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Editorial matter, selection and introduction © Jan Hein Furnée and
Clé Lesger 2014
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Contents
List of Illustrations, Maps and Tables
vii
Notes on Contributors
x
Acknowledgements
xiii
1 Shopping Streets and Cultures from a Long-Term
and Transnational Perspective: An Introduction
Clé Lesger and Jan Hein Furnée
2 The Shopping Streets of Provincial England, 1650–1840
Jon Stobart
3 Stalls, Bulks, Shops and Long-Term Change
in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England
Claire Walsh
4 Shopping Streets in Eighteenth-Century Paris:
A Landscape Shaped by Historical, Economic
and Social Forces
Natacha Coquery
5 Antwerp Goes Shopping!: Continuity and Change
in Retail Space and Shopping Interactions from
the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century
Ilja Van Damme with Laura Van Aert
1
16
37
57
78
6 Urban Planning, Urban Improvement and
the Retail Landscape in Amsterdam, 1600–1850
Clé Lesger
104
7 German Landscapes of Consumption, 1750–1850:
Perspectives of German and Foreign Travellers
Heidrun Homburg
125
8 Something Old, Something Borrowed, Something New:
The Brussels Shopping Townscape, 1830–1914
Anneleen Arnout
157
9 Innovation and Tradition in the Shopping Landscape
of Paris and a Provincial City, 1800–1900
Marie Gillet
184
v
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vi
Contents
10 ‘Our Living Museum of Nouveautés’: Visual
and Social Pleasures in The Hague’s Shopping
Streets, 1650–1900
Jan Hein Furnée
208
Select Bibliography
232
Index
243
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1
Shopping Streets and Cultures
from a Long-Term and
Transnational Perspective
An Introduction
Clé Lesger and Jan Hein Furnée
In the first decades of the nineteenth century, comparing the shopping
streets of Paris and London became a stock element of English and
French travel accounts. In 1810, the French writer J. B. Barjaud, like
many of his compatriots, praised the ‘grandeur’ and the ‘magnificence’
of London shops as ‘one of the particular characteristics’ of the British
capital. In turn, English travellers were deeply impressed by the ‘brilliant’
arcades and the ‘marvellous’ merchandise in the Palais-Royal. Travellers
also praised the increasing exchange of modern retail innovations
between the two capitals. In 1819, J. N. Quatremère de Roissy enthusiastically reported how only recently Paris’s shopkeepers had started
‘copying’ the exteriors, ornamentations and ‘general arrangements’ of
their English neighbours. Yet this constant competition fuelled sneering
comments as well. As French travellers generally looked down upon the
small number of attractive shopping arcades in London, English writers
were happy to scorn the lack of brilliant bazaars in the French capital.1
The advent of modern retail techniques and modern consumer culture has continued to be the core issue of the expanding historiography
on retailing and shopping in Western Europe.2 In recent decades, most
historians working on the nineteenth century have argued that the socalled ‘retail revolution’, and especially the rise of the department store
from 1850, was the ultimate ‘take off’ moment for modern retailing and
consumer society.3 Simultaneously, however, a growing number of historians working on early modern retailing have demonstrated that most
of the key elements usually regarded as modern – such as fixed prices,
lavishly decorated shop windows, and the practice of shopping for
pleasure – had already been developed in the eighteenth century and, in
some cases, much earlier.4 Surprisingly, historians whose specialisations
1
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Clé Lesger and Jan Hein Furnée
lie either side of the traditional gulf of 1800 have not, on the whole,
taken up the challenge to discuss their conflicting arguments or to
readdress processes of innovation and continuity in a long-term perspective. Even what is potentially the most interesting meeting ground,
the first decades of the nineteenth century, has largely remained a terra
incognita.5
From a geographical perspective, the uneven development of historiography on retailing and shopping is even more striking. In Britain, the
body of research on both the early modern period and the nineteenth
century is very impressive and research on France is also making good
progress. However, German historians have almost entirely focused
on the late nineteenth century, while Belgian scholars have primarily
surveyed the early modern period, and the Dutch are only just entering
the scene.6 In contrast to the numerous accounts of contemporary travellers who constantly compared retail strategies and shopping practices
in foreign cities, historians studying either period have mainly worked
within their national boundaries and comparative research has scarcely
been developed in any systematic way.7 Beyond mere comparison, there
are many reasons to embrace the recent ‘transnational turn’ and to study
the history of retailing and shopping in this period from the perspectives
of cultural transfer and histoire croisée. Following and stimulating the
desires of millions of consumers, foreign and native shopkeepers bought
and sold commodities from all over Europe and beyond. But, as indicated above, they also constantly exchanged and appropriated foreign
retailing strategies, while local authorities repeatedly restructured the
layout and the regulation of shopping streets and other retail premises
on the basis of foreign examples. How these processes of influence and
appropriation worked exactly has, however, hardly been questioned.8
This volume invites the reader to study the history of retailing and
shopping in Western Europe in both the early modern period and the
nineteenth century from a more systematic long-term, comparative
and transnational perspective. The book focuses on the history of shopping streets as an overarching research theme, enabling us to link and
integrate a broad variety of related themes: the spatial location and
development of shops and shopping streets in a changing urban fabric;
the rise of the ‘fixed’ shop in the spatial, economic and social context
of other retail facilities; the advent of new retail institutions such as
arcades, bazaars and department stores; the design and regulation of
shopping streets by local authorities; the shifting exterior presentation
of shops; and the changing social and cultural behaviour of consumers,
including the increasing cultivation of shopping for pleasure. Combining
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Shopping Streets and Cultures: An Introduction 3
quantitative and qualitative research approaches and using a wide variety
of sources – from tax registers, almanacs and municipal administration,
to newspapers, novels, prints and travel accounts – the volume brings
together fresh research on shopping streets in five neighbouring countries and in regions that strongly cultivated mutual relations.
What is the overall picture that emerges from the various chapters
in this book, and what does the book add to the existing historiography? Though we are only at the outset of a truly comparative and
transnational approach to the history of retailing, shopping streets and
shopping culture in the longer term, it is still possible to use the contributions in this volume and the available literature to mark the contours
of some important themes.
The location of shops in early modern and nineteenth-century cities
is the first theme, for which several chapters provide new information.
In each of the cities discussed in this volume, the marketplace and the
major thoroughfares were the oldest commercial locations. This, of
course, should not come as a surprise. Traditionally the market was the
principal arena of retail activities and along busy streets shopkeepers
and other retailers could intercept potential customers and entice them
in more or less sophisticated ways to make purchases. Indeed, accessibility was, and still is, the crucial factor in the location of retail activities,
and in marketplaces and along major thoroughfares accessibility was
optimal. After all, when settlements grew from a core site – the market
or crossroads – to a much larger size, that core retained its accessibility and locational advantages. Despite differences in the definition
of retailing and the methods used, the maps of Paris, Antwerp and
Amsterdam presented in this volume all clearly demonstrate that location patterns in the period under study had a remarkably high degree
of continuity. For centuries the old centres of these cities remained the
most important locations for shops and other retail facilities. The maps
also show that with the growing size of these cities, arterial streets to
and from the city centres became important shopping streets as well.
But not everything remained the same. Along with the demographic
and spatial growth of cities came the need for more marketplaces. These
were also attractive locations for shopkeepers and other retailers, as were
main streets and major intersections in the newly developed districts
and, in fact, all places where the structure of the urban grid and the
concentration of activities and public institutions generated a busy
flow of traffic. The growth of cities also created a spatial differentiation
between the various branches of the retailing industry. In small towns
both the providers of daily necessities and those of less frequently
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purchased and more durable (luxury) goods could be found in the centre.
When cities increased in size, however, this was to change. Being
easily accessible, the town centre and the busy arterial roads increasingly became the domain of retailers in durable and luxury goods. Due
to the infrequent purchase of such goods they had to attract customers
from across the city and even from out of town. They were willing
to pay a considerable price for a central location and they thus drove
retailers in daily necessities out to the side and back streets and to locations outside the centre. These traders in everyday goods could flourish
there as well, however, because they usually catered for an established
customer base in the immediate vicinity of the shop and were therefore
not dependent on an expensive location on one of the busy streets or
squares. As cities grew larger, retailers in consumer durables also moved
to locations outside the centre, but due to the nature of their merchandise, there too they showed a clear preference for easily accessible
locations. Nevertheless, in the English, French, German, Belgian and
Dutch cities that are studied in this book, the centre remained the
shopping heart of the city throughout the early modern period and
nineteenth century.
Besides spatial differentiation between the providers of daily necessities and consumer durables, in large early modern cities like London,
Paris, Amsterdam and Antwerp, a further differentiation occurred due to
the uneven distribution of income groups within the city. In the affluent
parts of the city the goods on offer were of a very different quality and
price than in the less affluent and poor districts. As Natacha Coquery
demonstrates in her chapter, the retail landscape of Paris, with its sharp
contrast between the rich shops on rue Saint-Honoré in the wealthy
northwest of the city and the shops in the less affluent southeast of the
city, is a case in point. Exactly at what point in time this form of social
differentiation within the retail landscape arose varied from city to city,
but it is clear that the size of the city, the policies of local governments
and private initiative all played important roles. Those factors were also
crucial in a phenomenon which is referred to in several of the contributions below: urban improvement – that is, the adaptation of public
space for social and cultural activities, particularly those of the wealthy.
Of the cities discussed in this volume, Amsterdam was the earliest
and most striking example of large-scale government intervention in
the urban landscape. More than a century before the well-known urban
renaissance in English provincial towns, in Amsterdam the adaptation
of public space to the needs of the wealthy was part of a larger project:
the creation of an orderly, efficient and attractive urban space. The
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Shopping Streets and Cultures: An Introduction 5
need for intervention arose when Amsterdam entered a period of rapid
economic and demographic growth from the end of the sixteenth
century. In the city extensions developed in the seventeenth century,
welfare groups were deliberately housed in separate quarters and economic activities were also assigned specific areas of the city. In addition,
the city government took care of street lighting, paving, waste disposal
and the control of traffic flows and it also relocated a number of markets
to the urban periphery. This package of measures resulted in a city
which was not only pleasant for the rich to live in, but also where, by
early modern standards, the shopping district in the centre was clean,
comfortable and safe.
From the second half of the eighteenth century, similar initiatives
towards urban improvement were taken up in almost all cities and
countries discussed in this book. Sometimes the changes were very
limited, as Jon Stobart shows for Birmingham, where in the 1790s only
a few street lights were installed, and in Besançon, which even in 1830
still had all the characteristics of an early modern city. Even in Paris in
the second half of the eighteenth century sewers and pavements were
missing in large parts of the city, and traffic was a constant threat to
pedestrians. Hence, as Marie Gillet argues in her chapter, the introduction of a new element in the Parisian retail landscape: covered arcades.
These were clean, well lit and free from traffic, and therefore provided
an ideal setting for undisturbed shopping and strolling. The first arcade,
the Passage Feydeau, was built in 1790–91 but was not without its precursors. The designers found inspiration in the famous galleries at the
Palais-Royal in Paris, a commercial project developed by the Duke of
Orleans and realised in the 1780s. Even older precursors were the shopping arcades in the exchanges of Antwerp, London and Amsterdam built
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the Antwerp ‘panden’
dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Because these early
forerunners of the Parisian arcades often lost their attractiveness and
function long before the end of the eighteenth century, they have
largely disappeared from the collective memory and are unfortunately
seldom included in the canonical history of retailing.
Covered arcades were copied in a series of European cities: London,
Brussels, Milan, Hamburg, Moscow, The Hague and elsewhere. In Paris
itself some 30 arcades were built between 1790 and 1840, but their
popularity really took off from the 1830s. Many factors can be held
responsible for the decline of the Parisian arcades, and the initiatives
to improve the quality of the public domain certainly contributed.
It was in the time of Haussmann that this manifestation of urban
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improvement reached its greatest extent and with a heavy hand the
urban landscape was adapted to what was seen as the demands of
modern times. From that moment, many Parisians and tourists preferred walking on the wide, tree-lined boulevards to strolling along the
arcades and the ‘new’ Paris of Haussmann became a desirable model
for other cities. Previously it had been London in particular that had
set the standards. Here, in the eighteenth century, ‘raised footpaths’ or
pavements had already been constructed to protect the shopping and
strolling public against dirt, horse manure and traffic on the streets.
Brussels and Paris had copied this innovation by the 1780s, but, as in
London, pavements were for a long time only to be found in the major
streets. In The Hague and Amsterdam the public had to wait until after
the middle of the nineteenth century for this innovation. With their
private stoops, basement entrances, stairs, fences and other obstacles,
the streets of The Hague and Amsterdam preserved their early modern
character to a much stronger degree. Obviously, this was not to the
satisfaction of the wealthy bourgeoisie, who were perfectly aware of
the situation in capitals like London and Paris, and did not hesitate to
present these cities as examples to their local authorities.
But sooner or later the changes that can be referred to as urban
improvement occurred everywhere. In the important shopping streets
especially it was often shopkeepers who took the initiative. Even without being forced by the local authorities, they removed the signs that
protruded far into the street, the displays in front of the shop and in the
window frames, and the heavy canopies attached to the lower part of
the facade. The authorities, in turn, widened streets and filled in canals
to facilitate traffic circulation. They also constructed sewers, organised
a city sanitation department, ensured adequate street lighting, imposed
traffic regulations, regulated markets, and experimented with different
paving materials. All this began, of course, in the city centres and the
residential quarters of the well-to-do. As a result, shopping and strolling
along the streets in the city centres in the second half of the nineteenth
century was no longer a perilous undertaking, but a pleasant pastime
for those who could afford it.
Those responsible for the design and execution of the extensive public works that were started in the nineteenth century constantly referred
to and derived ideas from examples in other cities. Urban landscapes
therefore have common elements such as pavements, gutters and street
lighting, but nonetheless the variety was great as it was dependent,
among other factors, on the scale of urban improvement. In large capitals such as London and Paris, and also in Brussels, slum clearance and
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Shopping Streets and Cultures: An Introduction 7
improved accessibility resulted in wide boulevards and a relatively open
urban landscape. Elsewhere, in English provincial towns and in many
German, Belgian and Dutch cities, the early modern street network was
less harshly dealt with and the small scale of early modern cities was
better preserved (see pictures in the chapters of Ilja Van Damme, Clé
Lesger and Jan Hein Furnée). Despite the variety of its manifestations in
the cities and countries studied here, urban improvement has led to the
disappearance of at least one specific element in the retail landscape:
about 1800 shops were removed from bridges.
The impression of unity and diversity remains when we leave the
two-dimensional world of location patterns and infrastructure and
include the design and appearance of actual shops themselves in our
story. The thing that stands out for the early modern period is the huge
variety of retail facilities. Firstly, in accordance with the centrality of
markets and fairs in retailing, we see the dominance of stalls. But even
within that category numerous variants existed. Some stalls were taken
down every night and must have been made of canvas with wooden
frames; others were semi-permanent or permanent and built in wood
or even stone. The more permanent stalls were usually located at busy
sites such as bridges and on the facades of important public buildings
in the heart of a city. Moreover there were the stalls in the galleries of
exchanges, and in Antwerp in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in
the ‘panden’, precursors of the arcades that were developed in the decades around 1800.
In addition, retailers ran shops from their homes. Virtually all rooms
were suitable, but the best suited were those with direct access to the
street and the public. This explains the preference of shopkeepers for
the front part of houses, and for cellars. The appearance of these fixed
outlets varied according to predominant architectural traditions and
thus differed from country to country and, within large countries such
as France and Germany, from region to region. For the Netherlands and
Flanders, the available images indicate a high degree of similarity in
house type and method of construction and consequently retail spaces
will have looked quite similar too.
What all early modern (and medieval) retail outlets had in common
was their open character. For stalls and ‘bulks’ this is self-evident, but
the workshops of artisans selling their products directly to consumers
and even fixed shops also had at least one open side. In front of a fixed
shop often stood a table or counter on which the merchandise was put
on display. Shutters and window frames were also used for presenting
merchandise and when the facade was equipped with an awning and
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the merchandise could be exposed to the weather, articles were hung
from the awning as well. Finally, there were movable and fixed cupboards placed in front of the shop or mounted onto the facade in which
precious objects were protected against the weather, dirt from the street
and theft. Both the merchandise that was put on display in the open air
and the customers were protected from direct sunlight, rain and dirt by
awnings and canopies. These too gave early modern shops the appearance of market stalls.
The open character of shops, and of retail facilities in general, has a
long history. Since the Middle Ages, transactions in the privacy of shops
and workshops were distrusted. Buying and selling preferably took
place in broad daylight and in the public sphere of the marketplace.
This way, cheating with shoddy weights and measures was prevented,
the customer was offered the opportunity to inspect the quality of the
merchandise and the establishment of a fair price was more likely due
to the presence of bystanders and other customers. But there was also
a very practical reason. Even during the daytime and in shops that
were located right on the street, it was usually half-dark and difficult to
attract the attention of potential customers. Medieval and early modern
streets were mostly narrow and the heavy wooden frames or stone
facades obstructed natural light from pouring in. Furthermore, glass
in these years was much less transparent than it is today and the incidence of light was also hampered by the rods or lead strips in which the
glass was mounted. Finally, awnings and canopies obscured the rooms
behind the facade. In combination with the fact that retailers liked to
display the goods in sight of passers-by, these were reasons enough for
both customers and retailers to prefer an open presentation of merchandise in the window frames or in front of the facade.
Yet there was a distinct long-term trend towards closed shops with
glazed facades. Markets and sales from stalls and bulks never completely
disappeared, but their share in total retail sales declined and they lost
the prominence they once possessed in the urban landscape. And
eventually retailers’ extensive displays on the stoops in front of their
shops disappeared, although this process took a long time. Even in
rue Saint-Honoré, the most luxurious shopping street of early modern
Paris, market stalls and street vending were quite common until late
in the eighteenth century. The resilience of sales under the open sky
did not prevent glazed shops from eventually dominating the retail
landscape. The question of why this development towards closed shops
occurred is not easy to answer. In her contribution to this volume Claire
Walsh emphasises civic authorities’ desire for order and control and
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Shopping Streets and Cultures: An Introduction 9
the need for shopkeepers to express cultural values like reliability and
respectability. In Antwerp Van Damme also finds a connection between
glazed shops and respectability.
For Amsterdam, Lesger suggests that in the course of the seventeenth
century especially, the affluent part of the city population increasingly
felt the need to draw a firm distinction between the public sphere of the
street and the private sphere of the home. This need found expression
in differentiated architecture and a change of function of the stoop in
front of the house. The latter was transformed from a semi-public transitional zone between the street and the interior into a barrier between
the two. From the second half of the seventeenth century the elite also
developed a preference for bright interiors and large windows. In the
course of the eighteenth century, shopkeepers in the fashionable shopping streets in particular followed these trends. And thus the displays
of merchandise in front of the facade disappeared and buying and
selling became an activity for inside the shop, away from the public in
the street. Once the development in the direction of glazed shops was
put in motion, it is not surprising that this type of retailing was much
imitated. Especially in major shopping streets the traditional shops
now looked very old fashioned compared to these manifestations of
modernity. And the same goes for markets and stalls. These remained
important mainly in the food trade and the sale of relatively inexpensive items, including used goods.
The development towards glazed shops occurred in all the cities
and countries discussed in this volume, but not simultaneously.
Capitals such as London and Paris led the way, cities in Belgium and
the Netherlands followed, and Heidrun Homburg’s study shows that
in Germany, markets retained a broad function for much longer and
the transition to a retail landscape with mostly closed shops set in
relatively late. But, wherever displays in front of the facade disappeared,
the facade itself and the shop window gained in importance. They now
had to draw in passers-by and entice them to enter the shop and buy
the goods on offer. They could only do so by giving an impression of
the quality of the merchandise, the status of the shop and the reliability
and respectability of the shopkeeper.
The exterior of a shop also became a way for shopkeepers to distinguish their shop from others. Walsh speaks, in this context, of facade
competition. That facade competition not only occurred between
shopkeepers in the same city, but also between capitals and provincial towns and between cities in different countries, is demonstrated
by the praise and admiration that especially the shops in London in
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the eighteenth and early nineteenth century won, both in England
and on the Continent. In Amsterdam, for instance, where the shopping landscape compared favourably with that in smaller cities in the
Netherlands, visitors nevertheless wrote of ‘a mean appearance compared to the standard of London conveniences and elegance’. In 1803/4
Johanna Schopenhauer, the wife of a merchant from Danzig, is also full
of admiration for the splendour of the shops and storehouses in London
and the beautiful displays of merchandise behind large shop windows.
According to Schopenhauer, even the presentation of items of little
value was given great attention and more than two decades later the
German poet and writer Heinrich Heine made the same observation.
As Parisian shopkeepers in the course of the nineteenth century had
successfully imitated their London colleagues, they themselves served
increasingly as an example. In the first half of the nineteenth century,
The Hague was called ‘a little Brussels’ due to its shops and shopping
streets, but Brussels itself was known as ‘a little Paris’. Throughout
the century competition and imitation drove change and innovation.
Around 1870 journalists celebrated the fact that shop windows in The
Hague had surpassed those in Brussels. And German architects who
had visited the shopping streets of London and Paris called on German
retailers to follow these foreign examples, and so they did. London and
Paris set the standard not only for shopkeepers in Germany, but also for
those in Belgium and the Netherlands and of course for retailers in the
provincial towns in England and France themselves. German migrant
retailers, in turn, were said to have introduced the display of visible
prices in The Hague’s shop windows.
In the world of retail the diffusion of innovations was not restricted to
improvements in the physical infrastructure (pavements, architecture,
gas lighting) and presentation techniques, but it also included new
retail formats such as arcades, bazaars, magasins de nouveautés, multiple
stores, department stores and market halls. From the various contributions to this volume it is clear that some of the new retail formats came
about in a mutual process of histoire croisée in big capital cities like
London and Paris: the Parisian arcades appeared first in London, and
the London bazaars first in Paris. Only thereafter did these innovations
spread to other countries and to provincial towns. The history of the
arcades shows that some countries (Belgium) were surprisingly fast to
adopt this innovation, while other countries (the Netherlands) were
surprisingly late.
Regarding the retail formats that so often have been labelled as modern
and typical for the nineteenth century, the contributions to this volume
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Shopping Streets and Cultures: An Introduction 11
give rise to three qualifications. The first is that the history and the
sources of inspiration for the large-scale retail formats go back much
further than is usually acknowledged. This applies to the arcades which,
it has already been noted, built on the examples of the shopping galleries in the Palais-Royal in Paris and in the early modern exchanges.
It also applies to the English department stores, of which Walsh has
revealed the roots in the larger drapery shops of eighteenth-century
London. With this emphasis on continuity and evolution the early
modernists have qualified the image of the nineteenth century as a
fundamental break and the beginning of the modern era in the history
of retailing. In some respects, however, the nineteenth century was a
radical break with the past. In the early modern period large shops were
not entirely absent, but the size and the monumentality of arcades,
market halls, bazaars and department stores was a completely new and
iconic phenomenon in the urban landscape.
A second qualification is that important nineteenth-century retail
formats did indeed spread from London and Paris across other cities,
but the specifics of those formats varied from place to place, and in the
process of diffusion and transfer the original concept was usually more or
less radically revised. The arcades in Paris, for instance, were little regulated and they not only gave access to the middle and upper classes,
but to almost the entire social spectrum, prostitutes included. In the
London arcades, however, the behaviour of the public became subject
to strict regulation and in practice only the upper classes had access.
Local conditions also accounted for the fact that in Brussels the monumental Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert (1847) flourished long after the
popularity of arcades had peaked in Paris and London, and that Sillems
Bazar in Hamburg (1845), the first arcade in Germany, was a commercial
failure and in 1881 was razed to the ground and replaced by a hotel.
In other words, the diffusion of retail innovations was a complicated
process of imitation and of adaptation to local conditions.
A final qualification is that the new retail formats, although a salient
and in many respects new element in the retail landscape of the nineteenth century, did not drive out older formats. Despite the construction of market halls, sales in the open air continued and hawkers and
pedlars did not disappear from the streets. And contrary to what often
has been assumed on the basis of complaints by shopkeepers and Zola’s
Au Bonheur des Dames, the rise of department stores in the 1860s did not
squeeze out traditional boutiquers. On the contrary, there was (and is)
still a sometimes bewildering variety of fixed shops. Even as late as
the end of the nineteenth century some retailers still displayed their
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12
Clé Lesger and Jan Hein Furnée
merchandise in front of the facade. Especially outside the central
shopping areas and major shopping streets, where the pressure to modernise and renovate was greatest, one can read from the shops the history
of the retailing industry and the shop fronts reveal the changing
architectural preferences of the past. All in all, the landscape of consumption itself is the best proof that there was no linear and uniform
development in the history of retailing. The relative weight of different
retail formats varied in time and space, but everywhere old and new
forms of retailing coexisted.
Much the same argument can be made for the history of shopping as
a pleasurable sociocultural practice, understood as walking or driving
down the shopping streets, enjoying the public spectacle of merchandise, comparing and discussing the commodities, imagining how they
could adorn the home or the body, and finally (perhaps) the satisfying
act of buying. In recent decades, historians have regularly argued that
the practice of shopping for pleasure developed as a new form of leisure
only in the nineteenth century, stimulated or even triggered by the
advent of shopping arcades and in particular the rise of the department
store. Research on early modern England and the Southern Netherlands,
and even on Renaissance Italy, has convincingly challenged this view.
In the eighteenth century and even earlier, shopping was a serious
business requiring knowledge and skill, but for many consumers it was
also a sociable and enjoyable pastime, often done in social company
and part of a sociable routine of visiting family and friends. This volume
confirms this vision: even in late seventeenth-century The Hague, fashionable ladies were said to enjoy visiting a tiny but luxurious shopping
street ‘to spend her money, with great pleasure’, offering male inhabitants a ‘pastime’ of watching them walking to and fro.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the combination of the increasing use of window displays and public works on
pavements, street lighting and traffic control encouraged a leisurely
perambulation of the shops, with promenading and shopping merging
into a polite social activity. Following the examples of London and
increasingly Paris, shopkeepers in Brussels, Amsterdam and The Hague
succeeded in cultivating shopping as a leisurely activity by adding
beautiful showcases, rich facades and fairylike gas lights. In Brussels, the
early construction of the shopping arcade encouraged relaxing strolling
alongside the shops even more. However, the pleasures of shopping did
not only attach themselves to modern retail inventions. In Germany,
visiting the ‘promenade’ on the weekly market was also experienced as
‘very pleasant’, while the magical excitement at traditional urban fairs
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Shopping Streets and Cultures: An Introduction 13
in Leipzig or Frankfurt surpassed the spectacle of modern bazaars in
contemporary London and Paris. Indeed, neither German nor Dutch
cities needed to wait for the introduction of arcades or department
stores to see their shopping streets filled with joyful consumers.
The social pleasures of shopping did change, however. While shopkeepers actively copied modern retail strategies and institutions from
abroad, consumers were also keen to style their shopping practices to
foreign examples. Despite lacking pavements or arcades, in the 1840s
The Hague was represented as a fashionable city where all classes, from
the aristocracy to the servants, cultivated the art of ‘flaneeren’. In 1829,
a German prince described how he enjoyed to ‘go shopping’ in Paris,
explicating the English term to his German audience as a very modern thing to do in the French (!) capital. Unlike in Germany, from the
1880s the Dutch increasingly appropriated the concept of ‘winkelen’ as
a literary translation of the English term, less as a new term for a new
phenomenon but rather to add an extra transnational layer of meaning
to an established social practice.
Both in the early modern period and in the nineteenth century, the
regulation of shopping streets was not only a matter of paving, lighting
and cleaning. Creating a comfortable space where well-to-do consumers
wanted to stroll and spend – to the benefit of the urban economy – also
meant freeing the key areas of consumption from ‘unpleasant’ activities
and fellow citizens. In early modern English towns, popular pastimes
such as bull-baiting and cock-throwing were expelled from market
squares, and some open markets and especially fairs were themselves
removed from the city centres as well. However, even in the modern
shopping arcades, regulating social accessibility and conduct was a
constant concern, with the arcade in Brussels, analysed by Anneleen
Arnout, being a fascinating example of how administrators carefully
mediated between the strict rules and aristocratic profile of the London
examples and the free conduct and mixed clientele they witnessed in
Paris. Unlike in Amsterdam, where respectable women did not dare to
stroll in the central Kalverstraat in the early afternoon when prostitutes
dominated the scene, The Hague’s elite did not let the demi-monde
spoil their daily pleasure of promenading the shopping streets. Perhaps
they felt more at ease with the manners of the elegant world in Paris?
This volume aims to demonstrate that running a shop, regulating shopping streets and shopping for pleasure in the early modern
period and the nineteenth century were all social practices that took
on different forms in different times, countries and cities. Comparing
them systematically from a long-term, comparative and transnational
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14
Clé Lesger and Jan Hein Furnée
perspective, however, offers us the opportunity to trace some new and
surprising continuities and similarities, to highlight stronger contrasts
and specificities, and to explore intriguing processes of cultural transfer,
appropriation and exchange. We hope this volume will encourage readers to pursue this quest, leading to a deeper understanding of how we
shop and why we do it the way we do.
Notes
1. All quotations from: C. Hancock, Paris et Londres au XIXe siècle: représentations
dans les guides et récits de voyage (CNRS, 2003), pp. 192–4.
2. For a concise bibliography, with emphasis on British historiography, see
J. Stobart, Spend, Spend, Spend! A History of Shopping (Stroud: Tempus, 2008),
pp. 247–51. For an excellent introduction in the broader field of consumption
history, see F. Trentman, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
3. A classic example: J. Jefferys, Retail Trading in Britain, 1850–1950 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1954). A more recent example: R. Bowlby, Carried
Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping (London: Faber and Faber, 2000);
B. Lancaster, The Department Store: A Social History (London: Leicester
University Press, 1995).
4. The classic example: N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb (eds), The
Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialisation of Eighteenth-Century England
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). A recent overview for England
offers: Stobart, Spend, Spend, Spend, pp. 45–96. For an even earlier period, see
E. Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400–1600
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
5. An exception should be made for the history of retailing in Britain: Stobart,
Spend, Spend, Spend!. See also J. Stobart, A. Hann and V. Morgan, Spaces of
Consumption: Leisure and Shopping in the English Town, c.1680–1830 (London:
Routledge, 2007). In the broader field of the history of consumption the longterm (and comparative) perspective is much more applied. See, for example,
H. Siegrist, H. Kaelble and J. Kocka (eds), Europäische Konsumgeschichte:
Zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des Konsums (18. bis 20. Jahrhundert)
(Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1997); P. N. Stearns, Consumerism in World
History: The Global Transformation of Desire (London: Routledge, 2001);
M. Prinz (ed.), Der lange Weg in den Überfluss. Anfänge und Entwicklung
der Kosumgesellschaft seit der Vormoderne (Padernborn: Schöning, 2003);
Trentman, The Oxford Handbook.
6. For the key publications for these five countries, see the various chapters in
this volume.
7. Except for a team of British, Belgian and French scholars working on the early
modern period, many of which are represented in the current volume. For
example, B. Blondé, E. Briot, N. Coquery and L. Van Aert (eds), Retailers and
Consumer Changes in Early Modern Europe: England, France, Italy and the Low
Countries (Tours: PUFR, 2005); B. Blondé et al. (eds), Fashioning Old and New:
Changing Consumer Patterns in Western Europe (1650–1900) (Turnhout: Brepols,
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Shopping Streets and Cultures: An Introduction 15
2009); J. Stobart and I. Van Damme (eds), Modernity and the Second-Hand
Trade: European Consumption Cultures and Practices, 1700–1900 (Houndmills:
Palgrave, 2010). For comparative studies in the broader field of consumer
history, see note 5.
8. A classic study: M. Espagne and M. Werner (1988) (eds), Transferts culturels:
les relations interculturels dans l’espace franco-allemand (XVII–XXe siècle)
(Paris, 1988). For some recent English-language overviews, see, for example,
D. Cohen and M. O’Connor (eds), Comparison and History: Europe in CrossNational Perspective (London: Routledge, 2004); H. G. Haupt and J. Kocka
(eds), Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches and
New Perspectives (New York: Berghahn, 2009).
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Index
advertising, 16, 18–19, 31, 49, 94,
120, 140, 166, 191–4, 202–3, 212
Amiens, 189
Amsterdam, 3–6, 9–10, 12–13,
79, 104–122, 208, 210, 214, 217,
225
Antwerp, 3–5, 7, 9, 78–99, 172
arcades (incl. passages and galleries),
1–2, 5–7, 10–3, 27, 31, 33, 78, 87,
99, 126–7, 137, 142–3, 157, 162,
164, 166–74, 177–9, 185–9, 192,
195, 203, 208–10, 226
auctions, 95–6, 98, 162
awnings and canopies, 6–8, 109–10,
113–16, 142, 165, 211
Basingstoke, 18
Bath, 26–7, 29, 52
bazaars, 1–2, 10–11, 13, 26–7, 31–3,
131, 140, 142–6, 157, 177, 185,
189–90, 192–5, 199, 203, 209, 220
Berlin, 134, 137, 139, 141–2, 144–6,
148, 189
Berchem, 85, 89
Besançon, 5, 185, 195–203
Bergen op Zoom, 89
Birmingham, 5, 19, 21, 23–26, 31,
105
Bonn, 137
Borgerhout, 85, 89
bourgeoisie, 6, 86, 107, 164, 166–7,
171–3, 175–6, 184, 186, 193, 197,
201–3
Braunschweig, 127–8
Breda, 89
Bremen, 133
Bristol, 27
Bruges, 79
Brussels, 5–6, 10–13, 89, 98, 157–179,
189, 213–16, 218–19, 226
Chambéry, 189
Cheltenham, 24
Chester, 17, 19–22, 24–26, 28–30, 46,
48, 108
Chicago, 158
coffeehouses and cafés, 91, 127, 143,
164, 168, 170, 186, 195, 198, 209,
224, 226
consumer revolution, 49
consumer society, 1, 16, 147,
161
co–operatives, 157, 161, 163, 176
Dam, 85, 89
Danzig/Gdansk, 10, 128
department stores, 1, 2, 6, 10–13, 16,
21, 25, 27, 30, 32–3, 78, 95, 99,
146, 157, 161–2, 164–6, 172, 176,
184–5, 189–90, 193–5, 198–9, 201,
203, 209–10, 221, 226
display of goods, 6–12, 16, 18, 22,
27–9, 31–3, 37, 39–41, 43, 47,
49–53, 60, 109–12, 114–121, 128,
131, 135, 137–8, 140–2, 150, 157,
165–6, 169–70, 174, 185, 191–5,
200, 211, 219, 221, 226
Dusseldorf, 137
exchanges (galleries in), 5, 7, 11,
26–7, 29, 32, 87–8, 96
Exeter, 26
fairs, 7, 12, 13, 30, 42, 61, 70, 86–8,
108, 126–8, 133–140, 146, 148, 150,
192, 196
Flaneur, 2, 95, 167, 157, 172, 216–17,
222, 224–5
Florence, 66
Frankfurt am Main, 13, 127–8, 133,
135–8, 140
gentlemen, men, male, 12, 29, 143,
146, 148, 213–4, 217, 221, 223–4,
226
Ghent, 79
243
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244
Index
glass (windows and boxes), 8–9, 22–3,
31, 33, 37–41, 47–8, 51–2, 92, 95,
109–10, 115–17, 119, 128, 131, 143,
167, 169–70, 185, 212, 216–17,
219–20
Glasgow, 27
Göttingen, 137
Gravesend, 32
London, 1, 4–6, 9–13, 18, 21–2,
24–29, 33, 40–1, 47–8, 51–3, 57, 79,
93, 98, 105, 107, 116–17, 119–22,
126, 128–32, 134, 140–2, 145, 158,
161, 164–5, 171–3, 178, 184, 188–9,
192–3, 211, 216, 221
Lübeck, 133
Lyon, 196
Hague, The, 5, 6, 10, 12–13, 176,
208–226
Harrogate, 24
Hamburg, 5, 11, 133–4, 136–7, 142–5,
150, 189
Hastings, 27
‘magasins de nouveautés’, 10, 185,
190–5, 199
Manchester, 24, 26, 30–31
market halls (and ‘panden’), 5, 7,
10–11, 30, 41, 50, 58, 62, 68–9, 81,
83, 85, 87, 96, 157–8, 162, 165–6,
170, 173–9
marketplaces, 3, 8, 17, 19, 30, 42,
44–6, 59, 81, 83–4, 136
Mechelen, 89
Merksem, 89
middle classes, 16, 24, 27, 30, 130–1,
186, 193–4, 196–7, 202–3, 218
Milan, 5, 168
modernity, 9, 25, 33, 125, 161, 166,
169, 170, 178, 191
Moscow, 5, 189
multiple stores, 10, 16, 23, 32, 157,
161–2, 176
innovation, 1– 2, 6, 10–1, 26–7, 30,
32, 59, 78, 95, 115, 117, 121, 126,
132, 140–1, 145–6, 158, 161, 164,
166–7, 169–70, 178–9, 184–5, 190,
192, 194–5, 203, 210, 212, 221, 226
itinerant retailing (incl. hawking and
peddling), 11, 42, 44, 47, 49–50, 61,
80, 86–8, 90, 95–9, 108, 166, 173,
175–6, 178, 196, 216
Ixeles, 177
Kiel, 89
Lancaster, 17
ladies, women, female, 12–3, 22, 26,
28–9, 31, 130–1, 136, 138, 143, 146,
148, 171, 176, 199, 213–4, 217,
221, 223–6
Leeds, 26
Leipzig, 13, 128, 138–40
light (day and sun light, street, oil,
gas and electric lighting), 5–6, 8,
10, 12–3, 18–22, 39–40, 47, 49,
51–3, 93, 105–7, 109, 114–17,
127–8, 130–1, 141–3, 145, 157–8,
168–70, 185, 191–2, 194, 197–8,
201, 217, 218–21
Liverpool, 19, 24, 30–1, 105
location and accessibility, 2–4, 17–20,
24–5, 30, 44–6, 49–50, 52–3, 57–74,
81–93, 96–9, 106–7, 111–13, 117, 121,
138, 146, 162–6, 168, 172, 174–5, 177,
186–8, 195, 197–8, 209, 211, 225
Nantes, 189
Newcastle, 27, 33
New York, 158
Niort, 189
Norfolk, 27, 29
Northampton, 24, 46
Norwich, 17, 24, 26–7, 29
Palais-Royal (Galeries de Bois), 1, 5,
11, 27, 59, 63–5, 74, 126–7, 129,
132, 142, 185–90, 194, 215
Paris, 1, 3–6, 8–13, 27, 41, 49, 57–74,
79, 93, 98, 105, 117, 119–22, 126–8,
131–2, 134, 140–2, 145, 157–8, 161,
164–5, 167, 170–3, 176–8, 184–203,
211, 213, 215–16, 218, 221, 224
pavement (incl. elevated pavement),
5, 6, 10, 12–3, 38, 47–9, 68, 92, 105,
119–21, 128, 131, 157–8, 165, 167,
171, 184–5, 189, 196–7, 216, 222, 226
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Index 245
Preston, 19, 30
prices of goods (incl. fixed), 1,
4, 8, 10, 16, 27, 30, 42, 44–5, 49,
67, 79, 94, 112, 136, 138, 174,
190–4, 196–7, 199, 201–3, 217,
219
promenade, promenading, 12–3, 20,
28–9, 131, 136, 148, 208, 214, 218,
222–226
regulations, 2, 6, 9, 11, 13,
18–19, 21–22, 37, 42–6, 48–50,
53, 60, 80–1, 84–7, 88, 106,
113, 127, 134–5, 138, 140,
165, 170–1, 173, 175, 177,
179, 186, 188–9, 212, 216,
222
reputation of shopkeepers, 37, 49–51,
53, 71, 86, 171, 215
restaurants, 73, 127, 143, 170, 186,
195
retail Revolution, 1, 11, 16, 33, 49,
78, 172, 178–9, 190, 209
Rotterdam, 217
Ryde (Isle of Wight), 27
Scarborough, 24
shop exteriors (facades, shop
windows), 1–2, 6–9, 12, 18,
20–3, 26–32, 38–42, 47–8, 51–4,
73, 82, 91–3, 95, 99, 108–22,
128–30, 141–2, 166–8, 188,
191, 200, 211–12, 215, 218,
221
shop interiors, 9, 29–32, 43, 93, 99,
111, 116, 146, 169, 192–4, 200–1,
212
shop signs, 6, 21, 41, 47–8, 73, 93,
111–13, 116–17, 121, 128, 130, 169,
191, 212, 215
shops ‘above stairs’, 19, 41, see also
exchanges
shops/retailing on bridges, 7, 57, 66,
95, 141
shopping areas (social differentiation
of), 4, 7, 11, 24–5, 27, 30, 41–2,
52, 63–70, 81, 90–1, 93–9, 106–7,
113–15, 121, 135, 162–6, 186–90,
197–8, 211
shopping and entertainment, 31–2,
164, 167–8, 171–2, 177, 186–7, 193,
203, 224
shopping for pleasure (incl. window
shopping), 1, 2, 12–13, 21, 27–32,
31, 37, 41, 47, 51, 59, 73–4, 79, 84,
86, 91–5, 98, 109, 115, 126–7,
130–2, 165–7, 170–2, 176–77, 179,
186, 195, 208, 213–4, 216–17,
222–6
shopping practices, 18, 27–29, 31,
33, 45, 49, 52, 84, 93, 95–8,
190–2
showcases (moveable), 38, 40, 51,
110, 117, 121, 212, 215
shutters, 7, 18, 92, 109–10, 113, 141,
165, 172, 211–12
stalls, booths and bulks, 7–9, 27,
30, 37–42, 44–7, 49–50, 80–1,
87–8, 108, 111, 115, 121, 127, 131,
135–8, 140–1, 150, 173–7, 184, 212,
216
street selling, 8, 30, 42, 44–7, 49–50,
61, 88, 115, 165, 173, 178
Stockport, 30
Strasbourg, 196
theatres, 25, 87, 105, 164, 170, 176,
188, 189, 208, 219
tradition, 3, 7, 9, 11–12, 22–4, 78,
83, 85, 106, 115–18, 121–2, 133–5,
143, 145–7, 150, 161–2, 164, 166,
169, 176, 178–9, 184–5, 190–1, 193,
195–6, 198–9, 201, 203, 209, 211,
216, 218, 223
traffic, 3, 5–6, 12, 30, 80, 87–8, 85,
105–7, 128, 163–5, 167–8, 172–4,
179, 184–5, 222
transfer of retailing strategies, 1–2,
5–6, 9–14, 22, 24–8, 41, 52, 95, 117,
120, 122, 125–6, 132, 141–2, 145–6,
157–8, 161, 164–5, 167–8, 170–2,
173, 176–8, 185, 188–9, 192–3,
195–200, 203, 215–16, 218–19, 221,
224
types of goods sold, 3–4, 17, 60–1,
57–73, 80–4, 86–8, 90, 94–9,
111–12, 121, 130, 135–7, 143, 163,
174, 199, 201–2, 210–11
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Index
upper classes (incl. aristocracy,
gentry), 13, 32, 63–4, 121,
145, 148, 171, 174, 177,
188, 208, 214, 218, 222–3,
226
urban improvement, 4–7, 10,
13, 19–21, 25, 29, 33, 46–50,
52–4, 67, 83, 85–6, 93–5, 98,
104–8, 119–22, 132, 163–6,
174, 177, 179, 189, 197,
216
used goods (sale of), 9, 79,
95–98, 145, 165, 188, 196,
202–3
Venice, 66
Versailles, 64
Vienna, 128
window shopping, see shopping for
pleasure
Wolverhampton, 19
Worcester, 24, 108
working classes, 11, 98, 165, 171, 188,
193, 197–8, 202
workshops, 7–8, 60, 62, 64–8, 84, 86,
108–9, 127, 169, 199
York, 24, 28, 52
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