Frank Trentmann

Empire of Things

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What we consume has become a central—perhaps the central—feature of modern life. Our economies live or die by spending, we increasingly define ourselves by our possessions, and this ever-richer lifestyle has had an extraordinary impact on our planet. How have we come to live with so much stuff, and how has this changed the course of history?
In Empire of Things, Frank Trentmann unfolds the extraordinary story of our modern material world, from Renaissance Italy and late Ming China to today’s global economy. While consumption is often portrayed as a recent American export, this monumental and richly detailed account shows that it is in fact a truly international phenomenon with a much longer and more diverse history. Trentmann traces the influence of trade and empire on tastes, as formerly exotic goods like coffee, tobacco, Indian cotton and Chinese porcelain conquered the world, and explores the growing demand for home furnishings, fashionable clothes and convenience that transformed private and public life. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought department stores, credit cards and advertising, but also the rise of the ethical shopper, new generational identities and, eventually, the resurgence of the Asian consumer.
With an eye to the present and future, Frank Trentmann provides a long view on the global challenges of our relentless pursuit of more—from waste and debt to stress and inequality. A masterpiece of research and storytelling many years in the making, Empire of Things recounts the epic history of the goods that have seduced, enriched and unsettled our lives over the past six hundred years.
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1,566 printed pages
Original publication
2016
Publication year
2016
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Quotes

  • memento2011has quoted5 years ago
    While precocious, then, consumption in Renaissance Italy also remained precarious, kept in check by a series of material and moral constraints. Excess and opulence retained a stigma of sin and corruption. Splendid possessions could not simply satisfy individual desire but needed civic legitimation
  • memento2011has quoted5 years ago
    But, as has become clear once more in recent years, things are not only bearers of meanings or symbols in a universe of communication. They also have material forms and functions.
  • memento2011has quoted5 years ago
    With peace restored, mass consumption was called upon to absorb the expanded manufacturing capacity created during the war. To make this happen, Galbraith wrote, production could no longer just satisfy wants: it had to create them, with the help of advertising and salesmen. A vicious cycle was set in motion that propelled people to live beyond their means (with the help of consumer credit), entrenched business more deeply at the centre of power, and, perhaps most worryingly, favoured individual materialism over civic-mindedness, creating, in his famous phrase, an atmosphere of ‘private opulence and public squalor’.12

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