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A Revolution of Scale in Overseas Trade: British Firms in the Chesapeake Trade, 1675–1775

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Jacob M. Price  and
Paul G. E. Clemens
Jacob M. Price
Affiliation:
Professor of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Paul G. E. Clemens
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University.
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Abstract

In seventeenth-century England the relatively open trades to America attracted ventures by hundreds of small merchants and shopkeepers. This ease of entry was checked after 1685 by very high customs duties on tobacco and intense regulation. Between 1685 and 1775 the number of firms in that trade was radically reduced and the size of the average firm increased ten to thirtyfold. Comparable if less extreme trends can be detected in the sugar, slave, and Levant trades. Insurance enabled large firms to use shipping more efficiently. The increased availability of credit also benefited larger and more secure firms.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 1 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1987

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References

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21 On the rise of the Scots, see Price, Jacob M., “The Rise of Glasgow in the Chesapeake Tobacco Trade, 1707–1775,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 11 (04 1954), pp. 177–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Devine, Thomas M., The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and their Trading Activities (Edinburgh, 1975).Google Scholar On the “cargo trade,” see Price, , “One Family's Empire,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 72 (Summer 1977), pp. 176–79, 185–89;Google ScholarPrice, , Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: the View from the Chesapeake, 1700–1776 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 127–36, 156–57;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Price, , “The Last Phase of the Virginia-London Consignment Trade: James Buchanan & Co.,1758–1768,” William and Mary Quarterly, 43 (01 1986), pp. 64–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 This was a normal practice for the Chesapeake merchant Thomas Starke when selling tobacco for export about 1700. See his accounts in PRO E.219/446. The phrase “on board” occurs regularly there and in contemporary printed prices-current. It was also a common practice for Joshua Johnson in the 1770s. On him, see Johnson's, JoshuaLetterbook, 1771–1774, Price, J. M., ed. London Record Society, 15 (London, 1979), introduction.Google Scholar

23 For example, Micajah Perry and Thomas Lane were partners in the firm of Perry & Lane from at least 1673 but in the 1676 port book appear as individuals making separate entries. Similarly John Cooper and John Harris appear there as unconnected individuals importing tobacco but were partners in a London firm owning a store in Virginia as of 1675. Bruce, Economic History, vol. 2, p. 384.Google Scholar On Perry & Lane, see Donnan, Elizabeth, “Eighteenth-Century English Merchants: Micajah Perry,” Journal of Economic and Business History, 4 (1933), pp. 70–98. The 1686 and later London port books are more regular in indicating partnerships: 23 are shown importing tobacco in 1686. If each of these firms, instead of entering under the name of the partnership, had made separate entries under the names of two different partners, total entrants for 1686 would have been increased by 7.9 percent.Google Scholar

24 This can be established by comparing the quantity entered with the duty levied.Google Scholar

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29 Price, Jacob M., “The Tobacco Trade and the Treasury, 1685–1733: British Mercantilism in its Fiscal Aspects” (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1954), pp. 2, 23–26, 792–96.Google Scholar

30 As in fn. 27.Google Scholar

31 Menard, Russell R., “Farm Prices of Maryland Tobacco, 1659–1710,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 68 (1973).Google Scholar

32 For example, in 1679 the Crowne Mallaga of London was entered at Cowes on February 20 and cleared outward on February 26; the Love of London entered on March 18 and cleared outward on March 26; the Richard and Elizabeth of London entered on May 8 and cleared outward on May 12, all for Rotterdam. PRO E.190/830/4.Google Scholar

33 See inventory of William Paggen in London Corporation Record Office, Orphans Court inventories, no. 2124. I am indebted to D.W. Jones of York for calling my attention to this inventory.Google Scholar

34 PRO E. 190/826/13. Cowes was a creek or subdivision of the Port of Southampton. This volume shows some modest entries of tobacco from Virginia at Southampton proper (not Cowes) in this year, but contains no export data.Google Scholar

35 PRO E. 190/827/2. There was then also a small Virginia tobacco trade at Southampton proper, but only one vessel entered there was involved in the transit trade: the William of Dover, which entered 45,835 pounds from Maryland and reloaded it immediately for Amsterdam.Google Scholar

36 PRO E. 190/830/4.Google Scholar

37 PRO E. 190/834/9.Google Scholar

38 PRO E. 190/838/7 (1696); E.190/839/10 (1697); E.190/843/9 (1701).Google Scholar

39 PRO E. 190/834/9.Google Scholar

40 BL Sloane MS. 1815 ff. 34–37 suggests a total English import of more than 28 million for the year ending Michaelmas 1686 and 27.6 million for the year ending Michaelmas 1687.Google Scholar

41 Paggens; Groomes; Wagstaifes; and Taylors.Google Scholar

42 Dryden (40.7 percent); Hiccockes (22 percent); Perry & Lane (15.9 percent); Phillips (15.2 percent).Google Scholar

43 Bayley (8 percent); Cary (4.5 percent); Starke (4 percent); North (1.9 percent).Google Scholar

44 It is also possible that Holland was a more attractive, low-tax market than London for manners and so encouraged larger than normal private ventures.Google Scholar

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46 For Amsterdam prices, see ibid., vol. 2, p. 852; for Chesapeake prices, see fn. 28.

47 Based on comparison of 1686 names with importers of tobacco exported in 1695 (PRO E.190/152) and a list of all tobacco bonds overdue in 1702 (PRO T.38/362). On these bonds, see Price, “The Tobacco Trade and the Treasury,” vol. 2, pp. 793–830; PRO T.1/76/54.Google Scholar

48 U.S. Historical Statistics, vol 2, p. 1190.Google Scholar

49 On the labor shortage, see Galenson, David, White Servitude in Colonial America (Cambridge, 1981), chap. 8, esp. p. 121;Google Scholar and Main, Tobacco Colony, chap. 3. For the continental competition, see Price, The Tobacco Adventure to Russia, pp. 870–90.Google Scholar

50 Price, “Tobacco Trade and the Treasury,” pp. 36–43, 820–23.Google Scholar

51 Price, , France and the Chesapeake, vol. 1, pp. 206–42.Google ScholarHoughton, John in his Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, no. 383 (24 11 1699) reports that 2,129,393 pounds of “bulk” tobacco were imported into the port of London in 1694–1695. This is much more than the 680,000 pounds we estimated for 1686 (see Appendix), but the rise in the price of tobacco after the start of the war in 1689 would have made such speculations much more attractive for ship's crews.Google Scholar

52 For references to possible continuing private ventures in tobacco by crews after the prohibition of “bulk” tobacco, see PRO H.C.A. 13/86 ff. 211–211v, 220v, 226v–228v.Google Scholar

53 PRO E.122/231/18.Google Scholar

54 On the 1711–1713 bankruptcy wave, see Price, “Tobacco Trade and the Treasury,” vol. 2, pp. 869–80.Google Scholar Thomas Corbin, a Virginian, was the brother of Gawen Corbin, who was number 12 on the 1686 list (Table 2). Richard Lee (son of Richard Lee) was the cousin of Thomas Lee (son of Francis Lee), another merchant who failed about 1702. Failures among London tobacco importers between 1711 and 1716 which turn up in the Court of Bankruptcy records (PRO B.4) and elsewhere but not in the 1716 list (Table 4) include James Braine, Edward and Arden Carleton, Deane Cocke, Thomas Corbin, Cornelius Denne, Thomas Edwin, William Fisher, Thomas Hammond, Richard Lee, William Lone, Henry Offley, Sir William Phippard, Samuel Shipton, and Robert Wise. Edwin and Wise procured private composition acts from Parliament in 1714. Edward Carleton & Co. had been the fifth largest importer in 1686 (Table 3). For the background of the financial crisis of 1711, see Scott, William Robert, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1912), vol. 1, pp. 385–87.Google Scholar

55 The 1719 London (waiters') port book for Christmas 1718–Christmas 1719 is now ms. NH 2440 in the Leeds City Library (Sheepscar Branch). Its principal defect is the omission by a careless clerk of whole days scattered through the year, though rather more frequent in the second half. For tobacco this means that the total pounds shown in the book as imported in 1719 are about 20 percent less than the London totals for the same year in the Ledger of the Inspector-General of Exports and Imports (PRO Customs 3). This does not mean an equivalent reduction in the number of firms reported, for only when all the tobacco entries by a firm were omitted from the port book would its name disappear completely. It should be remembered that the importation of tobacco by a single importer on one ship normally required two customs (and port-book) entries: an initial partial entry made before any of the tobacco could be removed from the vessel and a second or “post” entry made when it was clear how much more the tobacco actually weighed. The average importer of 1719 appears to have imported tobacco on about five vessels, necessitating ten entries (five initial and five “post”). The 20 percent defect in the port book merely reduces this ten to eight surviving entries. If the chance of any single entry being lost is one in five, the chance of both of a pair of entries (for a single importer's importation in a single ship) being lost is only one in 25. The chance of the name of an importer on two ships (four entries) being lost is only about one in 625; and the chance of the name of an importer on three or more ships being lost is infinitesimal.Google Scholar

56 Benjamin Gascoyne (who imported 72,248 pounds) was the father of Sir Crisp Gascoyne, lord mayor (D.N.B.); Robert Thornton (who imported 52,406 pounds) was for many years director of the Bank of England and was the father of John Thornton, the Evangelical (D.N.B.); Sir Robert Baylis who imported only 9,433 pounds, was later Lord Mayor and Commissioner of Customs.Google Scholar

57 Including James Carey; Thomas Frampton; Hugh & Charles Noden; Giles Shute, John Steventon; Samuel Storey; Thomas Toulson; Matthew Treavis.Google Scholar

58 Richard Tidmarsh and John Bosworth, major manufacturers, imported 68,260 pounds and 41,925 pounds respectively; Rebecca & Ann Watts, smaller tobacconists, imported 228 pounds. Job Wilks of Old Fish Street is described as a merchant in the London directories of 1738 and 1740. An advertising card has, however, survived, identifying him as a tobacconist (Archives of Imperial Tobacco Company) In addition, the big merchant importer Benjamin Bradley had a son Benjamin, who was a manufacturer.Google Scholar

59 The 1719 importers also included at least one bookseller, William Marshall, who presumably was paid for his Bibles in tobacco. See Plomer, Henry R., A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers… in England … from 1668 to 1725 (London, 1922), p. 198. In 1686 we find the names of at least four London booksellers among tobacco importers: Robert Cutler, Thomas Graves, John Hill, and Thomas Lacey; and at least three in 1702; Thomas Bennett, Richard Harrison and Samuel Hoyle.Google Scholar

60 George Winter (40,627 lbs.) and John Hodgson (2,577).Google Scholar

61 On the “worm” (teredo navalis) prevalent in June and July, see Middleton, Arthur Pierce, Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era (Newport News, 1953), pp. 35–37.Google Scholar On early sailing seasons, see Bullock, William, Virginia Impartially Examined… (London, 1649), p. 11.Google Scholar

62 Leeds City Library (Sheepscar Branch), NH 2440: London Port Book (Waiters) Christmas 1718–Christmas 1719.Google Scholar

63 PRO T.1/326/40 ff. 110–14.Google Scholar

64 Cambridge University Library, Cholmondeley (Houghton) MSS., 29/13 and 29/22.Google Scholar

65 PRO T.38/362.Google Scholar

66 As in fn. 64.Google Scholar

67 As in fn. 63.Google Scholar

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69 See Price, Jacob M., “One Family's Empire,” pp. 176–79, 185–89; Price, Capital and Credit, pp. 127–36, 156–57.Google Scholar

70 Northamptonshire Record Office, Delapre Abbey, Northampton Fitzwilliam (Burke) MSS., A.xxv.74. Extracted in Price, , ed., Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, pp. 158–59.Google Scholar

71 Copies in British Library Add. MS. 8133B ff. 358–59; and Bodleian Library MS. North b.6 ff. 372–73.Google Scholar

72 24 Geo II c.41 (Statutes at Large, ed. Pickering, Danby) XX, pp. 251–71.Google Scholar

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74 Conversion made at 1,003 pounds per hogshead, the average shown in the 1776 account (fn.71).Google Scholar

75 In reaching this total we have considered as one firm: Joshua Johnson and Wallace & Co.; John Roberts and Mildred & Roberts; and Barlow, Wigginton & Co. and Brown & Co. Johnson and Roberts were partners in the firms indicated, while Barlow & Co. were the assignees of Perkins, Buchanan & Brown.Google Scholar

76 The early importance of Plymouth is made clear in Sutton's thesis. See fn. 10. An analysis of the Plymouth port book for 1686 (PRO E. 190/1050/16) reveals a distribution similar to, though not as extreme as, that of Bristol in 1680. Plymouth still had a modest but not negligible trade in the 1720s, but it faded to almost nothing in the 1730s.Google Scholar

77 See Price, France and the Chesapeake, vol. 1, p. 590.Google Scholar

78 See fn. 8.Google Scholar

79 The 1723 Bristol port book shows 11 ship captains importing 133,403 pounds (average 12,128 pounds). Three of these, who imported on other vessels, as well as their own, were trading as merchants. Three other importers are known mariners and were undoubtedly mates in 1723. (More could very likely be found in this category.) In addition there were six entries for “ship's company” (12,455 pounds or 2,076 per vessel) and five other entries for a merchant “and ship's company.” At 2,076 pounds each for ship's company, this would add 10,380 pounds to crew's entries for a total of 22,835 pounds.Google Scholar

80 The Tobacco Act of 1723 provided that damaged tobacco should be burned at importation, with very meager compensation to the importer. On this question, around 1660–1723, see Price, “Tobacco Trade and the Treasury,” 11, pp. 715–51. Compensation at 1/2 d per pound would just cover the freight on a 960–pound hogshead at £2. On the lighter hogshead of the 1720s it probably did not cover the freight.Google Scholar

81 For the ability of larger Bristol merchants to borrow on bond in the 1730s, see Price, Capital and Credit, pp. 46–50. R. C. Nash also points to the lower interest rates of the 1730s as an explanation for the greater importance of credit in the trade after that time.Google ScholarNash, R. C., “English Transatlantic Trade, 1660–1730: A Quantitative Study,” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1982), pp. 35–38, 43–48.Google Scholar

82 The 1747 list of bonds outstanding has 19 names for Bristol. PRO T. 1/326 fo. 140 (old foliation).Google Scholar

83 Price, France and the Chesapeake, vol. 1, p. 590; W. L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor. Townshend MSS 8/23/65.Google Scholar

84 PRO E.190/1239/1.Google Scholar

85 See Clemens, Paul G. E., “The Rise of Liverpool, 1665–1750,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 29 (05 1976), pp. 211–25.Google Scholar

86 See fn. 83.Google Scholar

87 Based on Liverpool port books (PRO E.190): 1341/3 (1678); 1341/24 (1679); 1343/13 and 17(1680); 1343/2 and 6(1681); 1344/1 and 1345/11(1682); 1345/13 (1683); 1346/9 (1684); 1347/1 (1686);1350/I (1689); 1352/14 (1694); 1353/1 (1695); 1355/1 and 5(1696); 1351/I and 5(1697); 1359/11 (1698); 1365/18 (1703, mislabelled); 1367/4 (1704, mislabelled); 1367/12 (1705); 1369/5 (1706); 1370/11 and 1371/2 (1707); 1373/3 and 8 (1708); 1375/8 and 9 (1709); 1377/11 (1710); 1379/5 and 1380/6 (1711); 1383/6 and 12 (1712); 1387/7 and 1388/5 (1715); 1397/9(1719); 1401/lI (1721); 1402/15(1722); 1403/12 (1723); 1406/3 (1726); plus PRO E.122/198/9 (1699);Google Scholar and Poole, Brenda R., “Liverpool's Trade in the Reign of Queen Anne,” (MA. thesis, Liverpool University, 1961), pp. 151–58.Google Scholar

88 For example, the port book shows that Edward Feildinge, a soapmaker of Bristol, imported 88,950 pounds of tobacco in two vessels in 1680. One of these shipments led to a King's Bench lawsuit in 1681 for the collection of freight of £2 each on 78 hogsheads. Bristol University Library MS. D.M. 19/2.Google Scholar

89 Of the 15 individuals at Liverpool in 1686 entering between 2,000 and 12,000 pounds of tobacco, seven were ship captains and two were (presumed) ship's husbands entering for themselves “and ship's company”.Google Scholar

90 PRO T. 1/326 ff. 140–41 (old foliation); Price, France and the Chesapeake, vol. 1, p. 590.Google Scholar

91 See fn. 71 and The Liverpool Memorandum Book… for the Year [1753] (Liverpool, 1752) in Liverpool Record Office, 920 MD 407 and BL.Google Scholar

92 U.S. Historical Statistics, vol. 2, p. 1190;Google ScholarPrice, , France and the Chesapeake, I, p. 590.Google Scholar See also Price, Jacob M., “Glasgow, the Tobacco Trade and the Scottish Customs, 1707–1730,” Scottish Historical Review, 63 (04. 1984), pp. 1–36;Google ScholarPrice, “The Rise of Glasgow,” pp. 177–99; Devine, The Tobacco Lords.Google Scholar

93 Scottish Record Office, class E.504.Google Scholar

94 See Price, J. M., “Buchanan & Simson, 1759–1763: A Different Kind of Glasgow Firm Trading to the Chesapeake,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 40 (01 1983), p. 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95 We have omitted Whitehaven because of the absence of seventeenth-century port books.Google Scholar

96 Davis, Ralph, Aleppo and Devonshire Square: English Traders in the Levant in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1967), pp. 62–64;CrossRefGoogle ScholarInikori, J. E., “Market Structure and the Profits of the British African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century,” this JOURNAL, 41 (12 1981), pp. 748–53.Google Scholar

97 W. L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Shelburne Papers, vol. 78, p. 84; Cf. also The Times, 30 08 1786, p. 3,Google Scholar and Sheridan, Richard B., Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (Baltimore, 1974), p. 489.Google Scholar

98 British Parliamentary Papers (1803), Accounts and Papers, III/4/9 (Cd. 13); (1808), XII (Cd.337, 338); Schumpeter, Elizabeth Boody, English Overseas Trade Statistics 1697–1808 (Oxford, 1960), table XVII.Google Scholar

99 See fn. 8.Google Scholar

100 For the period 1748–1775 Morgan reports, “Tobacco and sugar merchants at Bristol were virtually different groups; there was very little overlap…” Morgan, K. J., “Bristol Merchants and the Colonial Trade, 1748–1783” (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1983), p. 97.Google Scholar

101 See Price, Capital and Credit, passim.Google Scholar

102 See Shepherd, James F. and Walton, Gary M., Shipping, Maritime Trade and the Economic Development of Colonial North America (Cambridge, Mass., 1972) chap. 5, esp. p. 87.Google Scholar

103 See Price, Capital and Credit, chaps. 3–6.Google Scholar

104 See fn. 102 and Dell, “The Operational Records,” pp. 1–17;Google ScholarWyckoff, Vertrees Judson, “Ships and Shipping of Seventeenth Century Maryland,” Maryland History Magazine, 33 (12 1939), p. 355;Google ScholarPrice, “Buchanan & Simson,” p. 28. Kenneth Morgan does not find an equivalent improvement in ship utilization at Bristol. Morgan, “Bristol Merchants,” p. 40.Google Scholar See also French, Christopher J., “Productivity in the Atlantic Shipping Industry: A Quantitative Study,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 17 (Winter 1987), pp. 623–24. French does not find the same increase in shipping efficiency in the London-Virginia trade which Dell and Walton found in the Glasgow-Virginia trade. He suggests that London consignment merchants could not realize the turnaround economies open to the Glasgow store.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

105 According to William Byrd II, writing in the 1690s, “every Sailor and Woman, and little inconsiderable person can buy Bulk on Board the Ships [from the Chesapeake], and squeeze out by little design part of the duties, if not wholly run it, and then carry it from Shop to Shop, and sell it at easy & low Rates…” Byrd, William II, Hisory of the Dividing Line and Other Tracts… Wynne, Thomas H., ed., 2 vols. Historical Documents from the Old Dominion, 3 (Richmond, 1866), vol 2, p. 147.Google Scholar

106 See Table 2 in text.Google Scholar

107 French, Christopher J., “Productivity in the Atlantic Shipping Industry: A Quantitative Study,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 17 (Winter 1987), pp. 623–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

108 The Cowes port book is in PRO E. 190/834/9. From a total of 34 vessels entering tobacco at Cowes, 13 had to be omitted because full details of cargo were not given.Google Scholar

109 The masters of the 14 vessels in the sample were: T. Bowman, D. Bradley, J. Browne, W. Clutterbooke, R. Dennis, T. Keysar, R. Langley, T. Lurting, C. Morgan, J. Mudge, G. Purvis, T. Samwayes, S. Stoddard, and R.Williams.Google Scholar

110 That is, 84 pounds (loose) on Capt. Aubone from the West Indies and 11,759 pounds (in hogsheads) on Capt. Paul from Virginia.Google Scholar

111 PRO E.190/143.Google Scholar

112 There was only one single-ship entrant of bulk tobacco above 4,500.Google Scholar

113 Two other ship captains imported over 2,000 pounds in hogshead tobacco in 1686: John Purvis (65,441 pounds) and Zachary Taylor (2,800 pounds). Both can be considered merchants as well as shipmasters in 1686 and soon were to become resident London merchants.Google Scholar

114 The 9 captains importing in 1676 were divided: 3 over 10,000 pounds; 3 between 2,000 and 10,000 pounds, and 3 below 2,000 pounds. The 14 of 1686 were divided: 1 over 10,000 pounds; 1 between 2,000 and 10,000 pounds; and 12 below 2,000 pounds. The 2 largest in 1686 were, however, merchants as well as captains. See fn. 113. For an interesting law suit (about 1696–1706) in which it was alleged that a captain's perquisite was one ton free freight for every hundred tons of hogshead tobacco carried, see PRO C.6/434/11 and 3. A ton of tobacco was four hogsheads. On a vessel carrying 400 hogsheads, the captain's claimed perquisite would have been free freight for four hogsheads (1,600 pounds in 1676, slightly more in 1686).Google Scholar