A Study On The Rise Of Consumer Society In England From The Late17th Century To The Mid And Later18th Century

In the recent forty years, researching the history of consumption has prevailed in the western historical field, and an increasing number of historians have regarded England in the late17th century and18th century as the origin of the consumer society and the consumerism. From the late17th century to the mid and late18th century, a significant period for England to transform from a traditional agricultural society to a modern industrial society, a consumer society appeared with the middle ranks as the main body and the broad participation of all ranks, which not only embodied the England’s economic and social development level and the degree of civilization development, but, in turn, further promoted the economic and social development. The thesis aims to study the background of the appearance of the consumer society, the consumption of food, clothing, housing, and entertainment, the consumption environment and its changes, and also their relations with the economic and social development; attempting to show the rise of the consumer society and its influence, so that we can recognize motivations and historical development of the England’s social transformation from the perspective of consumption.The emergence of consumer society was influenced by many factors. The increase of England’s population at that time meant the expansion of the potential consumer market. However, if it was self-sufficient consumption which did not rely on the market, then the population increase worked very restrictedly to promote consumption. So only when the production became more specialized and more dependent on the market consumption, the role of the population increase stood out.The acceleration of the urbanization process promoted the consumption potential, and turning it into the tangible spending power basically depended on the development of the social productive forces which benefited the majority. Only when the mass’s income got a general increase, the prices were stable with a slight decline, and the actual purchasing power increased, the consumer society was likely to appear. A clear sign of the rise of consumer society was the formation of the mass consumption with the middle class as the main body and consume became the dominant driving force and target of social life and production. What’s more, the emergence of consumer society was concerned with the development of transportation, the transformation of ideology and so on, and it was the timely integration that contributed to the appearance of the consumer society. The diet is the requirement for sustaining human survival and reproduction, and also the major indicator of the progress of economy and living standards. Generally speaking, from the late17th century to the mid and late18th century, England said goodbye to the famine, got away from Malthus Crisis; they ate more and better, their original diet structure changed dramatically and they got more nutrition. Besides, with the acceleration of the globalization and the development of the international trade, foreign food became popular in the England and even the poor purchased imported snack foods, like sugar, tea, tobacco and so on. Meanwhile, with the idea that clothing was no longer just for warding off the cold and covering the body, the style of people’s clothing was changed gradually. Clothing which were beautiful, comfortable, colorful, fashionable, and with good quality substituted for that of monotonous color and rough texture with little ornament, and even the poorest purchased second-hand fashionable clothing. It reflected consumers’pursuit and the affirmation of self-awareness and self-value and they strongly copied high-class’s clothing style. In addition, the style of housing and the changes of household furniture were obviously intending to be luxury, family and exquisite. With the growing of social fortune, residences both in urban and rural areas were reconstructed and renovated to make houses have more improved building materials, higher housing quality, better residential structure, more reasonable spatial arrangement and more private space. Also, the amount and kinds of furniture, household appliances and decorative items increased a lot as well as the quality of them. The family servant became popular and the household environment was more comfortable. What’s more, leisure and recreation industry, which went through a rapid process of commercialization and popularization, was an important sector of economy and the professional Spa and seaside towns was a meteoric rise of the leisure and recreation industry. The public not only cared about their physical and mental health, but also paid attention to the improvement of cultural cultivation, and wanted more information resources, which was a mark of the approaching of an era of mass reading.Demands and means of meeting demands developed simultaneously, so the emergence of the consumer society depended on the certain consumer environment. With the change of economic society, modern shops appeared and formed a perfect sales network. In order to stand out from the fierce business competition and attract more consumers, shopkeepers innovated in sales skills, focused on the use of shop decoration and merchandise exhibition, and especially advertised a lot in the emerging newspapers and magazines to spread the information and fashion of merchandises. They also used methods of discount, convenient mail-order and good after-sale service to winkle customers into making purchases. The local government and parish also realized that consume could promote the local economy and culture, so they began to improve the public consumer environment, actively construct the urban street landscape, take charge of the street cleaning and the night lighting and perform their duties.To a certain extent, the global trade and foreign goods facilitated the rise of the consumer society. And in turn the rise of the consumer society drastically increased England’s demands for foreign goods and made the global trade an in-depth development formed the Atlantic business-oriented and Asian business-oriented trading system as well In order to control and dominate the world trade and seize the world hegemony, the United Kingdom, on one hand, strengthened the colonial plunder, on the other hand, competed with the world power Netherland, France and other countries, and triggered sustained international conflicts, which reflected the external tension of the capitalist economy. Under the mercantilist policies, the England could not meet the consumer demand by relying on import for a long time, so the government restricted imports and encouraged import substitution and innovation. The strong market demand not only required processing innovation and production reorganization to increase productivity and decrease costs, but also required the market to produce more fashionable, original and practical products to trigger the technological innovation and the product innovation and thus promoted the industrial revolution. The real inchoation of the industrial revolution was an affluent society’s strong desire for more and better goods while original forms of labor organization and production technology could not meet the desire. In fact, the new methods of industrialization developed in the consumer industry like dyeing, textile, ceramics, so industrialization was the inevitable course of achieving the consumer society.To conclude, the rise of the consumer society in England from the late17th century to the mid and late18th century was attributed to integrated actions of the development of the England’s society, politics, economy, cultural concepts and the global trade, among which the development of economy and the increase of productivity were decisive factors. The rise of the consumer society, in turn, had an important influence on the England’s society. Living consumption was internal and indispensable factor and part of the general social production and social reproduction, so the rise of the consumer society with the middle class as the main body and the broad participation of all classes were the inner motivation and a great mark of social development and changes.