5 - Books, Hats, and “Foreign” Coats

Summary

Chapter 5 turns to elite consumption of foreign luxury goods. This detour from the book’s narrative of Plebeian consumption is necessary in order to question the historiography that has equated “foreign goods” with “luxury goods.” This chapter looks at how nineteenth-century Colombian elites incorporated European luxury consumer goods – clocks, books, umbrellas, clothing, and musical instruments – into practices of social distinction and cultural expression in a reaction against ordinary people’s way of life. In this way, the chapter highlights that, when it came to their own consumption, the category of “foreign commodities” in nineteenth-century Colombia was flexible for the members of the upper classes, with particular political and social ramifications.