Sorry for the broad title, but here's the context:
I saw these photos of late 19th century Korea. The photo that was most striking to me was this one, a photo of a crowded restaurant in Seoul.
Perhaps it's just ignorance on my part, but I honestly hadn't even entertained the thought of restaurants being affordable for the vast majority of people until the 20th century, even worldwide. It just seems absurd imagining some Roman pleb turning to a friend and being like, "Yo, wanna go grab some lunch at Apollo's?" In my mind, this sounds like a uniquely modern and extraordinarily decadent scenario.
And given my ignorance, it's hard for me to narrow down this question to a specific era, so please forgive me: would marketplaces of the pre-industrialized world be analogous to modern malls and shops (restaurants, stores selling clothing, jewelry, furniture, etc.)? Did commoners go 'shopping' in the modern capitalist sense?
Thank you in advance.
(original post: http://redd.it/20ivve)
This is a great question! Those photos of Korea in the 19th century are incredible. Most of the people in those photos are actually either high-class yangban or middle-class chungin. The poor in places like Jeolla and Hamgyeong had it even worse. You have to remember, though, that under Joseon Dynasty Korea, the peninsula was amongst the poorest places in the world, and had been economically stagnant since the end of the Imjin Wars (1592-1598). Therefore the photos are not precisely representative of global economic prosperity at the time. The answer, in my opinion, is that yes, normal people could enjoy market luxuries prior to the 19th century, but this was not the case in every region during every time period. You mention the Romans and eating out, for example. In fact, the preserved ruins of pompey prove that there were restaurants all over the place, and archaeologists believe that ordinary Romans consumed hot meals there regularly.
In medieval Europe, alcohol was probably the most widely available luxury good (although some economists might argue that in fact alcohol was a necessity due to the dangerous nature of water at the time). Judith Bennet demonstrates in Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in Medieval England that ordinary people enjoyed low quality alcohol such as ale almost daily, and higher quality alcohol like wine more and more regularly as time progressed.
In China, ordinary people enjoyed tea regularly from the Tang dynasty (7th to 10th centuries CE) onwards, though amongst the elite the quality and variety of tea was much better. By the Tokugawa period (c. 16th century) , tea culture had also spread to Japan, and had been commonplace in Korea for a few centuries.
One really good microstudy of the world economy is Salt: A World History by Mark Kulansky. It made quite a splash when it came out, and is one of the few economic histories that I find particularly accessible to non-economists.
