Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century: A Global Perspective

by Jennifer Aston, Catherine Bishop

Overview

"This volume challenges those who see gender inequalities invariably defining and constraining the lives of women. But it also broadens the conversation about the degree to which business is a gender-blind institution, owned and managed by entrepreneurs whose gender identities shape and reflect economic and cultural change." – Mary A. Yeager, Professor Emerita, University of California, Los Angeles

This is the first book to consider nineteenth-century businesswomen from a global perspective, moving beyond European and trans-Atlantic frameworks to include many other corners of the world. The women in these pages, who made money and business decisions for themselves rather than as employees, ran a wide variety of enterprises, from micro-businesses in the ‘grey market’ to large factories with international reach. They included publicans and farmers, midwives and property developers, milliners and plumbers, pirates and shopkeepers.

Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century: A Global Perspective rejects the notion that nineteenth-century women were restricted to the home. Despite a variety of legal and structural restrictions, they found ways to make important but largely unrecognised contributions to economies around the world - many in business. Their impact on the economy and the economy’s impact on them challenge gender historians to think more about business and business historians to think more about gender and create a global history that is inclusive of multiple perspectives.

Chapter one of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030334116
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	07/30/2020
Series:	Palgrave Studies in Economic History
Edition description:	1st ed. 2020
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Aston is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at Northumbria University at Newcastle, UK.

Catherine Bishop is a historian with an Australian Research Council DECRA postdoctoral fellowship in the Centre for Workforce Futures at the Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Table of Contents

1. Discovering a Global Perspective.- 2. ‘Se mantiene de lavar’: The Laundry Business in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Mexico City.- 3. Investing in Enterprise: Women Entrepreneurs in Colonial ‘South Africa’.- 4. A Mosaic of Entrepreneurship: Female Traders in Moscow, 1810s-1850s.- 5. A Constant Presence: The Businesswomen of Paris, 1810-1880.- 6. The Gendered Nature of the Atlantic World Marketplace: Female Entrepreneurs in the Nineteenth-Century American Lowcountry.- 7. On Their Own in a ‘Man’s World’: Widows in Business in Colonial New Zealand and Australia.- 8. In the Business of Piracy: Entrepreneurial Women among Chinese Pirates in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.- 9. The Business of Self-Endowment: Women Merchants, Wealth and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Luanda.- 10. More Than Just Penny Capitalists: The Range of Female Entrepreneurship in Mid-Nineteenth-Century United States Cities.- 11. Japanese Female Entrepreneurs: Women in Kyoto Businesses in Tokugawa Japan.- 12. Female Entrepreneurship in England and Wales, 1851-1911 .- 13. Skirting the Boundaries: Businesswomen in Colonial British Columbia, 1858-1914.- 14. Mirror, Bridge or Stone? Female Owners of Firms in Spain During the Second Half of the Long Nineteenth Century.- 15. Gendered Innovation: Female Patent Activity and Market Development in Brazil, 1876-1906.- 16. Not Such a ‘Bad Speculation’: Women, Cookbooks and Entrepreneurship in Late-Nineteenth-Century Australia.- 17. Nineteenth-Century Female Entrepreneurship in Turkey.- 18. African Women Farmers in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, 1875-1930: State Policies and Spiritual Vulnerabilities.

Editorial Reviews

The editors aim to increase dialogue between historians across the geographical and linguistic divides. They call for the use of technology to facilitate interactions between historians, a lesson that could be applied to all disciplines. Furthermore, they stress the scope for further research and collaboration. This book expands scholarship, assembling case studies from across the world, and thereby encouraging debate and the potential for further international cooperation.” (Helen Leighton-Rose, Family &Community History, Vol. 24 (1), April, 2021)

From the Publisher