------------ 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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