Choose a commodity (beer,wine,guns,rum,watches,umbrellas,coffee,cotton,whiskey,potatoes,gloves,etc) and find sources that refer to it in an interesting and coherent way. Find at 6 such sources in each of 3 decades (not necessarily concurrent) between 1780 and 1920. These can range from books or articles that are entirely devoted to a discussion of the commodity to a brief passing reference. If you do find an entire book about the subject, you should isolate those parts of it that work in relation to the other sources you find. To get credit for the assignment you need to use at least three different electronic resources.
To receive full credit for this assignment, please hand in the following:
1) Evidence of the 18+ sources you found. This can either be in the form of a list of authors/titles/publication dates/page numbers, annotated to indicate where you found each one; printed copies (only include relevant passages if it�s from a larger volume); or pdf files, which you can hand in on a CD or transfer to my office computer from a flash drive.
2) A short 2 page account of what led you to pick the commodity you settled on, and what led you to narrow your topic down to something more specific: e.g., from sugar to beet sugar, or from board games to Parcheesi. This is what philosophers of science call the �context of discovery.�
3) A 2 page account of how you think these sources would enable you to write a successful research paper using them as your basis. Briefly outline the story you think you would be able to tell with this material, and how the decades you picked and the changes you identify would help you tell that story. This is what philosophers of science call the �context of justification��and, hopefully, it will insure against my missing what might appear to you to be an obviously cool set of sources.
Databases to use:
Google Books/Advanced Book Search: https://google.com/advanced_book_search This works just like Google, only it limits your search to millions of books that have been scanned from libraries around the world. You should definitely use this database. Be sure to limit your results by publication date and �full view only.�
Old Bailey Online (1673-1913): https://www.oldbaileyonline.org.
“A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.” Since commodities have a tendency to change hands illegally, you might be able to turn some interesting things up here (it�s full-text searchable).
Parliamentary Debates: https://hansard.millbanksystems.com/index.html
“This site has been produced from digitised editions of Commons and Lords Hansard, the Official Report of debates in Parliament. This was part of a project led by the Commons and Lords libraries.” This will be especially useful for debates concerning trade for imported goods.