"This book is about the 'Rag Fair' street market, which was situated in the Jewish quarter of early Victorian London. By recounting the market's history (1780-1850), I demonstrate that it was not only a place of economic exchange but also an intercultural contact zone where Jewish and Irish migrants and natives met and mingled. The main aim of my study is to reconstruct the varied group building processes at work in the Rag Fair, some of which cut across ethnic divides. To understand the social mechanisms behind these processes, I draw on approaches from fields as diverse as migration history, economic history, 'history from below', economic anthropology, and the sociology of social movements"--
In the early Victorian age, the streets of East London were home to migrants from different regions and religions. In the midst of this area lay the famous Rag Fair street market, sustained by trade routes stretching across the globe. The market’s history demonstrates that it was not only a place of economic exchange, but also an intercultural contact zone where Jewish and Irish migrants mingled, entered client relationships and forged political alliances. Reconstructing the varied (partly multiethnic) group-building processes operating in the market, Rag Fair draws on approaches across migration history, economic history, economic anthropology and the sociology of political movements to uncover the social mechanisms at work in the old clothing trade.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: London Without an Ethnic Lens
Part I: Day-to-Day Life in an Intercultural Contact Zone: On Dealing with
Uncertainty at the Rag Fair
Chapter
1. Collecting Rags and Being Jewish: On the Interplay between Urban
Folklore, Group Formation, and Social Inequality
Chapter
2. Transnational Lifestyles among Old Clothes: The Social Make-Up of
the Long-Distance Trade Corridors to the Rag Fair
Chapter
3. On the Advantages of Not Having to Belong: Or, the Significance
of Jewish Emancipation for the Rag Fairs Shopkeepers
Chapter
4. A Wild Contact Zone: On the Integrative Dynamic of High-Risk
Business
Part II: Integration through Conflict
Chapter
5. The Cutler Street Conflict: Group Formation in the Dispute over
the Old Clothes Market
Chapter
6. The Agreeable Feeling of Shared Outrage: An Integrative Movement
for Electoral Rights
Chapter
7. A Multireligious Neighbourhood Movement: Or, the Story of a
Productive Defeat
Conclusion: On the History and Social Dynamics of an Intercultural Contact
Zone
Bibliography
Index
Ole Münch is a research fellow for modern British history at the German Historical Institute London. He studied history and sociology in Göttingen and completed his doctorate at the University of Konstanz. In 2020, his dissertation was awarded the Wolfgang J. Mommsen Prize of the German Historical Institute London and the City of Konstanz Prize to Promote Early Career Researchers at the University of Konstanz.
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