George Lillo's The London Merchant (1731) opens by extolling the virtues of honest merchants for contributing "to the safety of their country as they do at all times to its happiness." Such praise appearing in the popular forum of the playhouse reflects the emergence of a cultural hegemony that supported the exponential growth of commerce in the eighteenth century. Yet, even as writers propounded new social value systems that helped to legitimate the commercial gaze and the class of individuals coming to political power through commerce, proto-economists--Adam Smith most notably--were critiquing the interest-laden practice of merchant capitalism and reshaping economic theory around the ideal of free labor and trade markets.

This panel seeks to refocus our own vision of the commercial gaze in the eighteenth century. We invite papers that investigate how the lens of mercantilism helped writers to see the colonial world, national identity, and selfhood; and how perceptions of the commercial gaze and consumption evolved over the course of the century, particularly in relation to growing social concerns. We welcome proposals for this panel.

Please send electronic proposals (250 words) by November 9, 2005 to: m_adin@yahoo.com