Plebian Consumers: Global Connections, Local Trade, and Foreign Goods in Nineteenth Century Colombia

In this interview with Roger Horowitz, Ana Maria Otero-Cleves discusses the place of important objects in her book Plebian Consumers, especially textiles, machetes, and patent medicine. Otero-Cleves also elaborates on the crucial importance of Hagley’s Lanman and Kemp collection due to its extensive correspondence with Colombian merchants in the late 19^th century to obtain supplies for its patent medicines.  

From the publisher: “Plebeian Consumers is both a global and local study. It tells the story of how peasants, day workers, formerly enslaved people, and small landholders became the largest consumers of foreign commodities in nineteenth-century Colombia, and dynamic participants of an increasingly interconnected world. By studying how plebeian consumers altered global processes from below, Ana María Otero-Cleves challenges ongoing stereotypes about Latin America's peripheral role in the world economy through the nineteenth century, and its undisputed dependency on the Global North. By exploring Colombians' everyday practices of consumption, Otero-Cleves also invites historians to pay close attention to the intimate relationship between the political world and the economic world in nineteenth-century Latin America. She also sheds light on new methodologies and approaches for studying the material world of men and women who left little record of their own experiences.” 

In support of her work, Otero-Cleves received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library.