Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 2 (2022), p. 319

Anyone attempting to understand the dynamics of social change under capitalism could do worse than to start their studies with analyses of the British food distribution system. If we have E. P. Thompson’s famous study of the ‘moral economy’ to thank for exposing the complex interplay between capital and consumers, regraters and retailers, and magistrates and markets, the study of the mechanics of food distribution are far older. Indeed, N. S. B. Gras’ The evolution of the English corn market and other pivotal studies such as F. J. Fisher’s analysis of the development of the London food market arguably acted to figure the very emergence of economic history as a distinctive field of study. Collectively, such works teach us that beyond the fields and the farms, the making of food as a commodity exposes consumers to the effects of all the contradictory logics of capitalism: competition acting to lower prices and seek efficient routes to meet consumer demand yet profit-maximization leading to manipulation (of foodstuffs and markets alike) and other forms of market-based malfeasance. Sébastien Rioux’s study, then, is the latest expression of a set of well-established positions. In one sense the reader might be forgiven for thinking that Rioux’s study is too careful, too mannered, and too respectful of the vast historiography on which it stands. The four thematic chapters at the heart of the book – focusing on public markets, street sellers, small-scale shopkeeping, and the emergence of multi-retailers – are based in equal part on existing studies and Rioux’s careful reading of Parliamentary Papers. All tell well-rehearsed tales: the refiguring of medieval markets as modern wholesale centres geared to mass distribution; the role of the costermonger as vital in meeting the needs of the urban poor for cheap food; the phenomenal rise of the small shop a response to the changing socio-spatial basis of the population; and the emergence of cooperative retail and multi-retailers central to standardization, mass consumption, and forcing prices lower. This is all artfully done; each chapter a blend of synthesis and original observation, Rioux having an admirable ability to combine broad-brush analysis with pithy exemplifying vignettes.

The novelty of Rioux’s approach lays in his emphasis on the, as he puts it, ‘social costs’ of these shifts. In this, Rioux is concerned not with the ‘costs’ on consumers – the argument here is these shifts in distribution helped to force food prices down – or on producers – the book entirely silent as to the effects of the mass importation of foodstuffs that fed distributive change on those who laboured in the fields and gardens – but on those employed in distribution. And here a further point of qualification. Whilst Rioux offers a definition of distribution in the introduction, there is no explicit statement as to precisely this sprawling system fully entailed. As such, the account we have here does not consider rural retailing, this arguably a major gap considering that until the 1870s the balance of the population of England and Wales remained rooted in the rural. Nor does it consider the various individuals and occupations that made distribution possible: dealers, importers, warehouse operators, merchants, shipping companies and so on. Rather, it is those who worked in direct retail, either as employees or the self-employed small shopkeepers and street sellers. The lived reality for this huge occupational growth was that cheap food acted to cheapen their labour, the cost of an integrated and efficient distribution system the living and working standards of those so engaged. Of course, as Rioux carefully shows, costermongers were invariably already poor, often turning temporarily to the trade in response to un- and under-employment. Yet the returns were small and the effort high, the result not being a route out of poverty but rather a stay from absolute destitution, the last step before entering the workhouse. Shopworkers too were, in many cases, forced to endure horrendous working hours, miserable conditions, wages paid partly in truck and in-kind through squalid accommodation and the most meagre of meals. Rioux notes that some improvements were made in the early years of the twentieth century, not least as regards the diminished exploitation of child labour, but he steadfastly refuses to be drawn into offering a Whiggish account of progress.

One of the most striking themes that emerges from the study is that retail remained stubbornly resistant to the efforts of parliamentary investigations and legislative interventions to improve the lot of shopworkers. It is surprising that Rioux does not make more of this, but, to his credit, this is a book that not only wears its considerable scholarship lightly but also remains generous to others and is refreshingly cautious in drawing conclusions. Likewise, Rioux’s approach is unusually modest in not making stronger claims to novelty regarding the reading offered of migrant labour in retail, and especially more organized forms of street vending. The recruiting of children from the Calabrian countryside to sell ice-creams on the streets of London represented a defacto form of modern slavery, the parallels with the reliance on forced labour in parts of the UK’s food system today painfully apparent. Another aspect of Rioux’s study that deserves praise is his unfussy and direct prose. This is written with great clarity and certainty, something deeply impressive for a first monograph. What are the flaws? As detailed above, there are some significant gaps, but these are flaws only by virtue of the fact that the exclusive focus on retail as opposed to other aspects of distribution (the role of the railway a notable exception) is asserted rather justified. I would have liked, and this perhaps betraying my own intellectual biases, more in the way of the voices and individual experience of actual workers, the account often detailed but curiously devoid of actual human lives. None of this is take away from what is a fine achievement. This is a timely, thoughtful, and powerful account that acts both as a welcome synthesis of existing work and as a genuinely novel take on the hitherto hidden costs borne by those who brought cheap food to market.