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9781108418287

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'Written with verve and wit, Marsh's strikingly original commodity study reshapes our understanding of the Atlantic World. Marsh masterfully employs both macro and micro history to detail the importance of silk making efforts - and its failures - to colony, empire, and nation building. Sophisticated yet accessible, Unravelled Dreams is a magisterial must read.' Zara Anishanslin, author of Portrait of a Woman in Silk 'A deeply researched, felicitously written, probingly analytical examination of bright promise and repeated failure. Marsh's expansive account of raw silk cultivation illuminates subjects from trade to technology, empire to environment, silks to slavery, enriching while complicating our understanding of early modern European and American textile, consumption, and economic histories.' Robert S. DuPlessis, author of The Material Atlantic 'Rarely has a history of 'failure' been so skilfully evoked. Ben Marsh explores the western imperial hopes for silk production in the colonial Atlantic world - the stuff of competing politics, regional ecologies and assorted adventures. His sharp analyses reveal vital new perspectives, set within globally entangled material histories.' Beverly Lemire, author of Global Trade and the Transformation of Consumer Cultures

'Written with verve and wit, Marsh's strikingly original commodity study reshapes our understanding of the Atlantic World. Marsh masterfully employs both macro and micro history to detail the importance of silk making efforts - and its failures - to colony, empire, and nation building. Sophisticated yet accessible, Unravelled Dreams is a magisterial must read.' Zara Anishanslin, author of Portrait of a Woman in Silk 'A deeply researched, felicitously written, probingly analytical examination of bright promise and repeated failure. Marsh's expansive account of raw silk cultivation illuminates subjects from trade to technology, empire to environment, silks to slavery, enriching while complicating our understanding of early modern European and American textile, consumption, and economic histories.' Robert S. DuPlessis, author of The Material Atlantic 'Rarely has a history of 'failure' been so skilfully evoked. Ben Marsh explores the western imperial hopes for silk production in the colonial Atlantic world - the stuff of competing politics, regional ecologies and assorted adventures. His sharp analyses reveal vital new perspectives, set within globally entangled material histories.' Beverly Lemire, author of Global Trade and the Transformation of Consumer Cultures '... a much-needed counterbalance to triumphalist tales of innovative success and unsettling easy assumptions of inevitable technological progress ... This excellent book relies on meticulous research spanning an unusually wide range of times, places and cultures ... Beautifully produced with lavish colour illustrations, Unravelled Dreams ... reveals a substantial facet of imperial history that has previously been neglected.' Patricia Fara, The British Journal for the History of Science '... Unravelled Dreams recovers the causes and consequences of a forgotten history, highlights contemporaries' coping and compromising with contingencies, and, like all good books, inspires the readers to think and explore more into the story.' Dan Du, Enterprise & Society

'Written with verve and wit, Marsh's strikingly original commodity study reshapes our understanding of the Atlantic World. Marsh masterfully employs both macro and micro history to detail the importance of silk making efforts – and its failures – to colony, empire, and nation building. Sophisticated yet accessible, Unravelled Dreams is a magisterial must read.' Zara Anishanslin, author of Portrait of a Woman in Silk 'A deeply researched, felicitously written, probingly analytical examination of bright promise and repeated failure. Marsh's expansive account of raw silk cultivation illuminates subjects from trade to technology, empire to environment, silks to slavery, enriching while complicating our understanding of early modern European and American textile, consumption, and economic histories.' Robert S. DuPlessis, author of The Material Atlantic 'Rarely has a history of 'failure' been so skilfully evoked. Ben Marsh explores the western imperial hopes for silk production in the colonial Atlantic world – the stuff of competing politics, regional ecologies and assorted adventures. His sharp analyses reveal vital new perspectives, set within globally entangled material histories.' Beverly Lemire, author of Global Trade and the Transformation of Consumer Cultures '… a much-needed counterbalance to triumphalist tales of innovative success and unsettling easy assumptions of inevitable technological progress … This excellent book relies on meticulous research spanning an unusually wide range of times, places and cultures … Beautifully produced with lavish colour illustrations, Unravelled Dreams … reveals a substantial facet of imperial history that has previously been neglected.' Patricia Fara, The British Journal for the History of Science '… Unravelled Dreams recovers the causes and consequences of a forgotten history, highlights contemporaries' coping and compromising with contingencies, and, like all good books, inspires the readers to think and explore more into the story.' Dan Du, Enterprise & Society '… a titanic work … [a] masterpiece.' José María Luque Pecci, EH.net (Economic History Association)

Author Information

Ben Marsh is Reader in History at the University of Kent, Canterbury. He is the author of the award-winning Georgia's Frontier Women: Female Fortunes in a Southern Colony (2007) and Understanding and Teaching the Age of Revolutions (2017), and has published widely on early and revolutionary American history. His research on silk has featured in several exhibitions, including Enlightened Princesses: Britain and Europe, 1700-1820 (Yale Center for British Art and Historical Royal Palaces, 2017), and won the UK Textile Society's Natalie Rothstein Memorial Prize (2013).

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