A Bazaar Business

This opening chapter places women’s travel narratives of shopping in the marketplaces of Egypt, China, and Japan in context with early-nineteenth century developments in British commerce, in particular the Soho Bazaar and Regent Street. Drawing on historical evidence of women’s roles organising and patronising London ‘bazaars’, I theorise that narratives of shopping in actual Eastern bazaars are framed through a uniquely ‘female-capitalist gaze’ which performs a comparative evaluation of Western and Eastern trade practices. On this basis, I argue that female travellers’ accounts of visiting actual Eastern bazaars are not simply self-indulgent records of luxury or novelty consumption, but engagements with a mode of commerce that they, as women, felt entitled to critique. The second section applies this framework to travellers’ accounts of marketplaces across Egypt, China, and Japan. I argue that women’s representations of authentic Eastern bazaars and urban spaces are an attempt to illustrate the presumed universality of stadial-capitalist theory; however, as the century continues, strict adherence to a linear, Eurocentric view of progress is destabilised by the commercial and social realities observed across cultures.