“A Rose or a Tooth: Rent and the Political Economy of New York’s Manors”

A colloq with BJ Lillis (OI Postdoctoral Fellow)
Please note that all colloquia papers are pre-circulated. Please register via the link below to receive a copy.

Taking its title from a 1741 satire of New York’s manors that lampooned non-monetary rent, like the “four fat hens” many landlords demanded of tenants, “A Rose or a Tooth” traces the rapid growth of two major Hudson Valley estates from the 1730s through the 1750s. Lillis shows that manor rents were an almost insignificant part of landlords’ overall income, but represented a serious burden on most tenants. The combination of manorial property relations and landlords’ investment in slavery and the slave trade shaped a rural political economy characterized by hierarchy and inequality.

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BJ Lillis is an early American historian specializing in the intersections between Indigenous history, Atlantic slavery, and settler-colonial political economy. They received their Ph.D from Princeton University in 2024. Their project A Valley Between Worlds: Slavery, Dispossession, and the Creation of a Settler-Colonial Society in the Hudson Valley, 1674-1766, is a history of colonial New York’s manors and large estates that explores the contested relationship between land, labor, and property. Before graduate school, BJ worked in public history at the Museum of the City of New York. They are also known for their acclaimed collaborations with the artist Lissa Rivera, Beautiful Boy and The Silence of Spaces, exploring the history and performance of gender.