Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America

From the 1720s to the mid-19th century, mahogany was the preeminent medium for conspicuous consumption on both sides of the Atlantic. Using a methodology similar to David Hancock’s in his study of Madeira in Oceans of Wine, Anderson (history, SUNY, Stony Brook) traces the rise and fall of mahogany in the colonial world. It was a commodity that dominated refined drawing rooms and was sought by Americans for use in everything “from cradles to coffins.” However, as Anderson’s superb study makes abundantly clear, the polished luster of these immaculate objects came from exploitative labor practices, ecological devastation, and phenomenal business failures, all of which attested to the commodity’s natural and human cost. Anderson also explores how changing cultural standards brought about the “democratization of mahogany” through the availability of veneered objects that middle-class blacks and whites could purchase, to the disdain of social elites.