Professor Jon Stobart

Telephone: 01604 892098
Email: jon.stobart@northampton.ac.uk

An historical geographer by training, much of my research has focused on the role of space in structuring historical processes and social practices, from industrialisation to shopping. After completing my doctoral research on early industrialisation in north-west England, I have held posts at Staffordshire and Coventry Universities before moving to my present post as Professor in History in 2005. I am a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban History and Local Population Studies; a member of the Council of the Northamptonshire Record Society, and am course leader for the MA in Social and Cultural History.

Research interests

My research ranges across the economic, social and cultural history of England in the long eighteenth century. I have worked on industrial, urban and regional development in the Midlands and north-west England, published as The First Industrial Region and Towns, Regions and Industries; the construction and articulation of social and business networks, and the geographies of leisure and retailing. The last of these involved research, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, on the inter-relationship between the spaces and social practices of polite leisure and shopping in provincial towns.
 
Currently, I am working on a number of related projects. One offers a detailed analysis of the changing world of the grocery trade in the period 1650-1850 as both retailers and consumers transformed their behaviour and attitudes in the face of a range of new exotic imports. A second examines the relationship between fashion, taste and second-hand circuits of exchange, seeking to challenge traditional notions that second-hand markets were based on economic necessity. A third, supported by a major research grant from the AHRC, explores 'Consumption and the country house, c.1730-1800'. Through detailed case studies of two Warwickshire country houses, this project seeks to link the identity, supply networks and consumption practices of the gentry.

Recent publications

Books

  

Articles and Book Chapters

  • 'An eighteenth century revolution? Urban growth in North West England, 1664-1801', Urban History, 23, 1 (1996)
  • 'Geography and industrialisation: the space economy of North West England, 1701-60', Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, 21, 4 (1996)
  • 'Shopping streets as social space: consumerism, improvement and leisure in an eighteenth century county town', Urban History, 25, 1 (1998)
  • 'Textile industries in NW England in the early eighteenth century: a geographical approach', Textile History, 29, 1 (1998)
  • 'In search of a leisure hierarchy: English spa towns in the urban system', in P. Borsay, G. Hirschfelder and R. Mohrmann (eds) New Directions in Urban History (Waxmann, 2000)
  • 'Social and geographical contexts of property transmission in the eighteenth century', in J. Stobart and A. Owens (eds) Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the town, 1700-1900 (Ashgate, 2000)
  • 'Regions, localities and industrialization: evidence from the east midlands, c. 1780-1830', Environment and Planning A, 33, 7 (2001)
  • 'Culture versus commerce: societies and spaces for elites in eighteenth-century Liverpool', Journal of Historical Geography, 28, 4 (2002)
  • 'County, town and country: three histories of urban development in eighteenth-century Chester', in P. Borsay and L. Proudfoot (eds), Change, convergence and divergence: Provincial towns in Early Modern England and Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2002)
  • 'City centre retailing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: structure and processes', in J. Benson and L. Ugolini (eds), A Nation of Shopkeepers: a history of retailing in Britain 1550-2000 (Tauris, 2003)
  • 'Identity, competition and place promotion in the Five Towns', Urban History, 30, 2 (2003), 163-82
  • 'Retailing revolution in the eighteenth century: evidence from north-west England', Business History, 46, 2 (2004)
  • 'Personal and commercial networks in an English port: Chester in the early eighteenth century', Journal of Historical Geography, 30, 2 (2004)
  • 'The economic and social worlds of rural craftsmen-retailers in eighteenth-century Cheshire', Agricultural History Review, 52, 2 (2004)
  • 'Building an urban identity. Cultural space and civic boosterism in a 'new' industrial town: Burslem, 1761-1911', Social History, 29, 4 (2004)
  • 'Networks and hinterlands: transport in the Midland', in J. Stobart and N. Raven (eds) Towns, regions and industries: urban and industrial change, 1700-1840 (Manche Manchester University Press, 2005) - with N. Raven
  • 'New towns of the industrial coalfields: Burslem and West Bromwich', in J. Stobart and N. Raven (eds) Towns, regions and industries: urban and industrial change, 1700-1840 (Manchester University Press, 2005) - with B. Trinder
  • 'A settled little society of trading people? The eighteenth-century retail community of an English county town', in B. Blondé and N. Coquery (eds) Retailers and consumers in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (University of Tours, 2005)
  • 'Sites of consumption: the display of goods in provincial shops in eighteenth century England', Cultural and Social History, 2, 2 (2005) - with A. Hann
  • 'Leisure and shopping in the small towns of Georgian England', Journal of Urban History, 31, 4 (2005)
  • 'Information, trust and reputation: shaping a merchant elite in early eighteenth century England', Scandinavian Journal of History 30, 3 (2005)
  • 'Clothes, cabinets and carriages: second-hand dealing in eighteenth-century England', in B. Blonde, P. Stabel, J. Stobart and I. Van Damme, (eds), Buyers and Sellers: Retail circuits and practices in medieval and early modern Europe (Brepols, 2006)
  • 'Rus et Urbe? The hinterland and landscape of Georgian Chester', in M. Palmer and P. Barnwell (eds), Post-Medieval Landscapes in Britain: Landscape History after Hoskins, Vol. 3 (Windgather Press, 2007)
  • 'Leisure, luxury and urban specialization in the eighteenth century', Urban History, 35, 2 (2008), 216-36 - with L.D. Schwarz
  • 'Accommodating the shop: the commercial use of domestic space in English provincial towns, c.1660-1740', Citta e Storia, 2 (2007)
  • 'Selling (through) politeness: advertising provincial shops in eighteenth-century England', Cultural and Social History, 5, 2 (2008)
  • Stobart, J. 'In and out of fashion? Advertising novel and second-hand goods in Georgian England', in B. Blonde, N. Coquery, J. Stobart & I. Van Damme (eds) Fashioning Old and New …. (Brepols, 2009)
  • Stobart, J. 'Spinning the web: networks of production in the Lancashire textiles industries during the eighteenth century', in S. King & D. Ebeling (eds) Paths to European Industrialisation (forthcoming, 2009)
  • Stobart, J. 'A settled little society?: networks, friendship and trust in eighteenth-century provincial England', in E. Baigent and R. Mayhew (eds) English geographies: historical essays on English customs, cultures, and communities in honour of Jack Langton (2009)
  • 'Achat pour les épiceries exotiques en mi-18ème-siècle Angleterre', Histoire Urbaine (forthcoming, 2009)

Teaching

  • History of Heritage
  • Eighteenth-century trade and commerce
  • Consumption and shopping in the eighteenth century
  • Household and material culture

PhD supervision

I am currently supervising five PhD projects, on: taste, material culture and shopkeepers in eighteenth-century Norwich; the consumption regimes of the Northamptonshire gentry (AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award); long term changes in local business networks and social capital; consumption and identity amongst Caribbean settlers in Northamptonshire (AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award), and community, heritage and identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

I would welcome enquiries about projects covering various aspects of social, cultural and economic history of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, particularly material culture and consumption, retail history, and social or business networking.

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