The Age of Materialism

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The Age of Materialism/Consumerism

Copyright Martin Armstrong all right reserved January 5th, 2013

The Age of Materialism/ConsumerismWhy Starbucks is a Global Success &

How Consumerism Created the Industrial Revolution

By Martin Armstrong

Traveling around the globe for 3 months, there was always a feeling of security when a Starbucks wasnearby except in Italy where coffee is not a food group. The Italians still drink coffee out of tiny littlecups girls play with when serving their dolls tea. You wont find a Starbucks in Italy. I tried! I havebeen compared to Winston Churchill on so many levels, coffee is just one: When a woman said to him:Winston, if I were your wife, Id put poison in your coffee.Churchill replied to the acid-tonguedwoman, If I were your husband, Id drink it.

The model for Starbucks shows one thing, not only is consumerism inherent in human nature, but thekey is following the same pattern of previous success reinventing the same idea time and time again.Could it be a cycle is really timeless? So much for the Mayan hype that was supposed to be this shiftaway from materialism and a return to the way things were; of course, being a history buff, I just nevercould find that mythical age where communism worked and materialism/consumerism somehow did
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not exist.

Materialism/consumerism is part of human nature it is inherent. Gold became desirable as jewelry

because it had no utility as a weapon or tool. That is materialism/consumerism at its root core. I reallydo not understand where these people come up with this nonsense. It was Cicero who stood before theSenate of Rome in 55BC and said they were going to go bankrupt unless the trade deficit for luxuries(spices & silks) from China was not curtailed among other things.

From the 1650s, English inventories and criminal records illustrate the rebirth ofmaterialism/consumerism after the Dark Ages. (Yes we had staff research this stuff too). Ordinary
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people began to acquire possessions that had previously been the luxuries first of royalty and then ofthe elite upper class.

This is the same pattern that gold followed. Gold was first believed to be the tears of the sun god and

was reserved for royalty. Only as gold became more common did it migrate down the chain of classwithin society. Gold never became circulating money in Egypt until it had been conquered byAlexander III the Great (336-323BC) in 332BC. Likewise, trends start with those who can afford themas luxuries and then the lower classes want them and this is how materialism/consumerism becomes thedriving force behind rising living standards.

Ordinary people slept on loose straw. By the 17th century England, ordinary people were starting tosleep on mattresses and sometimes in the ultimate luxury beds. They began to sleep apart from theirchildren in separate beds albeit in the same room. This is how luxuries move down the chain andbecome necessities. They began to purchase additional clothing even though it was usually second-hand, which was the origin of the English Boxing Day (day of giving used clothes away to the poor).

By the end of the 18th century a large proportion of clothing and bedding was made from cotton thatwas a leading export of the American Colonies. The urban residents in London began to use wallpaperand purchased clocks which were a luxury at first. In 1675 only one in ten Londoners inventories afterdeath mentions clocks. By 1715 the ownership of clocks was more than 50% of the population ofLondon. Consumerism was emerging as this became the age of the small shopkeeper in London wherethe term shoplift was coined for theft about 1685.

Tea and coffee became popular, in addition to beer and local wine. Coffee is indigenous to Abyssiniaand Arabia. It was first mentioned by an Arab physician at the end of 9th century. In the 15th and 16thcenturies, coffee was cultivated in Yemen. In 1600 it was cultivated in India. It was the Dutch whotransported a coffee plant from Mocha to Holland in 1616 and started to cultivate it in Ceylon in 1658and then in Java in 1696.

In the 17th century, London became an important trade center when William or Orange brought Dutchfinancial innovations to England upon assuming the British throne with Mary. This led to an increasingdemand for ship and cargo insurance which had been perfected by the Dutch. Edward Lloyds coffeehouse became recognized as the place for obtaining marine insurance and this is where the Lloyds ofLondon began. From those beginnings in a coffee house in 1688, Lloyds has been a pioneer ininsurance and has grown over 300 years to become the worlds leading market for specialist insurance.
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The actual first coffee house opened in Venices St Marks Square in 1647. In 1650 the first Englishcoffee house opened in Oxford called the Angel and was operated by a Lebanese man named Jacob. Asort of 17th century Starbucks qualifying as a coffee house meaning a place to hang-out opened in1652 named Pasqua, at Rosees Head in Change Alley, Cornhill. By the early 1700s, the equivalent ofStarbucks had infiltrated London and there were more than 500 coffee houses in London. In 1660 theCaf Procope in Paris became was the forerunner of numerous French coffee houses.

Tea was predominantly a domestic beverage consumed mainly by women but as well as men. Englishtea became so widespread it was claimed that many female domestic servants allegedly refused to workin any establishment where tea was not provided as a bonus. To this day, afternoon tea is still servednot merely in Britain, but in the old English colonies such as India over to Singapore where tea roomsstill exist.

The Assam plantations were cultivated in the 1820s, and this brought tea other than from China whereeven to this day there are about 250 varieties of tea. Tea in China had been in use there since 273 BC.The first reference in Japan to tea (ocha) dates from 815 AD. It was in 1595 and 1599 that Jan Hugovan Linschooten (1563-1633), a Dutch navigator who had sailed to India with the Portuguese andpublished an account of his travels which included a section on tea. In 1595, the Portuguese harborswere closed to Dutch. This encouraged exploration in Java. In 1602 by the Dutch East India Companywas founded and by 1607 the first Dutch ship reached Japan and took tea to Java. In 1610 first teatransported to Holland was from Java.

The word tea (used in all European countries except Portugal and Russia) is based on tayfrom theAmoy dialect rather than the Cantonese cha. The Japanese call tea ochaa derivative ofCantonese. This is because the Dutch had established Batavia as a base in Java in 1596 and traded withships from Amoy. The Portuguese traded out of Macao where Cantonese was spoken.

In 1713 the East India Company negotiated a right of access to Canton and from then on regularsupplies tea could be guaranteed. In 1706, the first tea shop was opened in the Strand in London byThomas Twining to cater for ladies of fashion. Of course, Twining Tea is still a famous brand today.The Tea shop was much like Starbucks allowing women to mix shopping and pleasure and proved

extremely popular then as it still is today.

Tea Parties became fashionable at home gatherings that were a very inclusive social event. There wasan elaborate ceremony performed with kettle, teapot, china and silver, all copying such events in Asia.Today, a Japanese tea ceremony is still very serious. In London, ladies offered tea in the parlour inthe same way as gentlemen gather at the local pub for a spot of ale in the traditional tavern setting.Both such gatherings were very much all part of 18th century sociability. By 1720, there were ninemillion pounds of tea being shipped in from the East India Company into Britain. This grew to astaggering 37 million pounds just by mid-century mark. The King taxed tea with punitive duties tryingto cash in on the crazy. This led to many complaints of moralists like Jonas Hanway (17121786), theEnglish traveler and philanthropist. It was Hanway who became the first Londoner to carry anumbrella. He attacked vail-giving, or tipping, with only temporary success. He railed against tea-drinking and the taxation.

Tea, coffee and chocolate were all drunk with sugar and this fueled the expansion in the Americas fortrade. The production of sugar was at first from cane in the Caribbean and later from beets. The sugartrade actually extends back as early as 327 BC and the time of Alexander III the Great (336-323 BC)where it was reported that sugar cane was being cultivated in India. However, sugar at that time wasextracted from the cane by chewing and sucking the plant. At some point later in time, a sugar-syrupwas being extracted by means of pressing and boiling the cane. This process which was first practicedin India in about 300 AD and became the basis for producing sugar in solid form as we know it today.


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Sugar was brought back to Europe from the crusades along with bathing. However, at first sugar was arare and very expensive commodity worth more than its weight in gold similar to pepper. In the 1390simprovements in technology resulted in a more efficient press that doubled the juice obtained from thecane. This advancement in technology allowed the economic expansion of sugar plantations. In the1420s, sugar was carried to the Canaries, Madeira and Porto Santa Maria where it began to becultivated. In 1493, Columbus stopped at Gomera in the Canary Islands, for wine and water, but he

took with him cuttings of sugarcane to Santo Domingo. This was the introduction of sugar to America.The Portuguese took sugar down to Brazil where the production exploded. More than 3000 small millswere constructed prior to 1550. With the available supply increased, as was the case with gold, amarket was born. It was after 1625, when the Dutch carried sugarcane from South America to theCaribbean islands.Sugar had entered Britain during the 17th century as a pharmacists (apothecarys) ingredient. It wascommonly sold in solid cones and required a sugar nip to break off pieces. Several thousand tons ofsugar was imported in the 1650s. However, with the consumer revolution, the importation of sugar toBritain reached 23,000 tons by 1700 and almost 250,000 tons by 1800. The price of sugar fell and withits demand spread down the class ladder. Sugar prices fell by 50% during the 17th century andcontinued to drop another 20% by 1750 as imports doubled by 1700 and doubled again by the 1730s.

With the European colonization of the Americas, the Caribbean became the worlds largest source ofsugar much as Arabia today supplies crude oil. Sugar cane grew in the Caribbean lowering prices tosuch a point that no longer could sugar beets could be grown in Europe to compete. The Caribbean nowproduced 90% of the sugar for European consumption. Haiti became the largest sugar producer in theworld by 1750 controlled by the French. It was this trade that created the demand for labor and Africanslaves proved to be the preferred plantation worker as they were better suited to the hot climate andseemed to have a natural immunity to diseases such as malaria and yellow fever probably because thesediseases where common in the tropics. The European indentured servants died and proved to be toofragile for the climate. They were better north picking cotton.

Nevertheless, the English diet became more varied and increasingly included cane sugar and chocolateas society became more affluent. They ate off pottery rather than wooden plates and they drank
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increasingly out of glasses instead of pewter mugs. Romans saw the very same pattern inmaterialism/consumerism. By the peak of the Roman Empire in 180 AD, glassware had becomecommon. Metal and wooden cups were abundant. Glass was a real luxury. This same identical patternfollowed the rise of Britain.

During the reign of Charles II (16301685) almost no English home had china plates and cups. By thetime of George II (1683-1760), one in six English homes now had china plates. This was called china

because that is where they came from. In Rome, the color purple came from trade with the Far East. Itwas deemed so beautiful; no one was allowed to wear purple other than the emperor hence the termwhen he assumed the purple.

The greatest success of the Roman Empire was enabled bytheir road building. This dramatically increased their ability to mobilize their forces and respondrapidly to any threat. It was the British who followed the very same pattern. However, they were not

alone. More roads were constructed throughout Europe at this time of the 18th and 19th centuries thanat any time since the Roman Empire. The journey from Paris to Marseilles, which required seven daysat 48 kilometers per day in 1765, was cut drastically by 1780 to 3 days at 112 kilometers per day. Just

as the railroads dramatically expended the United States economy during the 19th century, it was roadsthat provided that first innovation for economic expansion.
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The 18th century materialism/consumerism revolution varied greatly from country to country

depending upon its economic freedoms moving away from serfdom of the 14th century prior to theBlack Death. By the 1730s the rapid growth in the number and proportion of people employed insupplying services rather than manufacture and agriculture had made London the greatest modern cityof its era. The peak demand may have occurred even earlier in the cities of the Dutch Republic as the

economics began to shift to London with William of Orange in the 17th century. The peak in the service

industry may have taken place even earlier in France. This is illustrated by the famous painting byJean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) ofLEnseigne de Gersaint, or Gersaints Shopsign, (1720),which is considered to be his last masterpiece. It was painted as a shop sign for the merchant or artdealer, Edme Franois Gersaint. According to Daniel Roche the sign functioned more as anadvertisement for the artist than the dealer. Nevertheless, it is an important snapshot of a shop in Parisat that point in time. Keep in mind that this was also the peak in the economy in Paris for it was 1720when the Mississippi Bubble burst followed a few months later by the South Sea Bubble in England.Going into these bubbles, money was abundant and this fueled the shop keeping trade as people spenttheir profits on all sorts of things offered by the shops.

The broadly based consumer revolution took place in an explosive manner during the latter years of the18th century. Thomas Jefferson had purchased numerous books in Paris at this time and sent them tothe states as references to create the American Constitution for James Madison. Jefferson would nothave been able to accomplish this research gathering without the boom in materialism/consumerismthat produced a vibrant trade in Paris. In every country the consumer revolution predated the industrialrevolution and no doubt enriched many and that inspired ideas that could invent gadgets to be sold inthis economic boom. The Industrial Revolution was a response to consumer demand so it was theconsumerism that gave birth to the industrialization of society. So do not minimizematerialism/consumerism. If people see they can make money, then they will create to fill that slot.This is Adam Smiths (1723-1790)Invisible Hand. Without a market to make money, nobody willcreate something for nothing. It takes INSPIRATION. Marxism begrudges people like Henry Ford
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(1863-1947) because he became rich creating an idea to lower the cost of his automobiles to expandthat demand for materialism/consumerism.

It has always been the growth in materialism/consumerism that furthers society. Banking emerged fromthe Dark Ages as merchants went to the East and brought back consumer goods such as spices andsilks. This resulted in merchant banking and foreign exchange. Of course kings began to borrow fromthe merchants and that gave birth to national debts as well. It was this link with international trade that

also inspired empire building. International trade began to explode between 1740 and 1780 increasingby a one-third. This was the most rapid period in economic history post-Rome for international tradeexpansion. This was the essence of Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations published in 1776. All of thiseconomic expansion came because materialism/consumerism provided the incentive to find goods tosell to the waiting consumers. Europe has very punitive VAT-taxes that depress this very engine foreconomic growth.

Clearly, the first materialism/consumerism fueled international trade. The motivation to satisfy thatdemand came from outside Europe. This obviously fueled industry of cotton and sugar cane in theAmericas not to mention tobacco. There was a huge demographic surge in China created a consumerdemand for tea, china, silk, and spices which attracted growing numbers of British and Dutchmerchants. This was the whole reason Columbus set sail to try to find a short trade route to India in1492.

Tobacco was the other commodity to exploit the consumer revolution. Tobacco is native to theAmericas and it was first grown commercially round Chesapeake Bay when in 1612 John Rolfeintroduced a superior species of tobacco from Trinidad. The imported plants flourished in theTidewaters soil and climate. Tobacco became a major export from the American colonies that becamea large and profitable tobacco industry. It began as a pharmacists (apothecarys) ingredient, andmigrated to alehouses where tobacco and china-clay pipes were provided to their patrons. Tobacco wasincreasingly provided in London shops and smoking quickly became a masculine pursuit.
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From 1617 to 1793 tobacco was the most valuable staple export from the English American mainlandcolonies. The quantity of tobacco shipped to Great Britain rose from 20,000 pounds in 1617 to over 40million pounds in 1727. A tobacco hogshead was a wooden barrel into which farmers packed curedtobacco leaves for transport and to store tobacco. Since the average hogshead weighed over 1,000pounds, it was practical that warehouses developed to store the crops. The standardized hogsheadmeasured 48 inches (1,219 mm) long and 30 inches (762 mm) in diameter at the head with a weight of

about 1,000 pounds (500 kg). In ancient Egypt, farmers took their grain to warehouses run by thegovernment and their receipts became money for they were in bearer form. Egypt never developedcoins until the conquest of Alexander the Great in 334BC. This was effective the earliest form of papermoney. Therefore, the emergence of tobacco receipts being used as money followed the same identicalpattern of development in ancient Egypt where gold and silver in ingot, rings and wire form was onlyused in international trade or very large domestic transactions.

The importance of the tobacco trade also led to the formation of the United Kingdom in 1707. Themain port of entry for tobacco was actually Glasgow. This was one of the primary reasons Glasgow

merchants were overwhelmingly in support of the union with England to ease trade flows creating theUnited Kingdom. The pound-of-tobacco became a currency unit in Virginia, with warehouse receipts intobacco circulating as money backed 100% by the tobacco in the warehouse

The beginning of the end of the tobacco age coincided with the outbreak of the AmericanRevolutionary War in 1775. The American planters were heavily in debt to the Glasgow merchants whohad lent money against future crops to secure trade. However, the collection of those debts becameimpossible during hostilities and this ruined many merchants in Glasgow. The Scottish tobacco fleetswere seriously threatened by hostile action. Finally, in 1783 when peace came, the now independentUnited States could send tobacco direct to Europe, cutting out the Glasgow merchants whose monopolywas secured by British domination.

Tobacco profits began to surge eliminating the Scottish merchants. This also dramatically increased thedemand for labor that then fueled the slave trade facilitated by the Dutch. Early attempts to employ theIndians to work the fields for the English proved futile. The system of indentured servitude supplied bythe English courts that sold criminals for the slightest infraction such as even shoplifting an applewas also cut off with British relations who then turned to Australia. Indentured servants had been animportant part of the Chesapeake labor force throughout the colonial era. Maryland had also importedsubstantial numbers of British convicts as bound laborers sentenced to generally 7 year terms. All thissupply vanished with the Revolution fueling the alternative slave trade.

The fourth largest export of commodities from America to Britain to feed the consumer revolution wasrice. Indeed, rice was to Carolina what tobacco was to Virginia. From the middle of the 18th centuryrice was also grown in Georgia. Thus, the primary crops exported to Britain were tobacco, sugar, wheat

and rice.Arab merchants brought cotton cloth to Europe about 800 AD. When Columbus discovered America in1492, he found cotton growing in the Bahamas. By 1500, cotton was known generally throughout theworld. Cotton seed are believed to have been planted in Florida in 1556 and in Virginia in 1607. By1616, colonists were growing cotton along the James River in Virginia. During the 18th century anincreasing number of clothes were made from cotton, which was lighter and easier to keep clean thanwool. The invention of the cotton gin in the USA in 1793 greatly speeded up the production of cotton,and increased the prosperity of Liverpool and Manchester.
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From 1791 to 1802, the United States government was supported by internal taxes on distilled spirits,carriages, refined sugar, tobacco and snuff, property sold at auction, corporate bonds, and slaves. Thehigh cost of the War of 1812 brought about the nations first luxury sales taxes on gold, silverware,jewelry, and watches. In 1817, however, Congress did away with all internal taxes, relying on tariffs onimported goods to provide sufficient funds for running the government.

In 1862, in order to support the Civil War effort, Congress enacted the nations first income tax law. It

was a forerunner of our modern income tax in that it was based on the principles of graduated, orprogressive, taxation and of withholding income at the source. During the Civil War, a person earningfrom $600 to $10,000 per year paid tax at the rate of 3%. Those with incomes of more than $10,000paid taxes at a higher rate. Additional sales and excise taxes were added, and an inheritance tax alsomade its debut. In 1866, internal revenue collections reached their highest point in the nations 90-yearhistorymore than $310 million, an amount not reached again until 1911.

In 1868, Congress again focused its taxation efforts on tobacco and distilled spirits and eliminated theincome tax in 1872. It had a short-lived revival in 1894 and 1895. In the latter year, the U.S. SupremeCourt decided that the income tax was unconstitutional because it was not apportioned among the statesin conformity with the Constitution.

Effectively, the primary target of taxation was consumption. After all, it was the consumer revolutionthat had captured the attention of government. It was the rise of this consumer market that inspired theindustrial revolution. Had materialism/consumerism not preceded the industrial revolution, it isdebatable if anyone would have attempted to invent something where there was no demand.


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Gold poured into Europe creating massive inflation from South America. The Spanish were simplybetter at spending money than they were at producing. The vast amount of wealth that poured into thenation created a sense of arrogance so that menial jobs went to imported French labor and peoplefollowed the money meaning that there was just plunder from America, not really even trade. This hadthe effect of steering people and money away from creating a domestic industry in anything other thanAmerican plunder and how to get a piece of that action. The materialism/consumerism in Spain was notearned even by trade. The imported wealth neither created infrastructure nor domestic industry toexport goods, only luxury spending. Spain used its wealth to pay bankers and it turned against its ownpeople to confiscate their wealth using the Spanish Inquisition when money became scarce. At the end
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of the day, Spain taxed its own people and borrowed against their future ensuring Spain would sink into3rd world status. They said that the vast majority of people working on the docks in Spain at the timewere imported labor from France. The vast amount of gold and silver imported to Europe by Spain,fueled inflation and funded the materialism/consumerism in other nations while Spain lived in luxurybut created nothing economically to fall back upon when the ships stopped coming.In the 18th century consumer products from the tropics and sub-tropics became commonplace in

Europe setting the stage for a booming America and migrations. We see even walnut was beingreplaced by mahogany, a tropical American hardwood that was first imported to England during the1670s. Additionally, from the late 17th century people began drinking hot drinks such as tea, coffee,and chocolate, all from china cups. This altered society creating indeed many social occasions thatconcentrated around the consumption of these drinks furthering the growth of London as the urbancenter. By the Victorian Age, London finally matched ancient Rome reaching a population of 1 million.

However, surveys of probate inventories and the Old Bailey criminal records of stolen goods suggestthat the 1720s saw a discernible extension into the commoner ranks of china, porcelain, tea and coffeepots, forks, knives and of course glassware. In 1675 only 9 % of English families had pewter plates thatrose dramatically to 45% by 1725. Pewter was then going out of fashion as households shifted to chinarising from 27% to 57%. By 1725 cups and other utensils for hot drinks were to be found in 15% of all

European families.The Chinese made the first porcelain during the Tang dynasty (618-907) and made the finest porcelainfor centuries that became known as china-ware. By the 1100s the secret of making porcelain hadspread to Korea, and in the 1500s even Japan knew how to make porcelain. As trade with the Orientgrew during the 17th century, Europe was desperate to reverse engineer porcelain as demand exploded.By 1791 the East India Company had imported 215 million pieces of porcelain. However, by the early18th century porcelain was also manufactured in many parts of Europe at a cheap price for the commonfolk like knock-off fashions of Gucci bags. In 1756 the town of Svres began producing itscharacteristic soft-paste porcelain while Dresden ware was the hard-paste porcelain produced atMeissen in Saxony from 1710.

As Europeans reverse engineered porcelain, some brands became well known. Worcester porcelain wasfirst produced in 1751 beginning with soft-paste porcelain decorated with Chinese designs in blueunder-glaze making it appear as a knock-off. However, the most famous became the cream-ware thatwas first produced in Staffordshire, England between 1730 and 1740. The principal ingredients werewhite-firing clay and ground flint, the flint being used to increase the whiteness and strength of thecomposition. This produced a durable body, where the tone varied from buff to a deep cream color towhich the application of a clear lead glaze was applied during a second firing to make it impervious toliquids.

Josiah Wedgwood (1730-95) carried out an enormous number of trials to perfect thecream colored porcelain body. His first really successful cream ware was produced until after 1759. In1765 Wedgwood opened his first London showrooms in Charles Street, off Grosvenor Square, and inJune he received a commission to make an elaborate tea service in green and gold cream-ware forQueen Charlotte. It was after this event that he was officially appointed potter to her majesty and hiscream-ware was renamed Queens ware. By 1770, Wedgwood had received his first order fromEmpress Catherine II of Russia and 3 years later she commissioned him to make almost 1,000 piecesfor the Chesmensky Palace. Wedgwood was a skilled marketer and he was also the first ever to use hisown name, which was impressed in the clay as the mark of his work. In 17712, he sent unsolicitedparcels of his work to many of the noble houses of Germany in the hope of attracting orders andadvertising the quality of the goods which proved to be a success.
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It is always the same sequence of events. Those who claim this is some unique age of materialismcannot point to a single period other than the Dark Ages where people simply ate and worked with littleeducation or personal property. They could not own land. They merely worked for the landlord. Sosorry! I can find no support for such a utopian view of history. It is what it is. Hence the success of

Starbucks is merely the same pattern repeating. It is not a new idea. Just a proven one of success.
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