What do you think?
Rate this book
Clothing: A Global History
In virtually all the countries of the world, men, and to a lesser extent women, are today dressed in very similar clothing. This book gives a compelling account and analysis of the process by which this has come about. At the same time it takes seriously those places where, for whatever reason, this process has not occurred, or has been reversed, and provides explanations for these developments.
The first part of this story recounts how the cultural, political and economic power of Europe and, from the later nineteenth century North America, has provided an impetus for the adoption of whatever was at that time standard Western dress. Set against this, Robert Ross shows how the adoption of European style dress, or its rejection, has always been a political act, performed most frequently in order to claim equality with colonial masters, more often a male option, or to stress distinction from them, which women, perhaps under male duress, more frequently did.
The book takes a refreshing global perspective to its subject, with all continents and many countries being discussed. It investigates not merely the symbolic and message-bearing aspects of clothing, but also practical matters of production and, equally importantly, distribution.
The first part of this story recounts how the cultural, political and economic power of Europe and, from the later nineteenth century North America, has provided an impetus for the adoption of whatever was at that time standard Western dress. Set against this, Robert Ross shows how the adoption of European style dress, or its rejection, has always been a political act, performed most frequently in order to claim equality with colonial masters, more often a male option, or to stress distinction from them, which women, perhaps under male duress, more frequently did.
The book takes a refreshing global perspective to its subject, with all continents and many countries being discussed. It investigates not merely the symbolic and message-bearing aspects of clothing, but also practical matters of production and, equally importantly, distribution.
- GenresHistoryFashionNonfiction
359 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
4 people are currently reading
58 people want to read
About the author
Robert Ross
15 books2 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Robert Ross is a British historian, a Professor Emeritus in African Studies at the Leiden University Institute for History.
He earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1974 on the history of the Griquas in central South Africa. His special interest is South-African history.
Robert Ross is a British historian, a Professor Emeritus in African Studies at the Leiden University Institute for History.
He earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1974 on the history of the Griquas in central South Africa. His special interest is South-African history.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 11, 2017
When we think of globalisation or the industrial revolution, we generally think of supply-led, 'producer capitalism': consumerism and its attendant dynamics of fashion and cyclical class differentiation only come to the fore in the second half of the XIXth century. Yet a closer look at economic history is quick to reveal the centrality that textile - and by extension, dress - has played in the development of modern production technology and economic patterns: the jacquard loom was among the first forms of 'automated' production, silk and cotton greatly spurred the various imperial projects of Europe, while wool carding and leather tanning, as early as the middle-ages, prefigured in many regards the modern division of labour. Fashion, which after James Laver is generally seen to arise at the height of the European Renaissance, constituted beyond doubt a motor of economic modernity.
I personally suspect that the overly neat separation between a fashion-less pre-modern era and a status-obsessed, fickle modern one, is too romantic to be credible - the distinction between ritual decay and fashionable innovation is in need to be deconstructed, but more on that another time... Ross' book in fact deals very little, if at all, with the macro-economics of the textile industry, which is all the more surprising given his book focuses on dress (clothing, in his jargon) and globalisation. Instead he takes a largely cultural angle and explore the evolution of dress, thematically and geographically, from the beginning of colonisation until today.
The book starts with a look at the ever fascinating subject of sumptuary laws - the eternal attempt at regulating consumption in general, and dress in particular. The practice is omnipresent in the earliest codes of law of the ancient world, and its failures just as frequently attested by modern historians. The demands of the market for permanent renewal, and those of the social order for stasis and discipline, seem to formulate a contradiction constitutive of society as such, belonging maybe more closely to anthropology than to history. Anthropology is however largely absent of Ross' book, who then move on to an overview of Western fashion, incomplete but efficacious for his true purpose, which is to explore the reception of Western clothing in the colonial context. This he does area by area, with particular emphasis on Africa (he teaches African history) but also on East Asia, South America and Japan. Australia, South Asia and the Middle-East feature for specific case studies, but Russia beyond the reforms of Peter I, or the Maghreb, or less 'eastern' but well defined areas like Scandinavia, for example, are largely ignored. This springs no doubt from conventions in the genre of 'global history' that emphasise, maybe rightly, non-western cultures at the expense of the 'liminally western' ones.
Ross moves on to look at the sometimes contradictory sartorial projects advanced by those seeking a workforce in the colonies, those seeking a market, and the missionaries, often at odds with the rest of the process, in their attempt to bridge with religion and life-style the 'uncanny valley' of colonial exploitation that the others were all to keen to maintain. Thus by the end of the XIXth century, the changing program of British imperialism for example increasingly attempted to forbid western dress to the natives, so as to emphasise the (hierarchical) difference between them and the colons, whose style of dress, in turn, became increasingly ossified and formal despite the rigour of the climate. At this stage the adoption of Western dress was a somewhat subversive decision, demanding equal recognition to that given to the white man. But soon enough, as images of the liberation from the colonial yoke moved from Restoration of past orders onto a new nationalist agenda, the need to 'invent traditions' that could homogenize the necessarily diverse costume of the local tribes made itself felt. From there on, the dilemma between modern, western dress and 'traditional' (yet frequently unhistorical) fokloric costume gave birth to a variety of hybrids, from the modern saree to the batik shirts of Mandela, which Ross makes a great job to list and to explain, if not always to illustrate.
As this is my professional field, although I am not reading into it as much as I should, I follow closely enough the publications in the field of dress history: despite a growing number of area-specific studies of colonial and post-colonial fashion, this is to my knowledge the only one with a truly global scope. Ross book is 'theory light' - there is no deep questions on the nature of fashion in and out of capitalism, and Ross seems to find it a necessary concession to individual freedom. The book is in fact largely a compilation of articles and books, but as such it works extremely well, and gives to the lay-man in dress and global history alike, a great and highly enjoyable overview of the fascinating and resilient diversity of modern dress.
If anything, more than the economics of the phenomenon, I regret Ross did not explore the 'mirror image' of cultural imperialism, namely, the western appropriation of non-western dress. The issues of 'cultural appropriation' have a high visibility today, and are problematic in so many ways, but simultaneously they have been a constant of history, and indeed predate imperialism however you might want to define that. From Diderot in his banyan to the maoist Left the use of 'Other' style has been central to the discursive articulation of subversion. Recognising this would then allow for the analysis of how and how much such identification with the 'others' was in turn acknowledged, and sometimes appropriated by non-western cultures, in a pizza effect which I find to be central to any reflexive understanding of globalisation.
I personally suspect that the overly neat separation between a fashion-less pre-modern era and a status-obsessed, fickle modern one, is too romantic to be credible - the distinction between ritual decay and fashionable innovation is in need to be deconstructed, but more on that another time... Ross' book in fact deals very little, if at all, with the macro-economics of the textile industry, which is all the more surprising given his book focuses on dress (clothing, in his jargon) and globalisation. Instead he takes a largely cultural angle and explore the evolution of dress, thematically and geographically, from the beginning of colonisation until today.
The book starts with a look at the ever fascinating subject of sumptuary laws - the eternal attempt at regulating consumption in general, and dress in particular. The practice is omnipresent in the earliest codes of law of the ancient world, and its failures just as frequently attested by modern historians. The demands of the market for permanent renewal, and those of the social order for stasis and discipline, seem to formulate a contradiction constitutive of society as such, belonging maybe more closely to anthropology than to history. Anthropology is however largely absent of Ross' book, who then move on to an overview of Western fashion, incomplete but efficacious for his true purpose, which is to explore the reception of Western clothing in the colonial context. This he does area by area, with particular emphasis on Africa (he teaches African history) but also on East Asia, South America and Japan. Australia, South Asia and the Middle-East feature for specific case studies, but Russia beyond the reforms of Peter I, or the Maghreb, or less 'eastern' but well defined areas like Scandinavia, for example, are largely ignored. This springs no doubt from conventions in the genre of 'global history' that emphasise, maybe rightly, non-western cultures at the expense of the 'liminally western' ones.
Ross moves on to look at the sometimes contradictory sartorial projects advanced by those seeking a workforce in the colonies, those seeking a market, and the missionaries, often at odds with the rest of the process, in their attempt to bridge with religion and life-style the 'uncanny valley' of colonial exploitation that the others were all to keen to maintain. Thus by the end of the XIXth century, the changing program of British imperialism for example increasingly attempted to forbid western dress to the natives, so as to emphasise the (hierarchical) difference between them and the colons, whose style of dress, in turn, became increasingly ossified and formal despite the rigour of the climate. At this stage the adoption of Western dress was a somewhat subversive decision, demanding equal recognition to that given to the white man. But soon enough, as images of the liberation from the colonial yoke moved from Restoration of past orders onto a new nationalist agenda, the need to 'invent traditions' that could homogenize the necessarily diverse costume of the local tribes made itself felt. From there on, the dilemma between modern, western dress and 'traditional' (yet frequently unhistorical) fokloric costume gave birth to a variety of hybrids, from the modern saree to the batik shirts of Mandela, which Ross makes a great job to list and to explain, if not always to illustrate.
As this is my professional field, although I am not reading into it as much as I should, I follow closely enough the publications in the field of dress history: despite a growing number of area-specific studies of colonial and post-colonial fashion, this is to my knowledge the only one with a truly global scope. Ross book is 'theory light' - there is no deep questions on the nature of fashion in and out of capitalism, and Ross seems to find it a necessary concession to individual freedom. The book is in fact largely a compilation of articles and books, but as such it works extremely well, and gives to the lay-man in dress and global history alike, a great and highly enjoyable overview of the fascinating and resilient diversity of modern dress.
If anything, more than the economics of the phenomenon, I regret Ross did not explore the 'mirror image' of cultural imperialism, namely, the western appropriation of non-western dress. The issues of 'cultural appropriation' have a high visibility today, and are problematic in so many ways, but simultaneously they have been a constant of history, and indeed predate imperialism however you might want to define that. From Diderot in his banyan to the maoist Left the use of 'Other' style has been central to the discursive articulation of subversion. Recognising this would then allow for the analysis of how and how much such identification with the 'others' was in turn acknowledged, and sometimes appropriated by non-western cultures, in a pizza effect which I find to be central to any reflexive understanding of globalisation.
July 24, 2011
Clothes are, in many cases and contexts, a taken for granted – I teach in a sports studies/science programme never having owned a track suit seem out-of-place (not having owned one being a sign of a certain non-sportiness). This taken-for-grantedness is most obvious when clothing becomes an issue – such as in cases of subcultural style, school student resistance against uniforms (a modern form of sumptuary law), or dress-down Friday (as we used to do in the government Ministry I once worked in – but kept a suit in the closet just in case we got called to the Minister’s office). Yet we don’t need to look far as we travel to see that clothing around the world seems uniform, consistent, standard, or whatever else we want to call it: basically, folks all over dress the same.
Robert Ross’s Clothing is an excellent instance of broad sweep synthetic history that attempts to make sense of how and why this came into being. His approach is inclusive, but concentrates on two major developments between the 16th and early 21st centuries. In the first, he explores the spread of European clothing styles and forms, while in the second he explores the uneven adoption and take up of those styles centred on the paradoxical tension between European clothes as a marker of individual modernity and ‘indigenous’ clothing (through actual or invented traditions) as a marker of nationalism (and therefore of collective modernity). He is aware of and able to present the subtle ways that individuals and groups negotiate new and adjusted sartorial rules, and of the awful gaffes that may result, of the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that clothes mark gender and ambiguity or paradox – consider the case of men who dress in western clothes to depict themselves as modern, but insist that women under their control/influence retain ‘traditional’ dress as a way to protect their individual and collective cultural purity. This, he notes, is only one of many strands in the complex contemporary debates over Muslim women’s dress. He also has a good sense of the arbitrary aspects of sartorial rules: before the emergence of the Chinese Republic in 1919 many local dress codes in effect had the women wearing trousers, and men skirts – with the effect that the ‘traditional’ dress of Chinese women, the qipao, may be seen as an early 20th century attempt to emulate men’s clothing.
In all, however, this is a case for the importance of the ordinary and the banal. He is critical of elements of the discussions of colonial mimicry and the politics of rejection as emphasising the exotic, failing to treat those who emulate (by, for instance, wearing European clothing) with respect and the benefit of free will (as he calls it), and failing to recognise the subtle ways that globalisation works. It is not that he rejects the usefulness of these discussions of mimicry, but that they are not the whole story. All in all, a rich and sophisticated empirically grounded exploration. My principle gripe being that there is not enough about the economics of production, distribution and exchange: the one good chapter that does this centres on the 19th century, with some seepage into the early 20th. More would have been helpful, have enriched the text, and made it a little more useful as a teaching tool with students beyond those in cultural and imperial histories.
Robert Ross’s Clothing is an excellent instance of broad sweep synthetic history that attempts to make sense of how and why this came into being. His approach is inclusive, but concentrates on two major developments between the 16th and early 21st centuries. In the first, he explores the spread of European clothing styles and forms, while in the second he explores the uneven adoption and take up of those styles centred on the paradoxical tension between European clothes as a marker of individual modernity and ‘indigenous’ clothing (through actual or invented traditions) as a marker of nationalism (and therefore of collective modernity). He is aware of and able to present the subtle ways that individuals and groups negotiate new and adjusted sartorial rules, and of the awful gaffes that may result, of the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that clothes mark gender and ambiguity or paradox – consider the case of men who dress in western clothes to depict themselves as modern, but insist that women under their control/influence retain ‘traditional’ dress as a way to protect their individual and collective cultural purity. This, he notes, is only one of many strands in the complex contemporary debates over Muslim women’s dress. He also has a good sense of the arbitrary aspects of sartorial rules: before the emergence of the Chinese Republic in 1919 many local dress codes in effect had the women wearing trousers, and men skirts – with the effect that the ‘traditional’ dress of Chinese women, the qipao, may be seen as an early 20th century attempt to emulate men’s clothing.
In all, however, this is a case for the importance of the ordinary and the banal. He is critical of elements of the discussions of colonial mimicry and the politics of rejection as emphasising the exotic, failing to treat those who emulate (by, for instance, wearing European clothing) with respect and the benefit of free will (as he calls it), and failing to recognise the subtle ways that globalisation works. It is not that he rejects the usefulness of these discussions of mimicry, but that they are not the whole story. All in all, a rich and sophisticated empirically grounded exploration. My principle gripe being that there is not enough about the economics of production, distribution and exchange: the one good chapter that does this centres on the 19th century, with some seepage into the early 20th. More would have been helpful, have enriched the text, and made it a little more useful as a teaching tool with students beyond those in cultural and imperial histories.
November 8, 2012
I found this really difficult to get into, so I ended up only reading parts of immediate relevance to my research and barely skimming the rest. Might try again someday.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews