Defoe’s Historical Vision: Commerce and Gentility in the 1720s

Abstract

However much Defoe disapproved of improvident spending on luxuries and any premature pretence to gentility on the part of tradesmen, he did not wish to deny the historical reality of social mobility. Families and nations might be swept to greatness by the tides of commerce but they might also be waylaid in its concomitant pools and eddies of luxury. When decline was apparent, he sought to understand its causes and correct them. If emulative consumption could ruin a young tradesman, self-justifying extravagance might sink an ancient family into debt and obscurity. When, however, pre-eminence or advance were deserved, he celebrated them. Defoe’s highly successful, three-volume Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain reveals the delight he took in surveying the economic and social success achieved by early-modern captains of finance and industry — the handsome villas they built along the Thames, the estates they rescued from decay, the social, political, and marital alliances they made with the gentry and nobility. Social mobility, however, did not mean social revolution. Although Defoe believed that merit should be recognized and even rewarded, he was not trying to eliminate the gradation of rank.