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2020 | Book | 1. edition

Discovering a Global Perspective Read chapter Read first chapter

Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century

A Global Perspective

Editors: Jennifer Aston, Catherine Bishop

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Palgrave Studies in Economic History

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

"This volume challenges those who see gender inequalities invariably defining and constraining the lives of women. But it also broadens the conversation about the degree to which business is a gender-blind institution, owned and managed by entrepreneurs whose gender identities shape and reflect economic and cultural change." – Mary A. Yeager, Professor Emerita, University of California, Los Angeles

This is the first book to consider nineteenth-century businesswomen from a global perspective, moving beyond European and trans-Atlantic frameworks to include many other corners of the world. The women in these pages, who made money and business decisions for themselves rather than as employees, ran a wide variety of enterprises, from micro-businesses in the ‘grey market’ to large factories with international reach. They included publicans and farmers, midwives and property developers, milliners and plumbers, pirates and shopkeepers.

Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century: A Global Perspective rejects the notion that nineteenth-century women were restricted to the home. Despite a variety of legal and structural restrictions, they found ways to make important but largely unrecognised contributions to economies around the world - many in business. Their impact on the economy and the economy’s impact on them challenge gender historians to think more about business and business historians to think more about gender and create a global history that is inclusive of multiple perspectives.

Chapter one of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Open Access

Chapter 1. Discovering a Global Perspective
Abstract
Aston and Bishop introduce the first book to consider nineteenth-century businesswomen from a global perspective, moving beyond existing European and trans-Atlantic frameworks and discovering a global perspective. These businesswomen, who made money and business decisions for themselves rather than as employees, ran a variety of enterprises, from micro-businesses in the ‘grey market’ to large factories with international reach. They included publicans and farmers, midwives and property developers, milliners and plumbers, pirates and shopkeepers. Despite a variety of legal and structural restrictions, women in the long nineteenth century made important but largely unrecognised contributions to economies around the world, many of them in business. This volume encourages gender historians to think more about business and business historians to think more about gender.
Jennifer Aston, Catherine Bishop
PDF View full text
Chapter 2. ‘Se Mantiene de Lavar’: The Laundry Business in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Mexico City
Abstract
Francois draws on archival and contemporary published sources to investigate the women who worked as lavanderas, or laundresses, in Mexico City in the late Spanish colonial period and early national period. This chapter casts laundresses as entrepreneurs with diverse backgrounds who managed risk, investment and client relations in a capital city with a scarcity of water, a steady demand for clean clothes and linens, and secrets that only laundresses knew. Laundry was unregulated but similar in its business and skilled labour characteristics to sectors regulated in guilds. The laundering workplace was diffuse, spread across the city in public washhouses, private patios and rooftops, and institutions such as schools. Francois demonstrates that rather than being live-in servants, laundresses were independent businesswomen.
Marie Francois
Chapter 3. Investing in Enterprise: Women Entrepreneurs in Colonial ‘South Africa’
Abstract
Grietjie Verhoef sets out the first investigation into the business activities of women in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonial context of the Cape Colony. Women were active in entrepreneurial activities under Dutch rule. British colonial occupation changed the statutory environment of business operation, but women still performed active business roles, often without being the official owner of the enterprise. The actual activities of women identified are explained, as well as their traceable investments. The transition from gender-defined roles to active engagement in economic life is investigated, using the limited primary resources accessible. The invisible women enter a realm of action and strategy hitherto not disclosed in South African history.
Grietjie Verhoef
Chapter 4. A Mosaic of Entrepreneurship: Female Traders in Moscow, 1810s–1850s
Abstract
This chapter investigates female entrepreneurship in the retail trades of Moscow during the first half of the nineteenth century. In this period, Moscow was one of the biggest European cities and, with its province, was the most commercially developed region of Russia. Drawing on trade statistics and inventories from 1827, Ulianova provides a rich and detailed picture of a group of Moscow female shopkeepers. The combination of statistical and biographical approaches makes it possible to explore the structure and space of consumption and the social composition of female traders over the course of the period under consideration. Ulianova concludes that female entrepreneurship in retail was widespread and that the role played by businesswomen was modest but stable.
Galina Ulianova
Chapter 5. A Constant Presence: The Businesswomen of Paris, 1810–1880
Abstract
Contrary to what the historical literature has long claimed, French middle-class women did not withdraw into the parlour in the nineteenth century. Béatrice Craig’s research shows that a small but overall stable proportion of businesses (retail, trades and manufactures) listed in the Paris trade directories from 1810 to 1880 were run by women, who were neither ghettoised into ‘feminine’ trades nor concentrated into low-end ones. Most were married, operating independently of their husbands, and widows did not necessarily run businesses inherited from husbands. Contemporary articles of association corroborate this, further revealing that female and male partners were treated similarly in distribution of powers and profits. Craig’s chapter convincingly argues that in nineteenth-century Paris, a woman in business was an unsurprising occurrence.
Béatrice Craig
Chapter 6. The Gendered Nature of Atlantic World Marketplaces: Female Entrepreneurs in the Nineteenth-Century American Lowcountry
Abstract
Alisha M. Cromwell uses the case study of Mary Ann Cowper, Flora and Elsey to show how elite and enslaved women throughout the nineteenth-century Atlantic World profited from the gendered nature of the provincial food trade. Similar to their counterparts in West Africa, enslaved women throughout the American South engaged in business partnerships with their female owners, buying and selling goods on their own behalf. With the support of their mistresses, entrepreneurial women like Flora and Elsey developed relatively privileged positions, acculturated from African economic practices, enabling them to benefit from their own labour in local marketplaces. By shifting the analysis from rural plantations to urban environments, this chapter focuses on women as important contributors to the American economy.
Alisha M. Cromwell
Chapter 7. On Their Own in a ‘Man’s World’: Widows in Business in Colonial Australia and New Zealand
Abstract
Catherine Bishop examines the strategies used by nineteenth-century Australian and New Zealand widows. Widowhood was common, and not limited to the elderly, meaning that women had to find ways of making a living. Surprisingly, perhaps, remarriage was less common for widows than for widowers. Repatriation back to family and friends was one possibility for recent immigrants, but business was also a popular option, particularly as many women were already involved either in family enterprises or in their own businesses. Bishop outlines the variety of enterprises run by widows, illustrating the ubiquity of businesswomen in the colonial economy. They included Indigenous women and white settler women widowed in the colonies as well as several who migrated independently, upsetting our notions of male-headed migration.
Catherine Bishop
Chapter 8. In the Business of Piracy: Entrepreneurial Women Among Chinese Pirates in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Abstract
The success of Zheng Yi Sao, perhaps the most successful pirate chieftainess in history, shows that women in South China participated, sometimes prominently, in piracy. This chapter shows that women’s involvement in Chinese piracy continued after Zheng Yi Sao’s surrender in 1810. The British colonisation of Hong Kong and the opening of treaty ports to foreign trade in 1842 produced new opportunities for women and Chinese pirates. Through the case studies of Mrs Bigfoot, Ng Akew and Liu Laijiao, Kwan explores the interactions between women and Chinese pirates. The chapter argues that these women engaged in the business of piracy, profiting from association with pirates. Piracy provided entrepreneurial opportunities for women, marginalised by Chinese society, to advance and improve themselves in mid-nineteenth-century South China.
C. Nathan Kwan
Chapter 9. The Business of Self-Endowment: Women Merchants, Wealth and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Luanda
Abstract
This chapter explores the strategies that merchant women of mixed Portuguese and African origin used to protect their wealth in nineteenth-century Luanda, the capital of Portuguese Angola. Drawing upon marriage petitions, contracts of marriage and registers of dowry, this chapter shows that Luso-African women in Luanda, upon marriage with immigrant men, used the benefits Portuguese legal codes conferred upon them to protect assets they had amassed through inheritances and their own entrepreneurial activities. These urban women drew upon contracts of marriage and self-endowments to exempt their wealth from becoming part of the couple’s joint estate. Their literacy and socio-economic status brought benefits, including the knowledge of their rights as Portuguese subjects as well as the means to hire the lawyers who advised them.
Vanessa S. Oliveira
Chapter 10. More Than Just Penny Capitalists: The Range of Female Entrepreneurship in Mid-Nineteenth-Century US Cities
Abstract
Relying primarily on credit records, this chapter describes the wide range of female entrepreneurship in over 30 locations across the United States between 1840 and 1885, proving that women owned and managed businesses far larger than the expected microenterprises. Using records linkage with the census, city directories and newspaper articles, Susan Lewis demonstrates that in addition to businesswomen described as ‘worth 00’ or ‘just making a living’, were those characterised as ‘making money’, ‘the best in her line’, ‘good for all she will buy’ and even as capitalists. These proprietors include milliners and dressmakers, grocers, plus bakers and confectioners, owners of breweries and saloons, hotels and boarding houses, dealers in dry and fancy goods, trimmings, hair goods, newspapers, books, pianos and wallpaper.
Susan Ingalls Lewis
Chapter 11. Japanese Female Entrepreneurs: Women in Kyoto Businesses in Tokugawa Japan
Abstract
Using the population surveys of 30 neighbourhoods in Kyoto, Japan, between 1786 and 1869, together with other qualitative primary documents, this chapter argues that women in Kyoto were integral to the success and long-term continuity of a family business. Employed as skilled artisans and overseeing apprentices, women were expected to troubleshoot and fill in with any task needed to maintain a business. An important intergenerational role of women in business was to oversee the inheritance and succession process, and they played pivotal roles in connecting and developing business networks. The analysis includes women’s activities within a business and women as business owners or branch managers. The chapter also discusses property ownership and decisions regarding who was listed as head of household and business.
Mary Louise Nagata
Chapter 12. Female Entrepreneurship in England and Wales, 1851–1911
Abstract
The British Business Census of Entrepreneurs provides data on all employers and self-employed sole proprietors between 1851 and 1911. This chapter uses those data to provide the first whole-population study of female entrepreneurship in England and Wales during that period. It gives the aggregate totals of female business proprietors as well as the totals broken down by sector. It also considers the geography of female entrepreneurship and how age and marital status affected the probability of women running a business. The chapter shows that female entrepreneurship was more common in England and Wales than previous studies have suggested, but that, as with male entrepreneurship, a range of factors, including the labour market, demography and household structure, restricted their activities.
Carry van Lieshout, Harry Smith, Robert J. Bennett
Chapter 13. Skirting the Boundaries: Businesswomen in Colonial British Columbia, 1858–1914
Abstract
This chapter investigates how marriage and family affected the business behaviours of white settler women from the mid-nineteenth-century gold rush era to the beginning of World War I in British Columbia, Canada. Looking at census records, newspapers and business directories, the author demonstrates that marital status is integral to the story of female entrepreneurship. In the colony-turned-province, the gender imbalance and resulting high rates of marriage for women did not stop them from working but influenced the likelihood they would work on their own account rather than as employees. British Columbia provided particularly fertile ground for women to commercialise their domestic skills through entrepreneurial forms of work. Marriage and motherhood did not halt their participation in the labour force but increased their propensity for entrepreneurship.
Melanie Buddle
Chapter 14. Mirror, Bridge or Stone? Female Owners of Firms in Spain During the Second Half of the Long Nineteenth Century
Abstract
This chapter investigates the roles played by female partners in Spanish firms during the past decades of the long nineteenth century and how legal structures and business survival strategies affected the participation of women in firms. It uses data sets created from the Book of Firms of the Mercantile Register, which contains descriptions of founding owners of all registered firms from 1886. Hernández Nicolás and Martínez-Rodríguez statistically analyse the characteristics of female partners, finding that many of them were widows. They discuss the range of roles played by these women by dividing them into three metaphorical categories: mirror, stone or bridge.
Carmen María Hernández-Nicolás, Susana Martínez-Rodríguez
Chapter 15. Gendered Innovation: Female Patent Activity and Market Development in Brazil, 1876–1906
Abstract
Zimmerman offers one of the few examinations of female entrepreneurship and patent activity in nineteenth-century Brazil. Analysing patent applications and business contracts registered by women in Rio de Janeiro between 1876 and 1906, this chapter considers the role of gender and legal tradition in national plans for economic modernity. Although the Brazilian government enacted policies that encouraged female entrepreneurship and innovation, women faced strong social expectations to privilege their domestic responsibilities over any commercial obligation or interest. Comparing legal code and social prescription with female patent activity, Zimmerman calls into question traditional conclusions on the role of female property rights, business innovation and gender in Brazilian economic development.
Kari Zimmerman
Chapter 16. Not Such a ‘Bad Speculation’: Women, Cookbooks and Entrepreneurship in Late-Nineteenth-Century Australia
Abstract
The late nineteenth century saw the emergence of a distinct cookbook publishing industry in Australia. These books found their way into every Australian home and were aimed almost exclusively at women. The publishing industry relied on women authors and editors to create material to satisfy the increasing demand for these books. This chapter examines the work and lived experience of women cookbook authors in Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. For many of these authors, cookbook writing and publishing was an activity undertaken for profit and a way to promote their other entrepreneurial activities. These authors utilised their entrepreneurial skills and business acumen to further their careers and played a significant role in the development of the Australian publishing industry.
Blake Singley
Chapter 17. Nineteenth-Century Female Entrepreneurship in Turkey
Abstract
This chapter offers a state-of-the-art overview of historical research on women’s roles as business actors in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Muslim women in the late Ottoman Empire. Very few historical studies examine women’s roles in business in the Middle East. After explaining why this has been the case, the chapter presents a survey of the literature on women’s economic activities in the Ottoman Empire before the nineteenth century. This chapter also draws attention to the role of women as founders and managers of an Islamic institution, charitable endowment or waqf, and explores how this institution served as a form of social entrepreneurship, linking revenue-generating activities with the social needs. The chapter concludes with evidence on women’s business involvement during the long nineteenth century.
Seven Ağır
Chapter 18. African Women Farmers in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, 1875–1930: State Policies and Spiritual Vulnerabilities
Abstract
As whites consolidated political control over South Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the economies of rural African families transformed. Redding investigates how, with the exodus of men as migrant labourers to the gold mines, African women became entrepreneurial market farmers in the Eastern Cape region. However, Redding contends, the colonial state’s legal restrictions on women’s property rights drained women’s economic resources and redefined them as dependents of men and ‘subsistence’ farmers. In tandem, accusations of witchcraft against women, often from relations or neighbours, increased as women exercised more power over familial resources. The cumulative impact of legal restrictions and witchcraft accusations threatened African women’s status and their opportunities to engage in entrepreneurial market farming by the late 1920s.
Sean Redding
Chapter 19. Conclusion: Expanding the Horizon
Abstract
In this volume, we have started a global conversation. In coming together to discuss their individual perspectives on female business ownership in its many different forms, contributors have made the scholarly connections necessary to establish new global understandings of female entrepreneurship in the long nineteenth century. Here, we reflect on the central themes emerging from these chapters, evaluate the new historiographical landscape and identify future avenues of research.
Jennifer Aston, Catherine Bishop
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century
Editors
Jennifer Aston
Catherine Bishop
Copyright Year
2020
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN
978-3-030-33412-3
Print ISBN
978-3-030-33411-6
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33412-3