Refashioning Patriotic Display in Britain and America: Rebellion, nationhood, and sartorial culture, c. 1745–1825

The long eighteenth century was a period in which the material landscape of everyday life became increasingly shaped by commercial enterprise and ideologies of economic nationalism. Manufacturers and consumers of sartorial culture – namely dress, fashionable accessories, and domestic décor – were navigating a burgeoning marketplace of topical goods, in which commodity choice weighed heavily upon the construction of an individual’s personal, patriotic identity. Dressing one’s body and home to communicate support for the political concerns of the day became commonplace in the British Atlantic region, with objects as disparate as furnishing fabrics, decorative fans, jewellery and household ceramics being used as sites of national feeling and collective memory.Historians have long since accepted that dress was employed as both popular protest and patriotic display during periods of political upheaval, most notably by contemporaries of the French Revolution. However, what is less understood is how cultures of sartorial resistance helped shape the patriotic landscapes of post-rebellion societies – a process here termed ‘patriotic refashioning’. Composed of two contrasting case studies, this thesis examines the impact of the manufacture and consumption of patriotic commodities during periods of contested nationhood in the British Atlantic region, focussing on the last unsuccessful attempt by Jacobites in Britain to reinstate the exiled House of Stuart to the throne (c. 1745–6) and the triumph of American Republicanism through the War of Independence (c. 1775–83).In order to explore the lived experience of manufacturers and consumers acting at the apex of revolutionary change, this thesis employs an interdisciplinary approach to the study of ‘patriotic refashioning’ in long-eighteenth-century Britain and America. By performing a cross-examination of documentary, visual, and material evidence – sourced from museum, gallery, and library collections across the United Kingdom and the United States of America – this thesis argues that patriotic commodities produced at times of national crisis significantly shaped both the patriotic display cultures of post-rebellion societies and contributed towards the material memory of civil conflict into the early nineteenth century