‘Crowded with traders and a great commerce: London’s domination of english overseas trade, 1700-1775

London Journal

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 1992, Pages 27-35

  French, Christopher J ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY; DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE; ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT; EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; LEDGER DATA; OVERSEAS TRADE; SHIPPING TRADE; TRADING NETWORK;

UK, ENGLAND, LONDON;

EID: 0027038296     PISSN: 03058034     EISSN: 17496322     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/ldn.1992.17.1.27     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas. I. The old colonial system, 1688-1850’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 41 (1986), 519.
2. For a closer analysis of the interaction between foreign trade and England’s industrial revolution see W. E. Minchinton, The Growth of English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1969), 36-52
3. C. P. Kindleberger, ‘Commercial expansion and the industrial revolution’, Journal of European Econ. Hist. 4 (1975), 613-54
4. R. Davis, The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade (Leicester, 1979)
5. F. Crouzet, ‘Toward an export economy: British exports during the industrial revolution’, Explorations in Economic History, 17 (1980), 84-92
6. J. M. Price, ‘What did merchants do? Reflections on British overseas trade, 1660-1790’, Journal of Econ. Hist., 61(1989), 267-84
7. J. M. Price, ‘Colonial trade and British economic development, 1660-1775’, Lex Et Scientia 14 (1978), 106-26
8. R. P. Thomas, ‘Overseas trade and empire 1700-1860’, in R. Floud and D. McCloskey, eds., The Economic History of Britain Since 1700. Volume 1:1700-1860 (Cambridge, 1981), 99-102.
9. For the influence of London (including her commercial growth) on the early stages of England’s industrial revolution see E. A. Wrigley, ‘A simple model of London’s importance in changing English society and economy 1650-1750’, Past and Present, 37 (1967), 44-70
10. P. J. Corfield, The Impact of English Towns 1700-1800 (Oxford, 1982), ch. 5.
11. In Public Record Office, Kew, under Customs 3, and covering the years 1696 to 1780; Volumes for 1705 and 1712 are missing. For complete statistics of trade between London and all areas of the world between 1699 and 1776
12. C. J. French, ‘The Trade and Shipping of the Port of London, 1700-1776’, Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Exeter (1980), Appendix III.
13. J. J. McCusker and R. Menard, The Economy of British America 1607-1789 (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1985), 73 n. 4.
14. N. Williams, ‘The London Port Books’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 18 (1955), 13, and n. 2.
15. Foreign goods re-exported ‘out of time’ were shipped too late to qualify for the drawback of duties paid on importation, hence their high value. Distinguishing between commodities carried in English vessels, and those carried in foreign vessels.
16. For detailed discussions of these records see G. N. Clark, Guide to English Commercial Statistics, 1696-1782 (Royal Historical Society, 1938), 1-42
17. W. E. Minchinton and C. J. French, Introduction to microform edn. of Customs 3 1696-1780 in the Public Record Office, London (EP Microform Limited, 1974), 1-33
18. T. S. Ashton, Introduction, in Elizabeth B. Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics, 1697-1808 (Oxford, 1960), 1-14.
19. Possibly after discussions with leading merchants: see Clark, Guide, 10. For the calculations involved see French, ‘Trade and Shipping’, Appendix I, Tables (a) to (f).
20. For a revaluation of English imports before 1772 taking such charges into account see P. Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth, 1688-1959: Trends and Structure (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1967), 318-22.
21. Introduction, 8. For an attempt to revalue English exports at current prices see J. J. McCusker, ‘The current value of English exports, 1697-1800’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 28 (1971), 607-28.
22. E.g. in their chapter on the eighteenth century, Deane and Cole revalued England’s trade at 1796-98 prices, and compared the results with England’s trade at official values. They were able to conclude that ‘the comparison does suggest that we are justified in regarding the official values as a rough index of secular changes in the volume of trade’: Deane and Cole, British Economic Growth, 43-4, and appendix I. Similarly, one contemporary argued that ‘(I)t is unnecessary to remark, that the value of the imports and exports, which was calculated from the Custom-House accounts, is not perfectly exact, owing to well- known causes; but they are allowed to be sufficiently accurate to answer in general the important purpose of comparison between distant periods, and of contrast between different countries’: John Holroyd, Lord Sheffield, Observations on the Commerce of the American States (1784; reprinted New York, 1970), 223-4.
23. For other problems encountered when using the Ledgers (e.g. the recording of bullion movements, and smuggling) see the references cited in note 8 above.
24. E.g. in the references by Minchinton, Deane and Cole, McCusker, and Ashton already cited.
25. C. Capper, The Port and Trade of London (1865), chapters 1 and 2
26. H. J. Dyos and D. H. Aldcroft, British Transport (Leicester, 1969), 44
27. R. C. Jarvis, ‘The metamorphosis of the port of London’, The London Journal, 3 (1977), 55-72
28. L. J. Bradley, The London/Bristol Trade Rivalry: Conventional History, and the Colonial Office 5 Records for the Port of New York Ph.D. Thesis, University of Notre Dame, 1971
29. Published by University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1973), chapter 1. This latter reference examines the many factors - geographic, economic and political - that led to London’s dominance in England’s foreign trade.
30. Quoted in Sir Leslie Ford, ‘The development of the port of London’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts (Nov. 1959), 823. This paper gives a brief account of the history of the port over the last 2,000 years.
31. Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1962 edn.), 347.
32. For example in the work of E. E. Hoon, The Organisation of the English Customs System 1696-1786 (reprinted Newton Abbot, 1968), chapter 4
33. R. B. Westerfield, Middlemen in English Business (reprinted Newton Abbot,1969), 416-19
34. G. Rudé, Hanoverian London (1971), 64-7.
35. F. J. Fisher, ‘London’s export trade in the early seventeenth century’, in Minchinton, The Growth of English Overseas Trade, 65.
36. T. S. Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade Manchester, 1959, 66.
37. R. Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (reprinted Newton Abbot, 1972), 34.
38. A. P. Usher, ‘The growth of English shipping 1572-1922’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 64 (1927-28), 471.
39. Calculated from the trade totals given in Table I. In 1772/74, London accounted for 68 per cent of total English trade (imports, exports and re-exports). One statistician, however, Sir Charles Whitworth, was still quoting the proportion of three-quarters as late as 1777: see Clark, Guide, 44.
40. T. S. Ashton, Economic Fluctuations in England 1700-1800 (Oxford, 1959), 60-1
41. J. H. Parry, Trade and Dominion: European Overseas Empires in the Eighteenth Century (1974), 163.
42. Bullion exports from London to Germany, for example, were 5246,053 in 1758 5230,458 in 1759; and 5167,211 in 1760.
43. These were the only years when London’s exports of coin and bullion to Germany exceeded 5100,000. They have not been included in London’s exports totals, but such payments would have increased demand for English exports.
44. Thus the value of London’s exports to Germany rose from 5349,766 in 1757, to 5563,292 in 1758, 5614,751 in 1759, 5509,773 in 1760 and 5707,787 in 1761: PRO Customs 3/57-61.
45. From 575,000 in 1700 to 948,040 in 1800: Corfield, Impact of English Towns, 8.
46. The number of sugar refineries in London, for example, increased from 45 in 1700 to a peak of 159 in 1766: J. J. McCusker, The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1650-1775 (Ph.D Thesis, Pittsburgh University, 1970; published by University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, 1970), 42-3.
47. D. C. Coleman, The Economy of England 1450-1750 (Oxford, 1977), 140.
48. Price. What did merchants do? 276.
49. Price. What did merchants do? 277. This study also emphasises the importance of the Acts of Trade to the rapid growth of England’s colonial exports vis-a-vis her European exports (p. 274).
50. Calculated from P.R.O., Customs 3/3-5, 72-74.
51. C. J. French, ‘The Role of London in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1680-1776’, M.A. Thesis, University of Exeter (1970), 3-10, 67.
52. Anon. An Essay on the Increase and Decline of Trade in London and the Out-ports (London, 1749), 7.
53. On the development of Bristol see W. E. Minchinton, ‘Bristol - metropolis of the west in the eighteenth century’, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., 5th series, 4 (1954), 68-89
54. Liverpool, P. G. E. Clemens, ‘The rise of Liverpool, 1665-1750’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 34 (1976), 211-25.
55. For private traders’ attacks on the monopolistic companies see Capper, Port and Trade of London, 120-1. As late as the 1740s, however, one contemporary still blamed England’s trading problems on the restrictive practices of the London monopolies: Sir Matthew Decker, An Essay on the Causes of the Decline of the Foreign Trade (2nd edn., 1750), 40-54.
56. Anon., Essay on the Increase and Decline of Trade, 33, 34-5.
57. William Braund’s career and an account of his commercial activities
58. see L. S. Sutherland, A London Merchant, 1695-1774 (Oxford, 1933).
59. T. M. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, 1660-1783 (Cambridge, 1989), 65.
60. C. Wilson, Anglo-Dutch Commerce and Finance in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1941), 56-7.
61. Quoted in Anglo Dutch Commerce and Finance in the Eighteenth Century, 57.
62. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, 67.
63. For details see French, ‘Trade and Shipping’, 63.
64. H. S. K. Kent, War and Trade in Northern Seas: Anglo-Scandinavian Economic Relations in the midEighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1973), 56.
65. For details of London’s re-export trade see French, ‘Trade and Shipping’, ch. 4.
66. L. M. Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade 1660-1800 (Manchester, 1968), 87.
67. During periods of war, Irish goods bound for London entered England through Chester and were then sent overland. For elaboration of this point and for London’s importance in Anglo-Irish trade see ‘Trade and Shipping’, 115, 131.
68. Westerfield, Middlemen in English Business, 424, T. S. Ashton, An Economic History of England: the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1955), 145.
69. This tendency, however, would have been partly offset by the desire of outport-owned vessels to use the convoy system operating out of London. This would especially be the case for vessels sailing to the colonies: Westerfield, Middlemen, 419 n. 4. For the organisation of the eighteenth-century convoy system
70. P. Crowhurst, The Defence of British Trade 1689-1815 (Folkstone, 1977), ch. 2.
71. Price. What did merchants do?’, 284.