------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (September 2006)
Nicola Phillips, _Women in Business, 1700-1850_. Woodbridge, Suffolk,
UK: Boydell Press, 2006. xi + 299 pp. $85/�50 (cloth), ISBN:
1-84383-183-X.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Margaret Walsh, School of American and
Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham.
_Women in Business_ is a book long in the making. Originating in a
Master's thesis and then expanded and developed into a Ph.D.
dissertation, it had already been through several revisions before
being further extended and refined into a research monograph. During
its gestation Nicola Phillips benefited from the expert guidance of
her advisors and the history staff at Royal Holloway, University of
London, from eighteenth century practitioners in other British
universities and from an established network of historians who
present at and attend the seminars in "British History in the Long
Eighteenth Century" held at the Institute of Historical Research,
University of London. As might be expected, the end-result of this
dedicated labor and constructive advice is a solid, in-depth
treatment of predominantly London-based female entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurship, which is thoroughly au fait with its
historiographical context.
The main thrust of the volume is its questioning of orthodox views of
the long eighteenth century, more usually set within the timeframe of
1688-1815, women's history and business history. Philips takes issue
with several well-known hypotheses and dissects these into a new
amalgam, which is best described as "diversity rules." Diversity has,
indeed, been the motif of third wave women's history, but this
nuanced approach suggests a wider socio-economic environment because
it is set in a business context in an England which is more concerned
with class than with race and whose ethnic dimensions are tied into
patriotism and francophobia. The overall outcome is a book that poses
questions and asks historians to recognize that there are no linear
or clear-cut progressions that can be easily identified or explained.
Fluidity and adaptability are the keys to understanding women's
economic activities, which were more extensive than has hitherto been
recognized.
So what are the specific arguments embedded in _Women in Business_?
The central contention, which challenges traditional women's history,
but is in line with current thinking, is that the metaphor of
separate spheres is an inadequate analytical tool. It is too rigid to
explain the varied lives of women in business or to offer
explanations for the long-term patterns of female entrepreneurship.
The gendered dichotomy of feminine/masculine that is the core of the
private/public debate simply does not work because other ingredients
such as class, family and co-operation between the sexes within
trading networks intervened to create numerous prospects and
divergences. The evidence used to substantiate this proposition
emerges from an analysis of legal systems, property-holding and
insurance records, as well as a close engagement with advertising
strategies and with the most feminine of economic occupations,
millinery and dressmaking.
Of particular interest is Phillips' lengthy excursion into women's
relationship with the law. Here she suggests that coverture was
neither as disabling nor as restrictive as women's historians once
suggested. This common law doctrine, based on the legal fiction that
a husband and wife were one person and that that person was usually
understood to be the husband, was frequently sidestepped. By the mid
eighteenth century female entrepreneurs could successfully defend
their separate business property even in a common law court well
before the Married Women's Property Acts officially ratified such a
course of action. So there were legally acceptable spaces within
which married women could continue their trade, even though their
right to do so was never formally acknowledged during this period.
Yet even if this had not been the case, it would still be erroneous
to regard coverture as a complete disaster for female entrepreneurs.
For many wives doing business according to the borough custom of a
feme sole trader, coverture was the best defense against being
declared personally bankrupt. Women, married or single, were able to
function as economic agents within a pluralistic legal system.
They were also able to hold property and to obtain credit.
Businesswomen who held insurance policies with Sun Life owned
significant amounts of stock and real property, as well as personal
goods. They also sometimes controlled quite considerable amounts of
capital, though much of this could not be classified solely as
business capital. Indeed Phillips argues that female entrepreneurs
running these larger operations were well integrated into the complex
and extensive networks that facilitated business and that marriage or
remarriage did not necessarily interrupt long-standing credit
arrangements. Smaller ventures were not likely to be insured and here
women needed partners, a long-standing reputation or family support
to trade on their own account.
Cultural expectations of women's role in society may have been at
loggerheads with the reality of female economic agency, but an
analysis of contemporary literature and newspaper advertisements
suggests that representations of women in business, whether negative
or guarded, point to their very existence. Rather than accepting at
face value the huge body of didactic literature that prescribed
domesticity as the essence of true womanhood, Phillips uses this
material to widen the debate about representations of women's role in
business. Certainly there were misgivings about the alleged sexual
promiscuity of eighteenth-century milliners and the wage slavery
practiced by prosperous nineteenth-century milliners, but these
representations were not necessarily intended to remove women from
their trade. They were more likely part of the contemporary public
debate about luxury goods, particularly if French, excess profits and
national superiority.
_Women in Business_ certainly reappraises the business enterprises of
women in the long eighteenth century, but it is not an easy read.
Though it is good to see arguments supported by abundant evidence,
the material is at times empirically dense and the various sections,
or the case studies, fit together awkwardly. As a result the text as
a whole does not flow smoothly. Part of this fragmentation may stem
from the cautious approach that is frequently found in theses and
part from a desire to demonstrate plentiful research data. Some of
the material might have been more easily digested in table format;
while other material plays very heavily on historiography.
Nevertheless this volume is a contribution to the field of gender and
business in that it moves on the debate about women's economic
agency, as well as fitting in with a growing trend to emphasize the
heterogeneity of female entrepreneurs.
Margaret Walsh is the author of _The American West: Visions and
Revisions_ (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and _Making
Connections: The Long Distance Bus Industry in the USA_ (Ashgate,
2000).
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Published by EH.Net (September 2006). All EH.Net reviews are archived
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