activity. This is an issue recently addressed by Richard Bushman who suggests that material acquisition and the quest for refinement exerted powerful influences in the world of production and distribution, and thus ensured that 'capitalism and gentility came to reinforce one another'.35 Engaging this issue from a slightly different perspective, it can be argued that, in part, such 'reinforcement' also resulted from the way in which gentlemanly values and codes of behaviour infused many forms of economic activity in North America,36 while, as in the metropolis, innovation and enterprise established a place for themselves at the heart of the colonial gentleman's world. This bilateral exchange occurred against a general background in which entrepreneurial business methods and characteristics were becoming evident in all sectors of the colonial economy,37 and it was assisted by the intermingling of different forms of economic activity. In the cultural and social sphere, the effects of this were such that they helped to remove, or perhaps prevent the establishment of, much of the hostility and antipathy that still occasionally characterized relations in Britain between the traditional landowning elite and those who operated in the world of business, commerce and trade.
In the Chesapeake, where the planter elite exhibited many of the behavioural, cultural and social characteristics of their metropolitan landowning counterparts,38 choice or necessity dictated that fortunes were often established and then developed through a combination of tobacco planting, mixed farming, and a wide range of business enterprises including money-lending, land speculation, industrial activity, shipbuilding, and commercial operations.
This not only enabled individuals to move away from a dangerous dependency on the success of their tobacco crop, but it also played an important part in the accumulation of wealth.39 Detailed case studies reveal the extent to which local elites dedicated themselves to economic 'improvement' and to the diversification and development of their activities.40 These individuals were neither crude caricatures of provincial British squires nor leisured rentiers. Rather, they were broadly similar to those British landowners who were genteel and civilized but who were also to be found in the vanguard of those promoting innovation, improvement and diversification within the British economy.Other North American elites began to move along paths of socioeconomic development that were strikingly similar to those followed by elites in Britain. Boston, New York and Philadelphia all saw the emergence of powerful commercial groups that bore a close resemblance to metropolitan merchant elites both in terms of lifestyle and the range of their economic activities.41 Although levels of personal wealth within North American commercial elites never reached the heights enjoyed by other colonial and metropolitan elites,42 these men sought, in the selective manner mentioned earlier, to secure the trappings and social status of the gentleman. Accordingly, they kept one foot in the world of work and trade, but they were also often to be found purchasing land for speculative purposes and the development of the estates and country house that provided them with some of the material trappings of gentlemanly status. But land did not capture the attention of such entrepreneurs to the exclusion of everything else and there was no 'flight from trade'. Depending on local circumstances, it is possible to find plenty of examples of them diversifying their economic activities and moving into manufacturing, shipping, insurance, the iron industry, money-lending and privateering. Some long-established landed families beyond the Chesapeake also developed a close interest in trade and commerce, and their connections and involvement in such activity were often strengthened through marriage and family association. In New York many of the great landed dynasties had important branches of the family heavily engaged in trade, commerce, and industry by the 1750s.43 Examples such as these illustrate that, broadly speaking, no firm line was drawn between land and trade, and this helped to bring elites drawn from a range of economic backgrounds into relatively close-knit alliances. These elites often displayed many of the characteristics of the most innovative and enterprising groups in metropolitan society, and, as was the case in South Carolina and Georgia for example,44 this helped to shape the outlook and actions of those who acted as agents of economic growth and territorial expansion in colonial America. Lest the comparisons between colonial and metropolitan elites are too closely drawn, however, it is necessary to stress that those in colonies were unable to gain easy access to the centres of political and financial power in Westminster and the City of London, and thus the colonial gentleman lacked direct representation and, with only a few exceptions, he was unable to assume the role of public creditor and thereby become a stakeholder in the state and empire. Even so, although the colonial elite could never fully enter the world of the British gentleman, enough evidence has emerged in recent years to suggest that a variant form of gentlemanly capitalism exerted a considerable influence upon the economic and social development of the American colonies.