Agricultural History Review, Volume 65 Part 2 (2017), p. 341

Sugar and spice is a wide-reaching and thorough examination of the grocery trade in the long eighteenth century that analyses the processes of selling and purchasing groceries from merchant to retailer to consumer. By placing groceries in the historical context of the ‘consumer revolution’ and global empire, Stobart links the national and transnational to the everyday, ephemeral goods that have often been overlooked in favour of durable objects. He also considers how the familiar terms ‘luxury’, ‘novelty’ and ‘pleasure’ as explanatory concepts of eighteenth-century consumerism often disguise the continuities within grocery retail. Over the course of the book, Stobart demonstrates that these could be relatively fluid categories, and that ‘novelties’ were often incorporated within existing retail processes and structures.

In his first chapter, Stobart studies the grocery trade’s pre-modern roots, arguing that the trade existed as a specialist branch of retailing well before the eighteenth century and that ‘change as much as continuity marked the eighteenth-century grocery trade’ (p. 40). Chapter two examines colonial goods that grew in popularity over the eighteenth century: sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate and tobacco. Through an examination of inventories and grocers’ stock, Stobart strengthens his argument that these new goods, rather than stimulating a big growth in grocery retailing (as has been previously argued), were incorporated into existing lines of stock. The third chapter turns towards grocers and their ‘networks of supply’, which developed over a period when imported goods were becoming increasingly popular. Stobart argues that the existing supply networks were ‘dynamic and responsive’ (p. 88) and that shopkeepers held established personal relationships with the suppliers through whom they purchased their stock and new goods.

The next chapter analyses the geographical location of grocery shops in provincial towns and cities. Stobart argues that the physical location of grocers, amongst traditional ‘genteel’ traders, shows that they were ‘firmly tied into polite lifestyles’ (p. 111). Through a study of geographical markers such as trade cards and newspaper advertisements, an interesting argument is made that consumers created mental maps which positioned grocers’ shops within other polite and genteel retailers, reinforcing their respectable position. Chapter five goes into the space of the shop itself, and looks at how groceries were displayed. Stobart provides evidence that grocers displayed their products in a way that suggested order, efficiency and professionalism, as well as adapting promotional techniques to suit their expanding range of goods. In chapter six, Stobart moves on to the process of buying and selling. Again, he demonstrates that selling groceries is as much about continuity with the seventeenth century as it was about change. Grocers were still expected to offer credit to respectable customers, and customers expected personal recommendations and guarantees from their grocers.

The next two chapters turn to advertising, focusing in particular upon newspapers and trade cards, and the audiences for these advertisements. Stobart argues that these two mediums offered different aspects of goods to the consumer: trade cards contained rich imagery and symbolism of empire and the exotic, whilst newspapers focused more on the commercial aspects of price, quality and availability. Consumers would receive both messages from these forms of advertisements, demonstrating that ‘new’ goods such as tea could be both exotic and mundane simultaneously. Stobart also examines the different shopping practices of consumers. Households developed their own routines in grocery buying, and developed skills at interpreting the commercial information available to them, whether through advertisements, reputation, or word of mouth, customers made their choices based on price and quality.

In chapter nine, Stobart delves into the life of groceries once they left the shop, leaving the space of the retailer and entering the home of the consumer. Stobart studies recipe books in order to explore the ‘novelty’ and ‘luxury’ of these ‘new’ imported goods. He argues that ‘food and eating held different meanings for different groups who were motivated by different concerns’ (p. 238). The elites, for example, used food and groceries to delineate their social status and financial position, whereas the middling sorts used new groceries to denote their polite sociability and prudent respectability. The final chapter examines the material culture which surrounded these new groceries, using inventories to reveal that new ‘consumption bundles’ such as hot drinks paraphernalia, were collected gradually and situated amongst existing goods, rather than replacing older practices.

Throughout this book Stobart presents a detailed analysis of the life of groceries, from the time they reached Britain’s shores to their consumption. Through this wide-reaching examination, he puts forward a persuasive argument that the growing demand for imported groceries in the eighteenth century was incorporated successfully into existing retail structures. A recurring theme is one of continuity and change (one might say, development) where existing sourcing, retailing, advertising, purchasing, and consumption processes were adapted and expanded to include these new goods. Colonial groceries could at the same time be seen as luxurious and everyday; novel and existing, nuancing these conceptual categories. As a whole, Sugar and Spice expands and furthers our knowledge of the consumer history, not least by insisting that goods should be understood through their ‘lifespan’ – from merchant, to retailer, and on to consumer.