"Under the direction of Professor John Brewer, the Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies and the Clark Library at UCLA have created an ambitious international programme to analyse the material culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through its patterns of consumption. Focus on this period allows consideration of a world in which economic and political connections are becoming global, in which an unprecedented range of goods and services are on offer, and in which the old political structures are first subverted and then radically modified. The Age of Enlightenment is transmuted into the first Age of Consumption." "The present volume, the first of three, is the result of a unique collaboration between twenty-six leading subject specialists from Europe and North America. The outcome is a new interpretation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that shapes a new historical landscape based on the consumption of goods and services."--Jacket.