The Forgotten Majority: German Merchants in London, Naturalization, and Global Trade 1660-1815 9781782384489

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The Forgotten Majority

Studies in British and Imperial History Published for the German Historical Institute London Edited by Andreas Gestrich Volume 1 The Rise of Market Society in England, 1066–1800 Christiane Eisenberg Translated by Deborah Cohen Volume 2 Sacral Kingship between Disenchantment and Re-enchantment The French and English Monarchies, 1587–1688 Ronald Asch Volume 3 The Forgotten Majority German Merchants in London, Naturalization, and Global Trade, 1660–1815 Margrit Schulte Beerbühl Translated by Cynthia Klohr

THE FORGOTTEN MAJORITY

German Merchants in London, Naturalization, and Global Trade, –

? Margrit Schulte Beerbühl Translated by Cynthia Klohr

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com English-language edition © 2015 Berghahn Books German-language edition © 2007 Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH, München Deutsche Kaufleute in London. Welthandel und Einbürgerung (1660–1818) The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association). All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schulte Beerbühl, Margrit. [Deutsche Kaufleute in London. English] The forgotten majority : German merchants in London, naturalization, and global trade, 1660-1815 / Margrit Schulte Beerbühl ; translated by Cynthia Klohr. — English-language edition. pages cm. — (Studies in British and imperial history ; volume 3) German-language edition entitled Deutsche Kaufleute in London : Welthandel und Einbürgerung (1660-1818); published by Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH, München, 2007. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78238-447-2 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-78238-448-9 (ebook) 1. Germany—Commerce—Great Britain—History. 2. Great Britain—Commerce— Germany—History. 3. Merchants—England—London—History. 4. Germans— England—London—History. 5. Naturalization—Great Britain—History. 6. International trade—History. 7. London (England)—Economic conditions. 8. London (England)— Ethnic relations—History. I. Title. HF3568.G7S3813 2014 382.0943—dc23 2014016238 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed on acid-free paper ISBN 978-1-78238-447-2 hardback ISBN 978-1-78238-448-9 ebook

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Note on the Text

xi

Introduction Sources and Outline

1 6

Chapter 1. Naturalizing Newcomers for Prosperity, 1660–1818 Early Modern English Naturalization Law 15 Naturalized Subjects: Their Numbers and Native Lands 17 Occupations of German Immigrants Who Became English Subjects 21

13

Chapter 2. Promoting Anglo-German Trade in the Seventeenth Century Reorganizing Anglo-German Trade during the 1600s 29 London’s German Merchants after 1660 34 German Merchant Trade in London 41 German Merchants and London Trade Companies 52 Naturalized Subjects and Joint-Stock Companies 58 Politics and Commerce 66

28

Chapter 3. Eighteenth-Century German Houses and Trade London’s German Trade Houses 87 Chain Migration, Successors, and Transnational Networks 95 A German Perspective on the Development of Bilateral Trade 101 The Rise and Organization of Early “Merchant Empires” 107 Early Merchant Empires—Flexible and Vulnerable 113

86

Chapter 4. German Merchants in the Levant and Russia Companies British Trade with Russia and the Levant 130 Naturalized Merchants in the Levant Company 133 Naturalized Merchants in the Russia Company 139

129

vi | Contents

The Russia Company’s Struggle with Naturalization Practices 146 Naturalized Subjects and the British Factory in St. Petersburg 152 The Bank of Scotland’s Right to Naturalize 159 Chapter 5. Boom and Bankruptcy 170 Insurance and Trade at London’s German Trade Houses 170 London’s Early Insurance Business 171 Networking Europe with the Americas and Asia 185 The Bankruptcy Trend and Naturalized Subjects’ Bankruptcies 198 Waves of Bankruptcy during the Coalition Wars 206 The Size of Failed Trading Houses during the Era of the Coalition Wars 210 Estates of the Failed 219 The Certificate of Conformity and the Ware Broker: Starting All Over 223 Commodity Brokers and the Freedom of the City 227 Conclusion

248

List of Abbreviations

257

Historical Sources

259

Bibliography

272

Index

300

FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures 1. Portrait of Henry Voguell

91

2. Home of the Rücker Family

96

3. The Rücker Family Empire

97

4. Portrait of Johann Heinrich Albers

98

5. Map of Northwest German Merchants’ Regional Entanglements

101

6. Portrait of Hermann Dietrich Retberg

104

7. Raymond De Smeth’s Trade Relations

109

8. The Amsinck Merchant Empire

110

9. Portrait of John Julius Angerstein

137

10. Abraham Korten’s Trade Relations

144

11. Nicholas Magens’s Trade Relations

147

12. Portrait of Commerell

176

13. General Trend in Bankruptcy in England

199

14. Bankruptcy among Naturalized Merchants of German Origin

200

15. Portrait of Henry Nantes

212

Tables 1. Naturalization by Country of Origin, 1701–1709 and 1712–1714

18

2. Naturalization by Country of Origin, 1715–1800

18

3. Naturalization by Country of Origin, 1801–1820

19

4. The Ten Most Frequent Places of Origin for German Immigrants to England, 1660–1800

20

5. Occupation and Status of Naturalized British Subjects of German Origin, 1715–1800

22

viii | Figures and Tables

6. England’s Trade with Germany from 1662/1663–1701, Thousands of £s (official records)

35

7. Eminent German Import and Export Merchants, 1695–1696

43

8. Ports of Departure for German Merchants’ Imports to England (percent), 1683 and 1696

45

9. MPs of German Descent (second and third generation)

69

10. Number of Ships Arriving in Bremen, Ten-Year Average

103

11. Numbers of Foreign Ships Received by the Retberg Firm

105

12. Number of Ships from English Ports Destined for the Retberg Firm in Bremen

106

13. Total Number of New Members in the Levant Company, 1698–1824

134

14. German Merchants: Time Span between Naturalization and Joining the Russia Company

142

15. Naturalized British Subjects Living in Russia

154

16. British Trading Firms with Naturalized Partners in Russia

157

17. Russia Company Members Naturalized by Purchasing Shares in the Bank of Scotland

160

18. Insurance Policies of Naturalized Subjects

178

19. Business Insurance Coverage among Naturalized Subjects

179

20. London’s Eleven Largest Firms with Naturalized Citizens as Partners, 1775–1787

179

21. Naturalized Subjects’ Policies with London Assurance

180

22. Amounts Insured for Wilson & Blanckenhagen, 1777–1781

182

23. Commerell & Lubbock’s Insurance, 1778–1782

183

24. Molling, Rasch, Spitta & Co.’s Insurance, 1778–1786

183

25. German Merchant Percentages of the Overall Amount Insured

186

26. Risk of Bankruptcy among Naturalized Merchants

201

27. Amount of Debt at the Time of Bankruptcy

211

28. Time between the Commencement of Bankruptcy Proceedings and the Issuance of a Certificate of Conformity

224

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book tells the story of the forgotten majority of German merchants who lived and traded in London between 1660 and 1818. It is a story of German merchants who went abroad. In Germany in the mid-1990s, politicians and the general public debated the legal definition of nationality. The issue soon also came to be discussed within academia, especially because, as Wolfgang J. Mommsen was quick to point out, European nations have such disparate criteria for granting nationality. In a history course held at Düsseldorf ’s Heinrich Heine University, the question arose as to how, in the past, Great Britain had legally dealt with the integration of immigrants. Long before the nineteenth century’s waves of European emigrants reached American shores, England was already a land of immigrants. The Kingdom also seemed particularly suitable for a study of naturalization because Roger Brubaker had not included it in his own investigation and comparison of French and German nationality in 1994. Alas, sources that may have proven helpful in addressing the question from a purely legal perspective led virtually nowhere. Thus I abandoned my original plan and began exploring the lives of England’s naturalized immigrants, especially their social status and occupations. Fascinating chance biographical findings then led to the discovery that England’s naturalization records reveal a great deal about the large majority of German merchants in England. Thus I commence with the protagonists’ first becoming English subjects. I then proceed to examine their trading enterprises and international trade networks. German immigrants contributed considerably to the development of a world economy by shipping goods from the Continent first to Britain (though sometimes circumventing it) and then on to other places. They also shipped goods from other parts of the world first to Britain and then on to the rest of Europe. The reasons for these import and export patterns merit exploration. Some traders were very successful; others failed. Yet even failures are of interest because they helped shape global economy. These findings preoccupied me for more than a decade and sent me repeatedly into uncharted waters. Many colleagues and friends encouraged me, and I am indebted to them all, particularly to Professors Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Eric Amburger, and Elisabeth Harder-Gersdorff.

x | Acknowledgments

I also owe much to the directors of the German Historical Institute London, Professors Peter Wende, Hagen Schulze, and especially Andreas Gestrich, and to their staff. As important contacts in London, they offered me opportunities for stimulating discussion and lectures. The German Historical Institute London, the State of North-Rhine Westphalia, and the German Publishers and Booksellers Association contributed financially. In 2006 the private Society of the Friends and Patrons of the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf awarded this work a prize for excellence. Andreas Gestrich, Cordula Hubert, and Sabine Walther paved the way for an English edition. I thank everyone. I owe special thanks to Professor Roger Bartlett, who very early on drew my attention to British trade with Russia, and to Derek Keene and his staff at the Centre for Metropolitan History for untiringly helping me with sources and granting access to their database. Professors Georg Kirchhoff and Jörg Vögele kept the project moving along with plenty of discussion. I thank Professor Heinrich Kaufhold for critically perusing the manuscript and Horst Rössler, Silke Fehlemann, Ulrich Koppitz, and Thomas Gerhards for also looking it over. It was a pleasure to work in English archives and libraries. The enthusiasm of the archivists and staff helped unearth many facts that would otherwise have remained unknown. I thank the staff at the Corporation of London Record Office, the Guildhall Library, the National Archives in London and Edinburgh, the Bank of England, the London Schröder Bank, and the Bank of Scotland for both the information and the comfortable research conditions. Adolf Hofmeister, archivist at the State Archives of Bremen, and his staff listened patiently to my concerns and provided valuable assistance. I would also like to thank the members of Bremen’s genealogical society Maus and the many German and English genealogists who provided material and help. Without their groundwork in genealogy, much of the context and many details would have remained unclear. Last but not least, I thank Thorsten Halling, Christian Hermann, and my son Simon for helping me create the maps. The English edition, an abridged and revised version of the original German publication, includes more recent literature. Chapter 1 (on naturalization laws) and chapter 4 (on the Russia Company) have been shortened considerably. The German edition further includes a list not found here of Britons of German descent who were naturalized between 1660 and 1820. I take responsibility for any errors. With a large family and parents in need of care, it has not always been easy to continue my work. I thank my husband and three children, who faithfully stood by me throughout the entire project. This work is dedicated to them. Margrit Schulte Beerbühl

NOTE ON THE TEXT

Before 1750, in England the month of March marked the end of the calendar year; thereafter the Gregorian system came into use. In this book, documents and events that date from January through March prior to 1750 are indicated in both ways. If only one date is given, it follows our present-day system. England did not become one United Kingdom with Scotland, thus forming Great Britain, until the Acts of Union of 1707 took effect. This book covers an era whose events took place both prior to and following unification. For the most part, I use England and Great Britain, and English and British synonymously. Any meticulous distinction between the two would be irrelevant to the lives of the persons concerned. Using the term German to cover either the era or persons explored in this study is less easily justified. Strictly speaking, the people whose stories feature here were not German, but rather British subjects of German birth. For simplicity’s sake, in attempting to distinguish them from all other foreigners living and trading in England at the time, I shall call them German. In general, the English simply used Germany to designate the entire Deutsche Reich with its many individual principalities and states; in this study I do the same. The German-speaking region of Europe was fragmented during this era, and the borders of principalities and states were renegotiated repeatedly. Continental Europeans were used to major shifts in political alliances. Thus, to say that the merchants’ kin and contacts back home were Germans implies a broad interpretation of that designation. The English language has a pragmatic understanding of being German. It excludes, for example, Polish people living on the eastern fringe of the German-speaking world, despite the fact that redrafted borders and the division of Poland made them Prussian subjects. My study focuses on merchants whose family names indicate German descent and who belonged to London’s German community. I also include two other foreign-born but naturalized members of internationally active German merchant families. They were born abroad because their parents were migrants and merchants, but I will show that in socioeconomic terms, they were part of the German community. The same criteria apply to some others who came from near the western border of the German-speaking region, and to some from the northern German-speaking area near Denmark.

xii | Note on the Text

Furthermore, I call Germans who came from Russia German Russians to distinguish them from Russian Germans, traditionally a term designating Volga Germans. The persons whose trading this study will explore were from the Russian capital’s upper German class, as well as from Baltic areas that came under Russian rule in the early eighteenth century. In historical English documents, the spelling of German names was subject to considerable variation, and in some cases one can only guess at what they may have been prior to immigration. In general, I simply use the English spelling. English currency was not yet written in decimals during the time under study. Thus £1.00 = 20 shillings (s.), and 1s. = 12 pence (d.).

INTRODUCTION

? Between 1688 and 1815, England became a major world power in trade and industry. To this day, historians from highly diverse backgrounds are still asking how it was done. All agree that no monocausal explanation will suffice and that various coinciding economic, political, military, and fiscal factors contributed to the process. Recent Anglo-Saxon research into early imperialism and economic history has yielded new approaches and perspectives for investigating historical phenomena. These point to a need to study the conditions and factors involved in bringing Great Britain’s distant possessions together to form a consolidated empire. Whereas previous research into imperialism focused on macroeconomics and impulses sparked by governmental decisions, military action, and political events, more recent studies have begun to explore the actors and their informal sociocultural environments. Emphasis now falls on Atlantic history on the one hand and on the history of relations between the center and the periphery on the other—that is, on how London, as a commercial hub and major entrepôt, traded with colonies overseas. According to Huw V. Bowen, this approach has led to novel imperial historiography and a seminal reevaluation of the relation between the metropolis and the periphery.1 One approach focuses particularly on London’s role in the Atlantic economy. Key significance is attributed to the capital’s commercial elite, dubbed by Patrick K. O’Brien the “primus mobile” which organized, coordinated, and financed foreign trade between Britain and her remote colonies.2 The elite, as David Hancock has said, brought together producers and consumers from distant, disparate cultures and coordinated the needs of varying trade regions.3 Besides merchandise, the elite exported cultural ideas that were to influence many places abroad. This contributed to the overall consolidation of the British Empire.4 Perry Gauci found that the empire owed “more to the efforts of thousands of entrepreneurs than to those of successive governments.”5 Eighteenth-century imperialism Notes from this chapter begin on page 9.

2 | The Forgotten Majority

was shaped by the opinions, decisions, and economic resources of the political elite (i.e., the property-owning gentry) and of the merchant and banker elites.6 Recently Nuala Zahedieh has once more stressed the crucial role London’s merchants played in England’s expansion.7 Going beyond Atlantic history, a few years ago James Belich explored what he termed a “settler revolution” in Britain. After 1783, British mobility fueled the development of an “Anglo-prone world,” a world that was, in fact, “a politically divided, but culturally and economically united intercontinental system.”8 Belich focused on the world outside of Europe and mentioned the Continent only in passing. Much earlier, Sidney Pollard had already highlighted how the Continent influenced Britain’s commerce: trade with Europe, he said, “seemed too insignificant to have made a noticeable impact. Yet even quantities of that order of magnitude might make a difference, if they are of a strategic or dynamic kind.”9 More recently, Stephen Conway has focused once again on England’s relations with the Continent, belittled by British research.10 As in most recent Anglo-Saxon research in general, Conway starts with Great Britain and then fans out to Europe and the rest of the world. My intent is not to reverse that order or to consider Britain from a primarily continental perspective; rather, I explore one element of Continental Europe that was at the very commercial heart of Great Britain. Bias for Atlantic history obscures the fact that Great Britain did not achieve worldwide supremacy by integrating colonies alone but by tapping into resources and business markets in other European countries, especially neighboring states along the Baltic Sea, including Russia. England became a leading global economic power by expanding and increasing trade with other European colonial powers, as well as with Russia, the Mediterranean region, and northwestern Europe. In the early eighteenth century England signed treaties with Spain and Portugal that permitted direct access to the two countries’ colonies, resources, and precious metals. Trade with Russia was crucial; both Herbert Kaplan and Arcadius Kahan note its importance for England’s growing navy and industrialization.11 During the Napoleonic Wars, maintaining supply from the Baltic Sea region was essential to Great Britain’s naval power and safety.12 Mediterranean markets and resources, too, became increasingly important.13 Within this overall context, the purpose of my study is to explore the commercial activity of German merchants in Great Britain—in other words, to discover how much they continued to trade with their native country and where they channeled their efforts within the British Empire. This work also deals with select aspects of Britain’s rise to hegemonic supremacy neglected by previous research. It will show how immigration and naturalization were part of England’s mercantilist policy in the race for international wealth and power. The Germans, as a major immigrant group, illustrate how naturalized subjects helped the country organize and sustain its ascent to world power through trade.

Introduction | 3

Older research on England’s economic development from the late Middle Ages onward noted the aliens’ contribution to the country’s economic growth up through the period of early industrialization. England, said Ephraim Lipson, owed an “immeasurable debt” to its foreigners, whose “technical skill and expert knowledge of the industrial arts helped to build up industrial supremacy.”14 William Cunningham had expressed similar views as early as 1882, and Warren Scoville repeated them in 1951.15 More recently, Lien Bich Luu has stressed how religious refugees contributed to Great Britain’s ascent16 and Stanley D. Chapman has pointed out that in the eighteenth century, two-thirds of London’s leading merchants were of foreign origin.17 Historians’ interest in England’s immigrant ethnicity has been varied. Detailed studies examine how Dutch and Huguenot refugees contributed to the modernization of the British economy and the establishment and development of British banking, lending, and insurance practices.18 Much literature also covers Jewish migration and communities.19 Yet apart from a few studies on German merchant-bankers, a history of the vast majority of Protestant German merchants living in England from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century is wanting. Research on German merchants ends with the Hanse’s decline20 and resumes in the nineteenth century. Even then it focuses primarily on large banks and trading firms such as Baring, Rothschild, and Schröder.21 For the most part, the German merchant community in England from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century has remained unexplored.22 The aim of this book is to shed some light on their fates. I discovered the key to that era’s forgotten majority of German merchants by chance. I did not originally intend to write a history of German merchants but rather wanted to explore the history of eighteenth-century English law on nationality and English naturalization policy. However, two problems prevented this. First, a perusal of current research and sources on that topic revealed few prospects for a historical study of a purely legal nature. All naturalization documents for the period from 1660 to the law reform of 1844 have survived, but except for the short-lived naturalization law of 1709—an outcome of debates in the late seventeenth century—the eighteenth century knew no intense parliamentary or public debate on the issue until the Napoleonic Wars.23 Thus, facing a lack of material for my original line of thought, I wondered whether the purpose of naturalization policy and the motivation to migrate might be discernible not only in political debate but also in analysis of the national, social, and occupational status of the immigrants themselves. The second problem was that naturalization documents provide little information. They reveal a person’s origins, but rarely an occupation. A first analysis showed that the majority of immigrants came from Germany, but their social status, livelihoods, and reasons for becoming British subjects remained unknown. Until 1844 naturalization was a matter of private law and very expensive to

4 | The Forgotten Majority

obtain, so only the wealthiest immigrants became subjects. This prompted me to seek biographical data for the German immigrants and to examine their lives. I found that in terms of status and occupational profile, England’s naturalized persons of German origin were startlingly similar: most were merchants. This created entirely new access to the subject. The naturalized immigrants’ occupational homogeneity cast new light on the objectives of British naturalization policy. Between 1660 and 1815, England, and later Great Britain, emerged as the world’s leading commercial and colonial power. What role did immigrants play in this context? Did the state exploit naturalized merchants to achieve imperialist ends? Did merchants help their country of choice in accomplishing those ends? Did they benefit from switching national loyalty? Based on my original project of exploring the rationale behind British naturalization policy, as my research progressed I discovered ever more clearly how closely the pursuit of commercial interests was linked to nationality. Both the alien merchant community and the British government appear to have shared an interest in mutually furthering both the personal and the common lot. To find out how naturalized merchants contributed to the Empire’s global rise, I first needed information on the organization, geographic focus, and extent of the community’s trade. Few studies on economic relations between German principalities and Britain extend to the era in question. Elisabeth Karin Newman has examined trade between Britain and Hamburg in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.24 Martin Reißmann, Ruth Prange, Percy E. Schramm, Hermann Kellenbenz, and Rolf Engelsing all mention bilateral relations between England and Bremen or England and Hamburg during the late seventeenth century, but a comprehensive study has never been done.25 Panikos Panayi’s work on nineteenth-century German immigrants provides a good, though brief, summary of known facts.26 My work thus navigates new waters inasmuch as I not only explore eighteenth-century trade between Germany and Britain in general, but also investigate the specific trade activity of naturalized merchants of German origin in a predominantly British setting that in turn was part of a global context. I shall show how German merchants, migrating to and settling in England, enabled German states to participate in the growing world trade while also contributing, under the protection of the British Empire, to the globalization of trade under British rule. The network approach, which concentrates on the actors and the contexts within which they were embedded, proved a valuable tool for analyzing the behavior and trade of naturalized merchants of German origin.27 Compared to earlier concepts of structured history, research guided by network theory and institutional economic history studies the actors of commerce, their private enterprises, and family firms. Although family businesses were typical of the

Introduction | 5

medieval, early modern, and early industrial eras, economic history has long considered them obsolete and of little interest.28 Family businesses do, however, have a surprising capacity for survival. As studies on Asia have shown, they are vital to economic upswings in developing countries.29 A few years ago, Mark Casson and Mary B. Rose rediscovered how pertinent private enterprise is for the dynamics of European economics and for innovation.30 As Hartmut Berghoff remarked some time ago, market mechanisms alone cannot explain the survival and success of family firms or the way they do business.31 The success of family businesses often rests on a fairly informal network of dependable partners who share a common system of values centered on trust and reciprocity.32 The network concept, which draws attention to the actors and their cultural and economic relations, led to the discovery of shared strategies that reduced the merchants’ transaction and communication costs and enabled them to bundle resources. For a long time, historical studies of early modern history presupposed that domestic national economies were fairly closed systems independent of one another. The few studies on foreign trade relations either were quantitative studies or dealt with foreign trade statistics or examination of foreign trade institutions and organizations such as the East India Company or the Hanseatic League. They emphasized the development and political and military impact of these institutions and rarely dealt with the actors. Network analysis in social science, on the other hand, demands comprehensive sets of data. In this study I use the network concept in a rather broad sense because of the fragmentary nature of documentary evidence for the early modern period. But even though statistical data for early modern times is piecemeal or lacking, it is clear that part of British trade grew rapidly alongside and outside of institutions. Overseas merchants formed informal, often short-lived, trading networks. The geographic focus of a merchant’s trade changed, depending on his success or failure, age, or political and economic circumstances. Such networks had no clear limits. They could attach to, integrate with, or usurp other networks while remaining fully detached from yet others. Previous network studies into early global economy focused primarily on economic, social, and cultural relations and neglected legal aspects.33 Overseas traders, however, did not work within a legal vacuum: the law set the parameters and the course of commerce. Richard P. Appelbaum has proposed that research on the growing global economy must take power relations and legal norms into account because “business transactions are embedded in an environment of culture, practice, and rule.”34 Migration and trade happen within contexts of national, political, and legal business norms. In the era of mercantilism, for example, countries pursued restrictive, protectionist economic policies, keeping markets closed to give native merchants an advantage. Merchant networks that crossed borders had to deal with the laws of different countries. In an age when international law was only in its infancy, separate national legal systems determined the general condi-

6 | The Forgotten Majority

tions and the geographic span of commerce. Thus migration and transnational trade meant not only networking in an unfamiliar society and commercial setting, but adapting to disparate legal systems as well. Without knowledge of and respect for the law in one’s adopted country, successful trade was impossible. As for entering British society, becoming naturalized was a key that unlocked doors to the country’s influential social and economic institutions and networks, which otherwise were closed to foreign merchants. Politics and law affected the commercial activities of the naturalized merchants at various times. The merchants did not remain passive but worked around national laws flexibly and resourcefully. Few actually pursued illegal paths, but many drifted instead into legal gray zones or areas not covered by law. Competition among various groups seeking market advantages led to conflict over their creative handling of the law. Disputes proliferating along national and ethnic borders as well as straight across them also had repercussions for the legal framework. An interplay of governmental and private interests shaped relations between native and alien merchants as much as the overall conditions of Britain’s imperial and global commerce.35

Sources and Outline The list of naturalized merchants became the point of departure for this study. It also determined which group I would investigate, namely Protestant German merchants, because Protestants alone were allowed to petition for naturalization.36 Germans of other religious denominations will be mentioned only marginally. The naturalization law similarly delimits the period this work covers. The relevant practices began to emerge after 1660, and although early modern naturalization law was not formally repealed until 1844, the practice of naturalization broke down with the short-lived law of 1818. Likewise, since the Napoleonic Wars mark a turning point in Britain’s economic history and merchant migration, 1815–1818 is an appropriate place to end the study. Initially, large prosopographic studies were indispensable for exploring the activities of German merchants in London. The aim was not only to uncover the merchants’ social and economic networks, but also to delineate, beyond individual biographies, a more or less comprehensive picture of German merchants in England, particularly in London. Certain problems tend to complicate studies of eighteenth-century overseas merchants’ commercial activities.37 Almost everywhere they went, traces of them remain; however, they are often barely discernible and too few and widely scattered to truly satisfy either the biographer or the statistician. Two factors account for the scarcity and dispersion of relevant data. First, little business was done in writing; indeed, many transactions were entirely oral. Overseas trade forced merchants to correspond, but the little correspon-

Introduction | 7

dence that has survived is often of limited worth, relating merely prices, contract fulfillment, or vessel arrival and departure dates.38 To this day it is common practice to keep business records for only a certain length of time, after which they may be destroyed. Second, merchants were highly mobile. In many cases the fact that they emigrated is the last thing known about them.39 Furthermore, German names were often Anglicized, making identification of discrete individuals difficult or well-nigh impossible, for persons with very common names. Family archives like those of the banker families Schröder, Rothschild, and Baring do not exist for the eighteenth century,40 although both British and German archives hold smaller collections of information on German immigrants. Unfortunately, monographs on large enterprises and banks often tell the story of only one branch of an international family business, generally neglecting other branches of the enterprise that were run by siblings or other kin abroad. Yet an exclusively domestic view cannot explain the economic success of large merchant and banking houses like those of the Rothschild and Schröder families.41 Transnational trade among Britain’s naturalized subjects often involved kin, fellow countrymen, and persons of the same religious affiliation. It is therefore paramount to trace the ramifications of business connections far beyond mere bilateral relations. An international perspective often reveals the geographic scope and focus of these commercial networks. Fuller assessment of the business activity of immigrant merchants therefore relies on disclosing the links and nodes in their networks. To reveal international networks, I consulted a wide range of sources: biographies, genealogies, church records, wills, lineage volumes, and various serial sources like London directories, port books, insurance and bankruptcy documents, and broker records of the City. I also examined the records of certain London trade companies. The Russia Company’s minutes turned out to be a crucial source. Although no complete list of the company’s members exists, the secretary regularly noted new members in minutes taken at meetings.42 An astonishing percentage of England’s naturalized merchants of German origin were members in the Russia Company. This discovery made it necessary to widen the sample to include German Russians. The serial sources mentioned above reveal strong links between German merchants, especially those from Hamburg, and Spain and Portugal, particularly the Atlantic port towns of Cadiz, Lisbon, and Porto. Unlike in Russia and India, corporations did not control British trade in Spain and Portugal. Commercial networks there among German merchants from London were organized differently and more difficult to trace. Although detailed study of trade connections to the Iberian Peninsula falls outside this study’s scope, examples of family ties between Hamburg, London, Spain, and the colonies should not be underestimated.43 Trade connections also stretched to the Mediterranean, India, and North America.44

8 | The Forgotten Majority

As London was the leading center of commerce and finance throughout the era treated here, the story of German merchants in eighteenth-century Britain is largely a story of the capital. The structure of this book is largely determined by the available sources. London’s port books were the main source for the seventeenth century, but none exist for the eighteenth century. Directories, insurance, and bankruptcy records proved a major source of information for the time after the mid-eighteenth century. Each kind of source contains different clues to merchant activities and leaves a different set of impressions. Taken together they offer comprehensive insight into the ways, opportunities, and risks of doing business as a German merchant in London. Since naturalization opened the door to Britain’s world trade, chapter 1 of this book begins by surveying the economic and political aims of the empire’s mercantilist immigration and naturalization policy, followed by an overview of naturalized subjects in terms of national background, place of birth, and occupation. Chapter 2 commences with the closing of the Hanse Steelyard in 1598, but otherwise deals primarily with the second half of the seventeenth century. Chapter 3 covers the period from 1714 until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. London’s directories made it possible to outline the fates of German enterprises, from their founding to their handover to the next generation. This picture was then filled in by what could be discovered about German chain migration, the business strategies of parent firms back in Germany, and the connections and spread of international families. Chapter 4 turns to the role of German merchants and their activities in the Levant Company and the Russia Company.45 Finally, chapter 5 looks at the size of the German trade firms, their geographical scope of trade, and key trading activities, paying particular attention to Atlantic trade. A case in point will highlight London’s central role as the hub, major entrepôt, and entryway to Britain’s global trade for parent businesses back in Germany and the merchandise suppliers they worked with there. For a long time, most histories of commerce interpreted England’s industrialization and hegemonic ascent exclusively in terms of success, neglecting the inherent risk of failure.46 The financial crises of our own times, however, are prompting ever more historians to examine failure more closely.47 For German immigrants, as for any other entrepreneurs, success and failure were two sides of the same coin. In closing, then, I turn to those who were less successful and discuss risks and possible reasons for failure. Bankruptcy records from the Coalition Wars era document various kinds of failure and elucidate the geographic scope of trade and the social and international composition of business partnerships. Ultimately, even the unlucky found ways to start all over again. It is fairly certain that local archives throughout Britain, Germany, and elsewhere hold valuable material on Great Britain’s German merchants and their international trade networks that, once discovered, might considerably supplement and propel what we

Introduction | 9

know. One historian cannot do it all. Thus, my study is meant as a starting point and inspiration for further research.

Notes 1. Huw V. Bowen, Elites, Enterprise, and the Making of the British Overseas Empire 1688–1777, Basingstoke, 1996, 5. 2. Patrick K. O’Brien, “Merchants, Credit and Overseas Trade,” in John J. McCusker and Kenneth Morgan, eds., The Early Modern Atlantic Economy, Cambridge, 2000, 250. 3. David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community 1735–1785, Cambridge, 1995, 16. 4. Hancock, Citizens of the World. 5. Perry Gauci, The Politics of Trade: The Overseas Merchant in State and Society, 1660–1720, Oxford, 2001, 3. 6. Bowen, Elites, 47f. 7. Nuala Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies: London and the Atlantic Economic 1660–1700, Cambridge, 2010, 55; see also Alison Gilbert Olsen, Making the Empire Work: London and American Interest Groups 1690–1790, London, 1992, and on the tobacco trade, Jacob M. Price, Tobacco in Atlantic Trade, Aldershot, 1995. 8. James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World 1883–1939, Oxford, 2009, 9. 9. Sidney Pollard, “British Trade and European Economic Development (1750–1850)” in Peter Mathias and John A. Davis, eds., International Trade and British Economic Growth from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day, Oxford, 1996, 42. 10. Stephen Conway, Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 2011, 2. 11. Harold Edward S. Fisher, The Portugal Trade: A Study in Anglo-Portuguese Commerce 1700– 1770, London, 1971; Herbert Kaplan, Russian Overseas Commerce with Great Britain During the Reign of Catherine II, Philadelphia, 1995; Arcadius Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Russia, Chicago and London, 1985. 12. James Davey, “Securing the Sinews of Sea Power: British Intervention in the Baltic 1780– 1815,” International History Review 33 (2011): 161–184; A. N. Bryan, “Trade with the Enemy in the Scandinavian and Baltic Ports,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 12 (1962): 123–140. 13. Maria Fusaro, “English Merchants in the Ionian Islands: The Currants Trade in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries,” in Proceedings of the IV Panionian International Conference, vol. 2, Athens, 2001, 161–168; idem, “Connecting Webs: English Merchants’ Strategy and the Republic of Venice from the XVI to XVII Century” (paper presented at Spinning the Commercial Web, Düsseldorf, 2002); Sakis Gekas, “The Merchants of the Ionian Islands between East and West: Forming International and Local Networks,” in Margrit Schulte Beerbühl and Jörg Vögele, eds., Spinning the Commercial Web: International Trade, Merchants, and Commercial Cities, c. 1640–1939, Frankfurt, 2001, 43–63. On English trade with the Levant and Scandinavia see below. 14. Ephraim Lipson, The Economic History of England, London 1956, vol. 1, 499. 15. William Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce, London 1968 [1882], vol. 2, 84 and 331; Warren Scoville, “Minority Migration and the Diffusion of Technology,” Journal of Economic History 11 (1951): 347–360.

10 | The Forgotten Majority

16. Lien Bich Luu, Immigrants and the Industries of London 1500–1700, Aldershot, 2005, 301–308. 17. Stanley D. Chapman, “Enterprise and Innovation in the British Hosiery Industry,” Textile History 5 (1974): 30. 18. Peter G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756, London and New York, 1967. 19. Separate studies also treat Jewish immigrant trade between the West Indies and England and the eighteenth-century diamond trade. In general, though, the research leaves considerable gaps. See Stephen Alexander Fortune, Merchants and Jews: The Struggle for British East Indian Commerce 1650–1750, Gainesville, FL, 1984; Gedalia Yogev, Diamonds and Corals: Anglo-Dutch Jews and Eighteenth-Century Trade, Leicester, 1978; and Harold Pollins, Economic History of the Jews in England, London and East Brunswick, NJ, 1982, esp. chapter 2, 42–60. See also Tijl Vanneste, Global Trade and Commercial Networks: Eighteenth-Century Diamond Merchants, London, 2011. 20. For the history of the Hanse in England see Terence Henry Lloyd, England and the German Hanse 1157–1611: A Study of their Trade and Commercial Policy, Cambridge, 1991. 21. On Baring see Ralph W. Hidy, History of the House of Baring in American Trade and Finance 1763–1861, Cambridge, MA, 1949, and Philip Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power: Barings 1762– 1929, London, 1988. On the Rothschilds in Britain see (most recently) Niall Ferguson, The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild, London, 1998. On the Schröder Bank see Richard Roberts, The Schroders: Merchants and Bankers, London, 1992. 22. A few older studies deal with what was left over of London’s Hanse in the seventeenth century. Over a century ago, Hamburg’s archivist J. M. Lappenberg drew attention to a small nucleus of Hanseatic merchants that survived the end of the Hanse in London and the period of the Commonwealth. Johann Martin Lappenberg, Urkundliche Geschichte des Hansischen Stalhofes, repr. Osnabrück, 1967 [1851]; Philip Norman, “Notes on the Later History of the Steelyard in London,” Archealogia or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity 61 (1909): 389–426. See also Derek Keene, “New Discoveries at the Hanseatic Steelyard in London,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter 107 (1989): 15–25. 23. With the exception of a dispute over naturalization law regarding Jews in the 1750s. 24. Elisabeth Karin Newman, “Anglo-Hamburg Trade in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries” (PhD diss., University of London, 1979); for trade relations between Bremen and England in the nineteenth century see Wilhelm Lührs, Die freie Hansestadt Bremen und England in der Zeit des Deutschen Bundes (1815–1867), Bremen, 1958. 25. Ruth Prange, Die bremische Kaufmannschaft des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in sozialgeschichtlicher Betrachtung, Bremen 1963; Martin Reißmann, Die hamburgische Kaufmannschaft des 17. Jahrhunderts aus sozialgeschichtlicher Sicht, Hamburg 1975. Percy E. Schramm and Hermann Kellenbenz wrote several studies on the merchant community from Hamburg and Bremen but focused more on overseas trade in general and trade with Spain than on trade with England. The same holds for Rolf Engelsing’s study, “Bremisches Unternehmertum,” Jahrbuch der Wittheit zu Bremen 2 (1958): 7–112; see also work by Ernst Baasch and Ludwig Beutin on the merchant community. 26. Panikos Panayi, German Immigrants in Britain during the 19th Century 1815–1914, Oxford, 1995, chapter 1; idem, “Germans in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in idem, ed., Germans in Britain since 1500, London, 1996, 29–48. 27. Stanley Wassermann and Katherine Faust, Network Analysis, Cambridge, 1994; Grahame F. Thompson et al., eds., Markets, Hierarchies and Networks: The Coordination of Social Life, London and New Delhi, 1991; Grahame F. Thompson, Between Hierarchies and Markets: The Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organization, Oxford, 2003. 28. Even in new institutional economics, the focus is still mainly on huge multinational companies and less on family businesses. For a classical study of the topic, see Oliver E. Williamson, The

Introduction | 11

29.

30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

Economic Institutions of Capitalism, New York, 1985. Recent developments in new institutional economics are summarized in various essays in Karl-Peter Ellerbrock and Clemens Wischermann, eds., Die Wirtschaftsgeschichte vor der Herausforderung durch die New Institutional Economics, Dortmund, 2004; for criticism of the model see S. R. H. Jones, “Transaction Costs and the Theory of the Firm: The Scope and Limitations of the New Institutional Approach,” Business History 49 (1997): 9–25. Shin ya Sugiyama and Linda Grove, Commercial Networks in Modern Asia, Richmond, Surrey, 2001; S. A. Zahra and D. M. Garvis, “Networks and Entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia: The Role of Social Capital and Membership Commitment” in Andrew Godley and Duncan M. Ross, eds., Banks, Networks, and Small Firm Finance, London, 1996, 39–60; Thomas Menckhoff and Solvey Gerke, eds., Chinese Entrepreneurship and Asian Business Networks, London, 2002. Mary B. Rose and Mark C. Casson see private enterprise as a source of innovation. Mary B. Rose, Firms, Networks, and Business Values: British and American Cotton Industries since 1750, Cambridge 2000, esp. 60; Mark C. Casson, “An Economic Approach to Regional Business Networks,” in John F. Wilson and Andrew Popp, eds., Industrial Clusters and Regional Networks in England 1750–1970, Aldershot, 2003, 60; see also T. A. B. Corley, “The Entrepreneur: The Central Issue in Business History?” in Jonathan Brown and Mary B. Rose, eds., Entrepreneurship, Networks, and Modern Business, Manchester, 1993, 11–29. In older literature, Cole said as early as 1959 that “to study the entrepreneur is to study the central figure in modern economic development.” Arthur H. Cole, Business Enterprise in Its Social Setting, Cambridge, 1959; G. Cookson, “Family, Firms, and Business Networks: Textile Engineering in Yorkshire 1780– 1830,” Business History 39 (1997): 1–20; Andrea Colli, History of Family Business 1850–2000, Cambridge, 2003. Hartmut Berghoff, Englische Unternehmer 1870–1914, Bielefeld, 1991; idem, Zwischen Kleinstadt und Weltmarkt. Hohner und die Harmonika 1857–1961. Unternehmensgeschichte als Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Paderborn, 1997. On trust and reciprocity, two key categories of network theory, see Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, New York, 1996, and Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, New York, 1979. On the relation of trust to obligation in early modern times, see Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England, Basingstoke, 1998. Pertinent German literature includes Martin Fiedler, “Netzwerke des Vertrauens: Zwei Fallbeispiele aus der deutschen Wirtschaftselite,” in Dieter Ziegler, ed., Großbürger und Unternehmer. Die deutsche Wirtschaftselite im 20. Jahrhundert, Göttingen, 2000, 93–115, and Hartmut Berghoff, “Vertrauen als ökonomische Schlüsselvariable. Zur Theorie des Vertrauens und der Geschichte seiner privatwirtschaftlichen Produktion,” in Ellerbrock and Wischermann, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 58–71. Studies on international merchant communities that have been presented by Wilhelm von den Driesch, Klaus Weber, and Herbert Kaplan mention nationality only in passing. Richard P. Appelbaum et al., eds., Rules and Networks: The Legal Culture of Global Business Transactions, Oxford, 2001, 2f. and 13f. On commerce with Russia and treatment of the Navigation Acts, see “The Elberfelder Merchants” below. See below. Wilfried Reininghaus, Die Stadt Iserlohn und ihre Kaufleute 1700–1815, Dortmund 1995, esp. 22f.; see also Hancock, Citizens of the World, 8. Hancock, Citizens of the World, 9. Reininghaus, Iserlohn, 64. The history of the Baring bank and business goes back to the first half of the eighteenth century, but few documents related to the first immigrant generation have survived.

12 | The Forgotten Majority

41. Recently Klaus Weber abandoned the purely national and embraced a European perspective by studying German merchants in Cadiz and Bordeaux: Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute im Atlantikhandel 1680–1830, Munich, 2004. 42. In most instances these notes explicitly mention that the new member is a naturalized subject. 43. In general, German historical research underestimates the family and economic ties that existed between German North Sea ports, London, and Spain. Most recently, Klaus Weber still believed that family ties between German merchants living in Cadiz and those living in London were too few to make British capital relevant to the study of the flow of money and commodities. Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute, 261. Research into the German merchant community in London does not support that view, as we shall see. 44. For details on trade with America and Asia see Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, “German Merchants and the British Empire during the Eighteenth Century” in John R. Davis et al., eds., Transnational Networks: German Merchants in the British Empire, 1670–1914, Leiden, 2012, 39–57. 45. This study does not deal with German merchants in the East India Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company. 46. See Julian Hoppit, Risk and Failure in English Business 1700–1800, Cambridge 1987, 1. 47. Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction, and Economics, London, 2005; Dieter Stiefel, Im Labor der Niederlagen: Konkurspolitik im internationalen Vergleich, Vienna, 2008; Harald Pechlaner et al., eds., Scheitern: die Schattenseite des Daseins, Berlin, 2010.

Chapter 1

NATURALIZING NEWCOMERS FOR PROSPERITY, 1660–1818

? The 1660 Restoration of the English monarchy marked a turning point in Britain’s political and economic history,1 ushering in an age of commercial revolution and a new economic ethos.2 Especially after 1688, public debate shifted from the religious disputes that had crippled the country to novel theories about the economy. Navigation law enacted between 1651 and 1695 came to characterize British mercantilism, setting the bearings for the expansion of overseas trade and colonization by stipulating that all exchange of commodities between England and its colonies must be done on English ships with English captains and through English ports. It prohibited any direct trade of “enumerated goods” between English colonies and other countries or their colonies. All freight was to be sent to England first and then re-exported. Perishable commodities such as fish and grain were rare exceptions.3 Duty drawbacks and discounts were issued on the import of resources that the British Isles could not themselves provide in sufficient quantities for the country and its colonies, navy, and textile industry. Whereas past studies have sought the reasons for England’s economic rise in her navy, naval legislature, tax policies, and commercial and industrial revolution, they have taken little notice of the country’s policy on the mercantile population overall, let alone of how politics managed immigration and naturalization. Yet immigration stimulated the economy, and immigration policy considerably influenced the private sector. Mercantilist opinion held that national wealth depended directly on population growth. “Whatever doth increase the stock of people must be a procuring cause of riches,” claimed economist Sir Josiah Child.4 Finding England underpopulated, seventeenth-century politicians demanded measures to not only increase family size but to raise immigration levels as well. Notes from this chapter begin on page 24.

14 | The Forgotten Majority

Increasing the number of inhabitants through family policy was a long-term project. By contrast, promoting immigration was a short-term solution. Josiah Child, Josiah Tucker, and others thus demanded straightforward encouragement of immigration from abroad5 to embolden qualified artisans and affluent merchants to immigrate and thereby expedite economic growth and technology.6 International rivalry for riches and power lent naturalization a special purpose. On the one hand it was seen as an instrument that fostered immigration, but on the other it also justified the government’s hold on the money made by newcomers. “If any Foreigner, originally poor, got rich in this country by his labour and industry, he might be enabled to lay out his wealth, where he got it, instead of carrying it away, as is the case at present. These are advantages, national and commercial.”7 In 1844 the fear that foreigners might make their fortunes in England and then take them to their countries of origin, draining the kingdom of revenue, was a major reason behind the reform of nationality regulation.8 Naturalization thus became a tool in England’s mercantilist economic policy. To generate an influx of foreigners, advocates of active immigration policy pursued a revision of the daunting expensive procedures involved in naturalization.9 Between 1660 and 1709, more than a dozen such initiatives were brought before Parliament.10 After many fruitless attempts, Parliament finally passed liberal Whig naturalization law in 1709 despite opposition from Tories, the Anglican Church, and the City of London. The Naturalization Act took effect on March 23, conferring English nationality upon every Protestant alien who first took Anglican Communion, swore an oath of allegiance and supremacy before a British court, and paid one shilling.11 The premonition of opponents of the initiative, namely, that the law would attract hordes of beggars, was manifested within just months of enactment. Between May and August of 1709, more than 15,000 impoverished Palatines came to London and were stranded there. All attempts to settle them were futile, despite the government’s great financial efforts under Sunderland and Marlborough-Godolphin. The fall of the liberal government in the summer of 1710 ended the experiment. When the Tories gained the majority in the House of Lords in 1712, they repealed the liberal law on naturalization and returned to the former practice.12 The ineptness at handling immigration from the Palatinate had far-reaching consequences. No further law of significance was passed on naturalization, and pleas to encourage immigration subsided.13 Advocates of liberal naturalization policy had had in mind highly qualified, skilled artisans and merchants of wealth and status. Although Tories had foreseen the immigration of the poor, Whigs had thought it inconceivable. Tracts written after 1712 called for selective immigration policy favoring qualified immigrants. A group of London merchants who in 1753 objected to the naturalization of a German merchant from Bremen openly articulated the intentions of eighteenth-century naturalization policy. Their letter of protest proposed that naturalization be always in the interest of the nation,

Naturalizing Newcomers for Prosperity | 15

conferring English subjecthood exclusively upon those who are “of easy Fortune, skillful in commerce, capable of introducing or improving manufactures, or, in a word, fit to become useful members of the community.”14 Josiah Tucker said that policy must provide “no encouragement to poor Foreigners to come over.”15 Similar opinions on naturalization predominated well into the nineteenth century. Between 1746 and 1753 there was some discussion about whether to resuscitate the old plans for a more general form of naturalization, but fundamental reform did not happen until 1844.

Early Modern English Naturalization Law Before the twentieth century, a foreigner had two ways to become a British subject: be naturalized, or become a denizen.16 Denization conferred a partial or limited form of subjecthood that restricted inheritance rights and business activity. In contrast, naturalization originally awarded the newcomer the full rights of a “natural-born subject.” The distinction, however, was not always closely observed.17 Constraints on denizens were generally economic in nature. Denizens were not allowed to join trade companies and could not purchase ships. They normally continued to pay foreign resident taxes,18 and they faced certain limitations regarding inheritance.19 Denization was awarded by royal prerogative, granted by letters of patent, and much cheaper than naturalization, which, until 1844, was acquired by private law. The economic restrictions on denizens compelled foreign overseas merchants to undergo the costlier process of naturalization. Denization was of little use to them and will not be treated in depth here. From 1609 on, naturalization was the preserve of Protestants.20 Persons of other faiths, be they Catholics or Jews, could not be naturalized. Catholics had no right to naturalization until the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829; for Jews it was to come even later.21 Denization, by contrast, was open to persons of all denominations, though Catholics were in practice excluded from it until the onset of the Coalition Wars. In the eighteenth century, denization was generally considered an option for Jews and craftsmen. The French and Napoleonic Wars can be seen as a turning point in the history of British immigration and naturalization. In early January 1793, shortly before the outbreak of war against revolutionary France, the British government under William Pitt signed the first immigration law in Britain’s history. The Alien Acts, as they were called, were meant to guard domestic peace, not by preventing immigration per se, but by keeping revolutionaries and agitators out.22 In 1798, shortly after sailor mutinies at Spithead and Nore, the House of Lords chose to reduce the number of petitioners seeking naturalization by mandating acquisition of a certain certificate.23 This decision anticipated requirements that the naturalization law of 1844 later made explicit. Petitioners had to first acquire a

16 | The Forgotten Majority

certificate from the Home Secretary attesting that they were “well-affected” to the country.24 Lack of this document terminated a petition for naturalization after one reading in Parliament. The new requirement had severe consequences. The Upper House had de facto handed over the power to naturalize to the Home Office and reduced Parliament’s role in the process to a mere formality.25 In addition, the Home Secretary was vested with the discretionary right to refuse and alter conditions of subjecthood. Parliamentary records for 1798 show the first rejections of petitions for naturalization. (By contrast, from 1715 up to 1798 not a single request was denied.) Still, few petitions were rejected before Lord Liverpool’s conservative government of 1806, when the number of refusals rose and both naturalization and denization came to a halt. The epitome of the Home Secretary’s repressive and arbitrary naturalization policy was a bill passed in 1818 intending to “prevent Aliens … from becoming naturalized or being made or becoming denizens.”26 This xenophobic measure affected foreign merchants in that it excluded them from important institutions, including the British financial market. Naturalization applications even from wealthy and venerable foreign merchants like John Henry Schröder and George Oppenheimer were denied without reason.27 Other foreigners applied for naturalization several times without success.28 And not even influential advocates from Parliament or the nobility could mollify the Home Secretary’s hostility to naturalization.29 For this reason, the discovery in the spring of 1818 of a long forgotten Scottish right to naturalization was warmly welcomed.30 This overlooked privilege had been awarded to the Bank of Scotland when it was established in 1695. The bank’s charter included a clause under which anyone buying at least £83 worth of shares could gain Scottish nationality. After Scotland and England were united in 1707, Scots came under English law. The government in London confirmed the Bank of Scotland’s charter, including its naturalization clause, several times in the eighteenth century, most recently in 1802. The discoverer of the dormant clause is unknown, but in April and May of 1818 there was a run on Bank of Scotland shares and by the end of May, forty-nine aliens, including George Oppenheimer and John Henry Schröder, had been naturalized by buying into the bank. By the time Sidmouth’s repressive law came into effect, the number of such shareholders had grown to 123.31 Changing one’s nationality by becoming a shareholder in the Bank of Scotland was not only cheaper, but also better, because it bypassed all the restrictions imposed by the private acts on naturalization and denization. Sidmouth responded to these events in 1818 by introducing a new naturalization act aimed primarily at eliminating the Scottish privilege. To get it through Parliament, he suspended standing orders so as to allow no time for a strong-willed opposition to form. The Bank of Scotland and a few merchants protested.32 Attending MPs neither opposed unconditional acceptance of the Home Secretary’s demands nor did they wish to open a general debate on comprehensive reform. The solution was to limit the validity of the new law to one year. The Bank of Scotland

Naturalizing Newcomers for Prosperity | 17

defended its charter in court.33 The highest courts in England and Scotland could not arrive at a uniform, clear decision. The Common Council’s and trade companies’ reactions in 1818 were also varied. After 1819, however, buying into the Bank of Scotland was no longer a path to aliens’ naturalization.34 From then on the number of naturalizations rose only slowly. Not until the 1830s was it as high as it had been before the Napoleonic Wars.

Naturalized Subjects: Their Numbers and Native Lands Establishing and changing naturalization policy had immediate impact on the number of people seeking to become subjects. The period from 1660 to 1818 can be divided into three phases. The first was from 1660 to 1714 (the year of Queen Anne’s death); the second phase started with the accession George I and ended with the transfer of applications for naturalization to the Home Office shortly before the end of the century. The first phase was an exceptionally liberal era. By 1709, more foreigners had become subjects than would do so in the entire period from 1715 to 1800. In terms of status and religion, new subjects from abroad were a rather motley group until 1714; restrictions on religion were not closely observed, and occasionally a few Jews and Catholics were naturalized.35 The Glorious Revolution changed the stance on Catholics; in 1709 a well-heeled Italian Catholic merchant was denied denization on religious grounds.36 Under the liberal Naturalization Act, the number of naturalizations soared between 1709 and 1712. The exact number is difficult to determine because foreigners could be naturalized at every Quarter Session and in Scotland as well. Decades ago, William Shaw and Mr. Guiseppi found “oath rolls” from three London courts that record 2,329 cases of naturalization from that period alone.37 Early in the century, most aliens lived in or near London, so that number probably represents most of the new subjects.38 Under George I the number of naturalizations dropped, and instances of denization were very few. Excluding the four years from 1709 to 1712, only 1,309 foreigners were naturalized from 1701 to 1714. Between 1715 and 1800, a total of 434 aliens became denizens and 1,262 were naturalized. Given the religion- and business-related constraints on naturalization, the number of naturalizations on record is not necessarily indicative of eighteenth-century immigration. Various groups of immigrants without any naturalized or denizen status—Jews, Catholics, and dark-skinned people from outside of Europe, not to mention those who simply could not afford it—lived in England right up to the nineteenth century. Since the eighteenth century knew neither immigration control nor censuses, the true number of immigrants can be only roughly estimated. Naturalization was so expensive that the number of those who did become subjects reflects only the most prosperous of all foreign Protestants immigrating to England.39 Yet the sources pertaining to naturalization do provide some clue to

18 | The Forgotten Majority

the size of the wealthy immigrant elite up until the end of the century. Contemporary estimates on the national origin of immigrants (Table 1) suggest that until Queen Anne’s death, Huguenots constituted the greater part of the immigrant community. After 1714, Jewish migrants from eastern European and German regions were the largest group. During the eighteenth century, German Protestants comprised the second-largest group.40 Until 1714 the Huguenots made up the largest group of naturalized subjects. Between 1701 and 1709 and between 1712 and 1714, 1,024 persons out of 1,309 persons naturalized came from France. The next-largest group—much smaller in comparison—was the Germans, of whom 109 were naturalized, as were 83 Dutchmen and 34 Swiss. Table 1. Naturalization by Country of Origin, 1701–1709 and 1712–1714 Year

Russia/ France Germany Holland Switzerland Scandinavia Livonia Italy Other Total

1701–09 1,857 1713–14 1, 167 Total 1,024

103 6 109

69 14 83

26 8 34

26 2 28

6 – 6

4 – 4

17 4 21

1,108 1,201 1,309

Source: Shaw II.

The total number of immigrants in the years from 1709 to 1712 cannot be broken down according to countries of origin, but the surnames of individuals naturalized under the act of 1709 suggest that for the most part Huguenots availed themselves of that act. Once the first Hanoverian ascended to the throne, Germans became the largest group of naturalized persons and remained so until the end of the nineteenth century. The Swiss were second-largest, while the French and Dutch dropped to third and fourth place.41 Table 2. Naturalization by Country of Origin, 1715–1800 Year

Russia / Germany Switzerland France Holland Scandinavia Livonia Italy Other Total

1715–24 1725–34 1735–44 1745–54 1755–64 1765–74 1775–84 1785–94 1795– 1800 Total Source: Shaw II

61 42 54 41 56 49 57 49 66

11 14 25 25 44 46 20 34 22

40 42 38 31 24 20 14 14 16

33 27 16 15 10 9 5 12 9

6 5 7 7 3 2 4 6 2

475

241

239

136

42

5 6 7 6 6 5 1 5

2 2 4 4 10 2 4 4 4

3 3 3 6 8 9 5 6 11

1,161 1, 143 1, 152 1, 129 1, 164 1, 143 1, 116 1, 126 1, 135

41

36

54

1,262

Naturalizing Newcomers for Prosperity | 19

The overall number of French immigrants after 1715 (Table 2) remained low until the outbreak of the French Revolution. As the majority of France’s refugees were Catholic, the lists of denizens reflect that wave of immigration more than do lists of persons naturalized. Table 3. Naturalization by Country of Origin, 1801–1820 Year

1800– 1804 1805– 1809 1810– 1814 1815– 1820 Total

Germany

SwitzerScandiland Holland France Italy navia

Russia Flandersi Other Total

40

15

9

5

3

3

3

2

4

84

47

9

7

7

3

7

3

3

3

89

2

1

1

1

1

2

–

–

1

9

15

2

1

2

2

2

–

1

3

28

104

27

18

15

9

14

6

6

11

210

i

During Napoleon’s occupation of Flanders this area turns up in the naturalization laws as a separate unit. I have included it in this table to demonstrate the regional origins of naturalized subjects. Source: Shaw II, 215, and the acts of naturalization for the years 1801–1820 at the House of Lords Records Office.

The increase in naturalization during the first of the Napoleonic Wars suggests that many Europeans sought permanent, not temporary refuge in Britain. Germans continued to constitute the largest group of both naturalized subjects and denizens.42 Of 210 naturalized persons, 104 came from Germany, mostly from its Protestant regions (Table 3). Between 1660 and 1820 large numbers of German immigrants came from Hanse towns. Prior to 1714 more people came from Hamburg than Bremen, but under the Hanoverians the ratio reversed, and arrivals from Bremen increased perceptibly. Few people came from German Baltic port towns. The number of newcomers from Gdansk sank conspicuously: before 1714, fourteen were from Gdansk, but from 1715 until the end of the century only two gave Gdansk as their place of origin.43 Prior to 1714, a salient number of new subjects came from the Palatinate (Table 4). The French ravage of that region and the House of Neuburg’s revival of Catholicism there drove many Protestants from their towns and villages, some of whom fled to England. Only a small, wealthy minority of this great wave of emigrants ultimately came to enjoy naturalization. The German Reformed St. Paul’s Church in London, established in 1697, is thought to have been erected at the initiative of Palatines.44 Virtually no further Palatines were naturalized after 1709, when the nightmarish wave of impoverished Palatines wore out their welcome among the English public.45

20 | The Forgotten Majority

Table 4. The Ten Most Frequent Places of Origin for German Immigrants to England, 1660–1800 Place of birth

Hamburg Bremen Palatinate Gdansk Frankfurt Duchy of Cleves Elberfeld Emden Lübeck Berlin

1660–1709 Number of immigrants

75 23 15 14 11 9 6 4 3 2

Place of birth

Hamburg Bremen Frankfurt Berlin Hanover Brunswick Lübeck Augsburg Gdansk Herford

1715–1800 Number of immigrants

79 67 13 13 12 9 9 8 6 6

Scarcely anyone from west of the Rhine was naturalized in eighteenth-century England. Catholic regions of southern Germany are barely represented in the statistics at all, with the one exception of the old merchant town Augsburg.46 Emigration from Hanover to England was not noteworthy before 1709. After 1715 the number of naturalized immigrants from Hanover spiked, but surprisingly, it did not head the list. Sorted by political borders, the Kingdom of Hanover, with 35 emigrants, took third place behind the two Hanse towns of Hamburg and Bremen. However, sorting naturalized German immigrants by their eighteenth-century political allegiances makes far less sense than viewing them in terms of regional, pre-industrial clusters. The latter approach shows that many came from northwestern regions of Germany specializing in textiles. Westphalia alone was the source of 19 persons, while 9 came from the Duchy of Berg and 11 from the Dukedom of Ravensberg and the diocese Osnabrück. Taken together, the England-bound emigrants leaving these regions outnumbered those leaving the Kingdom of Hanover. The towns of Herford, Elberfeld, and Osnabrück were local trade hubs for productive hinterlands and well known for textile exports; their commercial development was considerably effected by Atlantic trade. The textile regions of Westphalia, Silesia, and Bohemia also traded with Spain’s colonies.47 Most immigrants from Hanover who were naturalized in England were merchants and sugar refiners neither related to nor directly involved with the court. Records from the Alien Office and the Home Office show that during the Coalition Wars people from Hanover were treated no differently than any other foreigners seeking naturalization; save one, none of their petitions mention being a subject of the same king. The exception was Frederick Huth, who like Baring and Schröder was to become one of London’s leading bankers of German origin. His

Naturalizing Newcomers for Prosperity | 21

request for naturalization, dated 1819, mentions the royal tie between England and Hanover. Unfortunately for Huth, his petition was initially denied under Sidmouth’s restrictive naturalization policy.48 Of the eastern German regions, Brandenburg and Prussia were represented fairly well. Despite a lack of proximity to the sea, twenty-five individuals came from textile and trading regions in Saxony and Silesia.

Occupations of German Immigrants Who Became English Subjects Rarely do naturalization papers mention vocations, occupations, or professions. To discover the immigrants’ livelihoods, I looked for clues to their biographies, consulted directories, and sifted through the serial data mentioned above. The dearth of sources compiled prior to George I’s accession to the throne makes identifying immigrant occupations harder than it is for the years after 1715. Directories were not published regularly until after 1734, and less genealogical material exists for the families of those who emigrated, although London’s port records are helpful. Seventeenth-century name variation often adds to the complication. Of the 175 immigrants of German origin naturalized between 1660 and 1714, 8 were women and 10 were minors.49 Occupations were identified for 77 of the remaining 157 persons. Seventy of them were merchants, one a sugar refiner and the rest academics. Status is mentioned only once, in the case of a “gentleman.” For the years from 1709 to 1712, statistics on occupations are near impossible to find. Going by their names, the greater majority of all newcomers naturalized were of French origin. Other nationalities were represented, too: Dutch, Swiss, German, and German Russian. A conspicuously high number of women took advantage of Anne’s act of 1709, which made naturalization affordable. Some wives of merchants who had been naturalized prior to 1709 were naturalized during this period. Only a few occupations could be identified for men. Some were churchmen, like Rupert and Tribekko, two clergymen commissioned to provide for London’s Palatines. One new subject was a bookseller, one a cartographer, another a musician. Several were merchants, including Henry Voguell from Herford, William Amsinck and Libert Wolters, both from Hamburg, and Mathias Schiffner from Russia, all of whom we shall hear more about later.50 The occupations of most new subjects created after 1715 are more easily discovered (Table 5). Of the 469 Germans who became British subjects between 1715 and 1800, 21 were women and 4 were minors. Two of the latter were sons of merchants.51

22 | The Forgotten Majority

Table 5. Occupation and Status of Naturalized British Subjects of German Origin, 1715–1800 Occupation/ Status

Merchanti Broker Sugar refiner Artisanii Academiciii Esquire Nobleman Captain Composeriv/Artist Freeman of the City of London Unknown Total

Number

298 17 17 13 11 8 2 2 2 1 77 448

i Including nine furriers, two merchants who were also partners in sugar refineries, and the two merchant sons mentioned above. ii Including tailors, one musical instrument builder, one mason, and one clockmaker. iii Including clergymen, physicians, and pharmacists. iv The musician was Georg Friedrich Handel.

Sorting these immigrants by occupation produces a surprisingly homogenous picture: most of them were merchants. Overall, the number of academics, noblemen, and people otherwise associated with the court was small.52 More artisans were naturalized than academics and noblemen, but they were still an insignificant group compared to merchants. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Germans working in England were particularly well represented in three fields: sugar refining, music (including instrument making), and pork butchery. These three trades, as shaped by Germans, had excellent reputations among the British people. Yet most of the musicians and artisans never became naturalized subjects. A naturalized artisan was generally a particularly prominent or well-off individual, often involved in transnational trade. This was particularly true of large-scale sugar refiners. The eighteenth century made no clear distinction between tradespeople, entrepreneurs, merchants, and brokers. Many merchants were active entrepreneurs or brokers. I have listed as merchants those whose activity in production or entrepreneurship was, the sources suggest, either only temporary or subordinate to their activities as merchants, as in the case of Peter Meyer, a major overseas merchant of German origin who was also co-owner of a sugar refinery.53 Another individual, John Engelbert Teschemacher from the town of Elberfeld, was not only a merchant but also an inventor and textile factory owner. Furriers often combined craftsmanship with sales. Two brothers from Silesia, John Daniel Paul

Naturalizing Newcomers for Prosperity | 23

and John William Paul, were furriers and owned tanneries. I count them as merchants, too, because they traded with fur, hides, and other merchandise on a large, international scale.54 Some merchants were also bankers. In the eighteenth century, business and banking were not yet distinctly separate. Within the first generation of naturalized merchant-bankers all but one turned to banking only temporarily, so I have not put bankers in a rubric of their own.55 On the other hand, banking did attract many members of successive generations, like the Duntzes, the Dorriens, and the Barings. Again, separating merchants from brokers is difficult. Those listed here as brokers include only those who, according to the sources, pursued that occupation from the start and were licensed for brokerage.56 We cannot rule out the possibility that they also pursued other forms of business. The same holds for the esquires on the list. In directories, wealthy merchants who had retired from active business life often simply went by the title of esquire.57 Other occupations could not be identified for those listed only as esquires. All esquires whose occupations were discernible were merchants. Many esquires with undisclosed occupations were probably merchants, too. Some appear to have come from merchant families in Bremen and Hamburg, although their precise family backgrounds and occupations remain unclear. The origins of immigrants with very common names like Schmidt, Müller, Lang, and Meyer are impossible to trace, and widespread first names like Heinrich and Johann complicate things further. Moreover, in England family names such as Müller and Schmidt were soon changed to Miller and Smith, rendering their foreign origin or original line of work untraceable. Considerable variation in name spellings over time poses another challenge in identifying individuals.58 Other individuals could not be located at all because they did not live in London or were not listed in directories. In other words, the number of merchants among naturalized English subjects of German origin was probably greater than the table suggests. Immigrant family names and places of origin reveal instances of family and chain migration. Few German merchants moved to London alone—siblings and other kin went along or followed them later. Some, like the brothers Gerhard and John Wolrath Kettler from Leer in East Friesland, were naturalized together; others, like the Berckenhout brothers from Hamburg, were naturalized one shortly after the other.59 Once a business was established and flourishing, other relatives were asked to come over, either to expand the business as new partners or, if the business’s founder had no descendants, to secure succession.60 Between 1711 and 1779, four members of Hamburg’s merchant family Amsinck arrived in London in succession. From 1745 to 1818, the Rücker (or Rucker) family in Hamburg dispatched ten family members to England, all of whom became British subjects. Though family names vary, biographical data—particularly for families from Elberfeld and Herford—show that kin and chain migration lasted for over a century.61

24 | The Forgotten Majority

The homogeneity of occupations among naturalized German immigrants raises more questions, for instance whether other foreigners seeking naturalization were also predominantly from one or more specific occupational groups. An examination of occupations of Russian immigrants naturalized in England yielded similar results, although their total number was small—just seventy people. Remarkably, all of the Russians had either German or Dutch names. They came from large Russian and Baltic towns such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riga, and Reval (Tallinn). Most of them have been identified as merchants. The same occupational pattern holds for new British subjects of Swiss and Dutch origin. Well-known merchants such as the Haldimands, Miévilles, and Burckhardts came from Switzerland; the Van Assendelfts, Van Necks, and Berens were from the Netherlands.62 Under Hanoverian rule, naturalization policy clearly preferred merchants. In light of Britain’s rise to world power, the following chapters will discuss how immigrants and naturalized merchants contributed to expanding the empire and its global network. They will also explore these individuals’ aspirations, the opportunities and risks that awaited them, and the ways they dealt with challenges.

Notes 1. Daniel Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen: The Controversy over Immigration and Population, 1660–1760, London, 1995, 38. 2. See Ralph A. Davis, A Commercial Revolution: English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Historical Association Pamphlet 64, London, 1967; Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England; Donald Winch and Patrick K. O’Brien, eds., The Political Economy of Britain’s Historical Experience 1688–1914, Oxford, 2002. For contemporary pamphlet literature see most recently Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen. 3. For the navigation acts see Ralph Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, London, 1962, and Sarah R. Palmer, Politics, Shipping, and the Repeal of the Navigation Laws, Manchester, 1990. 4. Josiah Child, New Discourse on Trade, London, 1693, 12 and also 154; see also Edgar Furness, The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism: A Study in the Labor Theories of the Later English Mercantilists. New York, 1965, 29ff. 5. Child, New Discourse, 122ff.; Josiah Tucker, Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants in Two Parts, London, 1751, Part II, 6; Furness, Mercantilism, 131 and 142. 6. “Husbandmen, Seamen, Soldiers, Artizans, and Merchants,” wrote Petty, are the “very pillars of any Common-Wealth.” Similarly, Malachy Postlethwayt saw a direct correlation between the wealth of a nation and the qualifications of skilled workers. William Petty, Political Arithmetic, ed. Charles H. Hull, New York, 1963, vol. 1, 259; Malachy Postlethwayt, The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, 4th ed., 1774, 1. Other mercantilists, like the anonymous author of “England’s Great Happiness,” held that foreigners “bring several new trades with them or help to increase those we have” (“England’s Great Happiness,” 1677, in McCulloch, ed., Early English Tracts, Cambridge, 1970, 264). 7. Josiah Tucker, A Letter to a Friend concerning Naturalization, London, 1753, 23f.

Naturalizing Newcomers for Prosperity | 25

8. “It cannot be desirable to create inducements to Foreigners to carry away and disburse in other countries the wealth they have accumulated in this; and it would be difficult to assign a satisfactory reason why the State should be denied the services of a naturalized Foreigner, if his superior skill, information, or ability gave him superior recommendation for employment.” Parliamentary Papers, Report of the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the State of Laws affecting Aliens, 1843, vol. 5, p. vi. 9. See, for example, Philanglus, “Britannia Languens, or A Discourse of Trade,” London, 1680, in McCulloch, Early English Tracts, esp. 358f. 10. For early parliamentary debate on the topic see Caroline Robbins, “A Note on General Naturalization under the Later Stuarts and A Speech in the House of Commons, on the Subject in 1664,” JMH 34 (1962): 168–177. 11. Ibid. On the law itself see William O’Reilly, “The Naturalization Act of 1709 and the Settlement of Germans in Britain, Ireland, and the Colonies,” in Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton, eds., From Strangers to Citizens, Brighton, 2001, 492–502. 12. As early as 1711 they had proposed an amendment to annul the Naturalization Act, but it was resisted by the Upper House, where the Whigs still held the majority. An increase in the number of peers put the Tories in the majority the next year. 13. For the decline in debate on the topic following 1712 see Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen, 166. 14. Anon., The Case of Merchants of Great Britain, n.d. [1753?], BL 357.d.9 (39). 15. Josiah Tucker, Letter, 7. 16. Denization became obsolete after 1844, although it was in use until 1873. 17. Huguenots were denizens but had the same rights and privileges as naturalized subjects. 18. 11 & 12 William III c.6; see also Daniel Statt, “The Birthright of an Englishman, the Practice of Naturalization and Denization of Immigrants under the Later Stuarts and Early Hanoverians,” in PHSL 25 (1989): 61–74. 19. Only denizen children born after their parents’ denization were entitled to inherit. 20. 7 James I c.2. An applicant had to receive the sacrament in a Protestant church one month before submitting an application for naturalization. Swearing the “oath of supremacy” meant denouncing Catholicism. Every Protestant person over the age of eighteen was allowed to swear the oath. Shaw I, ix. 21. Naturalizing Jews was impossible as long as the oath contained a Christian passage. 22. William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, London, 1817, repr. New York, 1966, vol. 30, 188. See also Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, “British Nationality Policy as a Counter-Revolutionary Strategy during the Napoleonic Wars,” in Andreas Fahrmeir, Oliver Faron, and Patrick Weil, eds., Migration Control in the North Atlantic World, New York and Oxford, 2003, 55–72. 23. JHL vol. 41, p. 543; see also Schulte Beerbühl, “British Nationality”, 58f. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. 58 Geo III, c.96 and c.97; JHL vol. 51, 760f. 27. JHL vol. 47; 459; NA, HO 1/6 George Oppenheimer August 1811. His application was denied because he had not extended his residence permit on time. 28. Some applied as many as seven times, like Francis Maubert, whose first application dates from 1814. After seven unsuccessful attempts he was finally awarded British nationality in 1825 (NA, HO 5/4 under the letter M). His naturalization is said to have cost him £1,500.00 (BPP, Select Committee on Aliens 1842, 38, inquiry 394). 29. In 1818 Canning’s advocacy for Charles Winckelmann from Brunswick led to a period of resentment between him and Sidmouth (NA, HO 1/13, 27 May 1818, Canning to Sidmouth). 30. See Schulte Beerbühl, “British Nationality,” for this and the following paragraph. 31. Bank of Scotland Archive, Edinburgh, List of Proprietors 1818.

26 | The Forgotten Majority

32. JHL vol. 71, 732; HLRO, Main Papers, Aliens Regulation Bill, 1818, no. 306 a and b. 33. The majority of new shareholders had not confined themselves to the £80.00 minimum in shares but invested £250.00 or more. The value of their shares totaled £10,833 6s. 8d. Withdrawal of their money would have left the bank in a severe financial crisis (Bank of Scotland Archive BS 20/5/3 Papers re William Macao, and BS 20/32/140-148 Melville Papers. See also Charles A. Malcolm, The History of the Bank of Scotland 1695–1945, Edinburgh, 1948, esp. 595–598). 34. The clause in the bank’s charter was renewed once more in 1870 and was not struck until 1920. Malcolm, Bank of Scotland, 98. 35. The Catholic Maria of Modena, wife of James II, became a denizen in 1769, as did Catholic Peter La Dore in 1639. On 19 December 1667 Aluaro Da Costa, a Jew from Lisbon, was naturalized (Shaw I, 99). See also the dispute between Aluaro’s son Anthony Da Costa and the Russia Company, discussed later. 36. Anne’s naturalization bill did not formally make denization obsolete. The Queen and Sunderland wanted to assent to his naturalization under the provision that the law had no legal objections to his religious affiliation (BL, ADD MSS 61 611 fol. 189, 22 Nov. 1709). 37. Shaw I, 71–112. Guiseppi later found a third list from the Court of Exchequer that was not available to Shaw; see Minet and Minet, A Supplement to Dr. Shaw’s Letters of Denizations and Acts of Naturalization, HSQS 35, Frome, 1932, Sec. II, 11–34. 38. Statt, “Birthright,” 70. 39. Carl Schöll estimated that at the beginning of the century up to two thousand Germans lived in London and that by its end they were as many as six to ten thousand. Carl Schöll, Geschichte der deutschen evangelischen Kirchen in England, Stuttgart, 1853, 15f. See also Karl Heinrich Schaible, Geschichte der Deutschen in England, Strasbourg 1885, 368, and Panayi, German Immigrants, 4f. 40. Schulte Beerbühl, “Erwünschte und unerwünschte Einwanderer. Die britische Einwanderungs- und Einbürgerungspolitik im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Karen Schönwälder and Imke Sturm-Martin, eds., Die britische Gesellschaft zwischen Offenheit und Abgrenzung: Einwanderung und Integration vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, Berlin and Vienna, 2001, 38. 41. No study has been done on the Swiss population in London, but its founding of a Swiss church there in 1762 does indicate a growing community. Ernst Boos, Die Schweizerkolonie in England nach Berufsgruppen, Einsiedeln, 1966, 33. 42. Naturalization laws reflected shifts in political borders variously, e.g. Samuel Rackwitz’s naturalization act names “Ravitz, Province of Posmania, formerly Poland, now of Prussia.” HLRO, I Geo IV c.59. In acts of naturalization, the British referred mostly to the borders of the Old German Reich, ignoring temporary affiliations like Bremen’s belonging to Denmark. In cases of towns with changing political affiliations, such as Bremen, Strasbourg, and Gdansk, they generally skipped naming the state. 43. As of the seventeenth century, Gdansk and Great Britain were close in economic standing. Gdansk had an English colony, composed primarily of merchants. Some naturalizations were of children born to English parents in Gdansk, who until 1709, for lack of any jus sanguinis, were considered aliens and had no right to inherit their father’s estate or property. In 1665 Gerard and Hester Gore, children of the deceased William Gore, were naturalized for this reason. Shaw I, 95. 44. Heinrich Deicke, A Short History of the German Evangelical Reformed St. Paul’s Church, London, 1907. 45. Most persons emigrating from the Palatinate in the eighteenth century headed for the North American colonies, but the British government did not want them even there. They were tolerated but denied any kind of support, unlike emigrants from Salzburg (Schulte Beerbühl, “Frühneuzeitliche Flüchtlingshilfe in Großbritannien und das Schicksal der Pfälzer Auswan-

Naturalizing Newcomers for Prosperity | 27

46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

derer von 1709,” in Mathias Beer and Dittmar Dahlman, eds., Über die trockene Grenze und über das offene Meer. Binneneuropäische und transatlantische Migrationen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, Essen, 2004, 303–328). For the period from 1715 to 1800, the lists record only a handful of naturalized immigrants from southern regions of Germany: two from Lindau, one from Stuttgart, one from Tübingen, one from Württemberg, and two from Swabia. (Not all naturalization papers mention places of birth.) Karl Heinrich Kaufhold, “Deutschland 1650–1850,” in Wolfram Fischer et al., eds., Europäische Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte von der Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart, 1993, 530–588; Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute. TNA, HO 5/24 under R, and TNA, HO 1/13, 20 Feb. 1819, Huth to Sidmouth, memorandum. One girl and nine boys. For more detail on these merchants, see chapter 4. Some of the women were from the nobility, e.g., Melusine von Schulenburg, mistress of George I, and her daughter Sophia Charlotte, later the Countess of Leicester. Most naturalized women were married to wealthy Britons. Naturalization papers do not always clearly indicate whether a person was from the nobility. Robethon, for instance, was raised to the status of nobility in 1703. His naturalization papers make no mention of it, not even a simple “de” (of ). Noblemen running from the French Revolution often wrote out their long, sonorous titles in their petitions for naturalization, but denization papers mostly use the more modest form of “de,” or leave status unnamed. For the eighteenth century, many naturalization documents that write “de” between a person’s Christian name and family name pertain to merchants of Huguenot origin, for instance, Philip de Neufville from Frankfurt and Caesar and Hendry de Missy from Berlin. For more on Meyer, see below. See below for more on the Pauls’ trade in the Levant. We find another individual listed as a furrier and merchant in naturalization papers from 16 December 1778: John Daniel Hose (GL, L19/MSS 8 356 Hamburg’s Lutheran Church (in the following called “Hamburg’s Church”), 6 December 1778, list of persons […] taking communion for the purpose of naturalization). The exception, Andreas Grote from Bremen, went into banking permanently (see below). See the chapter on brokers below. E.g., as of 1804, London’s directory lists the Prussian Consul Sebastian Fridag, a merchant from Emden, as an “Esquire,” whereas from 1780 to 1804 the directory had listed him as a merchant. In 1803 he retired from the business and left it to his nephew Sebastian Fridag from Norden. For example, the name Cohlbrandt later became Colebrant (see Shaw II, 46, as well as Hamburg’s Church baptism records for 25 March 1715); in one case the name Richter was changed to Right (baptism record for 12 March 1719). For the Kettlers see Shaw II, 165. Benjamin and John Berckenhout were naturalized in December 1722 and March 1723; see Shaw II, 128, 129. E.g., John Abraham from Elberfeld was naturalized in 1718 and his brother followed him later, becoming a British subject in 1731. Emigrants’ economic activities thus had repercussions for their birthplaces. This raises the question of whether chain emigration can be seen as a policy of those German towns. Shaw II, 137, 164, 169, 186, 43 Geo III c.21, 46 Geo III c.8.

Chapter 2

PROMOTING ANGLO-GERMAN TRADE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

? Both contemporaries and historians found explanations for foreign merchants’ share in English trade. Some believed that exemption from guild membership and from the acquisition of Freedom of the City, which gave free status, the right to vote in the city, and other local privileges, spared newcomers the expense and toil of the civil duties imposed on native-born subjects. Others bemoaned the competition: outsiders allegedly undersold locals, forcing them out of their own market.1 Contemporary reasoning, however, may not have been sound. Dwyryd W. Jones has argued that England’s long wars may have drained local business communities of leadership, a situation further aggravated in the 1690s by several native merchants’ early retirement.2 Yet that is only part of the story. Several factors in play on both sides of the Channel contributed to the influx of migrant merchants. Germans’ eagerness to seek their fortune abroad arose from circumstances both local and regional. Merchants from the Lower Palatinate fled religious and political oppression. Between 1688 and 1710, a Catholic revival and the devastation left by the French caused many to leave the region.3 In contrast, most emigrants from northern and northwestern German-speaking regions left their respective homelands for economic reasons. Fragmented as they were, German principalities’ toll stations marked every bend in the road or river. Severe tax burdens and a lack of German dominions abroad impeded overseas trade.4 On the other hand, wage and price differences between Germany and England made England and its colonies attractive markets for German merchandise. By becoming English subjects, German merchants gained access to novel, coveted English colonial wares and entrance to London’s finance markets. Foreign merchants Notes from this chapter begin on page 72.

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 29

filled a niche vacated by English maritime traders who had turned to non-European and Asian markets promising greater profits and favorable financing. For English merchants, trade with the nearby Continent had lost its appeal. Since medieval times, London’s business elite had been international and cosmopolitan. In the fourteenth century, Flemings, Italians, and Germans migrated to London, followed later by Dutchmen and Huguenots. By the late seventeenth century, the economic elite consisted of two major groups: an influential native merchant community, and a small but similarly influential immigrant elite. No censuses were taken between the mid-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and immigration was not controlled until 1905, so the overall level of immigration for those times can be only roughly estimated. Although contemporary Englishmen suspected large numbers of foreigners were living in London, research on the late seventeenth century shows that aliens comprised only about 3 percent to just over 5 percent of the population,5 a percentage that presumably sank to 1.6 by 1776.6 And although immigration seems to have surged throughout the eighteenth century, it did not keep abreast of the city’s growing population.7 From 1700 to 1800, the number of London’s inhabitants almost doubled, going from about 490,000 to about 960,000.8 Compared to the total number of people living in London, the merchant population was small. In 1680 London had approximately 10,000 resident merchants, 2,000 of whom were considered eminent and 8,000, small-scale.9 London’s force of foreign merchants grew only incrementally throughout the 1700s. It was said to number about 2,900 around 1750 and just barely more than 3,500 by 1812.10 At the end of the seventeenth century, one-third of London’s merchants were apparently from abroad,11 although the City’s directories suggest many more. By the mid-eighteenth century, almost two-thirds of London’s leading overseas merchants were of foreign parentage or born abroad,12 making the City’s merchant elite thoroughly cosmopolitan.13 Though insignificant in number, merchants from abroad were wealthy and influential. At no other time in English history did the commercial elite control the economy, politics, and society so strongly as in the eighteenth century.14 Foreign merchants have even been said to have contributed considerably to the expansion of the British Empire:15 “The real seat of world power was not Downing Street No. 10; it was at the plain buildings around Threadneedle Street and Lombard, where the exchange and the banks, along with the shipping, insurance, trade, and later, industrial enterprises emerged.”16

Reorganizing Anglo-German Trade during the 1600s Elizabeth I’s closing of the Steelyard—the Hanse’s Kontor—in 1598 marks a divide in the history of Anglo-German trade relations. It terminated late medi-

30 | The Forgotten Majority

eval trade based on royal privileges and ushered in the demise of the Hanseatic League, thus creating a need to reorganize trade by changing it from a corporate to a private and individual undertaking. From then on, German merchants, like all other foreigners, were subject to alien laws that put them at a considerable economic, social, and occupational disadvantage. The Steelyard’s closure almost halted trade between the two countries. In 1609 Britain’s anemic imports from German North Sea ports were mostly of Silesian linen and lawn.17 Trade stagnated until the 1640s.18 British staples were exported mainly to and via the Netherlands. When the Hanse fell apart, London’s Company of Merchant Adventurers usurped all trade in cloth,19 replacing not just London’s Germans who traded with northern Germany, but Germans who traded with other countries as well. In the first half of the seventeenth century, the number of aliens trading in English drapery declined.20 The remaining foreign drapery-merchants were for the most part Dutch and Flemish.21 In Hamburg, meanwhile, the closing of the Hanse’s Kontor in London meant the ruin of an association called the Englandfahrergesellschaft. Once a major trade organization for textile export, it became a mere social club with fewer merchant and more academic members.22 England and the Hanseatic towns managed to avoid the complete collapse of bilateral trade. Both sides fought for old and new privileges in tough, tedious negotiations. The English had no real use for the Steelyard buildings and returned them to the Hanseatic towns in 1606. Yet despite repeated attempts persisting well into the second half of the century, Hanseatic towns failed to regain their former privileges.23 Although work through the Kontor had ceased, they continued to nominate a Steelyard master and representative and to rent adjacent buildings, the guild hall, and living quarters for cloth makers unaffected by the shutdown.24 They continued paying the pastor’s salary for Allhallows the Great, the church of the Hanse. Over the next two hundred years, until the Steelyard was sold and Hamburg was integrated into the Reich, the role of the Steelyard master underwent transformation to later include consular responsibilities.25 Originally, the closure of the Steelyard was accompanied by an order that merchants quit the country. Elizabeth I ultimately rescinded that decision, but few German merchants stayed on. Eight persevering merchants lived near the Steelyard;26 by 1621, five were said to live there.27 Census returns on foreigners living in London between 1618 and 1637 give some clue as to the number of German merchants among them. These returns do not accurately reflect the true number, as they were not taken for every district and some aliens evaded the count for fear of persecution or deportation. In contrast to the clandestine census taken in 1593, seventeenth-century returns were announced beforehand, thus enabling evasion. Moreover, not all compilers noted occupations and national origins: the 1618 returns for aliens living in the districts of Aldgate and Duke’s Place, for example, mention no occupations. Meanwhile,

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 31

individuals designated as “servants” because they lived with foreign merchants generally were not domestics but clerks or apprentices.28 The most comprehensive extant returns are for the years 1618 and 1635. Records for the years 1627 and 1639 are too fragmentary to create any general idea of the true circumstances.29 In 1618 a total of 1,343 aliens lived in London, 189 of whom were merchants. In 1600 the city had about 200,000 inhabitants; by 1650 it had 375,000.30 Most of London’s immigrants came from States-General of the Netherlands, the Austrian Netherlands, and France.31 Germans were a minority totaling only 119 people, twenty-four of whom were merchants. By 1635 the number of European aliens in London had grown to 3,662, but compared to the 1618 count, the number of German merchants among them dropped slightly: only twenty-one were left.32 German merchants’ geographic origins mostly correspond to our historical conception of the Hanse era. They came not only from Hamburg but from Emden, too, and especially from regions west of the Rhine, such as Kleve, Wesel, and the Cologne-Aachen area. These were also the native regions of most Germans accounted for in London in 1593,33 and remained so until after the Restoration. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century naturalization documents rarely mention these areas. After the Restoration, the number of merchants from the Hanseatic towns of Bremen and Hamburg and the entire northern German region rose disproportionately.34 The few German merchants who resided in England’s capital in the early 1600s belonged to two different groups of geographic origin and religious affiliation. The first group, which made an effort to uphold Hanseatic tradition, was Lutheran and mainly from Hamburg. They lived within the walled community of the Steelyard and nearby streets and flocked round the Steelyard master.35 In keeping with long-standing Hanse tradition, only bachelors could become Steelyard masters, so most masters stayed in London for a mere few years and then returned to their native country;36 not many stayed on permanently in London.37 One master who did was Marcus Brandt, who established a family there. Two others were the brothers Jacob and Theodor Jacobsen, both of whom remained single.38 The Jacobsen brothers were founding members of the Hamburg Church of London, established after the Great Fire of 1666. The second group of German merchants consisted of members of Continental Reformed churches and came largely from Emden, Holstein, Bremen, and the Cologne-Aachen area. Unlike merchants from Hamburg, the Reformed sought permanent residence and established families in London, especially in Billingsgate and Queenhithe. Many Dutch and Flemings also lived in Billingsgate near the Dutch church St. Austin Friars.39 Many members of the German Reformed church belonged to London’s Dutch church and accepted parochial offices there, like Samuel and William De Visscher (both born in Emden) and Abraham Beck (from Stolberg near Aachen), who were deacons and elders at Austin Friars.40

32 | The Forgotten Majority

In London the German merchants’ mingling with the Dutch was not solely a matter of religion. The forefathers of some members of London’s German Reformed congregation came from Holland. Having fled the Netherlands during sixteenth-century religious conflicts and settled in nearby Germany, they had never entirely broken with their former country. Further, the Netherlands and German principalities had long-established trade relations. The Dutch were crucial trade partners for Bremen and for Germany’s western regions. The Netherlands was by far the place of choice for training young German merchants. The strong past network of commercial, personal, and family ties between the two countries was continued in London, where young Dutch merchants lived with merchants from Bremen,41 and in turn, Reformed Germans lived with Dutchmen.42 The trade of German Reformed merchants was embedded in AngloDutch trade. London’s churches for foreigners were more than places of worship; they were centers of parish life, drawing members into an arrangement of social, festive, and mercantile duties. The English government tolerated these communities, exploiting them when necessary for national purposes and entrusting them with social, fiscal, and political work. During the Thirty Years’ War, the Crown put London’s Dutch church in charge of organizing and handling royal collections in support of Protestant parishes in the Palatinate. A few German merchants were among the Dutch church leaders entrusted with these transactions. Abraham Beck, already mentioned earlier, held royal monies from the first royal collection and organized their transfer to Amsterdam and Nuremberg.43 Overall, though, German merchants remained a vulnerable minority, not only in London but in other European port and trade cities, too, living in the shadow of the Dutch community and as part of the Dutch trade network. In Livorno, for example, German merchants affiliated with Dutch merchants from the Protestant congregation known as the Nazione Olandese-Alemanna (Dutch-German Nation).44 The Germans’ affiliation with the Dutch was also mirrored in seventeenthcentury English vernacular. The term “German” first appeared in the English language in the sixteenth century, but even in the seventeenth century the word Dutch was still widely used as meaning Deutsch, perhaps because the Netherlands did not definitely exit the Old German (Habsburg) Reich (i.e., the Holy Empire of the Habsburg monarchy) until 1648. Distinguishing between the two became more common toward the century’s end. Initially, Germans from German principalities were called “high German” to distinguish them from the Dutch. Nevertheless, in the English language no sharp distinction between being German and being Dutch became truly widespread until the eighteenth century. In London, designations shifted when the number of Germans rose and that of Dutchmen fell. Based on returns of aliens, Irene Scouloudi compiled a list of prodigiously successful immigrant merchants, counting as large-scale businesses those trad-

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 33

ing houses that had more than three employees. Her list is incomplete and omits big Dutch merchants and German merchants. Immigrant merchants may have inaccurately stated the number of persons they employed if the latter were aliens too. It was illegal to hire an excess of foreigners; sixteenth-century law prohibited foreign-born employers from themselves hiring more than two foreign-born workers.45 Of the five eminent merchants on Scouloudi’s list, two were of German origin: the aforementioned Abraham Beck, with four employees, and Giles Vandepitt from Cologne, who had six workers.46 The list fails to mention Jacob Herewin from Bremen, the owner of a larger trade firm who in 1618 had three employees. In the 1620s he also acted as a consignee for merchants from Hamburg.47 Also, one contemporary source—the Visitations of London of 1634, a compilation of prominent London merchants’ coats of arms and genealogical trees— includes the names of a few reputable German merchants: William Paggen from Jülich, Frederick Conradus from Lübeck, and two merchants from Hamburg.48 In the 1600s, the Dutch made up the commercial elite among London’s immigrants and lent considerable sums of money to the Crown. Over the decades, more and more Huguenots joined the mercantile immigrant elite, gaining influence as their numbers rose.49 Despite declining membership after the turn of the century, the Dutch church, attended by magnates such as the brothers Joshua and Gerrard Van Neck from The Hague, enjoyed greater prestige than the German church.50 The Dutch community was an important scene for Reformed German merchants from Bremen and Elberfeld.51 Many Germans were not only members but also elders and deacons, and were even buried at St. Austin Friars.52 Despite the Hanse’s collapse, German merchants upheld the sturdy tradition of sending young men abroad for apprenticeship. Prior to 1600, apprentices generally went to the Steelyard for a year or more to acquire the language and learn England’s trading practices.53 In London, apprentices from Bremen and Hamburg completed their training under the guidance of fellow countrymen.54 After the 1660s, London once again became an attractive place for training.55 However, after 1700 budding German merchants decided less often to apprentice in England. Instead they completed apprenticeships elsewhere and then went straight to London seeking employment as junior merchants and bookkeepers. Those who did complete apprenticeships in England during the eighteenth century generally did so for familial reasons, such as securing succession for their London family business.56 After 1660, the German merchant elite in London built upon the small nucleus of German merchants that had stayed on after the Steelyard was closed, and on the old custom of apprenticing and training abroad. Networks did not wholly disappear with the Hanse, and enough valuable knowledge of trade and its practices was preserved for a rudimentary network to be rebuilt with little effort.

34 | The Forgotten Majority

London’s German Merchants after 1660 Two facts from the 1690s point to a post-Restoration flourishing of London’s German community: an increase in naturalizations, and the founding of more German churches. Naturalizations doubled in the century’s final decade, and in the following nine years they jumped again by about 60 percent. Between 1660 and 1669 thirty-four, and between 1670 and 1679 thirty-one Germans had become English. After the Glorious Revolution the number grew conspicuously: between 1690 and 1699, seventy-four Germans became English; between 1700 and 1709 a total of 120 did so.57 The founding of more German churches also indicates that London’s German community was growing. After the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed the Steelyard and the Hanse merchants’ church Allhallows, merchants from Hamburg (through the intercession of Swedish Ambassador Johann Barckman Leyenberg) founded London’s Hamburg Lutheran Church, inaugurated on Trinity Lane in 1673. The Protestant Lutheran church of St. Mary-le-Savoy (Marienkirche) was founded in 1694 as a split-off from a church in Hamburg. Three years later the Reformed established their own parish at St. Paul’s, which was not meant to compete with the Dutch congregation at St. Austin Friars but instead reflected a growing desire amongst London’s Reformed German population to have its own independent church. In the 1660s the number of merchants among naturalized subjects had been considerable,58 but the notable increase in naturalization in the 1690s was particularly driven by merchants. Two things prompted them to change their nationality: the Company of Merchant Adventurers’ loss of monopoly in the 1680s; and the Navigation Act of 1660, which prohibited direct trade between England’s dominions and other countries. The Danish merchant Peter Peterson explicitly named the Navigation Act as the reason for his submission of a petition for naturalization in 1660, saying that the act threatened his maritime and mercantile existence.59 Studies for Bremen and Hamburg show that after the Restoration, England revived its trade with northern German Hanseatic towns (Table 6). The breakup of the Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly facilitated trade conditions, but other factors promoted Anglo-German trade as well: Dutch-English wars at sea redirected English trade to northern German ports, and in 1661 Charles I exempted Hanseatic towns from compliance with the Navigation Act.60 As a consequence, England’s exports to Hamburg increased in the final quarter of the seventeenth century, and its imports from Hamburg increased even more.61 For England, Hamburg had always been a crucial German port. It was a gateway to the markets of central and southern German regions and beyond to markets in central and southern Europe. Hamburg’s trade links reached to Austria, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Denmark, and wares from these countries were channeled via Hamburg to England.

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 35

Table 6. England’s Trade with Germany, 1662/1663–1701, Thousands of £s (official records) Year

1662/3

1668/9

1686

1693

1694

1695

1697

1698

1699 1699–1701

Exports Reexports Imports

192 233 no data no data 185 218

253 209 398

288 112 682

415 74 718

504 124 462

240 96 335

520 174 525

551 149 818

515 263 732

Source: Based on data from Newman, “Anglo-Hamburg Trade,” 84, 86.

Like English trade in general, Hamburg’s trade catered to contemporary demand. English wool fabric remained a major export, although it was increasingly supplanted by “new draperies” (lighter cloth manufactured in England by French and Dutch settlers). England also became a vital supplier of tin, lead, coal, silk, and leather. After 1650, the greatest change in Anglo-German trade involved exports of wares from English colonies to England and their subsequent reexport from England to the Continent. England outperformed the Netherlands as a supplier of colonial goods, mainly tobacco and sugar. England’s reexport of overseas items surged after the collapse of trade with Spain. Between 1678 and 1702, Spanish exports to Hamburg dropped by 75 percent. The outbreak of the Spanish War of Succession had blocked German access to Spain’s colonial products, and these were conveniently replaced by England’s colonial pickings, making German principalities a vital market for England’s colonial merchandise. The selection of goods that England imported via Hamburg varied. Fustian had been the major import item in the first half of the seventeenth century, but in the latter half it was linen. Fewer Italian and southern German textiles found their way to England via Hamburg, while between 1660 and 1730 linen from Silesia and the backlands of Osnabrück was most common. Conflict with France fueled England’s rising demand for German linen. As prohibitively high excises on French linen and the occasional total ban on its import constricted textile imports from France, English consumers turned to the German market. In 1663, French linen had made up 39.7 percent of England’s total linen imports, and German linen almost equaled it at 39.3 percent. By 1701 French linen had dropped to 0.9 percent while Germany produced 76.3 percent of all linen imported to England. After the turn of the century, 90 percent of all linen imported by England came from Germany.62 Low wages and prices gave German manufacturers a competitive edge. The demand for German textiles, however, was not from England proper, but from its colonies,63 where slaves and poor whites needed cheaper, lighter linen.64 Throughout the first part of the eighteenth century, sometimes more than 90 percent of all cloth imported from Osnabrück was reexported to England’s colonies.65 The Royal African Company traded mostly Silesian linen. By 1700, England was reexporting 56 percent of the linen the company imported from Germany; this figure was 85 percent by 1723 and

36 | The Forgotten Majority

hovered just below 80 percent until 1750.66 Silesian and western German fabric found its way to Spain’s American colonies via England’s Caribbean dominions.67 Britain’s total imports from Germany declined as the eighteenth century progressed, although linen remained a chief import commodity. Simultaneously, by about 1750, Britain’s reexport of colonial wares leaped by 130 percent.68 Compared to the total volume of British foreign trade, the quantity of goods from German areas was rather insignificant. Still, the history of the “commercial revolution” in England would be different had Germany not exported linen to England, and had England not reexported colonial merchandise to Germany.69 Britain’s trade with the Continent did not constitute the bulk of its exports, but the kinds of commodities traded were so strategic in nature that their importance for Great Britain cannot be overlooked.70 Bremen had never held as prominent a place in trade with England as Hamburg, for several reasons. Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Bremen merchants exported many goods to England indirectly, via the Netherlands and Hamburg.71 The Company of Merchant Adventurers forbade its members to trade directly with Bremen.72 To make matters worse, the town’s political situation (Bremen was under Swedish rule from 1648 to 1719) and countless duty stations along the Weser River (especially Elsfleth tolls exacted by Denmark) hindered direct trade considerably.73 As a result of the Anglo-Dutch wars at sea and explicit encouragement from the British government, England’s direct trade with Bremen expanded in the latter half of the century. To harm the Netherlands, a 1669 amendment to the Navigation Act permitted Bremen merchants to ship linen thread, aniseed, potash, tar, wood, Brunswick beer, and Rhine wine on German vessels to England. Linen then also became a key export for Bremen. In turn, Bremen bought wool cloth and leather, salt, and coal from England and Scotland. Bremen merchants were more or less middlemen in coal and salt, supplying nearly all of Flanders with British coal.74 Bremen’s imports of British colonial wares also rose. After the Merchant Adventurers lost their trade monopoly in 1689, Bremen’s merchants were permitted to trade textiles. Official letters suggest that toward the end of the century, the number of exporters working out of Bremen doubled and tripled.75 In 1686 the revival of trade between Bremen and England spurred a group of men from Bremen to establish a voluntary association for merchants seeking trade with England. They named it Die Englische Kompanie (The English Company). Little is known of this association’s history or life span.76 Its goal of monopolizing trading and shipping to England was hindered by both its own members’ and outside merchants’ reluctance to comply, and the attempt failed.77 Several strong Bremen merchants did not join the English Company. Some responded to the Nine Years’ War and the War of Succession by chartering convoy ships to escort their own vessels.78

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 37

England’s economic progress and developments in bilateral trade were not the sole factors pushing German merchants to settle in England. Germans were in general already migrating in large numbers. The aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War postponed economic recovery in some areas for years. From the mid-seventeenth century on, lack of prospects in the rural areas surrounding commercial centers fostered a wave of merchant migration. Northern port cities, especially Bremen and Hamburg, attracted merchants seeking opportunities. Almost half of Hamburg’s population was said to have been born elsewhere.79 Nearer principalities like Lower Saxony, Schleswig, Holstein, Westphalia, and Hanover had surpluses of new merchants over and above the Dutch, Huguenot, and Sephardic merchants who had come to Hamburg a hundred years earlier. Most merchants arriving from Westphalia and the Bergisches Land, particularly those leaving Herford, Hildesheim, and Elberfeld, favored Bremen.80 Some of their siblings and other close relatives simultaneously migrated to London. In the second half of the seventeenth century, for instance, some members of the merchant families Dorrien (from Hildesheim), Vogel (from Herford), and Teschemacher (from Elberfeld) settled in Bremen, while kin settled in London. Together they created the foundation for an Atlantic commercial network going through Bremen and London. Another, smaller wave of migrants at the close of the seventeenth century came from textile-manufacturing areas in Silesia and Saxony. As noted, merchants’ reasons for abandoning their hometowns and migrating to more promising centers of trade often were not only economic but also familial. Migration eased the pressure of too many family members competing in a small local market. “Too many brothers in one small town harm one another, while from a distance they can be useful,” said Hermann Jakob Garrels from Leer in East Friesland, explaining his desire to migrate to London.81 Other European merchant families did the same. In the first half of the seventeenth century, two of five siblings from Amsterdam’s merchant family Muilman left for London,82 and in 1676 Widow Berenberg from Hamburg sought an apprenticeship in London for her second son for the same reason.83

Lack of Trust and Understanding: Challenges for Both Sides Recent research into the history of modern-day businesses has emphasized the role of trust in business transaction.84 Given the slow communication in early modern times, trustworthy business partners were paramount. Important deals and decisions were often made without any previous opportunity to communicate, sometimes based on merely sketchy knowledge of current market trends.85 Risk was high. Profit and loss, success and failure depended on the reliability of partners abroad.

38 | The Forgotten Majority

The trustworthiness of foreign trade partners was, however, more difficult to assess than the reliability of one’s fellow countrymen and relatives. Rudimentary knowledge of foreign languages, unfamiliar trade practices, lack of information on current prices, swings in demand and supply, unreliable retailers, and the constant threat of bankruptcy made overseas trade imponderable. Correspondence between some of Hamburg’s trade houses and the London merchants Charles Maresco and Jacob David reveals these sorts of challenges.86 In the 1660s, London’s Maresco & David was a large, respected trade house whose network stretched from Sweden to Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, and on to the Near East. Maresco & David chiefly traded iron, copper, and coal tar with Sweden. Its trade with Germany involved reexporting colonial wares and dyes. Ten percent of Maresco & David’s English sugar reexports went to Hamburg.87 Its business partners included such prestigious Hamburg merchants as the Ruland Brothers, the Berenbergs, and Peter Juncker. Yet despite years of cooperation with Maresco & David, the Hamburg merchants consistently had independent third parties verify their British counterparts’ reports. This was no exception: German houses were often wary of the quality of information provided by their English business partners. Lack of trust and constant misunderstandings led to complaints, and at one point the Ruland house even threatened to terminate trade with Maresco & David.88 Letters from Andreas Berenberg’s widow to Maresco’s successor, Jacob David, reveal some of the problems in the two houses’ dealings with one another. Difficulties often sprang from differences in work practices and apprenticing in the two countries. Given the long-standing business relations between the two houses, Widow Berenberg inquired whether her son Paul might do an apprenticeship with Maresco & David in London.89 She intended to send her son to London for up to five years, but in England an apprenticeship lasted at least seven years. Even longer periods of apprenticeship were sometimes accepted in both countries, although the Statute of Artificers of 1563 specified seven years of training. Many of London’s guilds and trade companies, such as the Eastland Company, apprenticed young men for eight years or more.90 In both Germany and England, additional years of work could be expected of an apprentice when no premium had been paid for taking him on. Widow Berenberg herself had employed an apprentice without asking for any fee, and the young man stayed on for eight years, receiving wages only during the last two. In London, Jacob David was unwilling to accept an apprentice for less than seven years and equally unwilling to waive the premium. He asked for £300 in fees and a deposit of another £2,000, which the widow considered extreme.91 Such prices, however, could be expected in London. Daniel Defoe noted apprenticeship fees from £500 to £1,000 in early eighteenth-century London.92 Estimated fees of £50 to £300 in R. Campbell’s apprenticeship data for the year 1747 must be considered too low. In London they varied considerably, depend-

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 39

ing on a trade’s standing and a master’s reputation. An overseas trader could ask more than a merchant of mere local or regional relevance. At the turn of the eighteenth century, merchants trading with the Near East could easily require apprenticeship premiums of up to £1,000.93 The status of an apprentice’s family was also taken into account; families of repute often paid more. Conversely, in both Germany and England a master’s acquaintances and relatives were often granted a reduction in fees. Thus many German merchant families sent their offspring to German relatives abroad for training. Fees were also often reduced for the sons of widows or families of limited financial means. As mentioned earlier, that usually also meant additional years of apprenticeship.94 Charles Maresco had been a member of the Levant Company, but Jacob David was not and thus had no reason to demand exaggerated fees. Families of two other apprentices had paid him only £150 and £200, respectively.95 The widow’s grievance was thus not wholly unjustified. The deposit of £2,000 was also outlandish, although she did not protest that. Trades handling precious metals and money demanded deposits to guarantee the honesty of an apprentice who handled money and valuables. Upon impeccable performance, the original sum would be returned at the end of the apprenticeship; the master kept the interest. In London, deposits commonly lay between £100 and £1,000. The latter sum, however, was demanded only when houses trading with the Near East sent apprentices abroad.96 Widow Berenberg was unwilling to pay more than £200 for her son’s apprenticeship and eventually declined David’s offer. Later she regretted that David had not informed her that in London, “those who have served out their apprenticeship and carried themselves well and want to remain with the firm can enjoy a half-share of the commission [… meaning that they might] soon earn back the money they [had] paid for their service.”97 Known for an extravagant lifestyle, Jacob David was less successful at business than his predecessor Maresco had been.98 His work was ensconced in the far-reaching and influential network of the Lethieulliers, a family of Huguenot descent that he had joined by marrying Widow Leonora Maresco.99 In London an apprentice’s or employee’s former master or first employer could considerably influence his future career and was pivotal for introduction to the City’s eminent businesses and social institutions.100 A good way to become an independent merchant was to be trained by a master and then employed for a while, partly working on one’s own account. Many successful merchants owed a great deal to their former masters. Unfortunately, historical sources do not tell us whether Widow Berenberg was aware of this. On the other hand, London employers were known for assigning dull tasks to apprentices and employees, neglecting their obligation to train, and being of little help in finding further training opportunities.101 Thus it was often better to choose a master from among one’s own trustworthy compatriots, that is, from a

40 | The Forgotten Majority

network that fostered trust and the moral obligation to teach the apprentice the secrets of the trade.102 Many foreigners with existing international trade relations preferred to send their sons to either fellow countrymen or kin for apprenticeship. Foreign trading houses in London owed much of their success to kinship networks of that kind.103 Merchants based in Germany who traded with England but had no relatives there generally preferred business partners of German descent who lived in London or elsewhere in England. Fellow countrymen seemed more trustworthy. They could correspond in German, were more sensitive than their English counterparts to the differences in German and English business practices, and brought these things to the attention of German merchants on the Continent. This helped reduce misunderstandings and prevent losses caused by differing trade practices. Bremen’s English Company did business in London chiefly with James Crop, who was originally from Hamburg. Octavio Schröder from Hamburg also preferred dealing with compatriots in London, as we know from his surviving account books for the years 1772 to 1778. Lacking London-based relatives of his own did not diminish his trading: his main business connection during the 1770s was to the London-based house of brothers John William Paul and Daniel Paul from Silesia. Germans also ran most other London-based houses with which Schröder traded. Other account books of his for 1807 to 1815 reveal the same pattern: though Schröder was dealing with different business partners by then, most of them, were also of German origin.104 German and English training, work habits, and trade practices differed in many ways. In London, young employed merchants got yearly salaries. Since it was not common “to get interim payment from an employer,” one young merchant, Jakob Garrels, asked his parents for financial support once he had found a position in London.105 Garrels described how English customs clearance differed from what he had known. While “in England custom transactions are arduous and unpleasant, sending goods is not as troublesome as it is in Bremen, where you must weigh each item yourself.” Just how different things were is clear from a remark made in 1790 by Georg Soltau from Hamburg, to the effect that “upon coming to England [he] had first to relearn” everything.106 Merchants who became naturalized subjects generally came from families that had already traded with England for quite some time and were therefore not entirely unfamiliar with English practices. The Berenberg family had traded with England for generations, and some of its members had worked for some time in London before Widow Berenberg’s grandson finally settled there.107 Things were similar for the brothers Isaac, John William, and John Engelbert Teschemacher, who all quit Elberfeld to reside in London in the second half of the seventeenth century. The family’s business links with England went back to the Hanse era.108 Liebert Wolters’s ancestors had been members of the Company of Merchant Adventurers in Hamburg and one of his aunts had married an Englishman,

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 41

thereby creating a tie to London.109 Conspicuously many offspring, other kin, and descendants of the founders of Bremen’s English Company eventually settled in London.110 On arriving in London, fledgling German merchants usually looked up fellow countrymen or kin already residing there. When Hermann Jakob Garrels went to London in 1789, he sought work exclusively with German-born merchants, eventually finding his first job at the business of Sebastian Fridag (from Emden).111 Similarly, in the 1670s Peter Vansittart began his merchant career in London under John Martin Elkin (from Bremen). And Peter Selcken worked as an accountant for Theodor Jacobsen before becoming an independent merchant and broker.112 The Steelyard remained crucial for merchants from Hamburg, just as the Dutch Church and St. Paul’s were vital to Reformed merchants. Much like the reputation of an apprentice’s master or first employer, the repute of these churches and their congregations could influence a career. The four German churches in London were associated with various social strata, and choosing the wrong church might jeopardize a young merchant’s prospects. For instance, the German church St. George’s, established in 1761, was considered a poor choice: when Hermann Jakob Garrels arrived in London in 1789, Sebastian Fridag advised him to conceal his relation to Pastor Gustav Anton Wachsel from St. George’s because it could impede a career in the City.113 After some years of employment, many young merchants chose to work on their own account by first taking a position as a commission merchant or junior partner at a trading house and then later going into business for themselves.114 Often they had not originally intended to stay in London permanently. Moreover, neither becoming an English subject nor buying into a trading house, nor even setting up one’s own business can be seen as evidence of permanent migration. Roger Siebel (from Elberfeld), for example, was naturalized in 1761 and then became a partner at Amyand & Siebel, but in 1772 he returned to Elberfeld, where he married his longtime fiancée.115 Others, like bachelor Johann Heinrich Albers (1774–1855), returned to Germany in old age or moved to southern countries like Italy, as did Hermann Dietrich Retberg (1751–1830, from Bremen). Business failure was another reason to leave England. Some merchants planned from the start to settle in England indefinitely, especially when that was necessary to secure a successor to the business. The decision hinged on financial matters and individual concerns and no single phase of a career can be seen as indicative of a deliberate decision to remain in England permanently.

German Merchant Trade in London Based on London’s port books for 1695 and 1696, D. W. Jones has compiled a list of merchants who had annual import and export turnovers of more than

42 | The Forgotten Majority

£5,000 during those years.116 The list includes German as well as English, Huguenot, Dutch, and Sephardic Jewish merchants. As mentioned above, the worldwide expansion of English trade led most London merchants to specialize in either export or import. Few worked to equal degrees in both branches; only three that did so are known.117 The majority, 489 merchants, were importers, while 210 merchants concentrated on exports.118 Of the importers, 180 dealt in linen purchased from nearby Continental Europe, particularly the Netherlands, northern German port towns, and the Baltic area. Some 130 merchants did business with larger Baltic towns such as Gdansk in East Prussia, and towns in Norway and Sweden, importing not only linen but also flax, tar, pitch, potash, wood, and iron. A few imported exclusively Spanish and Portuguese wine. Others specialized in merchandise from India, the Levant, and the colonies. These importers usually also organized the reexport of goods, their major export item being English cloth. According to Jones, in the 1690s only a small number of merchants recorded high volumes of turnover. The twenty-nine merchants with turnovers of £10,000 and more together handled 68 percent of all exports, and the eighty-three merchants with turnovers of £3,000 and more accounted for 93 percent of exports. As for imports, twenty-two merchants with turnovers of £5,000 and more did 78 percent of the business.119 The focus was on certain commodities like sugar and tobacco. After the Royal African Company, the next-largest sugar importers were the private businessmen Joseph Marty and Robert Heysham, who together imported as much sugar as the entire RAC. Two other merchants, Joseph Morewood and Stephen Skinner, together handled 58 percent of reexported sugar.120 Businesses with large turnovers in the 1690s included thirty German merchants (Table 7). The small group of eminent trading houses whose ratio of export to import was almost balanced consisted of the two merchants Benjamin Ayloff and Sir William Gore, both British, and the German trading house Meyer & Berenberg. Peter Meyer, son of a merchant from Hamburg, had been naturalized in 1691; John Henry Berenberg, Widow Berenberg’s grandson, became an English subject in 1693. Meyer and Berenberg were related.121 Their total turnover of £32,000 almost equaled that of Benjamin Ayloff. Only Sir William Gore surpassed them, with a turnover of £70,000.122 Far behind them was Andrew Heidtredder from Hamburg with a turnover of £13,000.123 Alongside Meyer and Berenberg, nine other German names appear among larger exporters with turnovers exceeding £5,000, four of whose turnovers exceeded £10,000. David Debary of London was not only the largest of the German exporters but also,, with a turnover of £34,584, one of London’s leading exporters in general. In second place among the German merchants was William Teschemacher from Elberfeld, with almost £29,000, followed by the BalticGerman merchant Georg Ludwig Dunt from Reval (Tallinn) with £24,000.124

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Table 7. Eminent German Import and Export Merchants, 1695–1696 Name

Origin

Becceler, David Boehm, Clement Brandts, John Reynold Brook, John Henryi Conen, Jacob Crop, James Debary, David De Smeth, Raymond Devalpergen, Isaac Dunt, George L. Elkin, John Martin Erichs, Henry Esselborn, John Geerts, Otto Gronen, Frederick

Germany Strasbourg Hamburg Hamburg Burscheid Hamburg Hamburg Hamburg Frankfurt Reval (Tallinn) Bremen Brunswick Alzey, Palatinate Germany Grevenbroich, Germany Heidtredder, Andrew Hamburg Henckell, Jacob Hamburg Jacobsen, Theodor and Henry Hamburg Meyer & Berenberg Hamburg Muysken, Gerrard Oriot & Berens Osterland & Keyser Stehn & Dorrien Strode & Henning Teschemacher, William Utken, Henry Van Berchem, Henry Vansittart, Peter Weyman & Comp i

Osnabruck Stockholm/Hamburg Haarlem/Hamburg Lubeck/Hildesheim Gluckstadt/ Holstein Elberfeld Hamburg Bremen Gdansk Hamburg

Export in £ Import in £ Reexport in £

1,220 4,484

3,915 812 34,584 12,961 24,000 6,233 2,116 6,900 6,899

5,981 674 3,389 12,445 4,663 11,671 621 549 28,968 2,345 270 401 2,235

769 2,541 3,735 4,479 2,500 5,498 1,913 3,702 4,011

3,273

20/+1,693ii 578 2,499 8,505 (wine) 7,209 2,079 17,908 11,464 (17,000)iii

250

2,000

19,261 2,600 4,989iv 3,070 526 5,497 20,307

Shaw’s list of naturalized immigrants calls him Book (Shaw I, 239). The second number refers to linen imports only. iii Jones’s numbers for this firm are inconsistent. The first number comes from the appendix to his dissertation (“London Overseas-Merchant Groups,” appendix B, 406); the second number, taken from the dissertation itself (177), would mean a total turnover approaching £32,000. The ratio of import to export was almost balanced; reexported commodities were mostly sugar and tobacco that were shipped to Hamburg and Bremen (177). iv Imported sugar from Brazil. Source: Jones, “London Overseas-Merchant Groups,” appendix B. ii

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Heading the list of successful importers were the trade houses of Peter Vansittart from Gdansk, Theodor and Henry Jacobsen from Hamburg, and the SwedishGerman house owned by Oriot & Berens, whose turnovers, lying between £18,000 and more than £20,000, surpassed those of English merchants and naturalized merchants from other nations. Only Sir William Gore and William Benson had larger turnovers. The three preeminent German houses traded mainly in the Baltic area. Among London’s merchants was a small but influential group of wine importers that struggled with the Old East India Company (OEIC).125 The English imported most wine and port from Spain and Portugal; Rhine wine was purchased only in small quantities. The three largest wine importers were the two Englishmen Nathaniel Maxey and Richard Mead and the Sephardic Jew Moses Francia. Maxey imported Spanish and Portuguese wine worth £21,279 and Mead imported £10,724 worth of the same; Francia’s wine imports totaled £18,491. In 1696, German-born Frederick Gronen was in fourth place among London’s largest wine importers with a turnover of £8,505 from Spanish, Portuguese, and Rhine wine. London’s port books show other Germans also importing wine, of whom only Strode & Henning126 imported large quantities; Becceler & Co., David Debary, and Theodor Jacobsen all imported smaller amounts.127 Frederick Gronen counted as a large wine merchant as early as 1683. He and his two brothers, Anthony and Adam, came from Grevenbroich on the Lower Rhine and had been naturalized in England between 1662 and 1677.128 Their firm was located in Devonshire House. Port books for 1683 mention four other wine importers of German origin, but that year the Gronen brothers handled 55 percent of all 96 import transactions. John Loveroe from Ghent (Flanders), who was coincidentally Adam Gronen’s father-in-law, was another large wine merchant, although the port books do not mention his imports.129 John Kaus (from Elberfeld) handled 22 percent of all wine imports, followed by Theodor Jacobsen, who handled 18 percent. Most of the wine imported by German merchants came from Germany and was sent to England almost exclusively via Dort (Dordrecht). The Gronen brothers were the only German wine importers known to have also imported wine from Oporto; those shipments made up 43 percent of their entire wine purchases. The War of the Palatine Succession (Nine Years’ War) hindered trade in wine. Compared to 1683, by 1696 the number of importers had doubled, but that year Germans in London imported wine only 54 times. The Gronens handled 62 percent of all of those shipments, followed by James Crop (11 percent) and Jacob Henckell (somewhat more than 9 percent). Theodor Jacobsen and John Kaus commissioned only one or two shipments; wartime events may have diminished their business, but then again, the two men were also aging.130 In 1683 Frederick Gronen and his brothers had been the only merchants to import Portuguese wine in large quantities. In 1696, although the Gronen brothers were still buying large quantities of wine from the Iberian Peninsula, the percentage of Spanish and

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 45

Portuguese wine in general had declined compared to 1683. In 1696 somewhat more than 35 percent of the wine originated in Spain and Portugal, and German wine now made up almost 65 percent of all incoming barrels. The Gronen brothers’ loss in wine imports from the Iberian Peninsula reflects a general mid-1690s crisis for England’s wine trade with Spain and Portugal,131 although Gronen imports dropped more steeply (compared to 1683) than the percentage would suggest. In 1683 they had imported wine exclusively from Portugal; by 1696 only about 15 percent of their barrels originated there. Meanwhile, however, the brothers had expanded their trade with Spain and were buying less Portuguese than Spanish wine, which comprised more than 20.5 percent of their shipments.

Trading Regions and Commodities Like native English merchants, German-born naturalized English merchants basically worked in imports. During the two decades under scrutiny, most of the commodities imported by the latter group came from their regions of origin. Table 8. Ports of Departure for German Merchants’ Imports to England (percent), 1683 and 1696 Ports Total number of shipments North German Ports Hamburg Bremen Holland Rotterdam Amsterdam Dordrecht Baltic Rim Scandinavia Gdansk Others Russia/Baltic Rim Iberian Peninsula Portugal Spain Overseas North America Caribbean Others/unknown

1683 306 % 52.2 28.4 23.9 27.7 14.5 8.1 3.5 15.4 7.0 7.1 1.3 – 1.1 0.8 0.3 2.0 1.3 0.7 2.0

1696 459 % 59.4 45.5 13.9 15.8 11.2 0.2 4.4 11 10.4 0.2 – 0.4 9.4 7 2.4 2.3 0.2 2.1 1.7

Source: Analysis by NA, Port Books, E 190: 121/1, 114/7, 114/8, 118/4, 119/1, 115/1, 114/2, 118/5, 118/9, 117/1, 154/1, 156/2, 156/3, 156/4, 156/5, 158/1.

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Table 8 breaks down the total of 306 shipments brought to England by German merchants in 1683/84 and the total of 459 shipments in 1696 according to port of departure. Hamburg and Bremen were the chief ports of departure for both years, handling more than 50 percent of all shipments. From their native regions, the German merchants in London imported mainly linen merchandise: thread, Osnabrück linen, Silesian damask, diapers, and other linen items, as well as Hessian sailcloth. They also imported wood, clapboards, and large quantities of beer. Hamburg was the major German port of departure, handling 28.4 percent of all exports to London in 1683 and 45.5 percent ten years later, while Bremen handled only about 14 percent. In the last decade of the century, the breaking of the Company of Merchant Adventurers’ trade monopoly led to increased imports from these two northern German ports. The difference in amounts shipped to London from Hamburg and Bremen was probably less dramatic than the table suggests, however. Scrutiny of port books for the 1790s might correct the impression. In any event, Bremen officials spoke of an increase in exports to London after 1689. The growth in trade prompted officials to address the English government repeatedly to protest against the Company of Merchant Adventurers’ effort to reestablish a monopoly.132 Bremen in the 1680s was primarily an export harbor for a variety of wood items and beer. Once the Company of Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly was broken, cloth exports from Bremen increased.133 German merchants in London imported primarily linen and only smaller quantities of wood and clapboards from Hamburg. For German merchants in London, Dutch ports ranked second as Continental sites of export, although shipping from there declined between 1683 and 1696. In the 1680s London’s German merchants imported mostly dyes, spices such as nutmeg, weapons, steel hemp (a special kind of cannabis sativa fiber), and goatskins via Amsterdam and Rotterdam. These ports were also used to export cloth from Germany’s northwestern regions. In the 1690s, however, trade began shifting to German ports, especially after Bremen opened its harbor. Imports from Amsterdam dropped noticeably; in 1696 hardly any ships commissioned by London’s German merchants left from Amsterdam. Against the overall trend, most German wine was shipped via Dort (Dordrecht). The diverging figures reflect an increase in German wine imports caused by a temporary interruption in the supply of Spanish and Portuguese wine. The Baltic’s growing significance for England is not reflected in the number of import shipments contracted by German merchants, which by 1696 dropped by 3 percent from what it had been in 1683. A decrease in imports from Gdansk was the sole cause of this decline. Imports from Scandinavian countries, meanwhile, rose by more than 3 percent. Few goods were shipped through the seaports of Riga (now in Latvia) and Archangel (Arkhangelsk). The Russia Company’s monopoly kept both naturalized merchants and many native English merchants from trading through Russian ports. German merchants preferred other,

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 47

non-Russian ports, especially for importing tar, pitch, iron, potash, hemp, and wood to England. German merchants showed a marked interest in the Iberian market, particularly that of Portugal. In 1683 less than 1 percent of their imports originated there, but by 1696 this figure was 7 percent. Oporto was Portugal’s most important trade port. London’s German merchants did not commission a single shipment from there in 1683, but thirteen years later 5.7 percent of their cargo came out of Oporto. Shipments from Spain also increased slightly. Wine, oil, salt, and sugar were the main commodities shipped from Spain and Portugal. It was probably the war that allowed German merchants from London to enter Iberian markets. Currants and rice came from Italy, Greece, and the Levant, but those shipments were rare. Imports from remote overseas regions increased only incrementally, although more was imported from the Caribbean in 1696 than in 1683, when only two shipments were recorded. By 1696 there were ten. Conversely, in 1696 German merchants registered only one shipment from North American colonies, but in 1683 they had notified the customs officials of four. They bought sugar, tobacco, and fur overseas. Most Caribbean products were reexported. The surviving port books therefore do not accurately reflect the true pattern of Atlantic trade. Fewer books for export than for import exist for London’s port.134 In both years under study, comparatively few Germans were involved in export. What they did ship out of England were mostly textiles, so-called “old and new draperies,” Spanish fabric, hides and tanned leather, tin, and a few other items.135 Most of the freight was sent to northern Germany and Holland. Until the New East India Company (NEIC) was founded late in the century, few German merchants traded with India. No naturalized merchants of German origin are found in East India Company records prior to the 1690s; then, for the years from 1690 to 1710, the company’s account book mentions eight German trade houses in all.136 German merchants bought sporadically, in quantities that were small compared with the volume of Indian goods purchased by some British merchants. John Esselborn (from the Palatinate), Frederick Dorrien (from Hildesheim), and Teschemacher (from Elberfeld) bought Indian merchandise worth just a few hundred pounds, probably from the India Company. Peter Vansittart, Gerrard Muysken (Meuschgen), Peter Meyer, and John & Gabriel Keyser, however, bought merchandise worth several thousand pounds. The largest of the London-based German houses trading with India was the German-Dutch company Oosterland & Keyser.137 A remarkable range of products came from India: tea and pepper, medicinal herbs, silk, cotton, porcelain, dyes, saltpeter, mercury, and other goods. The East India Company’s account book lists three other merchants of German origin, but not as buyers of Indian wares. They were Theodor and Jacob Jacobsen, who rented the Steelyard to the East India Company for warehousing,138 and Peter

48 | The Forgotten Majority

Schrieber (from Mannheim), who was paid £1,268 to dye cloth for the company.139 In other words, London’s German merchants probably traded little with India. However, the East India Company’s records regarding Peter Vansittart and the Teschemacher brothers may not disclose the whole extent of their trade activity: one of Peter Vansittart’s sons and one of John Engelbert Teschemacher’s sons later settled in India.140 No Germans were among the merchants who, as prodigious traders in sugar and tobacco, had direct links to the Caribbean and North America. At the time, Atlantic trade was basically an English business. In 1682/83, John Van Wachtendonck (from Aachen) was the only German merchant in London ordering Caribbean and American commodities: tobacco and fur from New York and sugar from Jamaica.141 By 1695/96 a few more Germans were trading with the Caribbean: Peter Vansittart, William Teschemacher, Henry Erichs, and Meyer & Co. imported brown sugar and muscovado, indigo, and ginger from Jamaica and Barbados.142 William Teschemacher exported German linen to the West Indies via London, establishing a continuous trade link between merchants from Elberfeld and the West Indies that lasted until the latter half of the eighteenth century. The Germans did not always bring spices and sugar directly from the colonies, preferring to purchase such items in Rotterdam from Spain and Portugal.143 It is likely that other naturalized subjects had a share in colonial trade, even though port books reveal nothing about it. Trade voyages across the Atlantic— called “adventures” at the time—were not isolated ventures. Many merchants participated in large and small shipments undertaken and managed by a small group of eminent merchants and shipping houses. And some merchants, whose trade was otherwise focused on other regions, occasionally participated in Atlantic shipments without being mentioned on customs lists. This sort of cooperation extended also to trade journeys beyond the bounds of the British Empire. In 1707, for example, the London-based house Stehn & Dorrien chartered a neutral vessel with other merchants and set sail for Caracas, Rio la Hache, and other places in the Spanish West Indies.144 German-born Peter Meyer became a West India merchant after 1700. His will, written up in 1728, shows that he owned a plantation in Barbados and was also a partner in a sugar refinery in London.145 Strode & Henning and James Crop146 traded sugar from Brazil purchased in Portugal. When Raymond De Smeth died in 1727, he had had trade connections to the Spanish colonies via Cadiz and imported large quantities of tobacco.147 Although port books disclose only a small range of German activity in overseas trade, we can assume that London’s German-born naturalized merchants were much more involved in trading colonial goods than the surviving records suggest. Were German merchants from London involved in the slave trade? Around 1710, Peter Hollander was a co-owner of the slave vessel Nancy, but the ship was captured on the African coast before it could board slaves and head for the Carib-

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 49

bean.148 Sir Peter Meyer149 and a few other naturalized merchants of German origin owned plantations in the Caribbean and in South America; they probably were slave owners but not slave traders.150 Only one descendant of a German immigrant was listed as a slave trader: Peter Paggen, a tobacco dealer and descendant in the third generation, was one of the eight largest slave traders working outside the Royal African Company.151 Port books show that each merchant’s geographic reach and trade differed from that of the others and that the mainstay of trade for German merchants in London remained their country of birth. While some of them traded between their hometowns and England, buying and shipping a few commodities, others were involved in global trade. Unfortunately, little data about reexporting in that era is available to fill in the picture.

Late-Seventeenth-Century German Trade Networks Duty and port books record some German merchants’ trade business in London, but we do not know whether the data is thorough or representative. A journal for 1684 to 1694, kept by London’s three Bode brothers from Bremen—Hermann, John, and Frederick—has survived. This copybook, meant for their business back home, shows their trade activity within the wider context of their father’s business. It reveals the financial and personal risks (such as the implications of death) borne by a small trading house with neither a large family nor any other broad network of reliable business partners behind it. In the late seventeenth century, Johann Bode’s two older sons, Hermann and John, went to London. Neither became an English subject. John petitioned for naturalization in 1680, but his request failed when Parliament was dissolved. The youngest of the three brothers, Frederick, who moved to London in the early 1690s, was the only member of the family to be naturalized, becoming an English subject in April 1694.152 The brothers are among foreign importers in London’s port books as of the early 1680s, when they imported more than 90 percent of their wares from Bremen. Between 1682 and 1689 they imported beer, clapboards, beech, oak planks and various other goods such as lampblack and hog bristles.153 Occasionally they also imported viper’s grass154 from Hamburg. Johann Bode’s correspondence book confirms that these various wood products and beer were his main export items to London. Despite the monopoly of the Merchant Adventurers,155 he also exported German linen to England, most of it through John Loveroe.156 As we shall see later, in London around 1683/84, a group of merchants from Bremen and other foreign merchants and mariners joined to oppose the Merchant Adventurers’ exclusive trading rights. John Loveroe, a prominent importer of German linen wares, was one of the interlopers who ignored the Merchant Adventurers’ trade monopoly,157 importing German linen not only from Bremen but from Rotterdam and Amsterdam as well. After

50 | The Forgotten Majority

his son John died in London in 1688, however, Johann Bode gave up exporting linen, which he considered less profitable, and focused on exporting wood.158 Johann Bode’s letters indicate that he maintained trade relations with Newcastle as well as London. His trade partner in Newcastle, John Wilkinson, exported stone coal and salt to Bremen, and Johann Bode exported wood back to Northumberland.159 Besides business with John Loveroe, in London Johann Bode also traded with Dutch-born Gerhard van Heythuysen, James Crop (from Hamburg), Frederick Harlah and Reinier Lampe (both from Bremen), and the Englishman Christoph Hamilton. His main trade partner in England remained his son, John, a node linking Bremen with English business partners. Johann Bode ordered tobacco and sugar through his son John. His business was not limited to England; he had trade connections to Norway and Holland as well. Johann Bode’s oldest son Hermann died in London in 1686. It was thus doubly burdensome when his second son, John, died quite unexpectedly in 1688.160 It took Johann two years in London to settle the remaining business and paperwork. The losses in London and neglect of his own business in Bremen damaged him considerably. Not until his return to Bremen in early summer 1690 was he able to begin rebuilding his own business. For two years he looked for reliable trade partners in London before sending his youngest son Frederick over in 1692.161 Although John Bode had imported goods in considerable quantities throughout the 1680s, the family name no longer appears in London’s port books for the 1690s. The sources thus do not show whether Frederick was capable of managing the London branch. In 1699/1700, a time of general crisis when several houses in both London and Bremen went bankrupt, Frederick, too, was unable to make payments; by February 1700 he was bankrupt.162 Another large house in London belonging to Hamburg-born Mathias Giesque went bankrupt the same year.163 Like John Bode in England in the 1680s, James Crop from Hamburg traded mostly with Bremen, basically in the same items as Bode. His main trading partner from Bremen was the English Company. By 1695/96 Crop had expanded his business considerably. While trade with Bremen remained his mainstay, he began working through other ports such as Hamburg and Oporto. Besides wood products and beer, in 1695/96 he imported large quantities of fabric such as Osnabrück linen and Hessian canvas. He also imported large quantities of sugar and oil from Oporto.164 Before going bankrupt, Mathias Giesque from Hamburg conducted largescale trade with the Iberian Peninsula. His trade partners were situated in Lisbon and in Cadiz, Bilbao, Malaga, and San Sebastian, Spain. In Bilbao he and two partners opened the branch De Veer, Giesque & Le Clerque, which traded with Barbados and Mexico. Giesque drew Chinese goods from a partner in Holland165 and occasionally imported goods from Gdansk. The Jacobsen brothers from Hamburg, Theodor and Jacob, traded across Europe. In 1674 Jacob had taken up office as the Steelyard master in London;

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 51

when he died in 1680, his post was taken over by his younger brother Theodor, who had settled in London during the interregnum and been naturalized in 1657. Since both brothers remained unmarried, they brought several nephews to London and had them naturalized in infancy.166 Unlike Crop and Giesque, the Jacobsen brothers focused on trade with the Baltic region. According to studies by Sven-Erik Aström, Theodor and Henry Jacobsen were London’s largest importers from Scandinavia in 1672: Theodor alone imported goods worth £14,411, and his nephew Henry imported goods worth another £12,411.167 Over the next years, Englishmen Benjamin Ayloff and Gilbert Heathcote were to take the lead. In 1682/83 Theodor Jacobsen’s wares came mostly from Gdansk, Stockholm, and Gothenburg, but he also traded with Rotterdam and Bilbao. In 1681 he imported salt from Lisbon and goatskins from Spain, but overall his trade with Spain was negligible. Salt from Portugal was probably reexported to Scandinavia because the fish industry there depended on salt from southern Europe.168 From Gothenburg he imported large quantities of pitch, tar, and planks; from Stockholm iron and wire, wainscot, sailcloth, burlap, Polish wool, and beeswax; from Gdansk potash; and from Hamburg Silesian packing canvas. From Rotterdam he also bought planks and pitch that originally came from Norway.169 In 1684 he ordered a large quantity of hemp from Riga. In the 1690s Theodor Jacobsen continued trading with the same towns, mostly Baltic ports and Hamburg. However, he dropped Spain and Portugal; instead, he and his nephew Henry established links to Greek islands and began importing currants.170 Peter Vansittart, the founder of the English dynasty of Vansittarts, came to England in 1670 and was naturalized in 1677. He began his career at the house of merchant John Martin Elkin from Bremen before establishing his own business importing mainly German fabrics, especially Silesian linen. In 1683/84 Hamburg was his main exporting port; fewer shipments arrived from Amsterdam, these being chiefly Dutch linen and red dye. He received osnaburg (a heavy, coarse cotton fabric) from Bremen, but in much smaller quantities than what he got from Silesia. From his hometown of Gdansk in 1683/84 he imported only feathers. More than ten years later, his trade relations had expanded to Riga and the Caribbean sugar islands. When he died in 1706, Peter Vansittart left an unusually large fortune of more than £100,000.171 Part of his wealth came from supplying the army.172 Vansittart’s inventory is an excellent indicator of his trade relations at the time of his death: he dealt mainly with fabrics, but also with large quantities of colonial wares and textile dyes. When he died, his warehouse in London held goods worth almost £4,900, the bulk being textiles worth £4,700. His brother had a warehouse in Gdansk, where Peter stored colonial wares such as sugar, indigo, and pepper along with skins, thread, and fabrics. He also stored colonial wares at David Frederick Klug and Christian Menner’s Widow & Co. in Hamburg,

52 | The Forgotten Majority

wheat at Dupuy & Compton’s in Lisbon, tin and logwood at Wetken & Co. and at Hanbury’s in Livorno, and pepper at Peter Dorville’s in Amsterdam. His inventory lists eighty-one debtors in Europe and India who owed him a total of over £64,000. He himself owed somewhat more than £1,427 to others abroad. The locations of about one-third of his debtors and creditors were recorded, offering a sense of the geographic scope of his business relations. He had strong connections to various German cities, especially Hamburg and Bremen, but also Elberfeld. To the south his links arched from Nuremberg to Vienna, in the southern Baltic from Stettin to Gdansk. In Breslau he kept in touch with the Silesian cloth-making region through trade houses run by Johann Kretschmer and Joachim Krester, but his direct trade links were few. Vansittart also traded with the Netherlands—particularly with Amsterdam, where members of the Dorville family were his most important business partners. Debtors for whom no location is indicated were probably primarily English merchants, including his own sons Robert and Jacob. Vansittart’s largest debtors were Christian Menner’s widow in Hamburg, who owed him more than £17,000, and Morton & Company, a house that owed him over £15,000. His inventory mentions no business partners in North America or the West Indies. Since colonial wares made up a large part of his assortment and he imported sugar from the Caribbean in the 1690s, we can assume that when he died, either all of his invoices for the Americas had been paid and no monies were due, or these business partners were among those for whom no location was recorded. Many Baltic places also went unmentioned.173 A large part of Vansittart’s Baltic products would have been imported via his brother in Gdansk because the Russian part of the Baltic was monopolized by the Russia Company, which until 1699 prohibited trade with naturalized subjects. Peter Vansittart never joined the organization, not even after it became easier to do so.174 Like Theodor Jacobsen, he became a member of the Eastland Company, which held a monopoly on German Baltic ports, Gdansk, and Scandinavia.

German Merchants and London Trade Companies Members of England’s trade companies were exclusively English. The old reformed companies did not even admit newly naturalized persons. The exclusion was not xenophobic in nature: prior to trade company reform, not even most Englishmen could join. Trade organizations like the Russia Company and the Old East India Company were run by more or less closed groups that rarely admitted new members. Admission fees of up to £50 were the lowest hurdle. Restrictive membership policies very nearly made the companies resemble closed shops.175 The Levant Company’s policy required members to have both English nationality and Freedom of the City. A sixteenth-century law for London176 pro-

Promoting Anglo-German Trade | 53

hibited granting that freedom to second-generation immigrants, leaving them unable to fulfill a compulsory requirement for joining trade companies.177 There were exceptions, however: Peter Vansittart, for example, was granted Freedom of the City.178 Certain grievances about foreigners were common in late-seventeenth-century England. Contemporaries assumed that aliens were privileged because they were exempt from the financial obligation and time-consuming work involved with guilds and the trade companies. The bias was unwarranted, as foreigners could neither acquire the Freedom of the City nor become members in trade companies anyway.179 Perhaps they reflect the Englishmen’s own growing reluctance to take on companies’ duties. A mounting number of Englishmen excused themselves from office.180 In contrast, as we shall see, many naturalized immigrants became members in a trade company and sometimes in several, accepting the related duties, as soon as they legally had the chance to do so. Historical research has long regarded the late seventeenth century as a period of trade company decline. But as Gary De Krey and Perry Gauci have more recently shown, this fate was not shared by all trade companies.181 Some companies remained major elements in society and the economy of England’s capital throughout the entire eighteenth century. Reforms may have ushered in, or at least hastened, the demise of the Eastland Company and the Company of Merchant Adventurers, but the Levant Company, by contrast, remained entirely untouched by public debate over free trade and was not forced to reform until 1753, following a phase of decline. Public attacks on the Russia Company and the East India Company led to reform in the late seventeenth century, but reform and reorganization in the eighteenth century increased company power. The jumble of monopolized and free-trade regions raises the question of how foreigners, especially German merchants, dealt with it and with trade company practices. As we have seen, German merchants in London traded predominantly with their own native country and with Baltic ports, two regions that were monopolized by the Company of Merchant Adventurers and the Russia and Eastland Companies. Trade with Spain, Portugal, Italy, and across the Atlantic, however, remained largely unrestricted. Ever since the beginnings of London’s trade companies in the sixteenth century, merchants had sporadically risen in opposition. Opponents, called “interlopers” by contemporaries, occasionally were members of the companies themselves but more often were outsiders.182 Breaches of monopoly became more frequent in the seventeenth century and took on new dimensions in its latter half. Various India companies, like the Darien Company and the New East India Company, were established in protest of the original East India Company.183 As Brenner has shown in his study on London’s merchants in the years of revolution, wealth and power shifted among London’s leading commercial elite in the early seventeenth century.184 A small group of “new merchants” (as Brenner

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calls them), who had begun modestly during the expansion of English trade, worked their way up to the City’s decisive financial, social, and commercial elite and transformed commerce. These merchants made their fortunes in Atlantic ventures and trade with the Near East and India. To ease trade with India, in the 1630s and 1640s the group closed ranks with London’s Dutch immigrant elite to undermine the Old East India Company’s monopoly, and tapped into Dutch commercial know-how and knowledge, resources, and networks to facilitate trade with India.185 As merchant families intermarried, Dutch-German cooperation also spawned border-crossing family ties to Holland and other transnational mercantile relationships. Years of struggling with the Old East India Company eventually led the “new merchants” and the “alien” merchants to demand the opening of free ports in 1650/51. Their petitions asked, almost verbatim, that ports be open to all foreigners and that aliens be subject to the same tax and legal regulation as the native population.186 The “alien” merchants’ petition was signed by elite English merchants of Dutch origin, whose demands were also tied to plans for a political union with the States General, directed against Catholic powers. The English pursuit of economic hegemony and the Navigation Act of 1651 thwarted their efforts.187 The struggle with established trade companies continued after the Restoration, once Charles II had reconfirmed the privileges formerly granted to the companies. Large sections of England’s merchant community were still excluded from membership in those companies and thus barred from access to attractive markets, and new alliances arose among domestic “interlopers,” naturalized immigrants, and foreigners. German merchants first became involved in these disputes around 1660, when they challenged the Company of Merchant Adventurers.

Fighting Regulated Companies The Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly covered Holland, Zeeland, Brabant, Flanders, West and East Friesland, Holstein, Hamburg, and bordering territories. From southern Baltic ports to Stralsund, the Adventurers’ trade monopoly overlapped that of the Eastland Company. The Merchant Adventurers’ main focus was the North Sea area and trade with Holland and northern Germany, especially Hamburg, which had been their staple market since 1611 and where they held their General Courts at least as of 1637. After their mid-century loss of trade monopoly on Holland, the Merchant Adventurers commonly were simply called the Hamburg Company.188 The monopoly pertained chiefly to traditional English wool cloth. The trade company’s rights were less clear regarding new draperies, in which the company was less interested. With a little persuasion, in 1624 the company consented to opening trade for new draperies, kerseys, and dyed fabric. Years later, under a new

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charter, the government unsuccessfully tried to extend the monopoly to cover new kinds of wool cloth.189 The lifting of the Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly in 1689 was not the sole cause of the company’s deterioration. Early in the century, when it commanded two thirds of all cloth exports to Germany and Holland—in other words, half of all exports leaving London—economic and political circumstances had begun eroding its power. In 1614/15 the Company of Merchant Adventurers suffered because of the Cockayne Project and never fully recovered.190 The end of the Thirty Years’ War brought a reduction in cloth exports to German states; simultaneously, German textile production was on the rise. The Adventurers’ fortunes shriveled. Once members the City’s leading commercial elite, few still had that status by the end of the civil war.191 Meanwhile, government policy also enfeebled the company with arbitrary suspension of the monopoly and occasional intervention in favor of the “interlopers.”192 Disputes between London-based merchants and their factors abroad further weakened the company’s position. Finally, the Anglo-Dutch wars accelerated the company’s demise by temporarily halting all trade with the Netherlands, which in turn led to a loss of monopoly. After the Restoration, the company’s trade monopoly extended to Hamburg alone. The precariousness of the company’s finances then diminished its capacity for action. By 1664 the Merchant Adventurers’ Company was £75,000 in debt. The Great Fire of London further strained its resources, impairing its pursuit of growing numbers of “interlopers,”193 who originally, in the early 1660s, had only been Englishmen.194 The first evidence of a German merchant violating monopoly law appeared in 1674, when Georg Otto (from Hamburg) illegally exported wool cloth from England to Hamburg. The company had him arrested and evicted by the Privy Council.195 This was perhaps an isolated case, but by the 1680s violations of the trade monopoly—primarily by German-born merchants trading with Bremen—reached unprecedented proportions. The behavior was approved, if not straightforwardly endorsed, by Bremen’s Senate. The Merchant Adventurers’ company statutes, amended most recently in 1661, prohibited all direct trade with Bremen and threatened to impose high fines.196 Cloth trade was reserved exclusively for their principal staple market in Hamburg. In the 1680s, however, a growing number of German merchants ignored the law. In late March of 1683, the Hamburg Company petitioned the Privy Council for assistance, claiming that more than nine German-born and other alien merchants led by John Martin Elkin, David Debary, and John Esselborn, had for some time been exporting wool fabric to Bremen. The Privy Council did not agree to the company’s proposal to expel interlopers from the country but asked instead that it admit them as members for a fee of £13 6s. 8d. German merchants, however, “resolved to persist in their former practices” and refused to join the company. The Privy Council then ordered that they be charged with criminal conduct and ruled that future letters of denization should contain a

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clause to the effect that violating regulations set down by royal charter would result in deportation.197 The Hamburg Company then approached the Lords of the Committee of Trade to request that Esselborn, the merchant Van Gulick, and others be expelled.198 Some days later, on 13 July 1683, the King explicitly proclaimed the privilege granted the Hamburg Company, according to which only members were permitted to export English wool cloth to German states and Dutch provinces. He also confirmed the membership fee of £13 6s. 8d.199 But that was not the end of it. Seeking to facilitate trade, in February 1684 the City of Bremen announced a desire to negotiate with the English government.200 Despite the proclaimed royal prohibition, Bremen condoned ongoing illegal trade. A year later the English accused Bremen of abetting interlopers. In a reply to the English Secretary of State, Bremen’s Senate accused the Hamburg Company of pursuing private profit at the cost of national commonweal. Free trade with Bremen, according to the Senate, would benefit not only Bremen but the English nation as well, because Bremen was a hub for several German fair towns and wares from England would go, via Bremen, to Nuremberg, Frankfurt, and Strasbourg, and then from Basel to the rest of Switzerland and from Vienna to places beyond.201 Fearing the loss of its monopoly, the Hamburg factory discouraged direct trade with Bremen and struggled to guard its privileges. Once Court Master William Skelton had the English government’s backing, he summoned representatives from Bremen’s Senate to meet him in Hamburg, where he confronted them with the illegality of their activity. Bremen’s Senate apologized, but the problem with German interlopers remained.202 Two years later the Hamburg Company once again brought charges against Elkin and others for their sustained exports of wool cloth to Bremen. As before, the company addressed the Privy Council, which brought the parties together to hear them out. The company had Elkin arrested, and from then on, he petitioned the Privy Council from prison. Elkin pleaded ignorance of the regulations and vowed to follow the law. His apology was accepted and the charges dismissed. Three years later, the Hamburg Company’s monopoly on trade was defunct. The group of interlopers included naturalized subjects of German and Flemish origin, foreigners living in London, and mariners without permanent residence in England. The conflict of 1683 involved nine merchants in all, six of whom were naturalized Englishmen and three who were aliens: merchants John Van Gulick and John Esselborn from Alzey (Palatinate) and mariner-merchant Hermann Vogelsang from Bremen. Only Esselborn felt compelled to acquire English nationality because of the struggle.203 At the Hamburg Company’s insistence, Hermann Vogelsang was arrested in 1683 but later released after an interim ruling by the King’s Bench.204 Hermann may have been expelled from the country; as of 1684 London’s port books list Wilhelm Vogelsang, a relative and merchant mariner from Bremen, in his place.205 Whether any naturalized subjects joined

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the Hamburg Company is unknown; records no longer exist. Elkin refused membership. Together with John Loveroe from Flanders, in 1686 Elkin once again became a spokesman for the interlopers.206 In 1686 he was the only former interloper from 1683 still involved in the conflict: except for Loveroe and one other Englishman, most of the interlopers had been foreign mariners.207 Despite the loss of its monopoly and its growing insignificance in the eighteenth century, the Company of Merchant Adventurers existed until Napoleon dissolved the Hamburg factory in 1806.208 Following the loss of the monopoly, dues were reduced to 40s. This apparently encouraged membership: the organization was said to have about 400 members in London in the 1690s. Complaints filed by the Hamburg Company and by English cloth manufacturers in the 1690s suggest that much of the export to German ports was managed by foreigners and that the number of naturalized Englishmen among the members of the company had clearly risen.209 Attempts to revive the company’s monopoly failed. The Baltic had been monopolized by the Eastland Company and the Muscovy Company since the sixteenth century. The Muscovy Company was founded in 1555 when Ivan the Terrible awarded it a monopoly on trade;210 the Eastland Company, founded in 1579, covered Scandinavia and the southeastern ports of Gdansk, Elbing, and Königsberg.211 Following the execution of Charles I in 1649, the Muscovy Company lost its privileges in Russia and Englishmen were expelled from the country. The company never regained its previous privileges, even after normal business relations were reestablished in 1663. Thereafter, trade with Russia suffered from the imponderableness of Russian politics212 and did not improve again until the reign of Tsar Peter I began in 1689. The Muscovy Company survived expulsion from Russia, but its membership was reduced to a tiny, exclusive group of just over a dozen.213 The Eastland Company was the first to undergo reformation after the 1660 Restoration. England had few resources, and after mid-century, Scandinavia and the Baltic region rapidly became important suppliers of shipbuilding materials, wood, pitch, tar, and naval stores. To secure supply, Parliament instated a select committee in 1673 to explore ways and means to further trade with neighboring countries around the Baltic. The result was a law of 1673 that, for a fee of 40s., opened the Eastland Company “to all persons, native or foreigner … to have free liberty to trade into and from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.”214 The soaring membership included merchants of German origin such as Hanse Steelyard Master Theodor Jacobsen, Peter Vansittart, and John Henry Berenberg.215 For two decades the Eastland Company absorbed discontented merchants who were unable to join the Muscovy Company. With a group of powerful tobacco dealers surrounding Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Nathaniel Gould, and Joseph and John Cary, in the 1690s they struggled to enter trade with Russia. These events have been related in detail by Jacob M. Price and need only brief mention here.216

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On the eve of Tsar Peter I’s arrival in London, the Eastland Company launched an attack on the Muscovy Company’s monopoly. To invigorate trade with Russia, in December 1696 a group of Eastland merchants brought before the House of Commons a petition requesting the opening of the Muscovy Company, as had been done with the Hamburg and Eastland Companies.217 Upon Peter I’s arrival in Holland in 1697, Eastland merchants intensified their attack on the Muscovy Company, joined by an influential group of merchants who became known as “the tobacco contractors.” According to Price, the tobacco merchants apparently traded less with Virginia than with the Baltic, viewing Russia as a promising market for tobacco from English colonies, especially after Peter I lifted the prohibition on tobacco in 1697. To advance their interests, these tobacco merchants founded the Russian Tobacco Company. Immediately after Peter I arrived in London in 1698 and an agreement with Russia became tangible, these tobacco merchants spoke out in protest of the Muscovy Company. Though their interests differed somewhat from those of the Eastland Company, they closed ranks with the latter to defeat the Muscovy Company.218 The Eastland Company included about half of Virginia’s tobacco merchants.219 The Act to Enlarge the Trade to Russia, enacted in March 1699, opened the Russia Company to all Englishmen willing to pay £5 for membership.220 Among the 70 or 80 members of the Russian Tobacco Company, Price has identified an inner circle of about 65 merchants.221 The company’s spokesmen were influential, powerful overseas merchants surrounding Samuel Heathcoate, William Dawsonne, Sir Joseph Martin, and Nathaniel Gould. These individuals were also in conflict with the Old East India Company. They included directors of the Bank of England as well as members of the New East India Company and were some of the government’s largest lenders.222 In the struggle with the Muscovy Company, German merchants in London sided with the protesters: they had only to gain from a repeal of the monopoly. Historical sources provide only sketchy evidence of any active involvement in the conflict. In 1686 Johan Gabriell Keyser from Hamburg came forward with the Englishmen Joseph Martin and Nathaniel Gould to testify against the Muscovy Company before the Select Committee of the House of Commons.223 Names of German merchants also occasionally appear on lists of signatures and petitions.224 They were not leaders of the protest. Two naturalized subjects—merchants Theodor Jacobsen and Georg Ludwig Dunt (the latter born in Reval)—have been identified as members of the Tobacco Company; both joined as soon as the Russia Company was open for new members in 1698.

Naturalized Subjects and Joint-Stock Companies The decision to buy into a large joint-stock company was not necessarily motivated by the same reasons that persuaded one to join the regulated compa-

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nies, which were affiliations of merchants working with their own capital and at their own risk. Merchants joined regulated companies in order to do business in regions under monopoly. Joining joint-stock companies was more an economic than a business consideration; one’s relationship with the company was shaped more by anticipated dividends than by a desire to build and sustain trade relations.225 There were no membership fees in joint-stock companies; membership was acquired by purchasing shares. In the 1690s, the modernization of the English money market was as much a consequence of the Crown’s need for revenue as it was an outcome of the overseas merchants’ need for new, short-term, flexible ways to raise funds and invest. One reason for the attack on the Old East India Company in the 1690s was that a few affluent wine merchants were seeking lucrative investment opportunities. From 1688 to 1697, the Nine Years’ War barred them from the French and Iberian wine markets, so they explored new options for their surplus capital.226 Although the OEIC was the largest seventeenth-century joint-stock company, its capital structure was limited. In the second half of the century, trade with East India grew considerably. Between 1657 and 1693, capital did not increase. Profits were split among the few shareholders. Among them, a tiny group held increasingly more shares.227 The number of merchants among shareholders was small, comprising not more than 10 percent of the OEIC. Even after the increase in capital in 1693 they constituted only 15 percent.228 Many people were interested, especially because the company had made huge profits and distributed high dividends between the end of the Dutch War (1672– 1674) and the Glorious Revolution (1688). The company’s capital structure, however, allowed only a small minority to purchase shares. According to Jones, the attack on the OEIC was organized by three parties: English weavers fearing competition from cheap Indian cloth manufacturers, interloping merchants undermining the trade monopoly, and investors seeking profits. The history of the EIC in the 1690s is well documented and needs only brief mention here.229 Those opposing the OEIC saw their time come in 1694 and again in 1698, when the government approached them for loans. In 1694 the Crown’s search for capital led to founding the Bank of England because the OEIC was unwilling to lend more than £600,000.00. Subscription to the Bank of England quickly raised £1.2 million. In 1698 a new need for revenue justified founding the NEIC. Within three days, interlopers provided the government with £2 million, while the OEIC could offer only £900,000. From the start, the NEIC was established as a capital company with a trade monopoly, founded for the purpose of lending the Crown money. In terms of joint-stock organizations like the East India Company and its trade monopoly, the question is whether naturalized subjects of German origin were among the interlopers seeking access to trade with India or were passive shareholders more interested in financial investment than in trade.

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Members of the Levant Company were among those seeking reform for business purposes. Although the Levant Company and the East India Company imported similar goods, the Levant Company was much the smaller of the two and suffered greatly from the competition. As early as 1680 it approached Parliament with a petition protesting the OEIC’s monopoly.230 In 1695, William Paterson and other interested merchants countered the OEIC by founding the Scottish Darien Company, a joint-stock company for trade with Africa and the West and East Indies from Scotland’s shores.231 It was a motley group of 73 interlopers, including well-known merchants like Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Theodore Janssen, the Houblons, and Sir William Gore. These men were also investors in the Bank of England and other trade and joint-stock companies.232 The group further included less well-known wine merchants striving, as mentioned above, for the reform of the OEIC. Whereas others pursued commercial interests, wine merchants primarily sought investment opportunities. Germans were not among the major opponents of the OEIC, but they nonetheless showed interest in joining the East India Company. Theodor Jacobsen held shares in the OEIC. William Gronen (from Aachen) had become a member of the East India Company in the 1680s by completing an apprenticeship with it.233 John Anthony Teschemacher and Gerrard Muysken (Meuschgen) had a trade account with the East India Company as of 1695/96. In late 1695 John Teschemacher’s brother William bought shares in the Darien Company during the first round of subscription.234 Within the Darien Company, conflict between William Paterson and subscribers from London soon compelled London merchants to withdraw, and the trade company became increasingly Scottish.235 Not until the founding of the NEIC in 1698 did German merchants show vivid interest in trade with India.236 Trade with India, however, demanded more capital than all but a few of them had. Merchants bought into the East India Company, the Bank of England, and joint-stock companies for several reasons. Some wished to invest surplus capital in the EIC etc. that was not already tied up in ventures. Much depended on a merchant’s stance toward novel financial opportunities and risk. In the 1690s the founding of capital companies led to a temporary run on shares. Euphoria notwithstanding, the risks involved in the nascent capital market were high and complex, as evidenced by the South Sea Bubble of 1720, the first stock market crash in history.237 The number of German shareholders in these capital companies is a clue to the immigrants’ financial circumstances as well as their readiness to assume risk. Peter Dickson and Bruce Carruthers have explained which social groups and nationalities held shares in the Bank of England and the EIC.238 Dickson examined which countries were represented by foreign investors, whereas Carruthers focused on the ratio of native Englishmen to those he calls “unorthodox residents” (naturalized citizens, Huguenots, Quakers, and Jews)—without, however, saying exactly what constituted unorthodox residency or specifying what contribution

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came from each national, ethnic, and religious background. For our purposes, the questions are what proportion of the stock owners were naturalized subjects of German origin, how much money they invested, and whether, as members of the economic elite, they served on company boards. Contemporaries felt that foreigners, naturalized subjects, Huguenots, Quakers, and Jews were disproportionately over-represented among shareholders. Carruthers, however, has shown that until 1712, just 6.3 percent of all shareholders in the Bank of England were unorthodox owners. In the East India Company, where they were among the wealthiest and most active holders, they constituted 10.8 percent at most. At the Bank of England, unorthodox shareholders owned on average shares worth £3,118.80, whereas the average native-born English shareholder’s parcel was not worth more than £1,112.239 The ratio was similar at the East India Company, where Englishmen held on average shares worth £1,180.40, while foreign-born shareholders each held on average shares worth £3,309. Among the stockbrokers and directors of both companies, the number of Huguenots, Jews, foreign-born subjects, and Quakers was salient indeed. Active merchants were few among the overall number of shareholders. At the Bank of England, just 3 percent of the shareholders were merchants, and at the East India Company just 4.5 percent were merchants, 40 to 50 percent of whom came from ethnic and religious minorities and belonged to London’s extraordinarily moneyed elite. Stockholders at the Bank of England and the East India Company were divided into two groups: those with voting power, who were entitled to elect directors; and those not entitled to vote. The first group contained all stockholders investing £500 and more. Those entitled to vote were in turn divided into two groups: those with active and those with passive voting rights. Those with passive voting rights could be elected to the board of directors, which required more investment. At the Bank of England, directors had to own at least £2,000 worth of shares, Deputy Governors £3,000, and Governors £4,000.240 Similar restrictions applied at the East India Company.241 In 1694 the first subscribers to the Bank of England were a diverse group of aristocrats, merchants, academics, tradesmen, married and unmarried women, and widows. Most of them had London addresses.242 Many were Huguenots or naturalized subjects of Dutch origin.243 The investments made by Huguenot families alone made up approximately 15 percent of all capital raised. Houblon, Lethieullier, and Sir Theodore Janssen were involved in the beginnings of the Bank of England. These families were not only among the largest shareholders but also influenced the course the bank would take in its early years. The Bank of England’s original charter stipulated that only “natural born subjects of England or naturalized subjects” could be elected to the position of Governor and the Court of Directors.244 The Houblons and Lethieulliers were descended from Huguenots who had fled to England in the first sixteenth-century

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wave of immigrants. Sir Theodore Janssen from Angoulème, the only first-generation immigrant among them, had in 1683 first become a denizen under a royal proclamation of 1681, but then undergone naturalization as well a few years later. The twenty-four-member Court of Directors included seven Huguenots, three of whom belonged to the Houblon family.245 Neither the Bank of England nor the East India Company had any German-born directors. Sir Jacob Jacobsen was a director at the South Sea Company, and he and Raymond De Smeth also sat on the board of London Assurance.246 The original Bank of England charter allowed subscription by “Natives or Foreigners, Bodies Politic or Corporate.” In the bank’s early years, when shares totaling £2 million were issued to establish the New East India Company, few people abroad were involved, and those that were invested only insubstantial sums. Reservations about this form of investment persisted among large numbers of foreigners abroad until the 1720s.247 More Dutch investors became involved after 1700, and throughout the eighteenth century they constituted the largest group of foreign investors.248 Sephardic Jews were also initially reluctant to invest in the bank, but after 1700 more and more of them invested increasing amounts.249 Swiss and German investors behaved similarly, although their investments were small compared to those of the Dutch and Germans. For now we are more interested in England’s naturalized merchants of German origin than in other German investors abroad. Were their behaviors similar? Between 1694 and 1697, if they invested this way at all, naturalized subjects of German origin were reluctant to purchase substantial amounts of shares in the East India Company and Bank of England. Sephardic Jews living in England invested large sums, especially in the East India Company.250 Naturalized persons of German origin invested there only rarely: for the year 1698 there is evidence of only six stock buyers of German origin or descent, including the BalticGerman merchant Georg Ludwig Dunt. Except for Sir Peter Meyer, naturalized subjects of German origin were all small stockholders; none invested more than £1,000.251 In contrast, Henry Strode, an immigrant’s descendent, bought shares for £15,000. Major English buyers like Heathcote and Shepard bought shares for more than £17,000.252 Average early investments in the Bank of England were smaller than those in the East India Company. In 1694 investments were limited to a maximum of £20,000. Only twelve subscribers invested more than £10,000; forty-four subscribed for over £5,000. Seventy-five percent of all investments lay between £1,000 and £5,000. More individuals invested in the Bank of England than in the East India Company.253 During the first round of subscriptions for the bank in 1694, German immigrants were more reserved than they had been with the EIC; only four naturalized subjects of German origin bought shares. German-born David Debary acted as an agent for a Dutchman but did not buy shares for himself. German investments were between £500 and £2,000.254 When

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capital was increased in 1697, Peter Vansittart bought shares for £7,190. In 1709, when capital was raised once again, pharmacist Henry Scheibel (from Fridberg), Caspar Bergmann (from Elberfeld), and the brothers Theodor and Jacob Jacobsen each invested between £200 and £1,000.255 Over the next two decades, the number of naturalized subjects of German origin purchasing shares grew only gradually. Prior to 1720 we find only thirty such persons on Bank of England ledgers, investing from £200 to £60,000. Between 1697 and 1720, Theodor and Jacob Jacobsen, Peter Vansittart, Peter Selcken, Raymond De Smeth, Caspar Henning, Sir Peter Meyer, and Frederick Dorrien (from Hildesheim) were among the bank’s larger shareholders, each having invested more than £9,000.256 The East India Company had fewer English shareholders of German origin than the Bank of England, but they invested considerable sums in the EIC.257 Between 1700 and 1703, investments of less than £1,000, which were common at the bank, were nonexistent at the EIC. Lists of shareholders for those three years feature only the names of the commercial elite from among the naturalized subjects of German origin, such as Theodor and Jacob Jacobsen and Peter Vansittart,258 who invested between £9,769 and £27,248.259 The next surviving list, namely for 1707, includes the names of two other share buyers, Sir Peter Meyer and Raymond De Smeth, who had both invested much smaller sums.260 For two more decades, only a few more subjects of German origin bought shares and for much less, usually investing only £200 to £2,000.261 Some of this investment was mere short-term speculation. More naturalized subjects of German origin bought shares in the Million Bank, although their investments were comparatively small.262 Established in 1695, the Million Bank sold primarily annuities. Except for Raymond De Smeth, most former Germans invested between £700 and £3,050.263 Besides investing in the Bank of England, the East India Company, and the Million Bank, naturalized subjects of German origin also bought tickets for contemporary lotteries, endorsed public bonds, and sought other novel ways to invest their money.264 Interestingly, frequent changes in financial institutions were characteristic of German merchant behavior. Names drop out of ledgers for a while, only to turn up again in an institution’s records years later. Raymond De Smeth, for instance, first invested £300 in the Bank of England in 1697. Thereafter his name disappears from the bank’s stock ledgers and does not appear again until 1720, when he invested £9,600.265 The books of the other two capital companies show that in 1702, De Smeth switched over to the Million Bank. He started there with £900 but reduced it to £700 in 1704. In 1705 he again increased his investment, to £9,400. Within another two years he had invested an additional £12,100. Then he bought shares in the East India Company for £400. He remains on EIC ledgers with smaller investments of £250 to £750.266 Why he changed banks is not known.

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Other naturalized subjects of German origin had similar practices. In 1694 Caspar Henning bought shares in the Bank of England for £15,000. In 1701 he switched to the Million Bank, buying shares for just £3,050. His account at the Bank of England had already fluctuated heavily: between 1694 and 1695 his capital was halved, although by 1697 it again climbed to £7,910.267 His account at the Million Bank oscillated between £500 and £3,050. Do such monetary movements indicate financial losses or simply investment elsewhere? Did Raymond De Smeth earn great profits or accept an inheritance? The sources are silent on such questions. In contrast, we do know why Jacob Jacobsen’s finances flourished in 1703. Bank of England ledgers for the year 1702 list Jacobsen’s capital at £8,100, but a year later his account held £52,600: he had inherited his Uncle Theodor’s fortune. Jacobsen invested £39,000 of it in the Bank of England.268 A few years before he died, Theodor Jacobsen had begun dividing his money between his nephews Jacob and Theodor. At the turn of the century he made Jacob a partner in his business.269 Theodor Jacobsen first showed up on the East India Company’s list of shareholders in 1701, when he purchased shares worth £9,700. The next year he raised the total to more than £14,000. In 1703 he put his shares in his nephew Jacob’s name.270 In 1704 Jacob himself put £1,500 into the Million Bank.271 When the South Sea Company was founded in 1711, Jacob took his money out of the Bank of England and invested it in the SSC. He did not draw money from his account with the East India Company, and he did not return to the Bank of England until 1720.272 When the older Theodor Jacobsen died, his nephew Theodor was still a minor. The uncle bequeathed £8,000 of start-up money to each nephew, stipulating in his will that once Theodor had reached majority, Jacob, the older of the two brothers, was to take his younger brother on as a partner in the business and the two would continue to run it for at least seven years. Young Theodor’s money does not turn up in Bank of England shareholder lists until 1709, when he invested £2,397. In 1720 he raised his funds to £9,900.273 That same year, Jacob—who meanwhile had become a director of the South Sea Company—got caught up in the South Sea Bubble affair and was forced to lay open his books. Compared to the fortunes of other directors, his wealth of £51,000 was rather modest.274 His money was confiscated on 1 June 1720, but he and some of the other directors did get most of their capital back.275 In early 1721 Jacob sold most of his remaining shares in the East India Company and the Bank of England to his brother Theodor.276 The inventories for Jacob Jacobsen, Raymond De Smeth, and Peter Vansittart reveal how their business assets were related to the capital they invested in shares. Most of Jacob Jacobsen’s assets of about £35,000 were invested variously in the South Sea Company, the English Copper Company, and London Assurance.277

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Raymond De Smeth’s and Peter Vansittart’s investment behavior was different. By the time he died, Raymond De Smeth had accumulated £94,574; Peter Vansittart had amassed £108,036 at the time of his death.278 De Smeth invested about a third of his money, Vansittart had more than £31,600 in capital. Most of their wealth came from their businesses. Neither their inventories nor their wills mention landholding, so we know nothing of how real estate might have been related to the rest of their money.279 Jacobsen’s inventory for 1720 includes property in Walthamstow worth £1,500 and half of the Steelyard, including a housing building.280 Early capital-company ledgers make clear that naturalized subjects of German origin exhibited various patterns of investment behavior besides switching financial institutions. Some investors, particularly merchants, bought and sold shares frequently. Shareholder directories do not explain that behavior, but there appear to have been three different reasons for it. First, many used funds for short-term investment. Faced with long periods of trade-related debt, merchants often had to deal with liquidity squeezes. Owning shares was one way to park surplus capital profitably in the short term. When the need arose, shares could be sold quickly and easily. Merchants were less likely to invest in immovable property because buildings and property required maintenance and selling them was tedious. Investment in the institutions mentioned above promised high dividends and privileges in commerce and banking. The merchants put about 60 percent of their surplus capital into shares of the Bank of England and the East India and South Sea Companies.281 Second, buying and selling shares was an additional source of income. In 1694, at the very first subscription call for the Bank of England, David Debary acted as a broker.282 We do not know how profitable his brokering was; ledgers for the Bank of England and the East India Company mention the name of the buyer only, not the amount paid. Carruthers counts as brokers merchants who handled more than seven such transactions, which includes Abraham Crop (son of James Crop), Jacob Jacobsen, Peter Selcken, and Raymond De Smeth.283 The Jacobsen brothers and Raymond De Smeth acted as agents primarily for Dutch and German investors.284 Except for Abraham Crop, they bought and sold on the side and were not professional brokers. Moses Hart and John “Vulpture” Hopkins, among others, were big professional brokers.285 Third, merchants and wealthy families used investment in both of the companies as a means of long-term savings. For years the amounts deposited in these accounts hardly changed.286 Deposits in banks and companies were often intended as securities for widows and children in case of the proprietor’s death. Dividends between 10 percent and 20 percent made the option attractive. The wills of many naturalized subjects state that in the case of death, equity should be sold and the money invested in shares to provide for survivors. When Peter Vansittart died in 1706, his executor, Christian Toepken, bought into the Bank

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of England on behalf of Vansittart’s six surviving children, some of whom were minors.287 Toepken also transferred East India stock from Peter and Jacob Vansittart’s account to Peter Vansittart’s children’s accounts.288 Others, like Sir Peter Meyer, acted as trustees for foreigners and minors and managed their assets.289 Not all of London’s moneyed German elite exploited novel investment options to the same extent. John William Teschemacher invested only a small sum when the first subscription to the East India Company was issued in 1698. After the turn of the century he also invested in the Bank of England, but here again, only a small sum, buying shares for not more than £1,000. The Bank of England’s shareholder record does not list him among those holding voting rights, while Jacob Jacobsen and Peter Vansittart had passive entitlement to positions as governors.290 At the Million Bank, Teschemacher had only invested £300 in 1693, and overall he invested no more than £2,500 there.291 By the time he died in 1713 he had a large estate in Edmonton.292 In summary, naturalized subjects were certainly aware of the economic opportunities offered by England’s nascent financial market and made use of a wide variety of securities and company shares for both short- and long-term investment. Short-term investment of surplus money in the capital market provided additional income while simultaneously enabling German merchants to save over the long term to provide for their survivors. In the first two decades, they preferred investments at the Bank of England and the Million Bank to investment in the East India Company. Besides demanding substantial investment sums, the EIC was undergoing a lengthy amalgamation process that might have made the Germans initially reluctant to invest there. That changed after the EIC was consolidated and responded to the needs of small investors. Compared to the overall number of Huguenots and Dutch merchants in London, there were fewer naturalized subjects of German origin, and they invested less capital. Yet the nature of their investments exposes a small group of German merchants with considerable wealth and conservative investment behavior.293

Politics and Commerce In post-revolutionary England, a change in political culture began to take place, marked by the presence of fleeting non-parliamentary interest groups, lobbyists, petitioners, and pamphleteers. Struggle between various mercantile interest groups over more liberal commerce and the opening of the old, exclusive trade companies was an integral part of this new political culture. In recent years, Gary S. De Krey, Alison Olsen, N. V. Bowen, Perry Gauci, and others have researched the relationships between commerce, society, and the state, initiating a new debate on the interrelation of commerce and politics. Their research has led to a reevaluation of the commercial elite, showing that leading merchants acted as

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agents for social and economic change. Not only did merchants make an essential contribution to building the commercial empire, they also profoundly influenced the early modern state. As trade expanded, so, too, did the commercial elite’s impact on politics. In 1640 they contributed to the Crown’s downfall.294 During the wars of succession from 1688 to 1713, the commercial elite had been able to finance the government’s enormous military expenses; in times of peace they remained an indispensable source of loans to the state.295 Since the most affluent merchants often owed their fortune to the state’s need for money, commerce and the state became reciprocally dependent upon one another in an almost “inseparable connection”296 that inevitably involved the commercial elite in a wide range of politics. Their involvement was not limited to parliamentary events but spanned the entire field of political activity in both private and public institutions and especially the informal and personal networks of commerce, society, and culture. Gauci particularly insists on a fresh look at the commercial elite’s political efforts, and to understand merchant engagement in politics, viewing trade and commercial policy not from the higher perspective of the state alone but from below, through the eyes of the merchants themselves. In such a “politics of trade” the merchant becomes a political figure. The question is not how many merchants held political office; the focus is on the informal links between merchants and politicians and the political implications of such networks. Any study of the extent to which naturalized merchants influenced politics must take account of the legal, economic, and social peculiarities of the immigrant status that set these subjects apart from the native merchant elite. The primary goal of a foreign merchant abroad was to establish his enterprise and develop social bonds that would further his business. Already in an unfamiliar environment, a foreign merchant also had to deal with locals who were often wary of strangers. As his primary source of livelihood, his business had absolute priority; first generation immigrants had little time for politics. Even for established merchants, taking on an office always meant carefully weighing the time it detracted from business against whether it promised to enhance commercial endeavor through social interaction and influence. As of 1715, legal requirements for holding public office in Great Britain were regulated by the Act of Settlement and a clause included in individual naturalization acts. Before 1715 naturalized subjects at least officially enjoyed the same political rights as Englishmen. However, after the Glorious Revolution and William of Orange’s ascension to the throne, the population began to fear an overpowering foreign influence at the highest levels of government. This did not result in a general renunciation of immigration policy intended to boost the economy, but it did lead to constraints on the political rights of naturalized subjects.297 From then on, first-generation immigrants were excluded from political office.

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Although according to ius soli (the “right of the soil”) English-born children of immigrants were considered native-born subjects, they were not always treated as such. In the early seventeenth century, members of foreign churches who were descendants of immigrants were always considered aliens.298 Facing this century-old latent bias against foreigners in large parts of the population on the one hand and the English Crown’s economy-promoting immigration policy on the other, naturalized subjects sometimes had to maneuver within a gray zone in English legal practices. Naturalized subjects and their descendants’ successful integration and welcome into social and political involvement depended on the interests of the state and the attitudes of the domestic population. In 1618/19, for instance, the English government revoked the status of already naturalized subjects of Dutch and Huguenot origin and declared them foreigners to avoid repaying substantial sums of money borrowed by the Crown from London’s immigrant elite. To escape its financial obligation, the Crown accused lenders of having allegedly exported capital illegally and even imprisoned some of them, including already naturalized persons.299 After the Restoration, the attitude toward naturalized persons became more liberal. Yet although certain circles propagated a more liberal policy between 1660 and 1709 (and later once again in the nineteenth century), the era was not devoid of lower-class attacks on immigrants and prejudice toward naturalized subjects. Opinion on immigrant political activity was ambiguous. In the 1680s, for instance, naturalized representatives of the Huguenots were accused of using their political office solely to benefit fellow immigrants.300 Integration is not merely a matter of official policy and a people’s readiness to welcome newcomers; it also hinges on the migrants’ own ability to become a part of society. Economic success demanded that a naturalized merchant actively approach the social classes his business and family life relied on. Newcomers were forced to overcome social resentment toward them and to adjust their own conduct. Recognition and acceptance by the local merchant community was crucial. The success of a merchant’s enterprise depended not only on the economy and legalities, but also on personal social skills. Besides conditions stipulated by naturalization law, two further questions need consideration: to what extent Englishborn merchants, for their part, were engaged in politics and in shaping society; and to what extent naturalized persons (within the given legal and societal limits) participated in social and political activities or sought influence through informal channels. Studies on the social composition of the Corporation of London, the London City Council, and Parliament show that a fairly high percentage of aldermen and MPs came from the merchant class. In 1660 more than 35 percent of the aldermen in the Corporation of London were overseas merchants. After 1700 that figure dropped to below 20 percent.301 Similarly, in the early eighteenth century the percentage of merchants and bankers in the House of Commons was

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much higher than it was eighty years on, sinking from 55 percent to 34 percent between 1715 and 1790.302 With a few exceptions, naturalized subjects were seldom found among the aldermen and members of parliament before 1715.303 Circumstances changed, however, for the second and third generations of immigrant families. Besides Huguenot and Dutch descendants, sons and grandsons of naturalized subjects of German and German-Russian origin sat in the House of Commons (Table 9). Table 9. MPs of German Descent (second and third generation)i Name

Period in Parliament

John Angerstein Francis Baring John Baring Sir John Duntze Magens Dorrien Magens George Shum-Storey Henry Schiffner Arthur Vansittart George Vansittart Henry Vansittart

1796–1837 1784–1806 1776–1802 1768–1795 1796–1812 1796–1805 1761–1768 1757–1774 1784–1812 1768–1770

i

The fourth generation was not examined. Source: Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, eds., History of Parliament: Houses of Commons, Members, 1754–1790 and R. G. Thorne, ed., History of Parliament: Houses of Commons, Members, 1790–1820, London, 1986.

Henry Schiffner,304 Sir John Duntze,305 Francis Baring, John Baring, and John Angerstein306 were all second-generation immigrants. The Vansittarts, Magens Dorrien Magens,307 and George Shum-Storey308 belonged to the third generation. Forefathers who had taken it upon themselves to become naturalized English subjects paved the way for the political ascent of all of these families.309 The declining number of merchants in the Corporation and in Parliament did not necessarily mean that merchants had withdrawn from politics in general. Other means and channels had emerged that allowed them to gain political influence without jeopardizing business. The seventeenth century saw the development of non-parliamentarian ways to voice opinion, such as petitioning, lobbying, and pamphlet publishing. Merchants exploited these new channels’ potential for reforming trade companies and modernizing the financial market. German merchants used these channels to fight the Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly. Were they otherwise politically active? Late seventeenth-century Parliament was inundated with petitions for economic reform. Many petitions demanding liberalization of trade bear no signature; some were signed only by spokesmen. Sources are rare, and the field is little

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researched, leaving only fleeting impressions of German merchants’ political activities. Some petitions that show more names than just that of the spokesperson bear the names of such German merchants as James Crop, David Debary, Gerrard Muysken (Meuschgen), and Theodor Jacobsen.310 In May 1700, James Crop, Abraham Henckell, Theodor Jacobsen, and thirty-seven English merchants signed a “Petition of Portugal Merchants.”311 Peter Meyer signed a memorandum by English merchants bemoaning the countless toll stations along the River Elbe.312 In January 1695 a group of “Merchants trading to the Eastland Countries” submitted a petition signed by Theodor Jacobsen and David Debary, contesting a proposed prohibition on trade with France.313 Access to the trade companies was in the interest not only of many Englishmen but of naturalized subjects and foreigners as well. There were probably more German sympathizers than petition signatures alone suggest. As was true for the Russia Company and for some insurance companies, once trade companies had been reformed and insurance institutions established, naturalized merchants were no longer content with mere membership but desired influential functions within the company. Immigrants were barred from becoming governors of companies, but they could be co-opted onto boards of directors and the Court of Aldermen. These governing bodies at banks, trade companies, and insurance institutions had personal contact with the country’s political leaders. Being a member of the board meant a naturalized subject could influence company and institution policy, and enjoy indirect access to the nation’s policy makers. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to trace just what these interactions entailed in any one case. Even beyond formal affiliation, the relationship between the English merchant elite and the state was shaped to a considerable extent by personal ties.314 Many merchants owed their fortunes to the state’s need of finance. Merchants endorsed bonds, financed contracts, and performed other financial transactions for the government.315 England’s young loan market was unable to provide the state with a sufficiently large number of reliable lenders. Tendering and underwriting loans was a matter of personal negotiation between the treasury, leading financial institutions, and big financiers. The government always turned to the merchant elite for advice on economic policy. Representatives of high finance and the government remained in touch both in and out of Parliament. Research into individual biographies often reveals the true extent of that entanglement. Peter Hasenclever’s story shows how closely naturalized merchants were involved with representatives of the government. In the mid 1760s, Hasenclever conferred on various occasions with Secretary of State Shelburne, as well as with Chancellor of the Exchequer Townsend, regarding not only his own projects but also Britain’s commercial policy toward America. Not only did Hasenclever consider himself an advisor to the English government on economic policy, but

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the government, too, saw him as a competent advisor on issues related to trade with America.316 Peter Vansittart and Nicholas Magens, both army suppliers, also maintained contact with the government. In 1759, acting jointly with other members of London’s immigrant elite, Magens loaned the English government eight million pounds.317 German Russian–born John Julius Angerstein, founder of the New Lloyd’s and the Lifeboat Fund, was a personal advisor to William Pitt the Younger.318 In eighteenth-century London, social and economic advance often depended on family, friends, and religious affiliation. Private relations between naturalized merchants and England’s commercial elite with its immediate contact to Members of Parliament and government are therefore of particular interest. Relations of this kind have been identified for some naturalized subjects of German origin. Steelyard Master Jacob Jacobsen was related by marriage to Sir Gilbert Heathcote, MP, Alderman of the City of London and one of the eminent merchants of his time. John Abraham Korten (from Elberfeld) stood in a close relationship to the brothers Joshua and Gerrard Van Neck and to the Amyand family.319 Mathew Schiffner was related to Samuel Holden, governor of the Russia Company and director of the Bank of England.320 These kinds of close, informal, private contacts opened channels of influence to German merchants despite the official ban on political participation. For the era of the commercial and industrial revolution, we therefore should view social interrelations not merely as a sign of successful integration but also as a potential indicator of informal political involvement. Serving on parish and church councils was another way to informally participate in policy making. Attending the local church and becoming involved in the parish helped merchants pursue contacts. Parochial records may contain evidence that German merchants were particularly active in this way. As mentioned above, many Reformed merchants served on the church council or were deacons at the Dutch church of St. Austin Friars.321 Other German merchants, along with Huguenots and Dutchmen, were members at St. Martin Orgar in Walbrook.322 Deeper research into the parish lives of these communities would surely reveal much about the German merchants’ activities and social relations at the local level. As an interim result, in closing this chapter we can say that as early as the late seventeenth century, London’s German merchants began to build worldwide networks of trade based on remnants of Hanse connections. Their branches in England’s capital became hubs of global trade, linking their native regions to the empire’s rapidly expanding trade, which in turn had considerable impact on German centers of textile manufacturing in the eighteenth century.323 The decision to emigrate and settle abroad was often backed by a desire to link the trade of one’s native market to trade beyond Europe’s borders. England’s mer-

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cantilist immigration policy, forged to encourage trade, influenced the decision. Family firms often sent sons and siblings to distant ports and towns to lessen the pressure of competition among family members on the local market and to reach out to new markets. German merchants usually had some basic knowledge of the English market before settling in England, based on parent firms’ longestablished trade links with the country. The risk of failure was nonetheless high in a foreign environment with its unfamiliar financial, legal, and social customs. Finding and building “networks of trust” was an important strategy for reducing transaction costs and risks. For German merchants these networks grew primarily from ties with family, fellow countrymen, and members of the same faith—persons who not only were more easily trusted but also were in a position to advise newcomers, being more aware of national differences and the pitfalls in business, legal, and social practices. Ultimately, transnational trade meant constant struggle with opportunities and limitations of laws that differed from state to state, governing conduct, social hierarchies, and business. It was essential for early modern transnational trade to understand and exploit the rules and practices. Immigrant merchants pursued strategies that allowed them to reduce the transaction costs and risks of overseas trade. By petitioning and lobbying alongside British merchants, German merchants participated as much as they could in the changing political culture of their time. They sympathized with the British merchant elite’s general demands for improved economic policy and joined the struggle to open the trade companies to gain access to new markets, social networks, and resources. They made use of new financial institutions and insurance to invest profitably in the long and short term. And they laid the financial and social foundation upon which successive generations of German merchants would build and further expand trade networks.

Notes 1. Philanglus, “Britannia Languens, or A Discourse of Trade…” (London, 1680) and Anon., “England’s Great Happiness” (London, 1677), both in J. R. McCulloch, Early English Tracts on Commerce, Cambridge, 1956, 315 and 263. 2. Dwyryd W. Jones, War and Economy in the Age of William III and Marlborough, Oxford, 1988, 258. 3. Fifteen immigrants from the study came from the Palatinate during that period. As mentioned above, they were only the crest of a huge wave of emigrants leaving that area. Few individuals arriving from the Palatinate became British subjects after 1710. 4. German merchants living in London often complained of the countless toll stations that hampered business (see TNA State Papers, CO 388/10 H 21 Memorial from Several Merchants trading to Germany Relating to the Tolls upon the River Elbe, 12 April 1706). 5. Burrington assumed that the proportion of aliens was high (George Burrington, An Answer to Dr. William Brakenridge’s Letter, London, 1757, 37; see also Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century, Harmondsworth, 1965 [1925], 118). Gwynn estimates that around

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6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

1700, Huguenots made up more than 5 percent of the total population, not counting other nationalities (Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain, Brighton, 2001). Olsen, however, assumes that aliens constituted just 3 percent of the population (Alison Gilbert Olsen, Making the Empire Work: London and American Interest Groups, 1690–1790, Cambridge, MA, 1992, 96). Olsen, Making the Empire Work, 96. On immigration see M. Schulte Beerbühl, “Erwünschte und unerwünschte Einwanderer: Die britische Einwanderungs- und Einbürgerungspolitik im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Karen Schönwälder and Imke Sturm-Martin, eds., Die britische Gesellschaft zwischen Offenheit und Abgrenzung, Berlin and Vienna, 2001, 34–56. Roger Finlay and Beatrice Shearer, “Population Growth and Suburban Expansion,” in A. L. Beier and Roger Finlay, eds., The Making of the Metropolis: London 1500–1700, London and New York, 1986, 37–59; Edward A. Wrigley, “Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent in the Early Modern Period,” in Peter Borsay, ed., The EighteenthCentury Town: A Reader in English Urban History 1688–1820, London and New York, 1990, 42. Gregory King classifies those with an income of over £400 as “eminent merchants.” Gregory King, Natural and Political Observations and Conclusion upon State and Condition of England, 1696, printed in G. Chalmers, Comparative State of Britain, London 1804. Walter E. Minchinton, “Merchants in England in the Eighteenth Century,” Exploration in Entrepreneurial History 10 (1957): 62–71, esp. 62. Perry Gauci, Politics of Trade: The Overseas Merchant in State and Society, 1660–1720, Oxford, 2001, chap. 2. Stanley D. Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain: From the Industrial Revolution to World War I, Cambridge, 1992, 30. Jones, War and Economy, 257; N. Rogers, “Money, Land, and Lineage: The Big Bourgeoisie of Hanoverian London,” Social History 4 (1979): 441f.; Gauci, Politics of Trade, 65. Minchinton, “Merchants in England,” 62. Huw V. Bowen, Elites, Enterprise, and the Making of the British Overseas Empire, 1688–1775, New York, 1996, 47. Kurt Kluxen, Geschichte Englands, Stuttgart, 1968, 416. David Mitchell, “‘It Will Be Easy to Make Money’: Merchant Strangers in London, 1580– 1680,” in Clé Lesger and Leo Noordegraaf, eds., Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Times, Hollandse Historische Reeks 24, The Hague, 1995, 119–145. Martin Reißmann, Die hamburgische Kaufmannschaft des 17. Jahrhunderts aus sozialgeschichtlicher Sicht, Hamburg, 1975, 55–57. Ibid., 156. Frederick J. Fisher, “London’s Export Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century,” in Walter E. Minchinton, ed., The Growth of English Overseas Trade in the 17th and 18th Centuries, London 1969, 64–77. In 1602 foreigners exported about 5,000 pieces of cloth from England. By 1640 they only exported 503, and their share in the export of other kinds of goods, though increased, was negligible in comparison to the volume exported by Englishmen, which tripled during the same period. Mitchell, “‘It Will Be Easy,’” 119–133. Reißmann, Hamburgische Kaufmannschaft, 156–162. C. Brinkmann, “England and the Hanse under Charles II,” EHR 23 (1908): 683–708; Philip Norman, “Notes on the Later History of the Steelyard in London,” Archeologia, or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity 61 (1909): 392. The cloth makers’ houses were rebought in 1606; see Johann Martin Lappenberg, Urkundliche Geschichte des Hansischen Stalhofes zu London, Osnabrück, 1967 [1851], 111f.

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25. During Patrick Colquhoun’s time in the early nineteenth century, the position of Steelyard master gained official diplomatic rank. See Georg Fink, “Diplomatische Vertretungen der Hanse seit dem 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Auflösung der hanseatischen Gesandtschaft in Berlin 1920,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter 56 (1931): 112–155, esp. 130f. 26. Lappenberg, Urkundliche Geschichte, 111. 27. Norman, “Notes,” 395. 28. Charles Vandepitt from Frankfurt lived with his brother, the merchant Giles Vandepitt. The census calls Charles a “servant,” but he was a young merchant. Only a few cases, like that of Mathew Lymen, clearly state “merchant born in Germany, servant to Mr. Beck.” Irene Scouloudi, Returns of Strangers in the Metropolis 1593, 1627, 1635, 1637, HSQS 57, London, 1985, 345, nos. 2669a and 2670, 312, no. 1843. 29. On problems related to determining the number of aliens, see the introduction to Scouloudi, Returns. 30. Finlay and Shearer, Population Growth, 49. 31. In 1593 Germans made up no more than 10 percent of the aliens living in London; 45 percent of the foreigners were of Dutch or Flemish origin. The French constituted 34 percent of the foreign population. See Lien Bich Luu, Immigrants and the Industries of London 1500–1700, Aldershot, 2005, 103f. 32. For the returns of 1618 see the appendix to William Durrant Cooper, ed., Lists of Foreign Protestants, and Aliens, Resident in England 1618–1688: From Returns in the State Paper Office, Camden Society 82, London, 1862. These data were used here to calculate the number of Germans and German merchants residing in London. The numbers for 1635 are based on Scouloudi, Returns, 100f. 33. Scouloudi, Returns, 85. 34. For more details see later in this chapter. 35. Steelyard masters were: Jürgen Stempeel (1619–1625), Johann Held (1625–1637), Markus Brand (1637–1641), Conradt Stridholz (1641–1647), and Jacob Jacobsen (1647–1670). Lappenberg, Urkundliche Geschichte, 159f.; see also Cooper, Lists of Foreign Protestants, 74, and Visitations of London 1634, edited by the Harlean Society, London, 1880, vol. 15, 99 and 372. 36. Lappenberg, Urkundliche Geschichte, 159f. 37. Stempeel returned to his native country in 1625. Held had immigrated in 1610, and Brand in 1620. 38. Another member of the family, Henry, probably a brother of the above-mentioned, was also living in London. 39. Mitchell, “Merchant Strangers,” 130. 40. See Peter Ole Grell, Dutch Calvinists in Early Stuart London: The Dutch Church in Austin Friars 1603–1642, Leiden, 1989, 168f., 187, 286f. 41. In London, merchant Jacob Herewin from Bremen employed two Dutch merchants (Cooper, Lists of Foreign Protestants, 63, 86). For commercial relations between Bremen and the Netherlands, see Hans-Jürgen v. Witzendorff, “Bremens Handel im 16. Und 17. Jahrhundert” in Bremisches Jahrbuch 44 (1955), 128–174, esp. 141. 42. German merchants Lawrence Meacher from Wesel and Charles Buccell from Cologne lived with Dutchman Stephen Le Goughe (Cooper, Lists of Foreign Protestants, 71). 43. Grell, Dutch Calvinists, esp. chap. 5. 44. Ludwig Beutin, Der deutsche Seehandel im Mittelmeergebiet bis zu den Napoleonischen Kriegen, Neumünster, 1933, 48f. 45. 14 & 15 Henry VIII c 2. 46. Scouloudi, Returns, 141. 47. Cal SPD Charles I, 1625–6, 327; Ruth Prange, Die bremische Kaufmannschaft des 16. und 17.

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48. 49.

50.

51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

65. 66. 67. 68.

Jahrhunderts in sozialgeschichtlicher Betrachtung, Bremen, 1963, 133; Cooper, Lists of Foreign Protestants, 86. Visitations of London 1634 and 1664, edited by the Harlean Society, London 1880 and 1883, vol. 15, pp. 59, 99, 195, and 372, and vol. 17, pp. 61 and 139. See below for Huguenot impact on the “financial revolution.” Most of these persons were descendants of first-wave sixteenth-century immigrants. Peter G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756, London and New York, 1967, 257f. See Charles Wilson, The Anglo-Dutch Contribution to the Civilization of Early Modern Society, Oxford, 1976, 16ff. For the Van Neck brothers’ connection to the treasury and to Parliament, see Lewis B. Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd ed., London, 1957, 49–56. See William J. C. Moens, ed., Marriage, Baptismal, and Burial Registers, 1571–1874, and Monumental Inscriptions of the Dutch Reformed Church, Austin Friars, Lymington, 1884. Ibid., 160f. Raingard Esser, “Germans in Early Modern Britain,” in Panikos Panayi, ed., Germans in Britain since 1500, London, 1996, 17–28. Esser, Germans, 20. See also Prange, Bremische Kaufmannschaft, 130f. Two young men from Bremen who went to London during their apprenticeships were Johann Henckin (1618) and Johann von Rheden (1609–1661). Henckin worked for the Bremen merchant Jacob Herewin in London. Cooper, Lists of Foreign Protestants, 86. Prange, Bremische Kaufmannschaft, 130f. See below for details. Figures compiled from Shaw II. Commonwealth naturalization documents rarely mention the former nationalities or occupations of new subjects. The last naturalizations to take place under Cromwell were in 1656, the year of a large collective naturalization. Among those to become subjects were Steelyard master Jacob Jacobsen and one of the cofounders of the Royal Society, Theodor Haak, and his wife. Shaw I, 69, 71. Shaw I, 80. Prange, Bremische Kaufmannschaft, 37; Ludwig Beutin, “Die britische Navigationsakte von 1651,” Die Welt als Geschichte 12 (1952): 48. Dwyryd W. Jones, “London Merchants and the Crisis of the 1690s,” in Peter Clark and Paul Slack, eds., Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500–1700, London, 1972, 311–356, esp. 323; Elisabeth Karin Newman, “Anglo-Hamburg Trade in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries” (Ph.D. diss., London, 1979). Ibid., 7–15, 64, 85, 102, 189, and 191. German linen was popular not only in England’s colonies but also in those of France and Spain. See Margrit Schulte Beerbühl and Klaus Weber, “From Westphalia to the Caribbean: Networks of German Textile Merchants in the Eighteenth Century,” in Andreas Gestrich and Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, eds., Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society, 1660–1914, London, 2011, 53–98. Edith Schmitz, Leinengewerbe und Leinenhandel in Nordwestdeutschland (1650–1850), Schriftenreihe zur Rheinisch-Westfälischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte 15, Cologne, 1967, esp. 81–95. See also Hans-Werner Niemann, Leinenhandel im Osnabrücker Land. Die Bramscher Kaufmannsfamilie Sanders 1870–1850, Bramsche, 2004. Newman, “Anglo-Hamburg Trade,” 199, n. 1 and table. Ibid., 205, table 42. Klaus Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute im Atlantikhandel 1680–1830, Munich, 2004, 53f. Newman, “Anglo-Hamburg Trade,” 91.

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69. Ibid., 292. 70. Sidney Pollard, “British Trade and European Economic Development (1750–1850),” in Peter Mathias and John A. Davis, eds., International Trade and British Economic Growth from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day, Oxford, 1996, 42. 71. Hans Jürgen von Witzendorff, “Bremens Handel im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,” Bremisches Jahrbuch 44 (1955): 128–174, esp. 146f. 72. Letter to the Lords of the Committee dated 3 Nov. 1689, Bye-Laws of the Hamburg Company, BL ADD MSS 28079 fols. 63f. 73. See a letter from Elkin to the Board of Trade dated 6 Dec. 1726, in TNA, State Papers, CO 388/25, bundle, fol. 91. 74. Ibid., fol. 146. 75. TNA, State Papers, CO 388/6 b56, copy of a letter from the City of Bremen to his Majesty, dated 24 Dec. 1697. 76. See Prange, Bremische Kaufmannschaft, 37f. 77. Ibid. 78. STAB, 2-R.10.aa.13.1.2 and 4, England Convoy 1690–1700, 1704–1710. 79. Heinrich Reincke, Hamburgs Bevölkerung, Forschungen und Skizzen zur hamburgischen Geschichte, Hamburg, 1951, 184. 80. On migration to Hamburg see Reißmann, Hamburgische Kaufmannschaft, esp. 213–242. For migration to Bremen see Prange, Bremische Kaufmannschaft, appendix, 183–250. 81. Ernst Esselborn, Das Geschlecht Garrels aus Leer, Berlin-Pankow, 1938, 130. 82. “When his children grew up, what to do with five boys, he could not tell themself [sic]. Chose to be of the proffession [sic] of their father, that would not do in one and the same town, that placing two of them in England, those remaining at Amsterdam might be of reciprocal advantage to each other by the reciprocal connections and correspondences, accordingly in 1715 Henry the eldest, & in 1722 Peter the 3rd son came over and these two brothers entered into partnership.” Peter Muilman, “Autobiographical notes of Peter Muilman,” handwritten at the end of vol. 1 of A New and Complete History of Essex in 6 Volumes … by a Gentleman (allegedly Muilman himself ), Chelmsford, 1770. 83. Henry Roseveare, ed., Markets and Merchants of the Late Seventeenth Century: The MarescoeDavid Letters, 1688–1689, Oxford, 1987, letter no. 308, 428f. 84. Tanja Ripperger, Ökonomik des Vertrauens. Analyse eines Organisationsprinzips, Tübingen, 1998; Martin Fiedler, “Netzwerke des Vertrauens: Zwei Fallbeispiele aus der deutschen Wirtschaftselite” in Dieter Ziegler, ed., Großbürger und Unternehmer. Die deutsche Wirtschaftselite im 20. Jahrhundert, Göttingen, 2000, 93–115; Martin Fielder, “Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist teuer: Vertrauen als Schlüsselkategorie wirtschaftlichen Handelns” in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 27, 2001: 576–592. 85. For a detailed discussion see Wolfram Fischer, “Markt und Informationsnetze in der (neuzeitlichen) Wirtschaftsgeschichte des atlantischen Raums” in Wolfram Fischer, Expansion, Integration, Globalisierung. Studien zur Geschichte der Weltwirtschaft, Göttingen, 1998, 22–24. 86. Roseveare, Markets and Merchants. 87. Ibid., xv. 88. Ruland often reiterated his dissatisfaction with Maresco & David because quality did not meet expectations, the shipping of ordered items was unreliable, and German buyers were not informed of important details. Roseveare, Markets and Merchants, Ruland and LM & PJ, letter no. 165, 330. 89. Roseveare, Markets and Merchants, no. 308, 428f. 90. Richard Grassby, The Business Community of Seventeenth-Century England, Cambridge, 1995, 71; Raymond William K. Hinton, The Eastland Trade and the Common Weal in the Seventeenth Century, Cambridge, 1959, 56; Steve Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds: Structures of Life in

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91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

109. 110.

111. 112. 113. 114. 115.

Sixteenth-Century London, Cambridge, 1989, 319–322; Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, Vom Gesellenverein zur Gewerkschaft. Entwicklung, Struktur und Politik der Londoner Gesellenorganisationen 1550–1825, Göttingen, 1991, 67–70 and 73–82. Roseveare, Markets and Merchants, Maresco no. 314, 432f. Daniel Defoe, Complete English Tradesman, 2nd ed., London, 1717, vol. 1, 20 and 147. Apprentice fees were higher in London than elsewhere in England. Grassby, Business Community, 69; Roseveare, Markets and Merchants, 153–155, 201–203. For more detail see Grassby, Business Community, 65–72, and Gauci, Politics of Trade, 71–74. Roseveare, Markets and Merchants, 204. Grassby, Business Community, 69; Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London (1660-1730), London, 1989, 93f. Roseveare, Markets and Merchants, letter no. 314, 433. Ibid., 204–208. Leonora Maresco’s maiden name was Lethieullier. The Lethieulliers had immigrated to England in the sixteenth century. Members of her family were among the founders and first directors of the Bank of England. L. B. Ellis, “The Lethieullier Family,” PHSL 19 (1954): 60–67; Roseveare, Markets and Merchants, 1f. See Gauci, Politics of Trade, 73. Grassby, Business Community, 45f. For more detail see Gauci, Politics of Trade, 72. See Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England, Basingstoke, 1998. Octavio Schröder’s business records, STA Hamburg 621-1. Esselborn, Das Geschlecht Garrels, letter dated 26 Jan. 1790, 122. Ibid., letter dated 23 Feb. 1790, 123. Roseveare, Markets and Merchants, letter no. 308, 428f; Hamburger Geschlechterbuch 8 (1929): 26–31. See remaining papers and the history of the Brügelmann firm, Abt. 36, no. 79, fascicle 2 (Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv Köln, Cologne). The Bremen trading firm Meinertzhagen’s ties to England dated to the time of the English Company, but not until the early nineteenth century did one of its members, Daniel Meinertzhagen, immigrate to England, where he became a subject on 10 June 1837. He became a partner in German-born Frederick Huth’s trading firm and later the owner’s son-in-law. Under the direction of Huth and Meinertzhagen the firm became one of the leading British trade houses of German origin. See Andrew J. Murray, Home from the Hill: A Biography of Frederick Huth, ‘Napoleon of the City,” London, 1970. Reinhard Lohmann, Die Familie Wolters in Hamburg während des 17. Jahrhunderts und die Beziehungen von Liebert Wolters Vater und Sohn nach Schweden (Ph.D. diss., University of Cologne, 1979), 30. Sons of the England Company’s founding members Jacob von Berchem, Elard Koithan, Johann Bode, and Johann Andreas Uhthoff immigrated to England. Merchants Johann Jobst Vogel, Friedrich Ernst Droop, Dorrien, and Teschemacher had close relatives or descendants living in England. For the company’s founding members see the copybook for the Englische Kompanie, STAB 7, 2078/1). Lee, The Little London Directory of 1677 and Esselborn, Geschlecht Garrels, 24. TNA, Wills, Prob 11/489. Esselborn, Geschlecht Garrels, 117. See below for more detail. Johann Victor Bredt, Geschichte der Familie Siebel. Ein Beitrag zur Kultur-und Kirchengeschichte des Niederrheins, Marburg, 1937, 99.

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116. Turnover estimates are based on results from Dwyryd W. Jones, “London Overseas-Merchant Groups at the End of the Seventeenth Century and the Moves against the East India Company” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford, 1970), appendix B. 117. Jones, War & Economy, 263. 118. Ibid., 262. 119. Jones, “London Overseas-Merchant Groups,” 181 and 199. 120. Ibid., 205f. 121. Shaw I, 224, 228. Peter Meyer married Berenberg’s sister Sarah in 1697. Hamburger Geschlechterbuch 8 (Dt. Geschlechterbuch 63), Berenberg, 28. 122. Jones, “London Overseas-Merchant Groups,” 176 and appendix B, 389. 123. Andrew Heidtredder (or Heidtridder) from Hamburg became an English subject in 1673 (Shaw I, 228). 124. In Jones he goes by the name of George Lodrundunt (War & Economy, table 8.3). 125. Jones, War & Economy; idem, “London Overseas-Merchant Groups,” chaps. 6 and 7. 126. Jones, “London Overseas-Merchant Groups,” 447. 127. Theodor’s brother Henry Jacobsen is not always mentioned in the port books. Others were Thomas Berens, Frederick Harlah, and Gerrard Muysken. The Duke of Schomberg also imported wine from Rotterdam occasionally (TNA, Port Books, E 190 149/5, 1693/4). 128. Lee, The Little London Directory; Shaw I, 81, 111, 118. Most entries in the port books use the name Frederick Gronen. 129. John Loveroe was naturalized in 1660 (Shaw I, 77). For more about him, see below. 130. In the 1690s Theodor Jacobsen began handing over his business to his nephews, Henry and Jacob; he died just after the turn of the century (see below). Port books for 1696 sometimes list Henry as his partner. No further information was found on John Kaus, but he became an English subject in 1660, so by the 1690s he presumably was at least approaching retirement. 131. The crisis has been described by D. J. Jones, War and Economy; see above and below for more detail. 132. For more detail, see below. 133. The table above reflects only part of the exports because some of that year’s port books are illegible; one is in such poor condition that it cannot be used. 134. TNA, Port Books, E 190: 115/1, 114/2, 118/5, 118/9, 117/1, 156/4, 156/5. 135. Jacob Henckell and Andrew Heidtredder were two such exporters. 136. BL, EIO, L/AG/1/1/10. 137. Oosterland & Keyser and John & Gabriel Keyser belonged together. In 1701 John & Gabriel Keyser’s account was transferred to Oosterland & Keyser (see BL, EIO, L/AG/1/1/10, 396). 138. BL, EIO, L/AG/1/1/12, 34 and 174. 139. Ibid., 103. 140. John Ralph Teschemacher, son of John Teschemacher, died in 1721 in Calcutta (Prob 11/582); on the Vansittarts, see DNB. 141. TNA, Port Books, E 190: 121/1, 23 Feb. and 1, 10, and 14 March 1683. 142. Ibid., 158/1, 21, 30 July, 10, 13, 23 Nov., 1 Dec. 1696. 143. Peter Vansittart imported spices from Rotterdam. 144. TNA, State Papers, CO 388/6, H 82. 145. Prob 11/619. 146. James Crop was from Hamburg and was naturalized in 1670. Shaw I, 122. 147. Prob 31/52. 148. The Transatlantic Slave Trade, database, no. 21389 (http://www.slavevoyages.org). 149. William A. Shaw, The Knights of England, A Complete Record from the Earliest Time to the Present Day of the Knights of all the Orders of Chivalry in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of

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150.

151.

152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161.

162.

163. 164. 165. 166. 167.

168.

169. 170. 171. 172. 173.

Knights Bachelors, 2 vols., London, 1971, 279. Peter Meyer was ennobled in 1714 and, according to Shaw, was a director of the African Company. The company’s documents, however, do not support that. TNA, Treasury, T70/89; see also Kenneth G. Davies, The Royal African Company, London, 1957, chap. 4 and 377ff.). John Anthony Rücker (from Hamburg) owned plantations on Grenada and other West Indies islands (Prob 11/1410), John Julius Angerstein (born in Moscow) owned a third of a plantation on Grenada, and Henry Nantes (from Bremen) had property on San Domingo (see below). Peter Paggen descended from William Paggen, who in the early seventeenth century immigrated to England from Dremmen near Jülich. Shaw I, 23; Visitations of London 1633, vol. 15, ed. the Harlean Society. London, 1880 (that volume includes visitations for 1633, 1634, 1635; Davies, African Company, appendix 6). Shaw I, 122, 233. The British preferred oak from northern German areas particularly for barrels and clapboards. A medicinal herb, considered a remedy for snakebite. See the next chapter for the Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly. STAB 7, 2075-1, Johann Bode’s business correspondence from 1683–1691; STAB 7, 2075-2, 20 Feb. 1691, letter to Johan Thomas Fischer. See below and STAB, Bode’s correspondence with John Loveroe, Jan. 1684. Ibid. He mentions that selling linen brings little if any profit. Ibid., e.g., a letter of 21 March 1685 to Johann, and a letter dated 23 Oct. 1686. STAB, 7, 2075-1, Bode’s correspondence, letter to Mr. Cusy, 15 May 1686. John Bode died on 7 June 1688 and was buried in Clapham. Ibid., 13 June 1688. Ibid., letters to Theodor Jacobsen and John Martin Elkin, and to Wilhelm Schmidt in London (all dated 20 June 1688), to the Warnecken heirs in Brunswick (21 June 1688), to Arend Meyer (3 July 1690), to Rath Aveman in Aurich (10 July 1690), and to Gerhard van Heythuysen in London (23 Sept. 1692). According to the CMH, London database, Frederick married in London in 1792. On his bankruptcy see The London Gazette, 8–12 February 1699/1700 and Peter Koster’s chronicle, a copy of which can be found in STAB P 1 S.22c 1 S. Koster writes of a wave of insolvencies in Bremen at the turn of the century. The London Gazette, 8–11 Jan. 1699/1700, 18–21 May 1700. TNA, Port Books, E 190: 156/1 and 156/3, 158/1. TNA, C 104/126–127. Peter Jacobsen was naturalized at the age of one. At that time, his brother Jacob was four. Henry and Theodor were also both still children (Shaw I, 118, 168, 293). Sven-Erik Aström, From Cloth to Iron: The Anglo-Baltic Trade in the Late Seventeenth Century, 2 vols., Helsingfors, 1963 and 1965, 160, n. 15. In third place was Peter Joy with wares worth £9,263; fourth place was held by Francis Hunt with £8,967; fifth place went to Oriot & Berens with £8,823. Catia Antunes, “Urban Links, Trade Networks, and Globalisation in the Early Modern Period: Amsterdam and Lisbon 1640–1705—a Case Study”, in Margrit Schulte Beerbühl and Jörg Vögele, eds., Spinning the Commercial Web: International Trade, Merchants, and Commercial Cities, c. 1640–1939, Frankfurt, 2004, 78. The vessel Albert Guise, on which Jacobsen transported these wares from Rotterdam, normally came from Gothenburg. TNA, Port Books, E 190/156/3. CLRO, Orphans’ Inventories 2 718, box 0, fol. 150b. CMH database. See, e.g., DNB under Henry Vansittart, 137.

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174. DNB (137) says that he was one of the Russia Company’s directors, but his name does not appear among the new members for 1699 or on the list of directors. Neither did his son Arthur become a member of the Russia Company. 175. In the 1690s, the restrictive policy caused membership in the Russia Company fall to just over a dozen. For the East India Company, see below. 176. London’s city council did not pass ordinances, it passed laws in analogy to parliamentary law. 177. The Levant Company denied membership to merchant Humphrey Willet from France even though he had been naturalized. Roseveare, Markets and Merchants, 202. 178. For more on London’s municipal law see the previous chapter. Adrian Lofland from Holland was another naturalized subject who also acquired Freedom of the City. Boyd’s Index of London Citizens 15th–19 th centuries, London 1978; see also Earle, Middle Class, 395–403. 179. Daniel Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen: The Controversy over Immigration and Population, 1660–1760, London, 1995, 176. 180. Schulte Beerbühl, Gesellenverein, 65. 181. Gauci, Politics of Trade, 113ff. 182. Members who undermined the trading companies’ rules were originally called “stragglers.” The term became obsolete in the seventeenth century, however, and disloyal members and nonmembers alike came to be called “interlopers.” See Wolf-Rüdiger Baumann, Merchant Adventurers and the Continental Cloth-Trade (1560s–1620s), Berlin, 1990, esp. 191ff. 183. For the history of the Darien Company see George Pratt Insh, The Company of Scotland: Trading to Africa and The Indies, London and New York, 1932. See also Kirti N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company 1600–1640, London, 1965, and Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders 1550–1653, Princeton, 1993, esp. 169–180, 288f. 184. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 613–625. 185. Ibid., 617–619. 186. BL, ADD MSS 5138, fols. 149–150v; for more detail on the dispute over free ports see Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 613–625. 187. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, esp. 619f. 188. Jürgen Wiegandt, Die Merchants Adventures’ Company auf dem Kontinent zur Zeit der Tudors und Stuarts, Beiträge zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 4, Kiel, 1972, esp. 101ff. 189. For details see Newman, “Anglo-Hamburg Trade,” 231–247. 190. White English cloth was exported chiefly to the Netherlands for dying. Alderman Cockayne tried to prohibit the export of white sheets and allow only the export of dyed cloth. The Dutch refused to buy dyed cloth, export collapsed, and the price of wool plummeted. James I found himself compelled to rescind the law. For more detail see Wiegandt, Merchants Adventurers’ Company, 94f. 191. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 64. 192. Ibid., 59f.; Newman, “Anglo-Hamburg Trade,” 232–247. 193. For the Merchant Adventurers’ finances, see Newman, “Anglo-Hamburg Trade,” 248–257. 194. Ibid., 241. 195. TNA, Pivy Council Registers 2/64, 335. 196. BL, ADD MSS 28079, fols. 63f., Abstract of the By Laws restraining Trade & Navigation. 197. TNA, State Papers, CO 389/11, 15 May 1683, fols. 164f. 198. TNA, State Papers, CO 389/11, 341-2, fols. 164f. dated 25 May 1683 and 342-3, dated 7 June 1783. 199. Proclamation fo ye Better Ordering ye Transportation of Cloathes & other Manufactures into Germany… 13 June 1683. TNA, Privy Council Registers (hereafter PC), 2/70, 2f. 200. BL, ADD MSS 41824, f. 33, B. Skelton to the Earl of Sunderland, Hamburg, 27 Feb. 1683/84.

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201. BL, ADD MSS 41824, fols. 175f., Burgomaster & Magistrate of the Imperial City of Bremen to the Right Honourable Secretary, 16 March 1684. 202. Ibid., see also ibid., Wm. Skelton and the Earl of Sunderland, fol. 178; Skelton’s letters to Bremen’s Senate dated 14 March 1684, fol. 179, and 25 March 1684, fol. 188. 203. He became an English subject on 23 May 1685 (Shaw I, 168). 204. TNA, SP 29/429 Pt 2, fols. 15, 16; Cal SPD; Charles II, 169f., 11 April 1683. 205. TNA, Port Books, E 190: 114/5, 1681/82, E 190: 119/3, 1683/84. 206. According to port books, John Loveroe traded primarily with Bremen. Bremen’s trade house of Johann Bode (see above) was one of his business partners. 207. TNA, PC 2/71, 324; by name, they were Ewart Hillers, Tunis Meyerhoff, Derek Ratteene, and Segeba Detien, as well as the Englishman Wm. Browne. 208. On the Merchant Adventurers’ factory in Hamburg see Anne D. Petersen, Die Engländer in Hamburg 1814 bis 1914, Hamburg, 1993, esp. 31–36, and an older work by Heinrich Hitzigrath, Die Kompanie der Merchant Adventurers und die englische Kirchengemeinde in Hamburg 1611–1835, Hamburg, 1904. 209. TNA, State Papers, CO 388/8, Part 3, E 24, Memorial from the Hamburg Company… 13 Oct. 1702. See also David Ormrod, “The Demise of Regulated Trading in England. The Case of the Merchant Adventurers 1650–1730,” in Clé Lesger and Leo Noordegraaf, eds., Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Times: Merchants and Industrialists within the Orbit of the Dutch Staple Market, The Hague, 1995, 253–268, esp. 262f. 210. On the early history of the Muscovy Company see Thomas S. Willan, The Muscovy Merchants of 1555, Manchester, 1953. 211. Hinton, Eastland Trade, vii. 212. See Norman Hunt, The Russia Company and the Government 1730–1742, Oxford Slavonic Papers 7, Oxford, 1957, 29f. 213. It did not have more than thirteen members. Jacob M. Price, The Tobacco Adventure to Russia: Enterprise, Politics, and Diplomacy in the Quest for a Northern Market for English Colonial Tobacco, 1676–1722, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 51, Philadelphia, 1961, 5–11, esp. 41. 214. Charter, §§VII and IX in Hinton, Eastland Trade, 115. 215. Others were Cornelius Beckhoff from Hamburg (who joined in 1685), John Schroder from Hamburg (1685), Henry Philip Kugelmann from Michelstadt in Franconia (naturalized in 1690, he had become a denizen in 1688), Georg Ludwig Dunt from Reval, and others. Other foreigners, like William Henry Cornelisson, who had unsuccessfully petitioned for naturalization in 1680, also became members. 216. Price, Tobacco Adventure, 5–111. 217. Ibid., esp. 38–42. 218. Ibid. 219. Ibid. 220. 10 Gul. III c.6, came into effect on March 25. 221. Price, Tobacco Adventure, 30. 222. For more detail see ibid., 32f. 223. JHC 11, 674–75. 224. Many petitions bear no signatures at all. 225. Gauci, Politics of Trade, 121. 226. For details see Jones, War and Economy, esp. chapter 9. 227. See Bruce G. Carruthers, City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolution, Princeton, 1996, 146, esp. n. 62. 228. Jones, War and Economy, 288.

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229. Details can be found in Kirti N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660–1760, Cambridge, 1978, esp. chapters 2 to 4; Carruthers, City of Capital, 146–151; Jones, War & Economy, chapter 9; Stig Förster, Die mächtigen Diener der East India Company, Stuttgart, 1992. 230. Carruthers, City of Capital, 147; Jones, War & Economy, 335. 231. The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies was also called the Scottish Darien Company based on an expedition to the Isthmus of Panama. 232. Jones, “London Overseas-Merchant Groups,” 262. 233. CMH database. 234. CMH database under “Tashmaker,” London. 235. James Samuel Barbour, History of William Paterson and the Darien Company, Edinburgh and London, 1907, 22. 236. Besides the merchants mentioned above, John Fentzel (also Fentsall and Fencel) was interested in trade with India. As a boy he had been naturalized, along with his mother and siblings, in 1661. He was considered a Mediterranean merchant but was also involved in illegal shipments from India in the 1690s. Jones, War and Economy, 299, n. 125; CMH database under “Fencel.” 237. On the South Sea Bubble see Helen J. Paul, The South Sea Bubble: An Economic History of Its Origins and Consequences, London, 2010. 238. Dickson, Financial Revolution; Carruthers, City of Capital. 239. Dickson, Financial Revolution, 156–158. 240. In the early years, 235 persons owned shares worth £2,000 and 107 persons owned shares worth £4,000 and more. John Clapham, The Bank of England, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1944, vol. 1, 279; Elizabeth Hennessy, “The Governors, Directors, and Management of the Bank of England,” in Richard Roberts and David Kynaston, eds., The Bank of England: Money, Power, and Influence 1694–1994, Oxford, 1995, 158f.; W. Marston Acres, The Bank of England from Within, 1694–1900, 2 vols., London, 1931, vol. 1, 34. 241. Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia, 132. 242. For details see Clapham, Bank of England, vol. 1, 274–276. 243. Shaw I, 162: Denization on 16 May 1683 and 179, naturalization on 27 June 1685. 244. Acres, Bank of England, 15. 245. Alice C. Carter, “The Huguenot Contribution to the Early Years of the Funded Debt, 1694– 1714,” PHSL 19 (1955): 21–41, esp. 31. 246. Dickson, Financial Revolution, 117. Jacobsen also sat on the board of the English Copper Company (ibid.). 247. Ibid., 305f. and 311f. 248. Ibid., 311f. The same held for the East India Company; see H. V. Bowen, “Investment and Empire in the Later Eighteenth Century: East India Stockholding 1756–1791,” EcHR 42 (1989): 200–204. In 1756, 88 percent of foreign account holders, who owned about 30 percent of the initial capital, were from Holland. This does not include London’s Dutch residents. 249. On the Huguenots see Carter, “The Huguenot Contribution,” 21–41 and Clapham, Bank of England, 279f. On Sephardic Jews see Dickson, Financial Revolution, 263 and J. A. Giuseppi, “Sephardic Jews and the Early Years of the Bank of England,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 19 (1955–59): 53–63. 250. BL, EIO, IOR L/AG/14/3/3 and 4. 251. Peter Meyer submitted an offer for £3,000, James Crop, William Teschemacher, and Georg Ludwig Dunt for only £1,000. See table in Jones, “London Overseas-Merchant Groups,” 476–81. 252. Ibid.

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253. Dickson, Financial Revolution, 256. In 1694, 1272 people subscribed (Clapham, Bank of England, 272), in 1712 the Bank of England had 4419 stockholders and the EIC had 2261 (Carruthers, City of Capital, 158). 254. Caspar Frederick Henning bought shares for £2,000. Henry Van Berchem and George Nicholaus Dobbertin each bought shares for £100. Bank of England Archive, Stock Subscription 1694; AC 27/383. 255. Bank of England Archive, A 27/383, 384. 256. Bank of England Archive, AC 27/424–426. Jacob Jacobsen owned the most: In 1704 he held shares for £60,000. 257. In 1709 the average investment in the bank was £1,114, whereas at the EIC it was £2,984. Dickson, Financial Revolution, 261. 258. BL, EIO, IOR H/Misc/3, Lists of Stockholders 1701, 1702, 1703, and 1707. No list of shareholders exists for the years between 1703 and 1707. 259. Vansittart already owned stock in the OEIC. CLRO, Orphans Inventories 2718, Box 40, fol. 150b. 260. In 1707 Peter Meyer owned stock worth £2,458 2s. 4d.; De Smeth owned stock worth only £400. BL, EIO, IOR H/Misc/3. 261. Lists of Stockholders, BL, L/AG/14/5/8–14 (1723–1767). 262. Dickson, Financial Revolution, 270, 276f. 263. TNA, Million Bank C 114/16. 264. One such investment option was to pay into tontines, in which David Debary invested £1,200; John Martin Elkin, £100; Georg Ludwig Dunt, £400; and Peter Vansittart, £600. See more in Jones, “London Overseas-Merchant Groups,” 482–487. 265. Bank of England Archive, AC 27/429. 266. BL, EIO, IOR L/AG/14/5/5, 1723–1728. 267. Bank of England Archive, AC 27/414, 417. 268. Bank of England Archive, AC 27/418. 269. Prob 11/489. In 1704 Theodor had already transferred part of his real estate to his two nephews. 270. BL, EIO, IOR H/Misc/3, List of Stockholders 1701, 1702, and 1703. 271. TNA, C114/16 dividend books 1701-1707. The amount remained unchanged until the bank’s dividend book ended for 1707. Jacobsen’s half-yearly dividend was £45. 272. Bank of England Archive, AC 27/430. 273. Prob 11/489; Bank of England Archive, AC 27/425 and 429. 274. See inventories in John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble, London, 1960, repr. 1993, appendix A. Theodore Janssen owned more than £243,000, and John Fellows owned £277,000. 275. According to Carswell, Jacob Jacobsen was allowed to keep everything except “the odd hundreds of his balance of over £1,000” because he was Gilbert Heathcote’s son-in-law. Carswell, South Sea Bubble, 225. 276. Theodor bought Jacob’s shares in the Bank of England on 2 May for £1,000 and his shares in the East India Company on 20 May for £1,382. 277. BL, The Particulars and Inventories of the Estates of the Late Sub-Governor, Deputy-Governor, and Directors of the South Sea Company, and of Robert Surman, Late Deputy-Cashier and of John Grigsby, Late Accomptant of the Said Company, 2 vols., 1727. 278. Raymond De Smeth, Prob 31/52, 3 Nov. 1727; Peter Vansittart, CLRO, Orphans Inventories 2718, Box 40, fol. 150b. 279. Wills and inventories make only sweeping remarks, if any, about how much land these persons owned. See Karen Grannum and Nigel Taylor, Wills and Other Probate Records, London, 2004, 87f. and 93.

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280. The other half belonged to his brother Theodor (BL, The Particulars and Inventories of the Estates of the late Sub-Governor, Deputy Governor, and Directors of the South Sea Company, vol. 2). The inventory does not mention any funds or property belonging to his wife. 281. Jones, War & Economy, 250f. and 284. 282. Bank of England Archive, AC 27/392, no. 1389. He bought a share for £75 for Dutchman Nicholas Clignet from Leyden. 283. Carruthers, City of Capital, 181. 284. Dickson, Financial Revolution, 308 and 318, tables 45 and 49. 285. Carruthers, City of Capital, 181. On traders in general see Dickson, Financial Revolution, 308, and 188 for the names of leading stock-jobbers. 286. Take, for example, Frederick Dorrien’s account from 1709 to 1720: In 1709 he held shares worth £2,500; two years later he raised the sum to £9,550. Then the amount remained unchanged in the books of the Bank of England until 1720. That year he reduced his investment temporarily to £550, but then increased it again to £3,550, AC 27/414–430 stock ledgers 1694–1725. 287. Bank of England Archive, AC 27/416. The same was done for William Teschemacher, ibid. 288. BL, L/AG/14/5/2 under Christian Toepken, Jacob Vansittart dec., Peter Vansittart, Robert Vansittart, Arthur Vansittart, and Susanna Vansittart. Stock was transferred between 1711 and 1715. 289. BL, L/AG/14/5/1 and 2 under Peter Meyer in trust. 290. List of the names of all proprietors of the Bank of England, 25 March 1708, BL Coup 651 e 2(54). 291. His brother also invested only rather small sums. 292. Prob 11/534 and 537. 293. Raymond De Smeth and Peter Vansittart were not only economic leaders among the German immigrants but also members of London’s commercial elite. 294. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, esp. part 2, 199–391. 295. Ibid. See also Jones, War & Economy, 308, and Gary S. De Krey, A Fractured Society: The Politics of London, Oxford, 1985, 2. 296. Patrick K. O’Brien, “Inseparable Connections: Trade, Economy, Fiscal State, and the Expansion of the Empire, 1688–1815,” in Peter J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1998, 53–77. 297. For more information, see below. 298. For foreign churches in the early sixteenth century see Beate Magen, Die Wallonengemeinde in Canterbury von ihrer Gründung bis zum Jahre 1635, Bern, 1973, and Raingard Esser, Niederländische Exulanten im England des späten 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, 1996. 299. For details see Grell, Dutch Calvinists, chap. 4, 149–175. 300. Minutes of the Consistory of the French Church of London, Threadneedle Street 1679–1692, edited by Robin Gwynn, HSQS 58, London, 1994, 65. 301. Andreas Fahrmeir, Ehrbare Spekulanten. Stadtverfassung, Wirtschaft und Politik in der City of London (1888–1900), Munich, 2003, 162. 302. Based on numbers by Ian R. Christie, British Non-elite MPs 1715–1820, Oxford, 1995, appendix A, 206. 303. Sir Theodore Janssen (1654–1748) was an exception. He was born in France and immigrated to England after 1680, becoming an English subject in 1684. In 1717 he became MP for Yarmouth in the House of Commons. Romney R. Sedgwick, Houses of Parliament, House of Commons 1715–54, London, 1970, vol. 1, 171f. 304. For more on Henry Schiffner, see below. 305. His father John Duntze had immigrated to Exeter along with John Baring and settled there as a textile merchant.

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306. Son of John Julius Angerstein from Moscow; on the latter, see below. 307. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, several members of the Dorrien families emigrated from Hildesheim and Bremen. Magens Dorrien Magens was John Dorrien’s son. He took on the name Magens from his Uncle Nicholas Magens in Hamburg, a large-scale supplier for the army (see below for more on him) who had bequeathed his estate to his nephew. 308. A descendant of sugar refiner and brewery owner George Shum. 309. See below for more on the financial success of their fathers and grandfathers. 310. CMH database. 311. TNA, State Papers, CO 388/6, part 2, c.38, Petition of the Portugal Merchants, 10 May 1700. 312. TNA, State Papers, CO 388/6, H 21, Memorial from several merchants trading to Germany relating to the Tolls upon… the Elbe, 12 April 1706. 313. Manuscripts of the House of Lords, vol. 2, 1695–97, no. 994, 153. 314. Lucy Sutherland, “City of London in Eighteenth-Century Politics,” in Richard Pares and Alan J. Taylor, eds., Essays Presented to Sir Lewis Namier, New York, 1956, 51. 315. Namier, Structure of Politics, 53–58; Sutherland, City of London, 49–74. 316. For more detail see Sylvia Eichelkraut-Naumann and Tania Ünlüdag, “Peter Hasenclever— Kaufmann und Unternehmer der Aufklärung,” in Karl-Hermann Beeck, ed., Bergische Unternehmergestalten im Umbruch zur Moderne, Neustadt an der Aisch, 1996, 100–107. 317. Namier, Structure of Politics, 55. Magens put up the sixth-largest portion of the money, namely, £460,000. 318. On Angerstein see Public Characters of all Nations, Consisting of Biographical Accounts of Nearly Three Thousand Eminent Contemporaries, Alphabetically Arranged, 3 vols., London, 1823, vol. 1, 46f., Jacob Jacobsen was raised to nobility in 1718, Peter Meyer in 1714. Shaw, Knights of England, 281f. 319. See below for more detail. Gerrard and Joshua Van Neck were among the leading moneylenders to the Crown during the wars from 1744 to 1763. Joshua was made a baron in 1751. DNB, Missing Persons, Oxford, 1993, 688. Claudius Amyand was George II’s principal surgeon; Amyand’s son George became a member of Korten’s Trading House, and Korten’s son-in-law, an MP, was raised to nobility in 1764. 320. See below for more detail. 321. These included James Crop, Isaac Devalpergen, John Martin Elkin, and John Esselborn. CMH database 1696; see also church records for the Hamburg Church, GL L19/MSS 8 356, and the Dutch church St. Austin Friars, GL MSS 7 382, or the Teschemachers in Edmonton. 322. Register of St. Clement Eastcheap and St. Martin Orgar, edited by the Harlean Society, vol. 68, London, 1938. 323. Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute; Karl Heinrich Kaufhold, “Schwerpunkte des preußischen Exportgewerbes um 1800” Festschrift for Georg Zwanowetz, Exportgewerbe und Außenhandel vor der Industriellen Revolution, Innsbruck, 1984, 243–260; Axel Flügel, Kaufleute und Manufakturen in Bielefeld. Sozialer Wandel und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung im proto-industriellen Leinengewerbe von 1680–1850, Bielefeld, 1993.

Chapter 3

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN HOUSES AND TRADE

? By the eighteenth century, England had laid a foundation for its world-spanning network of trade and an epoch of distant war and conquest had begun. Though it successfully subdued Dutch competition early in the century, the country did not entirely oust French competition to become the world’s leading imperial and industrial power until 1815. As Paul Langford said, “Every war during [that] period was in essence a commercial war, and to a marked extent a colonial war.… Every peace was the continuation of war by economic means.”1 In times of war and peace alike, nations contended for resources, colonial goods, markets, and maritime services. Throughout the first half of the century, British overseas trade grew only incrementally. The northwestern region of Continental Europe, previously a crucial market for England’s merchandise, lost its significance. English wool exports stalled, in part because of protectionist Continental policies. In the first half of the eighteenth century, only English exports to Portugal and Spain experienced any growth.2 After mid-century, when the Iberian region became increasingly protective of its own markets, England’s exports there dropped too. German and Dutch linen exports to England fell in the first decade, then rose again to peak in the mid 1730s, only to continually decline once more, thwarted by the national promotion of Ireland and Scotland’s linen industries, which were also protected by tariffs. In the second half of the century, Great Britain’s domestically produced linen basically met the nation’s own demand; by 1774 linen imports had dropped by more than 50 percent.3 German linen remained the most successful product on the reexport market. Around 1700 it made up more than 50 percent of the linen reexported from European countries, and in 1723 Notes from this chapter begin on page 119.

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it peaked, accounting for more than 85 percent of linen reexports. Around 1750 German linen still constituted about 70 percent of reexported linen but then was increasingly substituted by cotton.4 Meanwhile, in sectors outside the linen industry, Great Britain went from major exporting to major importing. Whereas in the first half of the century it had been a large-scale exporter of grain, after 1750 it became ever more reliant on imported cereals. Wood imports, supplied for the most part by Scandinavia, Russia, and northern Germany, also became more important. Indeed, British-European trade generally shifted increasingly toward the Baltic. Russia and Scandinavia became crucial, less as markets for British merchandise than as suppliers of raw material. Demand for finished products waned while the need for resources rose. Britain’s fast-growing domestic manufacturing, expanding navy and merchant fleet, and growing domestic and colonial population needed raw materials. The real dynamic element in British overseas trade was the Atlantic economy. Between 1700 and 1773, trade with North America and Africa increased eightfold. The American War of Independence interrupted that surge only temporarily. Following the Treaty of Paris in 1783, trade grew unabated.5 In the 1780s and 1790s, Britain’s exports and imports both waxed noticeably. During the first half of the eighteenth century, reexport trade constituted about one-third of England’s entire volume of overseas exchange, even though trade growth overall was more sluggish than it had been in the seventeenth century. Not until the last decades of the century was there any noticeable upturn in reexporting, driven then by rice from Carolina, tea from China, and coffee from the West Indies.6 Throughout the latter half of the century, diversification in the range of commodities and shifts in the geographical focus of foreign trade forced British overseas merchants to readjust their trade connections frequently. War, economic fluctuation, and financial crises increased the risks of trade abroad. The general economic improvement of the long eighteenth century and overseas expansion in trade did not guarantee merchants unlimited success. Economically, the century was marked by peaks and troughs in ever-changing markets and demands.7 Failure always loomed, and unlucky merchants were as important for the economy as the successful ones.

London’s German Trade Houses City directories are one of the key sources in tracing the development of German trade houses in London. These directories attest to how the foreign houses in London began (and to some extent, how they ended), how they grew, and when they were passed on to the next generation. German trade houses in England

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often were part of much larger international trade networks, reciprocally dependent on and interacting with branches abroad. As far as the sources allow, we shall explore that context. The international scale of German trade houses reveals how much they contributed to the internationalization of trade in an era of mercantilist, nationally protectionist economic policy. Economic conditions, demographics, war, epidemics, and a high mortality rate played bigger roles in the fates of these international German trade companies than they would in the nineteenth century and were often crucial to the survival or demise of a firm, as will be discussed at the end of this chapter.

Starting Out in London: The Way to Independence In the eighteenth century, most German merchants began their careers as apprentices, young employees, commissioning agents, or bookkeepers.8 In general, they started out with fellow countrymen. Setting up business as an independent merchant in London was expensive, but under the protection, supervision, and care of an established merchant, a young man could gain experience abroad and save money to go into business himself. The first evidence of any particular German merchant residing in the capital is often his petition for naturalization and his name in a London directory. These are often very close in date and indicate a merchant’s intention to go into business for himself. We know little about any given merchant’s early beginnings in London; Hermann Jakob Garrels is one for whom we do know more. Garrels traveled to London in the 1790s with letters of recommendation to naturalized merchants of German origin in his valise. He did not find a position immediately, but eventually he started work under Sebastian Fridag.9 Another young man, Henry Uhthoff, started his career as an apprentice to his godfather, Henry Voguell; yet another, John Anthony Rücker, began working under his uncle, John Anthony Rücker senior. Others began as bookkeepers like Peter Selcken and Conrad Harksen, who started out as accountants for Theodor Jacobsen and Andreas Grote, respectively.10 Most German merchants in London planned to go into business for themselves. “Within a year,” Garrels wrote to his parents, “I could perhaps get further … than I probably would otherwise not get in years.”11 Collyer’s Parent’s and … Youth’s Guide in the Choice of a Profession or Trade of 1761 states that at that time an employee could earn between £50 and £100 per year, plus board. It was not much, but a young merchant could still earn more than he would at home by consenting to work abroad.12 Setting up a business incurred a number of costs. There were monies involved with naturalization and fees to join the large companies. A daunting amount of seed capital was required to open a trade house of one’s own or become a co-partner. For instance, a wood-selling merchant needed £1,000 to £5,000 to do so, R. Campbell wrote in The London Tradesman in 1747.13 And in 1761 Collyer estimated that it took

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at least £3,000 to £4,000 to start an overseas trade house. That provides a rough idea, but the amount of capital actually required depended on one’s options and the desired trade region. Jacob Price has estimated that for Atlantic, i.e., Chesapeake trade, a merchant needed at least £5,000 to £10,000 to start with; trade with the Levant took more. According to Ralph Davis, Levant trade demanded both the highest apprenticeship fees and the most seed capital. In 1718 Ralph and Edward Radcliff together began with £12,473 to start trade with the Near East. In 1755 Edward & Arthur Radcliff’s capital equaled £34,051.14 Less capital—approximately £2,000 to £4,000—was needed for trade with European markets. Partnership agreements and other sources point to much more heterogeneous circumstances. In mid-century, when William Maister from Hull entered the Russia house of Walter Shairp, he paid £3,000.15 American businessman Joshua Johnson began with a similar amount when he established a branch in London in 1771.16 Naturalized merchants of German origin appear to have started with considerably more. Early in the century, Jacob Jacobsen gave each of two of his nephews £8,000 to establish their joint business.17 Abraham Korten paid £15,000 for his share in a joint business; in 1739 he boosted it with another £12,500 “for the better carrying [of ] the joint trade.”18 The documents do not state how much his partners Godfrey Wichelhausen and Philipp Delahaize invested but do indicate that they each got at least one fourth of the total profit, meaning their share was probably about £3,700 per partner. A 1745 partnership agreement for Voguell & Amyand—in which, among others, George Amyand and Theophilus Pritzler (from Herford) were also partners—required each partner to bring in capital of £20,000.19 When George Amyand’s son John started a trade house in 1771 together with Roger Siebel (from Elberfeld), Siebel contributed £20,000 and John Amyand contributed £12,000.20 In 1763, when Russia merchants John and Henry Schiffner set up business, they started with a similar amount, investing a total of £24,673, of which Henry Schiffner contributed three-fourths (£17,264) and John Schiffner one-fourth (£ 7,409).21 In the early 1760s, Peter Hasenclever and his two partners began their business with £21,000. Hasenclever and Andreas Seton each contributed £8,000; Charles Croft added £5,000.22 Walter Shairp found that his friend Henry Uhthoff (from Bremen) had contributed too much to establishing a new firm. After leaving London’s trade house Amyand, Rucker & Uhthoff, Henry had contributed £52,000 to set up business with Nicolas Battier.23 Initial capital sums for all of these trade houses were much greater than what Collyer and Price suggest. Some German merchants started out with less capital. Particularly during the Coalition Wars, people often began business with insufficient means or no capital at all. When Hermann Jakob Garrels and Ulrich Anthony Hinrichs chose to collaborate in 1796, their capital probably totaled £10,000 or less.24 Only two

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partners brought money into the trade firm Riesenbeck, Eschke & Fähndrick— in all, just over £2,800.25 In comparison, Garrels and Hinrichs’s capital base looks fairly sound, especially since they limited their trade to nearby northern Germany. The considerable capital behind each of the German firms Voguell, Jacobsen, and Korten may be explained by the fact that they traded from Russia to the Caribbean. Long-distance trade meant long-term financing. In trade with the Levant and America, often two or more years passed before loans could be repaid. Returns were shorter for Europe, normally covering from six to twelve months, but liquidity problems were not uncommon.26 Establishing a bank took more capital than did founding a trade house. The bank Prescott, Grote, Culverdon & Hollingworth had a combined starting capital of £30,000. In 1776, when the partners renewed their agreement, Andreas Grote owned two-tenths of the company; Grote’s oldest son Joseph and partner George Prescott each owned one-tenth. Prescott’s oldest son George William, William Culverdon, and John Hollingworth each held two-tenths of the shares.27 Families and close relatives often provided the funds needed to start a business. Hermann Jakob Garrels asked his parents for both credit and an advance on his inheritance. Theophilus Pritzler’s share of £20,000 was part of a credit of £15,000 that Henry Voguell had given him out of his own business assets. At his death, Voguell (Figure 1) bequeathed £5,000 to Pritzler, to be deducted from the credit.28 Just as Theodor Jacobsen had provided for his nephews’ creation of a business, Henry Voguell likewise stated in his will that if his two surviving partners took his nephew Henry Voguell and godson Henry Uhthoff on as partners once they had completed their apprenticeships, these young men should each receive a third of the £20,000 he had invested in the business. Godfrey and John Frederick Molling were to each receive £1,000, were they to go into business for themselves.29 Similarly, George Kruger bequeathed £7,000 of his own invested capital to his godson John Batchellor in order to encourage his own partner Andrew Grote to take John on as a new partner, who would then own a third of the firm.30 In founding a business, parental trade house repute was just as important as the amount of capital one could contribute to it. Garrels found himself a more valuable partner because his parent’s trade house had far-reaching and influential trade connections: “In the event that we should both contribute the same amount of capital, I deem my connections and acquaintances in East Friesland, Bremen, and Hamburg of greater worth than [Hinrichs’s]. They give our house more credibility. This means that I have the right to first signature, especially since we are the same age and have worked here for almost the same length of time.”31 The Garrelses had widespread trade relations not only in northern Germany but in Holland, too. One of Hermann’s brothers opened a trade house almost simultaneously in Amsterdam. The Garrels family was closely related to one of Hamburg’s respected merchant bankers, C. M. Schröder,32 and Jacob

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Figure 1. Portrait of Henry Voguell (1682–1746) by G.F. Schmidt. Source: Kupferstichkabinett. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv 66-1880.

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Hermann Garrels managed his financial transactions through the C. M. Schröder bank. Similarly, at Amyand & Siebel, father George Amyand’s social prestige and economic standing outweighed John Roger Siebel’s greater share. Life in London was expensive. When the American merchant Joshua Johnson took up residence there in 1771, he hoped to live off £25 a year. Soon after arriving he discovered that “Meat, drink, and everything here is very dear.”33 Two small rooms he rented on Fenchurch Street alone cost £25 a year. One was his office; the other was a closet that just barely accommodated a bed. London’s directories show that many German merchants at first had modest abodes, either boarding or living with their employers. In 1749, the first business address for Diederick-Jacob Hane (from Lehe in the Elbe-Weser area) was “at Mr. Jacobson’s in Basinghall Street.”34 Bremen merchant John Baring’s two sons began their London careers in modest quarters, too: in 1763 their newly founded trade house, Baring, John & Francis & Company, was first listed “at Mr. Page’s, Queen Street, Cheapside.”35 In London, a respectable address was essential for success. Many new merchants used that of their favorite coffeehouse. As his own office was so tiny, Joshua Johnson met business partners at the Virginia Coffeehouse, which he also used as a mail address.36 In 1779 Sebastian Fridag listed his first address at “Hamburg Coffeehouse, Sweeting’s Lane, Cornhill,” a place frequented by merchants who traded with Hamburg.37 Emanuel Henry Brandt, a founder of one of London’s leading nineteenth-century banks, used the address of Batson’s Coffeehouse, a place frequented by Russia merchants. All of his early business correspondence was addressed there.38 In 1763 Frederick Teise (from NassauDillenburg) used the guildhall of the Mercer’s Company on Ironmonger Lane as his mailing address.39 Some merchants whose businesses were outside of London used two different addresses.40 Relocation was another reason to temporarily list one’s address at a coffeehouse.41 When starting a career as a junior partner in a firm other than that of his parents, a son often used a coffeehouse address.42 Coffeehouse addresses proved particularly suitable for young merchants starting out as agents. Some German merchants never got past the coffeehouse-address stage.43

Trade Houses and Partners At the onset of their careers, German merchants often bought into existing houses or formed partnerships with others; rarely did they start businesses entirely on their own. As we can conclude from his business addresses, Thomas Oom from Reval (Tallinn) gradually rose from being a junior partner in one firm to eventually owning an enterprise of his own and taking on junior partners himself. He and Charles Frederick Bremer (from Gdansk) acquired British nationality in March 1785. The two of them entered a trade firm on Leadenhall Street, No. 30,

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owned by British merchant Richard Cowle.44 In 1787 Cowle, Richard & Co. was renamed Cowle, Bremer & Oom and listed at the same address. Around 1789 the firm moved to New Broad Street, No. 5. After Cowle retired, the house was called Bremer & Oom and listed at that same address.45 Around 1799 Bremer withdrew from the business and Oom became the sole proprietor. As of 1800, the business was called Oom, Tho. & Co. merchts. Once he wholly owned the business, Oom began successively taking in new partners who all, save one, came from Russia. The first he took in was James Ecbert Hoolboom (born in Archangel), who had acquired British citizenship in 1798. The next was British-born Philip Ibbetson Fenton.46 In 1807 the firm changed its name to T. Oom, Hoolboom, Fenton & Co.47 When it went bankrupt in the financial and economic crisis of 1812, the firm was owned by five partners in all. Its newest partner—Thomas Adolphus Knoblock (from Reval), naturalized as recently as 1806—was never mentioned in its name. Thus, over about fifteen years, Thomas Oom had worked his way up from being a junior partner to owning the firm. Files on the firm’s bankruptcy in 1812 do not mention how much each partner brought to the firm, but given its liabilities of more than £150,000, it was certainly one of the larger trade houses at the time.48 According to a balance compilation, Thomas Oom owned some property; Hoolboom and Fenton owned less; and Knoblock hardly owned anything.49 Partnership agreements usually lasted for two, three, five, ten, or more years. In 1745 Henry Voguell renewed his contract with his two partners for another ten years. The document stated that Voguell’s godchildren should complete their five-year apprenticeships within the company and then have the option of joining the firm as junior partners for another five years. When the ten years were up, Henry Uhthoff left Amyand & Rücker and established a firm with Nicholas Battier under the name Uhthoff, Henry, Philpot Lane. Roger Siebel had been a partner with Amyand, Rucker & Siebel for at least five years when in 1769, after George Amyand’s death, he signed a new partnership agreement with Amyand’s son. The contract was limited to two years but included a renewal option for another five years, which John Roger Siebel did not take up.50 Various partners renewed their contracts several times in succession. Personal and economic factors determined the life span of any joint business. Two merchants from Hamburg, Luder Mello and Paul Amsinck, ran their trade house together from the early 1720s until Mello’s death in 1759. Other joint businesses had shorter lives. After just three years together, Jakob Garrels and Anthony Hinrichs parted because of bankruptcy. After four years, George William Soltau and Paul Amsinck Jr. went their separate ways for the same reason. George William Soltau never entered another partnership, preferring to work alone or with employees only. Garrels, too, at first dispensed with any further partners, though he brought his younger brother Gerhard to London once his new business was on its feet in 1800. After Gerhard died in 1803, Garrels continued the business alone, with one bookkeeper.51

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German merchants preferred partners of the same national background, or those who at least came from German-speaking regions. First-generation immigrants usually worked in “core partnerships” consisting of family members, siblings, and other close relatives.52 Naturalization records show that these immigrants arrived in groups of two or three family members.53 Trade houses run by merchants from Elberfeld, Herford, and Hamburg particularly favored kin. The pattern stayed in place for generations, as the following case shows. The aforementioned John Henry Berenberg was related to the Amsincks, a Hamburg family of Dutch origin. After the turn of the century, Berenberg asked William Amsinck to come to London. William was naturalized in 1711.54 Within a few years, two of William’s nephews, Paul and Wilhelm Amsinck, came over. In 1729 Wilhelm moved on to Porto while Paul stayed in London and founded Mello & Amsinck at Three-Tun Court, Miles Lane, Cannon Street.55 These and successive generations repeatedly brought in junior partners from Hamburg and Porto who were also relatives. Kin partners and kin employees were typical of many German trade houses. Not all of London’s German trade houses relied on tight-knit clans. Hamburg had plenty of prosperous merchant families willing to send junior merchants to England. Moneyed merchants from small towns in Germany’s northwest textile regions, however, had fewer opportunities to send family members to England and sent them instead to either neighboring towns or distant Hanseatic towns. German merchants in London who came from small towns were often related by marriage to trade families from larger nearby entrepôts or sought kin business partners from places near their own hometowns. Of the six partners Henry Voguell took into his business in London, only one was related to him; two came from his hometown Herford, another from nearby Osnabrück, and one each from Berlin and Hamburg. Only George Amyand, an English subject of Huguenot descent, was not a fellow countryman.56 Subsequent generations often displayed an obvious preference for compatriots. Descendants of naturalized German merchants worked with newly arrived Germans. Although most merchants favored family members and former countrymen, some established partnerships with British merchants. The directories suggest that these were few; among them were John Lewis Kraguelius (from Bremen) and Lucas Steinman (from Itzehoe).57 George Amyand had extraordinary relations to German merchants. His father Claudius Amyand had been connected with England’s Hanoverian Court.58 Born in 1720, George began his career under Henry Voguell. After Voguell’s death, George Amyand took over the firm and brought in three German partners: Henry Uhthoff, John Anthony Rücker (Rucker), and John Roger Siebel. In 1746 he entered a German merchant family by marrying John Abraham Korten’s daughter (Korten was from Elberfeld).59 Later, however, George Amyand’s son John did not sustain the close ties to German merchants.

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Individuals in binational business partnerships had often already cooperated privately or in business before combining their assets to establish a trade house. Marriages between Britons and naturalized subjects or the latter’s children produced the trading firms Commerell & Lubbock and Rucker & Bencraft.60 Anglo-Russian trade bred particularly close cooperation among Britons and naturalized immigrants of German or German-Russian heritage, for several reasons.61 During the Coalition Wars, British-German cooperation increased noticeably. Some trade firms involved partners from other European nations, Switzerland, and Holland, but these were much less frequent.62

Chain Migration, Successors, and Transnational Networks German merchant migration behavior between 1660 and about 1815 shows clear elements of chain migration. One generation after another sent young merchants to England in pursuit of lasting access to the imperial market and to London’s finance sector. The Amsinck and Rücker families from Hamburg clearly practiced chain migration. Four members of the Amsinck family were naturalized between 1710 and 1779. Nine members of Hamburg’s merchant and senator family Rücker (Figure 2) applied for naturalization between 1745 and 1806. The migration pattern of the Rücker family is a remarkable example of chain migration; not only were many individuals involved, but the sources also reveal some of the family activity.63 Rücker’s trade house operated in London well into the nineteenth century. Like the Rothschild, Schröder, and Frederick Huth families, the Rückers had one of Great Britain’s most successful houses run by merchants of German origin. This has apparently been forgotten, however, because the firm’s records have been lost. John Anthony Rücker (1719–1804), founder of the London branch, was naturalized in 1745. He remained single and in the early 1760s brought his nephew Johann Peter Rücker (naturalized in 1763) to the London business. After George Amyand’s death in 1766, John Anthony Rücker left the house of Amyand, Rucker & Siebel to concentrate on his own business, which already existed on Suffolk Lane and to which his nephew came as a partner. In the late 1760s Kent’s directory lists “Rucker, John-Anthony & John Peter, merchts” at Suffolk Lane, Cannon Street.64 John Peter Rücker left London in 1774 to live in New York.65 The firm in London went by the old name until 1778, although John Peter had been replaced there by two of John Anthony’s other nephews who had been naturalized. These two, who were brothers, did not stay in the business for long. One died within a few years; the other returned to Hamburg, where he became mayor in 1788.66

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Figure 2. Home of the Rücker Family. Source: Guildhall Library, London.

A third brother, Daniel Henry, moved to London in 1775 and was naturalized the same year. In 1783 he entered his uncle’s business as a partner. In 1785 the firm’s name changed to Rucker, John Anthony & Daniel Henry.67 In the early 1790s, the founder retired and the next generation took over, moving the business in 1796 or 1797 from Suffolk Lane, no. 2, where it had been for more than two decades, to Mincing Lane, no. 29. Daniel Henry was childless. In 1794 he brought John Anthony, who had just turned fifteen, and John’s ten-year-old brother Henry John to England. In 1802 John Anthony Jr. was taken in as a partner. The company existed under the name of Rucker D.H. & J.A. until 1831, when it went bankrupt. Shortly after the turn of the century, as Napoleon’s troops approached Hamburg, three other Rückers left Hamburg for London.68 Siegmund and John opened their own business on Broad Street at the Old South Sea House and called it Rucker Brothers, merchts. In 1804, John Anthony Rücker Sr. bequeathed several sugar plantations in the Caribbean to his nephew Daniel Henry Rücker.69 Many large British sugar merchants owned or were at least partners in sugar refineries. In 1806 the Rückers had the opportunity to buy a refinery when Tra-

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vers & Esdaile on Upper Thames Street went bankrupt.70 Together with a Briton named Elliot, Martin Diederich Rücker, the third newcomer brother, bought the refinery from the bankrupt estate. For the Rücker family, the successive migration of younger relatives thus not only secured successors for the business but also expanded trade. After the turn of the nineteenth century, the London Rückers became the nucleus of a worldwide family network (Figure 3).71 A striking number of German merchants in London never married. Among others, John Anthony Rücker, Sebastian Fridag, Johann Heinrich Albers, Herman Dietrich Retberg, and Daniel Nantes all remained bachelors. Succession issues compelled them to offer positions to the sons of their own siblings or of other relatives. To see his business continued, Sebastian Fridag called his namesake nephew to work with him in London. The latter took over the trade house in 1803. Succession, however, could not always be secured. Johann Heinrich Albers (Figure 4) found no successor and returned to Bremen in 1815. Merchant Retberg (born 1753 in Bremen) had been naturalized in 1781 and saw a potential successor in Simon Herman Retberg, the son of his own brother Hinrich. Simon’s untimely death and “a few other reasons” caused Retberg to abandon his business shortly after 1800.72

Figure 3. The Rücker Family Empire, eighteenth–nineteenth centuries.

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Figure 4. Portrait of Johann Heinrich Albers (1774–1855). Source: Kunsthalle Bremen.

Family on each side of the Channel had an interest in continuing chain migration. The expatriate merchant hoped to see his work continued by his own children, suitable nephews, or other close relatives. The time-honored custom of apprenticing and training promoted chain migration and enabled a business owner to find a suitable successor in a timely manner.73 However, a London merchant’s aspirations did not always coincide with family plans back home. When a foreign merchant in England turned his trade house over to one or more of his own offspring, it was sometimes at the cost of the bond with his native country,

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especially when the children had been born abroad. Nevertheless, when a merchant’s family back in his native land thought Britain a promising and profitable market, it continued to refresh the bond through steady chain migration. The strategy was typical of merchant families from Elberfeld and Herford. Economic prospects motivated merchants from Elberfeld and Herford to uphold chain migration; they sent family members to London for over one hundred years. The region’s export-oriented textile industry was the determining factor. Since the sixteenth century, Elberfeld had been known for its white flax, yarn, and linen. Elberfeld and Herford linen’s quality and low price increased overseas colony market demand for it.74 As early as the Protectorate, or immediately after the Restoration, three brothers—John, Engel, and Jasper Kaus—settled in London and set up business.75 Within fifteen to twenty years they were followed by three brothers from the Teschemacher family.76 One of the Kaus brothers had at least two sons and a daughter.77 John William and John Engelbert Teschemacher were survived by their children. Although John William wrote explicitly in his will, dated 1713, that his two sons should not become merchants, John William Jr. did anyway. London directories for 1749 list the trade house Jacobs & Teschemacher.78 Subsequent generations of Teschemachers never fully lost touch with their German roots, but as time passed the bond apparently became less strong. In the first decade of the eighteenth century, prospects in England’s reexport market compelled another two from Elberfeld to try their luck in London:79 John Abraham Korten and Peter Lucas immigrated after John William Sr.’s death in 1713. Nothing is known about Korten’s first years in the capital, but he likely started out in John Engelbert Teschemacher’s business, run by the latter after his brother’s death.80 After John Engelbert’s death in 1732, Korten took over the business and became proprietor of their trade house’s building. Within a few years he had moved the business to Mincing Lane.81 Shortly before John Engelbert died, Korten persuaded his younger brother Peter to join him in England.82 The tight chain of migration from Elberfeld to Britain’s capital broke off after 1737. Korten was survived by a daughter who married the aforementioned George Amyand. After the business closed, she kept in touch with Elberfeld. In the late 1750s, John Roger Siebel (from Elberfeld) came to England, but during the textile and financial crisis of 1772 he went back to his hometown,83 ending the story of Elberfeld chain migration and London branches of Elberfeld firms after more than one hundred years. Migration from Elberfeld was not interrupted entirely; rather, it shifted from London to northern England, where the cotton industry in rising textile towns presented a new market for Elberfeld flax yarn. Migration to northern British industrial regions late in the century, however, differed from earlier migration to London. In 1780, John Roger Teschemacher (from Hanover)84 moved to Nottingham with its flourishing hosiery industry and settled there as a “merchant entrepreneur,”85 opening a hosiery manufactory with an English partner. A ver-

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satile design engineer, Teschemacher had invented a steam and a textile machine and had patented them in 1791 and 1792.86 Another Elberfeld merchant from the Wichelhausen family set off for London around the turn of the century but then moved on to the prospering port town of Liverpool.87 Merchants from Elberfeld traded mainly in textiles, but competition from the Irish and Scottish linen industry reduced imports of Elberfeld wares. When the American War of Independence ended the constraints enforced by the Navigation Act, Germans began direct trade across the Atlantic. By the end of the century, the decline of the textile industry in Wuppertal set in and the local industry underwent a process of restructuring that ended emigration from there.88 Herford, too, had been a center of yarn and linen trade. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Bernard Sirps initiated a chain migration of the town’s merchants.89 By 1775, the Sirps had sent eleven merchants from Herford to London, one generation after another. Like Elberfeld’s emigrant merchants, they were all kin and focused in London on trading linen and yarn. Upon the death of Sirps, the first immigrant from Herford, his business was transferred to Henry Voguell and later continued by Theophilus Pritzler and Godfrey Molling. Henry Voguell’s will states that Godfrey Molling should follow up his apprenticeship in Hamburg by first working with Amyand.90 Whether Godfrey took that advice remains unknown, for his first recorded address in England is not with Amyand but instead (in the 1760s) at Langkopff, Molling & Co.91 Within decades, Molling & Co. became one of the eminent German trade houses.92 As in the case of Elberfeld, chain migration from Herford came to a halt in the 1770s. In 1775 Frederick Molling was the last Herford merchant to be naturalized in England. Merchants from Herford diversified their trade very early on, becoming merchant-entrepreneurs and not focusing their activities exclusively on the capital. In the first half of the eighteenth century, Conrade Smith established himself as a merchant in Bristol. Christoph Frederick Pritzler, a brother of the aforementioned Theophilus Pritzler, founded a sugar dynasty in London. He did not remain in London, however, but went on to Zittau in Saxony, where he opened a trade firm with a merchant named Biedermann. By 1720 at the latest, Henry Voguell was working closely with Saxon merchants. Through transmigration, a dense network of family ties evolved among German merchants in Saxony, northwest German textile regions, and the British capital. Langkopff, Molling & Rasch sustained trade with Saxony at least past 1750. One of London’s major buyers of fabrics from Saxony and Westphalia was the aforementioned American businessman Joshua Johnson. Conversely, Langkopff, Molling & Rasch was one of Johnson’s biggest buyers of Virginia tobacco.93 After Theophilus Pritzler’s death, Mary Pritzler and her son continued running the sugar refinery in London.94 In the 1780s the latter, or his son, traded with the Levant.95 Merchants from Herford also made London a hub for trade

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with Russia. In 1753 entrepreneurial merchant Henry Klausing became a subject and departed for Russia to begin business there.96 The migration of merchants from Germany’s northwestern textile-producing regions was part of a wider development (Figure 5). On their way to England, some individuals from Elberfeld and Herford settled in Bremen or Hamburg instead. They then networked through their family ties in northwest German and Saxon textile-producing regions, northern German port towns, and the English capital. London was the central node; from London, German merchants expanded their trade to include America, which in turn encouraged them to add further German textile-manufacturing areas to their kin-based network. They diversified their commercial undertakings by going into sugar refining and the banking and insurance sector. Thus merchant families had a keen interest in securing successors for their London branches and in sustaining and renewing trade relationships.

A German Perspective on the Development of Bilateral Trade Merchants migrated to London to explore new markets for themselves and their parent trade houses back in Germany, and in doing so also increased the prosperity in their home countries. The trade house of the Bodes from Bremen illustrates

Figure 5. Map of Northwest German Merchants’ Regional Entanglements.

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that connection as well as the various blows they endured, highlighting the risks involved.97 Another example, that of the Retberg family a century later, illuminates the consequences of having a branch in London for the parent trade house, both before and after a family member’s emigration. After the family opened a branch in the capital, Retberg trading activities shifted. Trade documents for the Retbergs have not survived, but the story of their trade with England can be reconstructed from the ledgers of the Schlachte, Bremen’s old port,98 although these books concern mainly fees for incoming ships from 1754 onward.99 The books indicate cargo, the names of the receiving merchant and ship’s captain, and the port of departure. We have no information on the Retbergs’ exports to London, but the records do show how the geographical scope and focus of the house’s imports changed as time passed. Unfortunately, the records do not name the consignor. Given the frequency of war in the second half of the century, Bremen’s foreign trade was subject to considerable change. While the American War of Independence opened new markets, the Coalition Wars cut Bremen off from further trade with France. Both these conditions affected the Retbergs’ trade. Obvious deviations from otherwise general patterns in trade with England give some indication of the family’s focus. Putting the Retbergs’ imports in the context of a general overview of Bremen’s foreign trade suggests how the family’s trade changed, once a member of the family had moved to England. According to official import statistics, France, not England, was the major trade partner of Hamburg and Bremen in the eighteenth century. Yet the statistics tend to underestimate trade with England. For instance, records for “Admiralty Customs and Convoy Fees” collected by Hamburg do not list all imported goods.100 The fact that a considerable part of Anglo-German trade did not pass through German ports further complicates the assessment. Considerable freight passed through Dutch, Belgian, and other European ports, although for the purpose of this study that context can be neglected. Jürgen von Witzendorff’s compilation of data from Bremen’s port books is representative of the overall situation and development.101 The analysis shows fluctuation in the annual number of incoming ships and rapid changes in the significance that various countries had for Bremen (Table 10). Until the end of the century, Holland was vital for imports to Bremen. Between 1800 and 1803, Great Britain replaced the Netherlands. Indeed, from 1794 to 1803 trade with the British Isles increased so much that those years have been dubbed “the golden period of Bremen’s trade.”102 When war broke out again in 1803, the blockade disrupted trade with England. Throughout the 1750s and 1760s, Great Britain lagged far behind Holland but still ranked slightly above France. In the 1770s and 1780s Britain’s trade declined further, falling to third place and hitting a low in 1779, when it sent only 28 ships. Trade with England did not recover until 1786. After war broke

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Table 10. Number of Ships Arriving in Bremen, Ten-Year Average Year

1754–57i 1764–69ii 1770–79 1780–89 1790–99 1800–03

England

France

Holland

23 23 57 50 85 52

16 21 64 66 67 24

119 57 184 94 111 25

i

Data are available for the years 1754–1757 only. Data are available for the period 1764–1766 and for 1769 only. Source: Based on the compilation by Von Witzendorff, Handelsgeschichte, 387.

ii

out in 1793, England and France switched ranks.103 In the 1770s and 1780s, about 65 ships arrived annually from France, on average. No fundamental change is evident for the 1790s, though the number of ships from France rose slightly to 67 per year. After 1793, however, Bremen saw a salient increase in the number of ships coming from England. Between 1795 and 1802 (with the exception of 1799), more than 100 vessels a year arrived from England. Although shipments from England definitely increased in absolute numbers, the percentage did not change noticeably. In 1770, 25.5 percent of all goods imported to Bremen came from Holland; by 1790 the Dutch share had fallen to 11 percent and remained unchanged until 1798. Imports from France peaked at 14 percent in 1786, but between 1770 and 1780 and then again between 1790 and 1798 they remained at 7 to 8 percent.104 Except for brief peaks, the volume of imports from England and France was almost equal: in 1770 shipments from England constituted 8 percent of Bremen’s imports, and by 1780 they had fallen to just 5 percent. In 1786 they rose again, but only to 9 percent, with French imports still outranking them, and by 1790 they had fallen to 7 percent. In 1798, 11 percent of the ships arriving in Bremen came from England, exactly matching the 11 percent coming from Holland. In the 1750s, Johann Abraham Retberg’s house (later Joh. Abr. Retberg & Sons) traded only occasionally with England.105 Johann Abraham Retberg Sr. had come from Lippstadt, settled in Bremen as a young man, and married Anna Maria Teschemacher from the Bremen branch of the Teschemacher family.106 In 1768 he sent his son Johann Abraham on a journey around England. The latter traveled to the new textile regions in the north and went as far as Scotland, returning via Liverpool, Bristol, and Exeter to London to explore market conditions, reconfirm contacts, and visit all the German trade houses in the towns through which he passed. In Liverpool he stopped at Fuhrer & Wagner and at Ecbert Nonnen’s, both from Bremen. In Exeter he called on John Duntze, the son of an emigrant from

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Figure 6. Portrait of Hermann Dietrich Retberg (1751–1830). Source: Focke Museum Bremen.

Bremen, and on Diederich Meyerhoff. In London he introduced himself to more than twenty trade houses, more than half of which belonged to new immigrants and descendants of Dutch, Huguenot, and German immigrants. Johann’s notes indicate that his father already traded with Amyand, Rucker & Siebel. When Johann visited him, John Anthony Rücker was about to leave his former partners, and Rücker and Siebel both confirmed their intent to continue business with the

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Retberg firm.107 In the years to come, Amyand & Siebel and Fuhrer & Wagner of Liverpool became important trade partners for the Retbergs in Bremen.108 Due to the port books’ size and poor condition, various years had to be chosen to represent the latter half of the century for the purpose of analyzing the Retbergs’ trade.109 Data for the year 1754 show that three of seven ships destined for the Retbergs arrived from London. For the next years the books show not a single ship arriving from England, but three from Bordeaux. Trade with England fluctuated considerably in the 1750s and 1760s. For those decades only an occasional ship is mentioned as having arrived from France, though one came regularly from the Latvian seaports of Riga or Libau (Liepaja). Christoph Menke has identified the Retberg firm as one of Bremen’s large Russia trade establishments after 1750.110 Russia trade appears to have boomed in the late 1760s; in 1770 four ships came from there. In the 1770s the volume of the Retbergs’ business with Russia was greater than that with England. For the rest of the century, however, their trade with Russia stagnated while their overall number of incoming ships rose significantly, due primarily to trade with England. No change is discernible in the Retbergs’ volume of trade with England after Johann Abraham Retberg’s return in 1770 (see Table 11). That year three of seven shiploads received came from England (two from London, one from Hull). In 1775 they had a total of eleven foreign incoming ships, four from England, including one from London carrying thirty barrels of tobacco.111 Table 11. Numbers of Foreign Ships Received by the Retberg Firm Origin

Netherlands France Great Britain Spain Scandinavia Portugal Turkey

1770

1775

1780

1786

1790

1798

1800

7 1 7

1 6 13

2 7 13

4

3

2 1 4

2 1 48

52 1 1

1 1

We do not know exactly when Hermann Dietrich Retberg (Figure 6) went to London. He had already worked for some time in London before being naturalized in late 1781 and going into business for himself.112 London’s 1782 directory lists a trade house under his name.113 Some eight years after naturalization, he joined the Russia Company. Unfortunately, nothing is known of the extent of his trade with Russia.114 In 1786, 54 percent of ships sailing to the Retbergs in Bremen (i.e., thirteen of twenty-four imports) departed from England, up from 36 percent in 1775. Their trade with France also grew. Six ships arrived from France in 1786, seven in 1790. By the end of the century the total number of ships destined for the

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Retberg business had quadrupled. Whereas in 1790 thirteen of twenty-nine arriving ships came from England, in 1798 fifty-two of sixty-six ships did so, making up 79 percent of their total imports.115 By 1800 this figure had dropped to 75 percent. After the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in the 1790s, Bremen’s trade with England grew in general, but only from about 7 percent to 11 percent. In other words, the Retbergs’ increase in trade with England, which made up from 36 percent to 79 percent (later 75 percent) of their total imports, was noticeably above average. Table 12. Numbers of Ships from English Ports Destined for the Retberg Firm in Bremen Port

1775

1780

1786

1790

1798

London Liverpool Hull Englandi Portsmouth Falmouth Bristol Total

1 (25%) 1 2

2 (29%) 4 1

5 (39%) 2 3 2

8 (62%)

43 (83%) 41 (85%) 7 2 2 4

i

4

1800

1 1 4

7

1 13

13

52

48

Total

100 16 16 2 1 1 1 137

Harbor not specified.

Table 12 shows that exports from the capital to the family firm in Bremen increased after Hermann Dietrich Retberg established a branch in London. In 1775 and 1780 only one and two shipments, respectively, arrived from London; by 1786 the number had risen to five. Imports from London made up 62 percent of the Bremen Retbergs’ business in 1790, growing to 83 percent by 1798.116 Evidently, trade with London had become the Bremen Retberg’s key business. Although the port books say nothing about the items exported, travel notes left by Johann Abraham Retberg Jr., as well as documents pertaining to Amyand & Siebel and Fuhrer & Wagner, suggest that the Retbergs mostly exported textiles to England.117 Details are, however, available on the range of goods that Johann Abraham Retberg imported from England. In the 1750s he bought hides and fish oil in London, leather from Cork (Ireland), and Irish butter. In the 1770s Retberg abandoned the Irish connections. Various other commodities such as woolen wares, lead, coffee, and ginger arrived from Liverpool and Hull.118 In 1770 he bought large quantities of tobacco in London. Following the American War of Independence, however, he established a direct link to Baltimore, and by the 1790s he had stopped importing tobacco from London.119 By about that time London had become his supplier of sugar, coffee, pepper, indigo, and other colonial wares.120 Sugar from London had become a major import item. In the 1770s and 1780s sugar was not among the goods imported by the Retbergs in Bremen, though other Bremen firms imported raw and refined sugar from Bor-

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deaux.121 The Retbergs also traded with that French port town, but purchased only coffee and wine there.122 In the 1790s trade with France declined visibly; only an occasional ship arrived from there.123 In contrast, trade with Baltimore grew continually, constituting 1 percent of Retberg’s imports in 1790, 5 percent in 1798, and even 11 percent in 1800. Import books do not disclose the names of Retberg’s English suppliers, nor much about Retberg’s customers in Bremen. However, once Hermann Dietrich had immigrated to London, a distinct shift increased the family in Bremen’s focus on trade with England. Statistical analysis of Bremen’s import records would probably suggest similar circumstances for the many other merchant families from Bremen that sent their sons to Britain’s capital. Nonetheless, German merchant families sent their offspring and close relatives not only to England, but to other countries as well. The Retbergs were content with a branch in London. Other leading merchant families from Bremen, such as the Uhthoffs and the Wilckens, more or less simultaneously sent offspring to France and Spain, and across the Atlantic, too.

The Rise and Organization of Early “Merchant Empires” In a study on England’s international trade houses, Stanley Chapman calls trading and banking houses “international” as soon as they operated simultaneously in two or more countries. Trade dynasties of that nature had already existed in medieval times, but what was new about England’s international trade houses, according to Chapman, was that they sent family members to reside permanently in the world’s leading trade centers.124 Following Chapman’s definition, all German merchant houses in London after 1660 fall into that category. The German merchants’ patterns of chain migration, their endeavors to secure successors and preserve their branches, and not least their propensity to be naturalized, all indicate that these were not traveling salesmen or family members sent abroad merely for training. The structure of these nascent international family trade houses was not that of an entirely novel kind of enterprise, but one that can to some extent be traced back to the era of the Hanseatic League.125 As at London’s Steelyard, at many other international entrepôts merchants began transforming old corporative settlements into informal gatherings. Family members of the rising international trade dynasties began taking up permanent residence at these centers. Not all of the old corporative locations survived the transition; rather, some declined while others emerged, particularly on Europe’s Atlantic coast. Sanjay Subrahmanyam has pointed out that for a long time debate over the world’s expanding economy ended at simply ascertaining the role of transnational trade merchants, thus avoiding deeper exploration of the particular features of emerging world trade.126 Commercial expansion involving the old corporate

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organizations such as the Hanse and the English trade companies has been relatively well studied, although even that research has considerable gaps, as Stephan Selzer and Christian Ewert have shown in a study on the Hanseatic League.127 Study of the border-crossing expansion of informally organized trade houses has been particularly neglected.128 Yet it was precisely these informal transnational networks, forged basically by trade houses linked by family ties, that interconnected previously independent remote trading areas and thereby fostered market integration. Chapman dates the beginnings of England’s large international trade houses of Huguenot and Sephardic origin to the late-sixteenth-century period of religious wars and expulsions. Before then, a few international houses had existed in Italy, but their number did not grow until the early seventeenth century.129 According to Chapman, the first international houses of German origin in Great Britain did not emerge until much later, at the turn of the nineteenth century.130 Chapman focused his attention on the large, globally operating banking houses Rothschild and Schröder, on Frederick Huth, and on Emanuel H. Brandt. Together with a few other Jewish, Huguenot, and Swiss houses, these firms shaped Great Britain’s international trade and banking business in the nineteenth century. These houses, however, represent only the peak of a development that began centuries earlier. These family enterprises experienced their greatest geographic and economic expansion in the nineteenth century, prior to the rise of modern capital companies. Chapman’s study emphasizes that any investigation into leading British trade houses prior to World War I must necessarily transcend national borders. The history of these houses cannot be adequately explored by concentrating on their national context because these dynasties of Continental European, Ottoman, and American origin operated on a global scale. Chapman’s study nevertheless focuses on Great Britain, investigating primarily British circumstances and relationships and trade links that converged in Britain. It neglects the inner structure and function of family-based transnational trade relations. Little is said about how economic and social conditions weighed on the family enterprise as a whole and which strategies emerged for dealing with crises, about how these firms worked from within, or about how they were affected by economic, social, and political circumstances in general and which strategies they pursued to survive. The Rothschilds and the Schröders are prime examples of how sibling cooperation at the world’s leading trade metropolises contributed to a family’s ascent. Earlier historians of international trade houses often treated the part of a business that existed in their own country in isolation, as if it were an autonomous entity. A monograph on the Schröder firm describes the business in London, mentioning the parent firm in Hamburg and other trade houses owned by siblings only in passing, in the introductory material. Studies of other leading trade families, such as the Burckhardts and the Bethmanns from Switzerland, focus on events in Basel and Nantes, Frankfurt and Bordeaux.131 However, both the Beth-

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mann and the Burckhardt (Bourcard) families had trading houses in London, too, and the Bourcards also had one in Moscow.132 For the Schröder family, trade with Russia was important to both its London branch and the parent firm in Hamburg, although the study on the Schröders makes no mention of John Frederick or John Henry Schröder’s brother Herman Schröder in St. Petersburg. Yet an exclusively national perspective was not the sole reason to dismiss the transnational aspects of these family firms: lack of coherent source material is equally at fault.133 Information is scattered and located in various national archives and private collections. Little is known about the business beginnings of even fairly well-documented families like the Schröders and Barings. Work of this kind remains a desideratum; it would require international cooperation in research, exceeding the capacity of any one historian. The present study, meanwhile, gives at least a glimpse of these trade houses’ international entanglements. German multilateral trade house expansion began with Hamburg merchants of Dutch origin. In the early eighteenth century, their activity had a geographic scope that other German firms attained only much later. The earliest trade empires with the widest geographic spread were established by the Berenbergs, Amsincks, and De Smeths, whose children and siblings moved to London and other leading trade metropolises of the world. Like the Amsinck family, the De Smeths were one of the early eighteenth century’s leading international trade dynasties (see Figure 7). Three De Smeth

Figure 7. Raymond De Smeth’s Trade Relations, 1690–1727.

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brothers were born in Hamburg: Raymond went to London, Nicolo moved to Italy’s Leghorn (Livorno), and the third remained in the Hanseatic town. Another branch of the family had one of Europe’s largest eighteenth-century banks in Amsterdam, alongside Hope & Co. and Clifford.134 London’s Raymond De Smeth, like his father in Hamburg, was a merchant banker.135 With branches in Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, and Leghorn, the family’s location in pivotal trade centers of early modern times gave it access to local products, colonial wares, and regional networks. Raymond De Smeth’s inventory shows that his brother Nicolo in Leghorn was his most important trade partner. Through Nicolo, Raymond ordered goods from the entire Mediterranean area, including the Levant. Nicolo established and monitored business contacts and exchanged bills for his brother in London. After the Spanish War of Succession, when trade relations returned to normal between Spain and Great Britain, Raymond De Smeth extended his trade to Cadiz, Bilbao, and Seville, which in turn gave him access to Spain’s colonial market. Nicolo also monitored the business in Spain.136 In the seventeenth century, siblings, nephews, and cousins of the Amsinck family’s Hamburg branch settled in other German areas and other countries, including Holland, France, and Spain (Figure 8).137 At the turn of the eighteenth century, siblings and cousins from London’s Amsinck family settled in Oporto. The Amsinck dynasty also established links to non-European countries. As early as 1650, Cornelius Amsinck migrated to India.138 Around 1700, members of the

Figure 8. The Amsinck Merchant Empire, seventeenth–nineteenth centuries.

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Dutch branch lived and owned plantations in Suriname. Vansittart and Teschemacher sons also left London for India. Most eighteenth-century German merchant families had only a branch in London, but a growing number of them sent offspring, siblings, and other close relatives to two or more other countries, producing various triangular networks. Traditionally, merchants from Bremen and East Friesland maintained close relations with Holland, creating triangular family and business networks between Bremen, the Netherlands, and England. For example, Bremen’s trade house Gildemeister sent two brothers abroad: Christoph went to London, while his brother Henrich Daniel established a business in Amsterdam.139 The Van Berchem family from Bremen and the trade house Garrels from Leer sent offspring to London and Amsterdam.140 The growing attraction of the Russian market, especially after the 1734 trade treaty with Russia, encouraged triangular trade between Bremen, London, and Russia.141 Other Bremen families like the Katenkamps created a business net stretching from Exeter to the Iberian Peninsula.142 In 1759 Heinrich Poppe from Bremen established a triangle of trade by moving to Lisbon while his brother settled in London, where he was naturalized one year later. In other cases Bremen’s merchant families set up triangular trade with London and Leghorn.143 The Uhthoff family is an example of even broader international trade activity. While Henry Uhthoff from Bremen migrated to England, his cousin Johann Andreas Uhthoff (1736–1797) migrated to Spain. Somewhat later Henry’s brother Georg Konrad Uhthoff established a trade house in France.144 The Uhthoff family’s quadrangular trade network stretched from Bremen to London to France and Spain, and was eventually extended to Mexico and Canada by additional family members who moved there in the nineteenth century.145 From the early seventeenth century on, Hamburg maintained intense trade relations with Spain and Portugal. As Klaus Weber has noted, merchants from Hamburg dominated German trade houses in Cadiz until about 1730.146 Hamburg merchants in London therefore could conveniently take up and extend the old trade links to Spain. England’s commercial treaties with Portugal and Spain even encouraged them to first become English subjects and then migrate to the Iberian Peninsula. London merchants from Hamburg thus were already trading with Spain before 1700, whereas merchants from Bremen did not enter the Spanish and Portuguese markets until after 1750, and their trade there never reached Hamburg’s levels. On the other hand, London’s merchants from Bremen were more heavily involved in Anglo-Russian trade. Only a few families from Hamburg expanded their triangular networks into quadrangular ones,147 among them were the merchant bankers Schröder and the Brandt family.148 The Soltau family’s network covered Hamburg, London, Russia, and Spain.149 There is some evidence that the Bethmann family, the Luetken family from Hamburg, the Schröders, and the Wilckens from Bremen engaged in triangular commerce between northern German ports, England, and France. Between 1735

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and 1801, three members of the Wilckens family migrated to London and Liverpool. When Henry Wilckens went to Liverpool in 1778, his brothers Hermann and Jacob Friedrich settled in La Rochelle. One nephew of the London house of John Anthony Rücker also settled in Bordeaux.150

Connecting Colonial Empires In the eighteenth century, expanding German trade houses focused primarily on Europe. German merchants mostly settled in Atlantic port towns that were gateways to overseas colonies. In the first half of the eighteenth century, only a few families sent offspring to the New World or Asia. One such son was Christopher Gildemeister from Bremen, who migrated to America after marrying in London.151 In the final quarter of the eighteenth century, however, increasing numbers of German merchants settled outside Europe. After a temporary stay in London, one member of the Rücker family migrated to America in the 1780s; other nephews from the same family migrated to Riga and Montevideo, Uruguay. From the next generation, one of the London Rücker sons immigrated to Sydney.152 One member of Bremen’s Wilckens family crossed the Atlantic, too. While Herman Wilckens founded a French branch of the family, his brother Jacob Friedrich left France in 1791 to settle in San Domingo, where his brother-in-law owned a sugar plantation.153 When slaves rebelled in 1791, he fled to Jamaica, where he bought a coffee plantation.154 Although European empires tried to restrict trade with colonies to their own subjects, resident foreign merchants had several legal and semi-legal ways of overcoming or circumventing trade barriers. One accepted strategy was to be naturalized, but not all alien merchants were willing to do this. Acquiring British nationality brought considerable advantages, but merchants in Spain or France lacked such incentives. Like Britain, Spain had several forms of nationality that granted different rights to aliens, none of which permitted trade with Spanish colonies.155 Catholics were excluded from naturalization in Britain; in Spain, France, and Portugal, it was Protestants who were thus barred. Implementation and application, however, did not always conform to the law.156 Foreign merchants often shunned Spanish citizenship because alien status involved tax and other legal privileges not enjoyed by Spain’s own subjects.157 The clause meant to exclude aliens from trade with the colonies was weakened by the liberal practice of granting licenses and authorizing exceptions. Besides hiring front men and shipping goods across the Atlantic in their names, foreigners circumvented regulations by cooperating with Spaniards who lacked the capital needed to finance overseas trade. The bulk of colonial trade passed through the hands of resident foreign merchants, regardless of legal restrictions.158 The Methuen and Asiento treaties had secured Britain’s limited right to trade with Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Since British ships dominated the sea-

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borne trade even with these colonies, British subjects enjoyed considerable privileges.159 German-born merchants thus profited by becoming British subjects before leaving for Spain. Wilhelm Magens and Wilhelm Amsinck transmigrated to Spain via England.160 Abraham and Jacob Henckell, sons of two Hamburg merchants who had settled in London, went to live on the Canary Islands.161 The situation was different in France, where old rivalries and ongoing hostility between the two countries put British merchants at a commercial disadvantage while merchants from Hanseatic towns enjoyed privileges laid down in the trade treaty of 1716. German merchants looking to do business in France therefore preferred to migrate directly from their hometowns to France, without taking the detour through England and naturalization. In Bordeaux, Germans made up the largest group of immigrant merchants,162 comprising a third of the town’s aliens. Nantes, La Rochelle, and a few other French seaports had large German communities. As in Spain and Portugal, aliens in France were not allowed to trade with the colonies. Not even the commercial treaty of 1716 between the Hanseatic towns and France permitted Germans to trade with French colonies. After 1685 French nationality was reserved exclusively for Catholics, although the law was occasionally waived for wealthy foreigners of other denominations.163 In Bordeaux the strong Huguenot community facilitated the integration of foreign merchants. The community’s permeability is evidenced by the comparatively high number of intermarriages and by close commercial collaborations, which prevented the merchant community’s division into Reformed, Lutherans, and Catholics.164 The French government handled the exclusion of aliens from colonial trade fairly liberally and issued special permits for limited trade with overseas territories.165 German merchants in London accessed the economic privileges enjoyed by Hanseatic towns in France by sending goods to France via German ports instead of shipping them directly from England. In effect, during the era of mercantilism, international family enterprises circumvented national and imperial trade restrictions, evaded boycotts, and avoided the disruption of commerce by war. Even during the Napoleonic blockade, Britain’s German merchants continued trade with France. In the development of a global economy, the importance of establishing trade firms in hubs of national, international, and colonial trade cannot be underestimated. These houses created networks that fostered the interconnectedness of markets beyond mercantilist trade barriers.

Early Merchant Empires—Flexible and Vulnerable International family businesses were loose alliances of largely autonomous trade houses that collaborated without an explicit hierarchy. Depending on an individual’s skill and success, one or another house might temporarily become a focal

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point within a merchant family empire, but the consequences of bankruptcy and death could quickly alter the standing of any given branch. To some extent location, too, influenced the way family enterprises were organized in informally linked, yet otherwise independent, networks. Relationships among a family’s trade houses were not shaped by either formal agreement or general obligation to the parent trade house. Instead, they can been seen as a loose net of several lesser or greater nodes, with one parent company and several branches established by offspring or siblings in the world’s leading financial and trade sites. The individual houses relied on an overlapping and interlocking trade network. There was, first of all, the immediate family network, which research has come to define as being one of “core partnerships.”166 This network—the backbone of a trade empire—included the immediate family: parents, offspring, siblings, and first cousins. Second, any one family member could have his own local or regional network, occasionally on an international scale. Individual trade houses generally operated as discrete units and were involved in the overseas networks of other family members only through the owner himself. Finally, the whole transnational core network was in turn loosely connected to the trade networks of distant relatives, compatriots, other merchants of the same religious affiliation, or simply persons who shared the same commercial interests. Trade houses of family members abroad were self-sufficient units. They were not bound by formal, written agreements. Inasmuch as any kind of hierarchy developed among them, it was generally temporary and related to the start-up phase only. German merchants like Christian Splitgerber began in London by commissioning shipments for the trade houses belonging to parents and siblings back home and were, to that extent, dependent on them. Over time they became more independent and relaxed their ties to the overarching family business. Some of the sons’ firms in London were more successful than the family business back home and thus became major nodes in the family’s international network. German trade houses in the Caribbean, by contrast, appear to have had some hierarchy. The London trade houses Muilman & Nantes and Obwexer (from Augsburg) were not based on family ties. To found a branch in San Domingo, Muilman & Nantes commissioned three clerks,167 none of whom were related to the owners. Originally they were exclusively to follow instructions from London. Their contracts prohibited doing business on their own because they had brought in no capital. As agents they were entitled to a commission fee, but not to profits. The plan, however, was impractical. Richard Dalton, one of the agents in San Domingo, was soon involved in unauthorized speculative transactions. To regain control over Dalton, Henry Nantes signed a clandestine addendum to the agreement with Gerard Janson, one of the other clerks the house had sent over, giving Janson more power and, in a futile attempt to secure his loyalty, promising him a share of the profits. It was to no avail. The agency in San Domingo continued to lose money in questionable transactions. Eventually, after the slave revolt of

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1791, the instable political situation and the owners’ own poor market decisions left Muilman & Nantes bankrupt.168 Obwexer, a trade house from Augsburg, sent Pierre Brion, a clerk, to Curaçao to establish a branch there.169 From the start, Brion was permitted to trade on his own account. The branch gradually became independent and eventually evolved into a self-sufficient unit. Neither Dalton’s work in San Domingo nor Brion’s work in Curaçao flowed from moral obligation to a trade family. Both had contracts and pursued purely economic interests. The conditions of Dalton’s contract did not lead to success; and whereas those of Brion’s contract did, Brion’s death severed the relation to the house in Augsburg. The strength and the continuity of trade empires upheld over generations thus appears to have been an outcome of entangling family and business. Besides sharing economic interests, family members were part of a network of reciprocal trust and moral obligation. Expected to fulfill moral obligations, family members were in turn seen as trustworthy, reliable, honest, and solidary. One such moral obligation was to voluntarily train future generations and support them financially when starting out on their own. Members of the immediate and extended family were a paramount source of credit at the start of a merchant’s career and throughout it. The geographical scope of a London merchant’s trade made credit essential, and relatives, friends, and business partners were major creditors. In difficult times, reciprocal support was similarly crucial. When Hermann Jakob Garrels went bankrupt in 1799, his parents provided money for a new start. A few years later his brother in Leer experienced similar difficulties, and Hermann Jakob Garrels went to Leer to reach an agreement with his brother’s creditors.170 He also bequeathed half of his estate to his brother for starting up a new business, and to keep creditors from seizing the inheritance he made his sister a trustee for the estate to ensure that their brother’s share was not handed over to him until all insolvency proceedings had been settled.171 In times of crisis, the independence of an overseas branch also protected the other houses. Yet this did not necessarily spare other family members additional financial obligation or keep them entirely out of another’s bankruptcy matters. Bankruptcy files on London merchants of German or German-Russian descent present a heterogeneous picture. Some files show family members being held responsible for only fairly small amounts. When Walter Persent and Augustus William Bodecker failed in 1799, Nonnen & Bodecker, Bodecker’s parent trade house in Bremen, was held responsible for only £1 of a total debt of almost £300,000.172 In contrast, Theophilus Christian Blanckenhagen’s Dutch and Russian relatives faced greater losses when his business failed. Theophilus owed £409 to his brother Justus in Riga. His nephew Johann Christoph Blanckenhagen in Amsterdam demanded £94 as his part of an inheritance from his deceased father Peter Heinrich Blanckenhagen. In 1802 the same nephew demanded another £2,099 in his father’s name and £43 in the name of his own firm, S.J. & A.W.

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Blanckenhagen. The same nephew then still owed Theophilus in London more than £289 and owed another £715 to Blanckenhagen & Co.173 Theophilus owed family members £2,645 and had claims for £1,005. Despite his considerable liabilities toward his family, his total debt amounted to £160,000; thus his family did not rank among his major creditors.174 Oom, Hoolboom, Knoblock & Co. owed parent firms in Riga and Reval (Tallinn) between £8 18s. and £13 14s.175 In contrast, bankruptcy records for Jacob Gottfried Hippius mention neither his father’s business nor that of his brother in Liverpool.176 Unfortunately, the papers do not indicate whether reciprocal obligations were held back or had been taken care of in a timely manner.177 The comparatively small sums involved suggest that the family was kept out of the bankruptcy procedure as much as possible. To a large extent, the two pillars supporting transnational family networks were the independence of individual branches and the moral context that followed from consanguine ties. These two factors determined the economic well-being and chances of survival of the branches. Yet trust and consanguinity did not guarantee survival, success, or expansion. Merchant families devised various strategies for dealing with the high mortality rate and succession issues. As time progressed, remote family members and subsequent generations generally tended to become less tied to the family business. Thus merchant families developed mechanisms of moral obligation that in turn brought distant relatives more firmly back into the family bond. In times of expansion, international family enterprises had not only to uphold and consolidate the family bond, but to find ways for growth by welcoming new, non-related persons into the family circle. Marriage among the offspring of commercial partners thus became a proven method for strengthening, expanding, and sustaining the business.178 German research into marriage patterns among the German merchant elite has focused on the social exclusivity of the circle of potential partners (Geschlossenheit der Heiratskreise).179 In German towns the number of potential nuptial candidates was limited, making marriages among cousins a common event. Abroad, however, a trade house’s expansion and integration could be enhanced by a marriage choice. The marriage of men and women from different national backgrounds helped integrate the foreigner economically and culturally and encouraged further transnational trade relations. John Lubbock’s marriage to Frederick Commerell’s daughter from Heilbronn not only led to the founding of Commerell & Lubbock, but also introduced him to British circles of commerce, facilitating integration into both British society and the English merchant community for himself and his future children. Godparenthood has only recently attracted attention as another social tradition that consolidated and expanded family enterprises,180 serving merchant family networks much as marriage did. David Cressy notes that baptism was

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not simply a sacrament of the church but a form of social interaction that created “bonds of neighbourliness, community, and kindred.”181 Godparenthood involved “a sacred and specifically Christian relationship, [that imposed] higher standards of mutual conduct on those whom it bound.”182 The custom was particularly dear to London’s merchants of German origin. Godchildren often became heirs and successors of merchants who remained single or childless. Henry Voguell, for example, had no children of his own but saw to it that his godchildren were trained, mentored, and ready to take over his business. Liebert Wolters and Nicholas Magens did the same.183 Godparenting enabled families to revive bonds across considerable geographical distances and for generations. Spiritual kinship served not only to provide for a child: the act of sharing responsibility when a child was born also consolidated the bond between a child’s natural and spiritual parents.184 The institution also imbued relations with nonkin business partners with a certain sense of moral and spiritual obligation. Throughout a new trade house’s early phase and particularly in difficult times, business associates often transferred and accepted the responsibilities of godparenthood in order to reinforce mutual loyalty. Shortly after going bankrupt, Theophilus Blanckenhagen chose godparents with financial considerations in mind. When he set up business as Wilson & Blanckenhagen, he asked his British associate Thomas Wilson to stand as the godfather for his first child.185 A similar motive seems to have governed his choice of George Grote (son of banker Andrew Grote) to godparent another child. Theophilus’s brother Justus Blanckenhagen had married Conrad Harksen’s daughter, creating a link to the trade and banking business Grote & Harksen. After Justus returned to Russia, Theophilus used godparenthood to revive and sustain the existing bond with the Grote family. Other German merchants also reinforced their business relations through the institutions of marriage and godparenthood. In early modern times, this mélange of moral commitment, family connections, and economic interests allowed distant trade to flourish and endowed transnational family enterprises with sufficient stamina and capacity to recuperate when things got difficult. Demographic and political factors weighed more heavily in the fates of eighteenth-century international family businesses than in those of the next generation. A high mortality rate made it difficult to sustain business over several generations, especially outside of Europe. Levant trade took a fairly high toll: 5 to 10 percent of young European Levant merchants died during stints abroad.186 The failure of branches across the Atlantic was often due less to lack of mercantile skill than to unfavorable climates and colonial warfare. Subtropical climates were even less wholesome; European merchants in the Caribbean often died after just a brief period of work, placing trade houses there in the continuous predicament of finding successors.187 The death rate in Europe in the eighteenth century also affected the fates of trade enterprises much more than in subsequent centuries. The early deaths of

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Johann Bode’s two sons caused the house considerable difficulty.188 Similarly, the premature deaths of the Garrels family’s adult children kept the Leer-based family business from becoming a genuinely international enterprise. Tjard Ludwig Garrels had built up a flourishing business with far-reaching trade connections. Three of his sons who reached adulthood remained in Leer, while Hermann Jakob went to London and Peter Wilhelm, as mentioned above, to Amsterdam. The latter died of an infection at the age of twenty-seven. Hermann Jakob’s brother Gerhard, who joined his brother’s business in London, died of consumption at the age of twenty-six in 1803. One year earlier, their brother Ludwig had died in Leer. While visiting Leer, Hermann Jakob died unexpectedly of typhus at the age of forty-one.189 The only brother to outlast the Napoleonic Wars was Johann Hinrich. The parent trade house in Leer suffered immensely when Napoleon’s army occupied East Friesland and eventually went bankrupt. The London branch flourished, but after Hermann Jakob Garrels’s death, his estate was lost to the circumstances of war. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, death and war-related crises had greatly diminished a once prosperous, internationally expanding house. War, revolts, and privateers all increased the risks of Atlantic business. During the Coalition Wars, the Wilckens family ceased trade with Friedrich Wilckens in Jamaica.190 Unstable political conditions in the Caribbean and South America caused legal dilemmas, as changes in power also meant changes in the legal status of European merchants, who could suddenly find themselves subject to different laws or threatened with deportation, depending on the nationality of a new power. Hence, Jacob Friedrich Wilckens became a British subject after fleeing to Jamaica.191 John Gottlieb Sultzbergen from Saxony, seeing his position and property jeopardized when Suriname came under British rule, soon traveled to England to undergo British naturalization.192 Similar reasons moved W. Vogeler to seek naturalization. The owner of a trade firm in Liverpool, he was also an associate in a trade house in Bahia, Brazil, headed by his partner, a merchant from Trieste. The prospect of losing his home and plantation in Bahia drove him to seek British naturalization because Brazil threatened to deport all foreigners except Britons and Americans.193 When Dutch colonies were conquered by Great Britain, Dutch merchants faced countless legal and business problems. The antenati and postnati rule of British nationality did not automatically make the inhabitants of occupied colonies British subjects. When the Peace Treaty of 1814 stipulated that the former Dutch colony of Demerara (now Guyana) be handed over to Great Britain indefinitely, the English government gave all of the territory’s inhabitants—regardless of their citizenship—the option of either accepting British nationality or leaving the island. All objectors were allowed a period of six years to sell their property and leave the country.194 At the time the treaty was signed, Philp Frederic Tinne and Andreas Christian Boode lived in England and, unaware of the legal

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requirements, failed to declare their intentions in this respect. Both men had worked for the British government during the occupation of Demerara and were married to Englishwomen, and after the Treaty, both erroneously thought of themselves as Englishmen.195 Eventually they found themselves forced to apply for naturalization. Being naturalized was important for London-based German merchants trading with Russia and the Levant, and it was a prerequisite for joining the companies and doing trade with monopolized regions. The next chapter is devoted to this facet of German merchants’ operations in mercantile-era England.

Notes 1. Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783, Oxford, 1992 [1989], 3. 2. Harold Edward F. Fischer, The Portugal Trade: A Study of Anglo-Portuguese Commerce, 1700– 1770, London, 1971; also see Allan Christelow, “Economic Background of the Anglo-Spanish War of 1762,” JMH 18 (1946): 22–36 and “Great Britain and the Trade from Cadiz and Lisbon to Spanish-America and Brazil, 1759–1783,” HAHR 27 (1947): 1–29. 3. Ralph Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1700–1774,” in Walter E. Minchinton, The Growth of English Overseas Trade in the 17th and 18th Centuries, London, 1969, 99–120, esp. 103, and Elizabeth Schumpeter, English Overseas Statistics, 1697–1808, Oxford, 1960, 11. 4. Elisabeth Karin Newman, “Anglo-Hamburg Trade in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries” (Ph.D. diss., London, 1979), 205. 5. Stanley D. Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain: From the Industrial Revolution to World War I, Cambridge, 1992, 5f. 6. Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1700–1774,” 113. 7. The description that follows is largely taken from the following literature: Thomas S. Ashton, Economic Fluctuations in the Eighteenth Century, 1700–1800, London, 1959; Ralph Davis, “English Overseas Trade, 1700–1774,” 99–120; Ralph Davis, The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade, Leicester, 1979; Schumpeter, English Overseas Statistics; Charles P. Kindleberger, “Commercial Expansion and the Industrial Revolution,” JEEH 4 (1975): 613–54; R. P. Thomas, “Overseas Trade and Economic Development, 1660–1775,” in Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey, eds., The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. 1, 1700–1860, Cambridge, 1981. 8. Many got the necessary seed capital, or at least part of it, from their parents. 9. Letter to his parents dated 26 Jan. 1790, in Ernst Esselborn, Das Geschlecht Garrels aus Leer, Berlin-Pankow, 1938, 118–122. 10. On Selcken see below, on the other see Prob 11/751 and 11/835. 11. Letter dated 19 Jan. 1796, in Esselborn, Garrels, 129. 12. Joseph Collyer Esq., The Parent’s and Guardian’s Directory, and the Youth’s Guide, in the Choice of a Profession or Trade, London, 1761, 191f. 13. R. Campbell, London Tradesma.n Being a Compenious View of all the Trades. London, 1747, 336 and 339. See also Collyer, Parent’s and Guardian’s Directory, 119f. 14. On Chesapeake trade see Jacob M. Price, Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: The View from The Chesapeake, 1770–1776, Cambridge, MA, 1981. For the other numbers see Ralph Davis, Aleppo and Devonshire Square: English Traders in the Levant in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1967, 69f.

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15. NA Edinburgh GD 30/1583/7, 17 Aug. 1753, Walter Shairp’s letter to Thomas Shairp. 16. Jacob M. Price, ed., Joshua Johnson’s Letterbook, 1771–1774: Letters from a Merchant in London to His Partners in Maryland, London, 1979, p. xi. 17. See chapter 2. 18. HRO, Korten Account Book J 56/VI/2, fol. 19 Dec. 1739. 19. Prob 11/751. 20. HRO, Korten MSS BA 89/8/7, Articles of Partnership, April 1769. 21. East Sussex Record Office, Schiffner Archive, MS 2802. 22. Adolf Hasenclever, Peter Hasenclever aus Remscheid-Ehringhausen, ein deutscher Kaufmann des 18. Jahrhunderts, Gotha, 1922, 28. 23. NA Edinburgh, GD 30/1583/14, Shairp Papers, 21 May 1761, London. 24. The papers do not clearly state just how much Garrels brought into the venture. In one of his letters he mentions £2,000 as being the absolute minimum and asks his parents to pay out his inheritance. He hoped to put up as much as Hinrichs, who wanted to contribute £5,000. (Garrels’s letters from London to his parents, dated 19 Jan. 1796 and spring 1797.) His father’s will states that Hermann Jakob had gotten not only his due inheritance (not further quantified) but also an additional credit of 8,500 Reichstaler in gold (about £2,000); Esselborn, Garrels, 129f. and 134f., app. 5, p. 97. 25. See the last section of chapter 3 for more information on this trade house. 26. See chapter 5 on bankruptcies. 27. National Westminster Bank Archives, 2 155 Articles of Co-Partnership, 28 Nov. 1776. 28. Prob 11/751. 29. Prob 11/751. 30. Prob 11/835. 31. Esselborn, Garrels, 135. 32. Esselborn, Garrels, 137f. Hermann Jakob hoped to marry one of Christian M. Schröder’s daughters. But due to bankruptcy he had to cancel his marriage plans. 33. Price, Joshua Johnson’s Letterbook, 9. 34. Upon arriving in London Garrels first lived at the “Anti-Gallican Coffeehouse” before making the address of Sebastian Fridag’s trade firm his own (see Esselborn, Garrels, 118, 125). For Hane see A Complete Guide, 1749. 35. Kent’s London Directory, 1765. Shortly afterward they moved to Mark Lane before finally opening their office at Mincing Lane No. 6. Kent’s London Directory, 1768, 1769, 1770. 36. Price, Joshua Johnson’s Letterbook, xxii. Since his first address was not respectable enough for an ambitious merchant, a few months later Johnson sought different quarters, saying “I found that in the manner I lived [no one] would answer. It looked so mean. I therefore resolved to take a counting house which has made me of the consequence a merchant merits. It has stripped me of the appearance of [being] a transient person.” Ibid., see also p. 9. 37. Kent’s London Directory, 1779. 38. University of Illinois, Brandt Collection, esp. box 1. 39. Mortimer, The Universal Director, or the Nobleman and Gentleman’s True Guide To the Master and Professors of the Liberal and Polite Arts and Sciences; and of the Mechanic Arts, Manufactures, and Trades, established in London and Westminster and Environs. London, 1763. 40. Kent’s London Directory, 1738. Things were similar for Richter & Taylor. Their address read: Richter & Taylor, merchts, near the King’s Mill, Rotherhithe or Will’s Coffeehouse (Kent’s London Directory, 1780). 41. As mentioned, Emanuel H. Brandt, founder of the bank Brandt & Co., first used the address “Batson’s Coffeehouse.” In 1815 his trade house was located at No. 9, Lawrence Pountney Street, but in 1819 he again used “Batson’s Coffeehouse” in Cornhill for correspondence while relocating to Lombard Street No. 34 (Kent’s London Directory, 1820).

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42. Christopher Hake Jr. began his career at “John’s Coffeehouse.” Kent’s London Directory, 1765. 43. Christian Poppe never had more than a coffeehouse address (Kent’s London Directory, 1667–1779). 44. Oom came from a respected merchant family in Reval (Tallinn) that was originally from Russia. Early in the eighteenth century, theirs was the biggest company in Reval; not until the latter half of the century was it outranked by the British trade company Clayhills & Sons. Thomas Oom’s brother Adolph was Reval’s mayor. 45. In 1812 one Richard Cowle, living in Elbing, was acting as a creditor for the Oom trade house, TNA B3/3805. 46. The Fentons were British Russia merchants; one member of the family was a partner in the house of Cumming & Fenton in Riga. 47. Kent’s London Directory, 1807. 48. See chapter 5 for bankruptcies. 49. TNA, Bankruptcy Records, B3/3805, sheet E. 50. HRO, BA 89/8/7, Articles of Partnership John Amyand & John Roger Siebel, April 1769; John Victor Bredt, Geschichte der Familie Siebel. Ein Beitrag zur Kultur- und Kirchengeschichte des Niederrheins, Marburg, 1937, 99. 51. Esselborn, Garrels, 109. 52. For more on this concept see Stephan Selzer and Ulf Christian Ewert, “Verhandeln und Verkaufen, Vernetzen und Vertrauen. Über die Netzwerkstruktur des Hansischen Handels,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter 119 (2001): 136–161, esp. 146. 53. Frederick William Commerell and John Ulrich Commerell (brothers from Heilbronn) were naturalized in 1752 and 1754, respectively; John Conrad Heinzelmann and John Swiccard Heinzelmann (brothers from Augsburg) were naturalized in 1754 and 1755, respectively; Benjamin Berckenhout and John Berckenhout (brothers from Hamburg) were naturalized in 1722 and 1723. See the next chapter for more on chain migration. 54. On 18 June 1711, William married a daughter of Sir Peter Meyer and Sara Anna, née Berenberg. Sara Anna Berenberg was a great-granddaughter of Sara Amsinck. Caesar Amsinck, Die niederländische und hamburgische Familie Amsinck. Ein Versuch einer Familiengeschichte, vols. 1 and 2, Hamburg, 1886 and 1891, vol. 3, edited by Otto Hintze, Hamburg, 1932. See esp. vol. 2, 36. 55. Kent’s London Directory, 1736. 56. Henry Voguell worked with Christoph Videband (from Berlin) from 1708 to 1710. His partner from 1715 to 1725 was Florian Göbel (from Hamburg). For the next three years he became a partner to his cousin Frederick Voguell (from Herford) and Anthony Fürstenau (from Osnabrück). As of 1743 he took in Theophilus Pritzler (from Herford) and George Amyand as partners. In between he occasionally worked alone. STAB A 620.147, funeral speech for Mr. Henry Voguell, Esquire, from Bremen, 1746 (I thank Ms. S. Boesenberg for bringing this source to my attention). 57. In 1740 these were Kraguelius & Clarke on Fenchurch Street and Steinman & Wilson on Sise Lane, A Complete Guide’ to All Persons Who Have Any Trade or Concern in the City of London and Parts Adjacent, 1740. 58. Claudius had been George II’s surgeon. 59. As of 1766 the firm, called Amyand, Rucker & Siebel, merchts, was located at 5 Laurence Pountney Hill. Kent’s London Directory, 1766. 60. John Anthony Rucker, nephew of the aforementioned John Anthony Rucker, married the daughter of deceased Stephen Bencraft on 8 April 1810. (Hamburger Geschlechterbuch vol. 5; for more about Rucker & Bencraft, see Guildhall Library MSS 15 637). 61. See Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, “Staatsangehörigkeit und Fremdes Know-How. Die deutschen Kaufleute im britischen Russlandhandel,” VSWG 89 (2002): 379–399.

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62. E.g., Uhthoff & Battier or Fridag & Bourcard—Both Battier and Bourcard were from Switzerland. Muilman & Co. took on Henry Nantes from Bremen as a partner; see below for more on their Dutch-German trade house. 63. The following description is based on scrutiny of London’s directories, petitions for and acts of naturalization, and the Hamburger Geschlechterbuch. Hamburger Geschlechterbuch, vol. 5 (= Deutsches Geschlechterbuch, vol. 27), 1914, 129–222. 64. Kent’s London Directory, 1769. 65. Hamburger Geschlechterbuch, vol. 5 (= Deutsches Geschlechterbuch, vol. 27), 1914, 190. 66. Ibid. 67. W. Lowndes, A London Directory 1774–1795 for the year 1785. Between 1777 and 1785 the firm went by the name of Rucker, John Anthony, merchts. in Kent’s London Directory, existing under that name in the directory until 1786. 68. All three, Martin, Siegmund, and John Diederich Rücker, claimed reasons of inheritance as their grounds for seeking British nationality. TNA, HO, 5/24. 69. Prob 11/1410. 70. TNA, Bankruptcy Records, C 217/61. The Rückers bought the refinery for £1,740. 71. See below for more detail. 72. Heinrich Leo Behncke, Eine Lübecker Kaufmannsfamilie, Lübeck, 1900, part 1, 75. 73. See the stories of Henry Voguell and Georg Krüger. 74. Walter Dietz, Die Wuppertaler Garnnahrung. Geschichte der Industrie und des Handels von Elberfeld und Barmen 1400–1800, Bergische Forschungen 4, Neustadt an der Aisch, 1957. See also Walter Dietz, “Die Wuppertaler Garnnahrung,” in Horst Jordan and Heinz Wolff, eds., Werden und Wachsen der Wuppertaler Wirtschaft von der Garnnahrung 1727 zur Modernen Industrie, Wuppertal, 1977, 23–48, esp. 334ff., and Stefan Gorißen, “Bergisch-märkische Kaufmannschaft: Handels- und Verwandtschaftsnetze,” Zeitschrift des Bergischen Geschichtsvereins 99 (1999–2001): 43–69, esp. 46–50. 75. Only John and Jasper were naturalized, in 1660 and 1667, respectively. I thank Dr. Uwe Eckhardt, former Director of the Wuppertal City Archive, for information on the Kaus family. 76. John Engelbert and John William Teschemacher were naturalized in 1685 and 1691, respectively; Isaac was not. 77. Jasper Kaus married, but had no issue. Upon his death in 1679 he bequeathed his estate to his two nephews John and Jacob Kaus and his niece Mary. Prob 11/359. 78. The sources say nothing about the other son’s occupation. The family’s domicile remained Edmonton, where they achieved the status of Lord of the Manor. 79. Besides the Teschemachers, around 1710 Engelbert Iserloo and Caspar Bergmann also lived in London. 80. John Engelbert’s son died before him (see below for more about him). His daughter married Isaac Panchaud, who came from a family of bankers adhering to the Calvinist doctrine of the Waldenses (Vaudois). Panchaud went bankrupt in 1743. His son later founded a bank in Paris that became the forerunner of the Bank of France. See H. Lüthy, La Banque Protestante en France, 2 vols., Paris 1959 and 1961, vol. 2, 420–439, 447–449, 458–463, and 693–696. 81. GL MSS 11 316/97 and 100, Land Tax 1731 and 1732. See also the register of St. Martin’s Orgar, The Register of St. Clement Eastcheap and St. Martin Orgar, Publications of the Harlean Society vol. 68, 15, The Intelligencer or Merchants Assistant, London, 1738. 82. Johann Abraham Korten arrived in 1718, followed in 1719 by Peter Lucas. Shaw II, 53, 63, 123, 124; on Lucas see also Deutsches Geschlechterbuch, vol. 14, 402. In 1731 Peter Korten came over; in 1737 Godfrey Wichelhausen did the same. 83. Peter Lucas died without issue in London in 1749. Caspar Bergmann was survived by two daughters, one of whom married a merchant in Amsterdam. Bank of England documents note that Bergmann was a surgeon (i.e., physician); whether he was also active as a merchant we do

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84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

not know. The two occupations were not incompatible (as we know from George Amyand’s father). John Roger Teschemacher’s father had moved from Elberfeld to Hanover around the middle of the century. For more detail on the hosiery industry see Stanley D. Chapman, “Enterprise and Innovation in the British Hosiery Industry,” Textile History 5 (1974): 14–37. Bennet Woodcroft, ed., Patents of Invention, Chronologically Arranged from 2 March 1617 to 1 October 1752, London, 1854, patents no. 1917 and 1808. Deutsches Geschlechterbuch, vol. 24 (1914), 297. For the history of the textile business in Elberfeld see Dietz, Wuppertaler Garnnahrung and Wolfgang Hoth, Die Industrialisierung einer rheinischen Gewerbestadt, dargestellt am Beispiel Wuppertal, Cologne, 1975, esp. 93. Sirps was naturalized in 1670. Henry Voguell wanted Amyand to take Godfrey Molling into his business if either of the other two nephews, Henry Uhthoff or Henry Voguell, proved incapable. Prob 11/751. Kent’s London Directory, 1761. Godfrey Molling was naturalized in 1753. Henry A. Langkopff (from Braunschweig) was naturalized in 1750. See below. Godfrey Molling married a daughter of Anthony Fürstenau from Osnabrück, one of Henry Voguell’s former business partners. After Langkopff’s death, Frederick Rasch from Flensburg and later John Spitta from Braunschweig became new partners in the firm. Price, Joshua Johnson’s Letterbook, xxvf.; Arno Kunze, “Der Zittauer Leinengroßhandel im 18. Jahrhundert,” Zittauer Geschichtsblätter 6 (1930): 44. Hamburg Church, register of naturalized persons, 11 March 1748/49 (included in GL L19/ MSS 8 356 Hamburger Lutherische Kirche (Hamburg Church); Prob 11/751. For more detail, see below. Anthony Cross, By the Banks of the Neva: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in Eighteenth-Century Russia, Cambridge, 1997, 407, n. 114. For more on the Bodes, see chapter 2. Generally Bremen’s entire port was called the Schlachte, although this was specifically the designation for the waterfront district. There are only two gaps, one each for the first two decades; see below. For more details see especially the introduction to Jürgen Schneider et al., eds., Statistik des Hamburger seewärtigen Einfuhrhandels im 18. Jahrhundert, St. Katharinen, 2001. See also Klaus Weber, “Die Admiralitätszoll- und Convoy-Einnahmebücher. Eine wichtige Quelle für Hamburgs Wirtschaftsgeschichte im 18. Jahrhundert,” Hamburger Wirtschafts-Chronik Neue Folge 1 (2000): 83–112. Hans Jürgen Von Witzendorff, “Beiträge zur bremischen Handelsgeschichte in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Bremisches Jahrbuch 43 (1951): 342–394. Wilhelm Lührs, Die Freie Hansestadt Bremen und England in der Zeit des Deutschen Bundes (1815–1867), Bremen 1958, 123. Lührs assumes that trade with France ended once the Napoleonic Wars had begun. See Lührs, Bremen, 122. According to Luhrs, in 1779 the value of imports from France was twice that of imports from England and climbed to 11 million livres by 1788. The number of ships arriving, however, does not confirm any such leading role for France. Lührs, Bremen, 122. See Angabebücher der Schlachte, STAB, 2-SS.2.a. 4a 3, vol. 2, 1754. Retberg imported fish oil and hides from London on 14 Aug., 10 Oct., and 11 Dec. 1754. Sibylla Bösenberg, “Johann Abraham Retberg, gest. 1813, Blätter der “Maus” Gesellschaft für Familienforschung. e.v., Bremen 29 (1004): 53–59. STAB 7, 42, Retberg “Book of Correspondence,” 15 June 1768.

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108. TNA C 104/247; on Amyand & Siebel see below. 109. This selection rests in part on a preselection made by Karl Schwebel in compiling the data in the first place. (I thank Dr. Marianne Schwebel for kindly allowing me to view her husband’s manuscripts.) 110. Christoph Friedrich Menke, “Die wirtschaftlichen und politischen Beziehungen der Hansestädte zu Russland im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert” (Ph.D. diss, Göttingen, 1959), 64, 186, 376. 111. STAB 2-SS.2.a. 4a 3, Angabebücher der Schlachte, vol. 4, 18 May 1775. 112. Hermann Dietrich Retberg, born in 1751, completed an apprenticeship in Lübeck at the trade and chemistry firm Lange & Knuth before going to London, where he “entered service at various merchant houses.” Behncke, Lübecker Kaufmannsfamilie, 76. 113. Lowndes, A London Directory, 1781; first in Kent’s London Directory in 1783. 114. As reported by Heinrich Leo Behncke from Lübeck, who was related to Hermann Dietrich Retberg, the latter apparently made his fortune with indigo, which was among the colonial wares he shipped to his family in Bremen in 1798. See Behncke, Lübecker Kaufmannsfamilie, 76, and STAB 2-SS.2.a. 4a 3, Angabebücher der Schlachte, vol. 13. 115. Three came from Hull, two from Liverpool, and one from Bristol. Two others were noted as merely being “from England.” STAB 2-SS.2.a. 4a 3, Angabebücher der Schlachte, vol. 10. 116. Ibid., vol. 13. 117. TNA, C 104/289. Bremen’s directories for the 1790s list the Retberg firm as a linen business. Karl H. Schwebel, Bremer Kaufleute in den Freihäfen der Karibik. Von den Anfängen des Bremer Überseehandels bis 1815, Bremen, 1995, 255, n. 151. 118. STAB 2-SS.2.a. 4a 3, Angabebücher der Schlachte, vols. 2 and 4. 119. He also imported coffee from Baltimore. STAB 2-SS.2.a. 4a 3, Angabebücher der Schlachte, vol. 13, e.g., the entries for 18 May and 22 June 1798. 120. Ibid., vols. 11 and 13. 121. Schwebel, Bremer Kaufleute, 335f. 122. STAB 2-SS.2.a. 4a 3 Angabebücher der Schlachte, vol. 9. 123. Not a single ship arrived from Bordeaux in 1798, and in 1800 there was only one, bringing sherry. STAB 2-SS.2.a. 4a 3 Angabebücher der Schlachte, vol. 14, 23 May 1800. 124. See Stanley D. Chapman, “The International Houses: The Continental Contribution to British Commerce, 1800–1860,”Journal of European Economic History 6 (1977): 5f. 125. For family networks of the Hanseatic League see Selzer and Ewert, Verhandeln und Verkaufen, 136–161. 126. See the introduction to Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ed., Merchant Networks in the Early Modern World, Aldershot, 1996, xiii. 127. Selzer and Ewert, Verhandeln und Verkaufen, 136–161. 128. The few extant studies include Gunnar Dahl, Trade, Trust, and Networks: Commercial Culture in Late Medieval Italy, Lund, 1998 and Klaus Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute im Atlantikhandel 1680–1830, Munich, 2004. 129. Chapman, International Houses, 5; on Italian trade houses see Dahl, Trade, Trust, and Networks. 130. Chapman, International Houses, 10 and idem, Merchant Enterprise in Britain, xiii and esp. part 2. 131. For the Bethmanns see Wolfgang Henninger, Johann Jakob von Bethmann 1717–1792. Kaufmann, Reeder und kaiserlicher Konsul in Bordeaux, Bochum, 1993; Claus Helbing, Die Bethmanns. Aus der Geschichte eines alten Handelshauses zu Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, 1948; Wilfried Forstmann, Simon Moritz von Bethmann, 1768–1826, Bankier, Diplomat und politischer Beobachter, Frankfurt am Main, 1973. For the Burckhardts (Bourcards), see Carl Burckhardt-Sarasin, Aus der Geschichte der Großhandelsfirmen und “Indiennes Fabriques” Chris-

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132. 133.

134.

135. 136. 137. 138.

139. 140. 141. 142.

143. 144. 145.

toph Burckhardt & Sohn in der “Goldenen Müntz” und dem “Ernauerhof ” Christoph Burckhardt & Cie im “Sägehof ” mit seiner Nanter Filiale, n.p. [Basel], n.d. [1950]. For the business in Nantes see Markus A. Denzel, Der Preiskurant des Handelshauses Pelloutier & Cie aus Nantes, Stuttgart, 1997. Benoît Bourcard was a partner in the Pelloutier trading house. Burckhardt-Sarasin, Burckhardt & Sohn, 4. In an unpublished depiction of the German trade house Schröder, Hildegard Marchtaler wrote: “We know nothing about how the Schröder sons who had established themselves in London worked with their branch in Petersburg and with their father’s firm, Christian Mathias Schröder.” Hildegard Marchtaler, Die Firma J. H. Schröder & Co. in Hamburg 1819–1903, unpublished manuscript, STA Hamburg 622-1 Folder I/2, p. 3. It went bankrupt during the great bank crisis of 1763. Johan E. Elias, De Vroedschap van Amsterdam 1578–1795, Haarlem, 1903–1905, 707ff.; Marten Gerbertus Buist, At Spes Non Fracta. Hope & Co. 1770–1815, The Hague, 1974, esp. 3–96 and 104–108; Ludwig Beutin, Der deutsche Seehandel im Mittelmeergebiet bis zu den Napoleonischen Kriegen, vol. 1, Neumünster, 1933, 48. Prob 31/52; see also Johann Bode’s account book (STAB 7, 2075 Briefbuch von Johann Bode 1683–1694). Conrad De Smeth was Bode’s banker. Prob 31/52. On the Amsinck’s seventeenth-century branch in Spain see Hermann Kellenbenz, Unternehmerkräfte im Hamburger Portugal- und Spanienhandel 1590–1625, Hamburg, 1954, 182–184. Roseveare, Markets and Merchants, 437, 539; Hamburger Geschlechterbuch, vol. 9 (Deutsches Geschlechterbuch, vol. 27), 27 and 29; Caesar Amsinck, Die niederländische und hamburgische Familie Amsinck. Versuch einer Familiengeschichte, vol. 3, edited by Otto Hintze, Hamburg, 1932, 7. Henrich Daniel Gildemeister founded the Dutch branch of the Gildemeister trade house. Alfred M. H. Gildemeister, “Die Familie Gildemeister 1675–1875,” in Club of Bremen, ed., 150 Jahre Bremer Clubleben. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte Bremens, Bremen, 1933, 248. Esselborn, Garrels, 108. On the Van Berchem family see Hans Jürgen Witzendorff-Rehdiger, ed., Die Personalschriften der Bremer Staatsbibliothek bis 1800, Bremen, 1960, 17, no. 150. The Klencke brothers from Bremen are one example of this (see below). Exeter’s merchants exported considerable amounts of wool cloth to Spain. The city’s wine imports from Spain were an important source of income for the merchant community there, although they by no means equaled the quantities of wine imported to London. William G. Hoskins, Industry, Trade, and People in Exeter 1688–1800, Manchester, 1935, esp. chap. 3. Hermann Katenkamp from Bremen first migrated to Exeter and, alongside John Baring, became one of the town’s wealthiest merchants. He was survived by four sons (Prob 11/928). Exeter’s intense trade relations with Spain encouraged one of his sons to move there. Another of his sons later became the Consul of Messina. Harold Edward S. Fisher, “Lisbon, Its English Merchant Community, and the Mediterranean in the Eighteenth Century,” in Philip L. Cottrell and Derek H. Aldcroft, eds., Shipping, Trade, and Commerce: Essays in Memory of Ralph Davis, Leicester, 1981, 42. For example, Friedrich Wienholt migrated to Leghorn (STAB, 2-R.2.B.3, Abzugsgelder [emigration fees], UV K 31 and 536) while Henrich (Henry) Wienholt migrated to England (Shaw II, 207). See the Wienholt genealogy in STAB Graue Mappen (grey folders, Bremen). Raymond Robert Uhthoff-Kaufmann, The Uhthoff Families, n.d. (Rainer Uhthoff from Berlin kindly put these documents at my disposal). Ibid. One descendant owned a hat factory in Cadiz. The family’s Spanish branch was established by Ludolph Christian Uhthoff, who married a Spanish woman in 1805 in Cadiz. His grandson Ludolfo Enrique Uhthoff migrated to England in the nineteenth century and

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146. 147. 148. 149.

150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155.

156. 157.

158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163.

became a partner in the trade house Fesser, Uhthoff & Co. On the Uhthoffs in Spain see also Wilhelm von den Driesch, Die ausländischen Kaufleute während des 18. Jahrhunderts in Spanien und ihre Beteiligung am Kolonialhandel, Cologne and Vienna, 1972, 208, 215. Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute, 117. Besides the Amsinck family, Hamburg’s Magen family merits mention in this context; we shall return to them later. Richard Roberts, The Schroders: Merchants and Bankers, London, 1992, 19. Christian Mathias Schröder’s youngest son immigrated to Riga. Eric Amburger, Die Familie Brandt. Hamburg— Archangel—St. Petersburg—London, Groitzsch, 1937. George William Soltau immigrated to London, while his brother settled in Russia (see below). Another member of the family, Christian Soltau, married into the Ellermann family, which owned one of the most important German trade firms in Cadiz; the Soltaus thus also had intense trade relations with Spain. See below for more on the London Soltau family’s trade with Spain. I thank Klaus Weber for bringing Christian Soltau to my attention. On the Ellermann family see Klaus Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute, esp. 126f. Hamburger Geschlechterbuch vol. 5, 190. For the Gildemeister family, see Gildemeister, “Die Familie Gildemeister 1675–1875,” en, 150 Jahre Bremer Clubleben, 248. Ibid., 190, 207f. Friedrich Wilckens, Geschichte der Familie Wilckens, n.p., 1964, 148j (grey folders). Wilckens, Familie Wilckens, 148cf.; STAB, 2-R.2.B.1, Einnahmen von Abzugsgelder [revenue from emigration fees], b.1., pp. 37 and 42, K 215. According to Spanish law, an alien who lived in Spain for more than ten years, married a Spanish woman, or owned property in Spain automatically became a Spanish citizen. See Hans Pohl, “Die diplomatischen und konsularischen Beziehungen zwischen den Hansestädten und Spanien in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter 83 (1965): 63, the Eiffler case. Children born in Spain fell under the right of the soil (ius soli). Other regulations besides these gave large-scale merchants the right to register themselves as Transeuntes; for details see Driesch, Die ausländischen Kaufleute, chap. B. Naturalized persons could have the status of a Domiciliado or Vecino; for details see Driesch, Die ausländischen Kaufleute, 44, and Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute, 96–97. On the handling of naturalization in France see Peter Sahlins, “Fictions of a Catholic France: The Naturalization of Foreigners in Ancien Régime France,” Representations 47 (1994): 85–110. According to Driesch, only seventy-nine foreign merchants acquired Spanish citizenship (Die ausländischen Kaufleute, 30–31). For further information on the privileges enjoyed by communities of alien merchants see Hans Pohl, “Die hanseatischen Nationen in Cadiz und Malaga im letzten Viertel des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter 84 (1966): 88–101 and Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute, ibid., 96–97. Driesch, Die ausländischen Kaufleute, 246–247, 516–517, 530; Christelow, Great Britain and the Trades, 2–29. For more on the Methuen-Asiento Trade Agreement of 1725 see Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute, 105–106. Amsinck, Die Familie Amsinck, 7. Driesch, Die ausländischen Kaufleute, 389. Paul Butel, “Les négociants allemands de Bordeaux dans la deuxième moitié du XVIII siècle,” in Jürgen Schneider et al., eds., Wirtschaftskräfte und Wirtschaftswege, vol. 2: Wirtschaftskräfte in der europäischen Expansion, Stuttgart, 1978, 597. Jean-Françoise Dubost, La France italienne XVIe–XVIIe siècle, Aubier, 1997, 146–147 and JeanFrançoise Debost and Peter Sahlins, Et Si On Faisait Payer Les Étrangers? Louis XIV, Les Immigrés et Quelques Autres, Paris, 1999. See also Henninger, Bethmann, vol. 1, 41. In the early

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164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178.

179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187.

188. 189. 190.

eighteenth century, Hendrich Luetkens from Hamburg was granted French citizenship even though he was Protestant. See Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute, 176–177. Ibid. See also Henninger, Bethmann, vol. 1, 40–41. Selzer and Ewert, Verhandeln und Verkaufen, 146. TNA, Bankruptcy Records, B3/3688, as told by Janson. For more detail, see below. Mark Häberlein and Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein, Die Erben der Welser. Der Karibikhandel der Augsburger Firma Obwexer im Zeitalter der Revolutionen, Augsburg, 1995. Esselborn, Garrels, 110. Prob 11/1485. TNA, Bankruptcy Records, B3/3862. Ibid., B3/191, balance sheet B and C, fols. 103, 111. Ibid., B3/191. Ibid., B3/3805, balance sheet E, and 12 Nov. 1812. Ibid., B3/2116. See below for more detail. Monica Boyd, “Family and Personal Networks in International Migration: Recent Development and New Agendas,” IMR 23 (1989): 638–661, esp. 651ff. See also Jari Ojala, “Approaching Europe: The Merchant Networks between Finland and Europe during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” European Review of Economic History 1 (1997): 329. On marriage strategies see Hermann Mitgau, “Geschlossene Heiratskreise sozialer Inzucht,” in Hellmuth Rössler, ed., Deutsches Patriziat 1430–1740, Limburg, 1968, 1–25 and Wilfried Reininghaus, Die Stadt Iserlohn und ihre Kaufleute (1700–1815), Dortmund, 1995, 81–116. For further detail see Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, “The Commercial Culture of Spiritual Kinship amongst German Immigrant Merchants in London, c. 1750–1830,” in Robert Lee, ed., Commerce and Culture: Nineteenth-Century Business Elites, Farnham, 2011, 225–254. David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, Oxford, 1997, 149. See also Will Costers, Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in Early Modern England, Aldershot, 2002. John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400–1700, Oxford, 1985, 16. For Voguell see above, for Liebert Wolters see Prob 11/870 and for Nicholas Magens see Prob 11/901. John Henry Hecker from Bergzabern also left his trading firm and his estate to his nephew and godchild (Prob 11/1695). See John Bossy, “Godparenthood: The Fortunes and History of a Social Institution in Early Modern Christianity,” in K. von Greyerz, ed., Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500–1800, London, 1980, 194–201. Baptism register of the Hamburg Church, 1775 (GL, L19/MSS 8 356 Hamburger Lutherische Kirche [Hamburg Church]). Davis, Aleppo, 67, esp. note 2. Johann Berenberg (from Hamburg) died after just one year in Suriname. Hermann Kellenbenz, “Deutsche Plantagenbesitzer und Kaufleute in Surinam vom Ende des 18. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 3 (1966): 142. See also Christian Degn, Die Schimmelmanns im Atlantischen Dreieckshandel. Gewinn und Gewissen, 3rd ed., Neumünster, 2000. The number of employees and relatives who died in a short time because of the climate was high, forcing Schimmelmann time after time to find suitable successors. See above. Esselborn, Garrels, appendix 7, 109. Wilckens, Familie Wilckens, 148 K–M.

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191. Wilckens, Familie Wilckens, 148 K. Having been naturalized in Jamaica, he was not a full British subject but a British colonial subject instead. See above for various forms of nationality in Great Britain. 192. HLRO, Lords Committee Books, vol. 44, 366. Sultzbergen owned property in Suriname and planned to return there after being naturalized in England. 193. TNA, HO, 1/4, 23 April and 3 May 1811. 194. “Convention between Great Britain and the Netherlands relative to the Dutch Colonies, signed in London, 13 August 1814,” in Clive Parry, ed., The Consolidated Treaty Series, vol. 63, 1813–1815, New York, 1969, 321ff. 195. In their applications for naturalization they did not mention the impending loss of colonial property but instead said they wished to purchase property in England. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the purchase of land in England was the only argument accepted by the Home Office. All applications for naturalization from that period mention property purchases, irrespective of the genuine reasons for seeking naturalization. TNA, HO, 1/4: Tinne 24 March 1823; Boode 20 Feb., 29 May 1819; 18. Jan. 1821; 26 April 1823. An anonymous protest initially held up Boode’s naturalization, but ultimately both Tinne and Boode were naturalized on 27 June 1823. HLRO, 4 Geo IV c.36 and 37.

Chapter 4

GERMAN MERCHANTS IN THE LEVANT AND RUSSIA COMPANIES

? Trade companies monopolized Britain’s trade with Russia and the Levant until the early nineteenth century. But after the “Act to Enlarge the Trade to Russia” of 1699 forced the Russia Company to reform, all Britons were permitted to become members for an entrance fee of just £5. Some decades later, the Levant Company followed suit, reducing admission fees from £50 to £20. Foreigners, Catholics, and Jews remained excluded from membership. Although the Naturalization Act did grant foreigners the right to membership in the trade companies, the combination of its clause barring non-Protestants from naturalization and the requirement that they possess the Freedom of the City formally prevented Catholics and Jews from joining. As a rule, denizen status did not suffice.1 Monopolies forced all those desiring to trade legally with the Levant or Russia to join the companies. The Russia Company rigorously controlled seaports: besides duties exacted on imported goods, an intercepted interloper was charged a fine of 5 percent of the volume of their imports and had to pay an alms penalty (mulet) for the poor.2 The Russia Company compelled interlopers to join, and most merchants complied: admission fees were low, and membership reduced or even canceled their fines.3 Reformed companies opened membership to all naturalized subjects. Did German merchants seize the opportunity? Unlike joint-stock companies, both the Levant and the Russia Company were regulated. Financial interests were not necessarily the primary motive behind membership; the crucial issue was obtaining the right to trade in monopolized markets. Trends in Britain’s commercial relations to the Levant and Russia, overall conditions of trade abroad (required capital, credit conditions, risk), and the presence of kin or business contacts in Notes from this chapter begin on page 161.

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those regions were persuasive factors as well. Family, friendship, and business relationships between native-born company members and naturalized subjects were also significant. Thus a brief overview of the overall economic development is in order before examining the number of naturalized merchants in each of these companies, what influence they exerted, how they were affiliated with native-born British members, and how they dealt with conflicts.

British Trade with Russia and the Levant In the eighteenth century, the development of Great Britain’s trade with Russia differed from that of its trade with the Levant. While Russia became an ever more crucial trade partner, the Levant diminished in significance. In the late seventeenth century, trade with the Levant had flourished,4 Persian and Syrian silk being major imports for England. But after the Spanish War of Succession ended in 1713, the Levant Company faced new competition in the silk market. Silk from Bengal (imported by the East India Company) and inexpensive Spanish silk became serious contenders. Then, in the 1740s, the Russia Company entered the silk market by securing the right to import Persian silk overland through Russia.5 Protected by law during the first half of the eighteenth century, England’s domestic silk production (introduced a century earlier by Huguenot and Walloon immigrants) expanded quickly. Like Italian organza, it satisfied a demand different from that for Middle East silk and never became a serious competitor. England’s rising cotton industry and numerous wars and other unrest in Persia reduced the demand for Persian silk. By 1800, silk imports from Persia were negligible. From its outset, the Levant Company’s main export item had been broadcloth. After 1660 the export of cloth to the Levant increased, and by the eighteenth century, broadcloth made up one-eighth of all English textile exports.6 Thereafter, growing French and Dutch competition in the Mediterranean (which had been almost eliminated by the wars of succession) once more threatened the British share in the Levantine market; decline set in by the 1720s or 1730s at the latest. Reforming the Levant Company in 1753 did not halt the downward trend.7 Trade improved slightly in the late 1770s, but the Mediterranean wars of the 1790s disrupted it anew. The situation did not change until Nelson’s victory at Abukir. Once the English had forced the French and Dutch out of the Mediterranean region, the Levant Company flourished as never before during the last twenty years of its existence, before it handed back its charter in 1825. Military supremacy on the Mediterranean Sea was not the sole reason for the growth in Britain’s trade with the Levant: England’s successful cotton industry was equally pivotal. While silk imports continued to decline, the demand for raw cotton rose in the latter half of the century and the Near East became a large-scale

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supplier of raw cotton. Between 1817 and 1824, imports of raw cotton increased from just less than £6,799 to £611,547. Madder, used to dye cotton cloth red, also became an important import item.8 Meanwhile, exports to the Near East (mainly cotton wares, followed by colonial goods such as sugar and coffee) also rose. Between 1780 and 1801, the value of exported cotton goods rose from £335,060 to over seven million English pounds. By 1825 it had reached almost £30,800,000.9 The development of trade with Russia was entirely different. While trade with the Levant basically declined throughout the eighteenth century, trade with Russia grew, starting in the final decades of the seventeenth century.10 Early in the eighteenth century, Russia ranked seventh after Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey, contributing 3.3 percent on average to England’s total annual imports (measured in pounds sterling). After 1750, at 8.1 percent, Russia’s share surpassed that of all other nations,11 making Russia and Great Britain each the other’s largest trade partner. Early in the century, the Russia Company requested a trade treaty. It was finally was written up in 1734 and renewed several times thereafter.12 By granting considerable trade advantages, it set the stage for British success. The two countries awarded one another the privilege of being the most favored nation. The formal declaration of such a privilege was negligible, as for decades Russia had signed trade treaties with no other country;13 of greater significance was the right to have disputes settled by the College of Commerce founded in 1718. This privilege gave English merchants invaluable legal security. In light of the arbitrary practices followed in ordinary courts (where other foreigners were forced to contend their trade disputes) and faced with countless cases of bankruptcy and breaches of contract by Russian trade partners, the privilege of settling disputes at the College of Commerce put British trade partners at a profound advantage. They were also granted the freedom to quarter. Securing equal rank for English and Russian merchants in all matters of trade was consequential. Eighteenthcentury Russia had no competitive mercantile fleet. This left sea traffic between the two countries for the most part up to the English. The English were also permitted to pay import duties in rubles, instead of using the more expensive Rixdollars (Dutch silver coinage used widely in continental Europe). This meant that compared to other countries, the English paid 10 to 14 percent less at customs. Their profit margin became even greater when, at the close of the century, the ruble dropped in value.14 In the eighteenth century, Great Britain’s trade with Russia was based on importing raw material and semifinished goods—especially wood, potash, tar, iron ore; industrial crops such as flax, hemp, and linseed; and many other commodities needed for manufacturing.15 Great Britain’s rising colonies and industries had an almost insatiable demand for these products. The colonies could not compensate the mother country’s lack of natural resources, which made Russian

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imports crucial to Great Britain’s industrialization and the development of its expanding navy and merchant fleet.16 Peter Matthias has pointed out that bar iron imported from Russia had an immediate impact on Britain’s industrialization.17 Britain’s own iron production was unable to meet domestic demand as early as the seventeenth century. Sweden had been Britain’s first principal supplier of pig iron. In the 1680s, half of Sweden’s iron ore exports went there.18 In the eighteenth century, however, trade conflicts between Britain and Sweden, including a temporary prohibition on iron imports to Great Britain, persuaded the British to approach Russia. As early as the 1760s, 47 percent of England’s iron imports were from Russia, while 45 percent came from Sweden.19 In the last two decades of the century Russia’s share climbed to about 57 percent.20 Herbert Kaplan has calculated that of the 83,000 tons of bar iron produced in Britain in 1788, 32,000 tons were of British production, while the amount from Russia was almost equal at 30,000 tons.21 Britain also imported considerable quantities of Russian hemp and flax, two raw materials needed primarily for its growing marine and linen industry.22 Linen was the second most frequently imported item throughout the entire century, outranked only by colonial foodstuffs such as tea, coffee, cacao, and other tropical and subtropical victuals.23 Between 1764 and 1782, Great Britain imported an average of 23,000 tons of hemp annually. During the last two decades of the century, 97 percent of all imported hemp was Russian.24 Russian flax also made up 80 percent of all flax imported by Britain. After Cromwell England suffered an enormous shortage of wood. In the eighteenth century, Norway and Russia were Britain’s two major wood suppliers. Norway provided mostly pine and lath wood. Although Russia’s wood exports to England came nowhere near the amounts imported from Norway, from the 1760s to the 1790s Russia doubled its supply from an average of 78,000 to over 156,000 laths.25 Russia was without competition when it came to exporting wood for large masts and paneling. The demand for masts came primarily from the Royal Navy and British mercantile shipbuilding. During the decade of peace between 1778 and 1788, Great Britain imported a yearly average of 4,000 large masts, 70 percent of which came from Russia (mostly Riga). In early 1793, as Great Britain entered into war against France, its demand for masts was prodigious; in 1794 Britain imported a total of 5,700 large masts. In 1795 mast imports rose to 12,000 and one year later, in 1796, to 21,000. Over 80 percent of these came from Russia.26 Elisabeth Harder-Gersdorff has noted that at times Britain’s demand for wood from the Memel broke all late-eighteenth-century records.27 The import of other raw materials and semifinished products such as saltpeter, potash, hempseed, fur, skins, fish glue, and so on, was similarly high. Ninety percent of Britain’s tallow imports, 58 percent of its rope imports, and 32 percent of its pitch and tar imports came from Russia.

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In the late seventeenth century, Great Britain imported more from Russia than it exported to Russia. The negative trade balance quadrupled between 1734 and 1764 and continued to climb as the century progressed.28 Exports to Russia rose slightly after mid-century, but they still lagged considerably behind imports from there. The deficit caused by trade with Russia was compensated through specialization in banking, insurance, and shipping services. Despite all efforts, Catherine II was never able to build up a competitive merchant fleet of her own. Britons made huge profits just from shipping.29 In the second half of the eighteenth century, 52 percent of all ships departing from St. Petersburg were British, as were almost all ships traveling between Russia and Great Britain.30 British ships outstripped other European countries’ fleets not only in number, but in tonnage as well. Russian imports were particularly crucial to Great Britain during both the American War of Independence and England’s subsequent wars against France, Spain, and Holland. In turn, Russia’s economic and political ascent was closely related to the British economy. No other country offered Russia such a huge market for its products.31 Nonetheless, according to Kahan, the relationship was hardly an entente cordiale—far from it, the reciprocal dependence was of a purely commercial nature.32 Despite their finding themselves in opposing political alliances during the Northern War and Seven Years’ War, awareness of economic advantages for both sides kept the two countries from ending trade relations. After the turn of the nineteenth century the Russian market lost significance for Great Britain—a loss brought about by England’s domestic industrial progress, particularly in iron smelting, and by new overseas markets. The difference in how relations developed between Great Britain and the Levant on the one hand and those between Great Britain and Russia on the other is reflected in membership data for the Levant and Russia Companies. Legal aspects also played a role.

Naturalized Merchants in the Levant Company Before the Levant Company was reformed in 1753, membership was based entirely on apprenticeship, patrimony, or purchase. Admission fees were £25 for applicants under the age of twenty-seven and £50 for all others. Only wholesale merchants were admitted to the company, and for those living in London, Freedom of the City was mandatory.33 Membership in the Levant Company peaked in the late 1670s at a total of 380 merchants.34 Thereafter, it declined continually; just prior to the reform, the company numbered less than forty members, not all of whom were active merchants. In 1731 only thirty of the company’s forty-two members were active merchants.

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At the Levant Company, a small cluster of merchants controlled trade. Five firms alone handled about half of all silk imports.35 For generations, Levant trade houses had been passed on among the same families, and during the first half of the eighteenth century, they still recruited new members chiefly from immediate and extended family circles. Outsiders rarely joined the Levant Company,36 and equally seldom did a merchant actually purchase membership. Demands to liberalize trade with the Levant were heard as early as 1719,37 but the first petition regarding regulation was not submitted until 1744. The Reform Act followed nine years later.38 After 1753 any Briton, naturalized subject, or (with certain limitations) Jew could become a member of the Levant Company for an admission fee of £20.39 An applicant did not need to be a merchant or have Freedom of the City.40 The reform instantly increased membership, but within two years it waned anew because trade with the Levant had not increased. The situation persisted until the 1770s, when once again the number of members steadily rose. Records for 1810 to 1820 show 162 new members (Table 13).41 Table 13. Total Number of New Members in the Levant Company, 1698–1824 Year

Total

1698–1707 1708–1717 1718–1727 1728–1737 1738–1747 1748–1757 1758–1767 1768–1777 1778–1787 1788–1797 1798–1807 1808–1817 1818–1824

76 56 52 23 19 58 47 87 90 101 123 285 199

Naturalized subjects and their descendantsi

– – – – – 2 1 4+1 3+2 9+1 3+2 9+4 ii

i

Germans of the second generation only. The last naturalized subject to be accepted by the Company was Nathan Mayer Rothschild. In 1818 six merchants were denied membership, even though they had been naturalized through the Bank of Scotland. ii

The new members included few naturalized subjects. Between 1753 and 1814, only 31 merchants of foreign origin joined the company. Six of them were of Swiss descent, three of Dutch, and 21 of German or German-Russian origin. Four new members were Jewish: the brothers Abraham and Benjamin Goldsmid from Holland, along with Barent Gompertz and Nathan Mayer Rothschild. Ten sons of naturalized subjects also applied for membership.

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In the first two decades after the reform, only three naturalized subjects applied for membership: Dutch-born Kuyk van Mierop, and German-born Conrad Heinzelmann and Henry Peter Kuhff.42 Between 1780 and 1800, twelve naturalized subjects joined, and over the next fourteen years another twelve followed. After 1814 the Levant Company stopped admitting naturalized persons due to Sidmouth’s xenophobic naturalization policy.43 Without the new obstacles to naturalization, the number of naturalized new members might have grown along with the number of members in general. Nonetheless, the number of sons of immigrants to join doubled during that period—a salient fact, considering that none of their fathers had been members in the Levant Company. Interest in trade with the Levant had increased, but foreign merchants could not pursue it without being naturalized.44 In 1818 six foreigners applied for membership in vain. In 1818, after many merchants had acquired English nationality by buying shares in the Bank of Scotland,45 six of them requested membership in the Levant Company, but their applications were accepted only with provisions. Jacob Bosanquet, the company’s governor, doubted the legality of acquiring nationality by buying shares in a bank and addressed Foreign Minister Lord Grenville on the subject. Grenville passed the inquiry on to Home Office Secretary Lord Sidmouth, thereby setting off a chain of events that led to the Naturalization Act of 1818.46 Even though the validity of naturalization through the Bank of Scotland was never definitively confirmed or denied in court, the Levant Company rejected applications from persons naturalized in that manner. The company’s policy hampered trade opportunities for Swiss-born John Lewis Prevost and German-born Charles Frederick Winckelmann, Lewis Frederick Hulle, Peter Ambrose Schutz, Rudolf Groning, and Charles de Cramer.47 Winckelmann, Hulle, and Groning had previously tried in vain to gain British nationality by naturalization.48 The Home Office refused Charles Frederick Winckelmann’s applications for naturalization time and again, causing him considerable financial difficulty. During the Napoleonic blockade he had worked on Heligoland as an agent for merchants from Liverpool. In 1812 he had done the same from Malta, before finally taking up residence in Smyrna in 1817.49 There he joined the Levant Company, having sworn the membership oath at the British factory in Smyrna. Charles de Cramer did likewise.50 Initially in 1820, Winckelmann suffered no immediate financial consequences from being barred from the company because his partner in Smyrna was British. But his uncertain legal status disposed him to apply for British nationality year after year, beginning in 1817. When his partner died in 1823, he saw himself forced “to leave property of considerable value in the hands of an agent at Smyrna … and to return to England in the hope of being made a Denizen & being thereby enabled to resume [my] business there as a British subject.”51 In June 1823 he finally acquired British nationality, not by naturalization, but by denization. The Levant Company finally accepted him, and he returned to the British factory in Smyrna.52

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Traditionally the Levant Company was held in such high esteem that after the reform of 1753 some Britons joined simply “to assume the grand title of Levant merchant.” Others wanted to at least secure for themselves the right to an occasional transaction with the Levant.53 Certainly naturalized subjects were less concerned with prestige than with finances. The Levant Company’s “imposition books” noted member fees paid to the company. Of the surviving books, only one—for the years 1775–1808—pertains to this study.54 The import books note the name of the merchant, port of departure, and imported goods. Unfortunately, the corresponding export ledgers do not state the names of exporting merchants, so they provide only partial insight into the trade activity of naturalized subjects. The Levant Company’s books do not inform us of the kind of trade handled by the first three naturalized members. London’s 1766 directory lists Henry Kuhff from Frankfurt under Kuhff & Meyer, Turkey merchants, no. 17 Sise Lane, Budge Row.55 Due to the decline in Levant trade after 1758, his trade house probably abandoned it in the 1760s and went into insurance.56 Although Peter Henry Kuhff’s trade house was still listed under his name in the 1770s, after 1770 the additional attribution of “Turkey merchant” was omitted.57 Martin Kuyck van Mierop, the first naturalized subject to join the Levant Company, traded in Persian silk as of 1740. Like many other naturalized aliens, he was also a member of the Russia Company. In the early 1740s he had crossed Russia for the Russia Company to reach Persia, where he ran a trade house for several years.58 Following the Levant Company reform, van Mierop reentered the silk trade a few years after his return from Persia (1749/50), but it was not his sole interest.59 He went into insurance and, together with the German-Russian John Julius Angerstein (Figure 9), founded the New Lloyd’s company in 1773.60 As vessel and shipment insurers, both men had an immediate interest in offering their services to the Levant Company and its members. For this reason both Julius Angerstein and his two partners Henry Crockat and Thomas Lewis joined the company in 1784 as well.61 As for Nathan Mayer Rothschild and Swiss-born John Henry Schneider, financial opportunities, more than trade, persuaded them to join the company.62 One of the early merchant manufacturers was Theophilus Pritzler, a scion of a family from Herford in Westphalia that had settled in London early in the century. Besides trading, his father and an uncle ran a sugar refinery in London that existed until the end of the century. Next to cotton wares, refined sugar was one of England’s most important exports to Turkey.63 During the Napoleonic blockade, the Ottoman Empire became a gateway for smuggling British goods—especially sugar—into markets on the Continent, particularly Germany.64 Unfortunately the imposition books do not reveal what Pritzler exported, but they do indicate that from 1788 to 1792 he imported predominantly raw cotton.65 Peter Tooke, his factor in Constantinople, purchased large quantities of it for him there.66

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Figure 9. Portrait of John Julius Angerstein (1732–1823). Source: National Gallery, London.

In London, John Daniel and John William Paul, two brothers from Strehlen in Silesia, were, like Pritzler, “merchant manufacturers.” They specialized in trading hides67 but ran a tannery as well.68 Britain imported hides and fur mostly from colonies in America and from Russia. Turkey was a long-established market for Canadian fur, but in the second half of the century, Russian fur basically replaced Canadian fur in Turkey. The Paul brothers were shareholders in the Hudson’s Bay Company and through it imported large quantities of Canadian

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fur.69 Like others in the business, they were members in both the Levant and the Russia Company.70 Not only expensive ermine but rabbit and less costly fur, too, was imported from Russia. The Levant Company’s import ledgers show that the Paul brothers also imported goatskins, raw cotton, madder, and raw silk.71 The imposition books reveal Christoph Henry Martens as being one of the larger merchants of German origin. He entered the trade house Murrel in 1779 as a partner and by 1788 had become its sole proprietor.72 Other German-born merchants like Charles Schreiber, Hane & Bercks, and Hermann Dietrich Retberg turn up only occasionally in the Levant Company’s ledgers. German merchants focused on new market segments like cotton and dyes.73 Unlike Christoph Henry Martens, they dealt only marginally with declining monopoly wares. Martens, for his part, imported an exceptionally wide range of commodities from cotton and silk to currants, goat hair, boxwood, rugs, opium, medicines, madder, and other dyes.74 The books report only direct trade and thus only a fraction of the entire import business from the Levant because many goods were not sent directly to Great Britain but took detours instead to circumvent the company’s monopoly. Leghorn and other Italian seaports were essential entrepôts for trade with the Near East. Many Levant merchants had warehouses there, which enabled them to react fairly quickly to changes in demand. Italian staple places enabled interloping in great volume and illegal trade by outsiders, that is, nonmembers.75 Even silk and mohair took such a route to Britain, circumventing the monopoly by being declared Italian silk. By 1766 the Levant Company no longer controlled trade in currants and cotton. Much imported raw cotton was shipped from Italy to England via Holland. After 1780 the largest importer of raw cotton was Liverpool, not London. Many naturalized merchants in Britain used family networks abroad to evade the monopoly, working either through the Netherlands or through foreign merchant communities at Italian seaports.76 During the American War of Independence and the Coalition Wars, the English government suspended the Navigation Act several times in favor of the trade companies, allowing both the import of Levantine wares on foreign ships and imports via European ports; many ships came from the Netherlands or Italy. Amsinck & Soltau and Luder Hoffham seized the opportunity.77 After Spain declared war against England in 1796 and the British fleet had withdrawn from the Mediterranean Sea, direct imports from the Levant sank dramatically by 60 percent between 1797 and 1798. A year later they had fallen by another 8 percent. To counteract the trend, Parliament once again suspended the Navigation Act and allowed the Levant Company to import wares through other seaports; this in turn increased the import of Levantine goods through German and Italian ports. During those years John Birkett Wienholt, son of John Wienholt from Bremen, became a large-scale importer, bringing Turkish commodities (mostly

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ammoniac, opium, other drugs, and toxins) to England via Hamburg and Leghorn.78 The books also mention John Roger Teschemacher from Hanover/Elberfeld, although there is no evidence that he joined the company.79 None of the naturalized merchants of German birth belonged to the Court of Assistants, nor were they on any other committee, except for Christoph Henry Martens, who spent some time on the audit committee.80 The sources do not reveal whether German merchants had any influence on Levant Company policy. At the Russia Company, things were different.

Naturalized Merchants in the Russia Company When the Russia Company opened up to new members in March 1699, many merchants rushed to join. Seventy-five merchants applied for membership on 14 April alone. These included Sir Theodore Janssen, Theodor Jacobsen, Georg Ludwig Dunt (of German-Baltic extraction), and some merchants of Huguenot descent. Seven more merchants had joined by the year’s end.81 After the first rush, there were few new requests for membership for almost twenty years. When the Northern War ended growth in membership revived, increasing conspicuously at the end of the 1720s, when treaty negotiations began with Russia. After that point the Russia Company experienced continuous growth in new members until after the turn of the century. In the first decade of the eighteenth century, a total of eleven naturalized subjects applied for membership, followed by another eighteen between 1710 and 1719. Only twelve applied from 1720 to 1729. The increase between 1710 and 1719 was not in line with the general development in membership because comparatively, only a few Englishmen applied. The increase must be attributed to the fact that between 1709 and 1712, foreign merchants seized the opportunity provided by Queen Anne’s liberal naturalization law to acquire British nationality cheaply and then join the Russia Company.82 Not until the 1720s did the admission of naturalized subjects reflect the overall trend. Between 1730 and 1739, twenty-eight new subjects became members.83 Thus a total of 220 naturalized merchants from various European countries joined the Russia Company between 1699 and 1833.84 This means that more naturalized persons joined the Russia Company than the Levant Company. The Levant Company’s reform, however, came more than fifty years after that of the Russia Company. In the period from 1753 to 1818 the Russia Company accepted 160 naturalized merchants while the Levant Company accepted only forty. The number of naturalized merchants at the Russia Company was conspicuous. About 70 percent of the Russia Company’s foreign-born members came from Germany. Far behind them, German Russians took second place, followed by Swiss and then Dutch merchants.85 About 30 percent of all naturalized mer-

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chants of German origin in Great Britain were members of the Russia Company. The ratio of German-Russian members in the Russia Company to merchants of German-Russian origin who were naturalized English subjects is even more notable: 67 percent of all naturalized persons from Russia were members of the Russia Company. Corresponding to the overall trend of new English subjects who originally came from German regions, most German-born naturalized English subjects who became members of the Russia Company came from the Hanseatic towns of Hamburg and Bremen.86 More merchants from Bremen than from Hamburg joined the Russia Company. Of the ninety Hamburg merchants who acquired British nationality between 1715 and 1820, only twenty joined the Russia Company, compared to twenty-six of seventy-three merchants from Bremen. In other words, 22 percent of the merchants from Hamburg joined, while 36 percent of those from Bremen did. Reasons for the larger percentage of merchants from Bremen lie in differences between the two towns in terms of how trade was organized and where it was directed. Hamburg had always been the more important trade town: it had broad international relations, and since the early eighteenth century its merchants in London had been traditionally more involved in trade with Spain and Portugal.87 The expansion of Bremen’s trade was long hindered by the city being under Danish rule and especially burdened by the heavy tolls collected by the town of Elsfleth. Not until the latter half of the century did Bremen’s merchants turn to Atlantic trade. Lack of capital may also have been a concern because returns from southwestern Europe took from two to three years, in other words, much longer than returns from Russia.88 Following London and Amsterdam, Hamburg was one of Europe’s most important financial centers. Unlike Bremen’s traders, Hamburg merchants had direct, easy access to the capital market. Traditionally the geographic scope of their trade relations was broader, and their greater financial power gave them more options in London. However, the number of Hamburg merchants in the Russia Company indicates that the Russian market was also attractive for them. Bremen’s trade with Russia was insignificant until mid-century. The town’s neutrality in the Seven Years’ War marked a turn, and in the 1770s a reduction in Danish tolls further facilitated trade.89 Bremen’s port (Schlachte) records show that Russia was the fourth most important country from which Bremen imported goods, whereas the number of ships arriving from Spain and Portugal remained small for the remainder of the century.90 The admission of merchants from Bremen to London’s Russia Company almost paralleled the rise in Bremen’s trade with Russia. Until 1750, only five naturalized merchants originally from Bremen joined the Russia Company, but eighteen joined between 1751 and 1800, most of them in the 1790s.91

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The sources do not reveal the timing of the establishment of trade links between Bremen, Britain, and Russia. Bremen’s families Grote, Heymann, Berck, Duntze, and Heineken set up trade links with Russia either simultaneously or shortly after a family member established himself in London. Some Bremen families, like the Wienholts, Nonnens, and Albers, entered into trade relations with Russia before setting up business in London. Most of Bremen’s Russia merchants had children or other close relatives living in Britain.92 Some of Bremen’s trading families consciously constructed a trade triangle. Two brothers from the Klencke family, for instance, immigrated to Britain. While Martin Klencke remained in London, Henry became a British subject and then moved to St. Petersburg.93 Other merchants from Bremen, like Johann Meybohm, arranged a triangle of trade between Bremen, England, and Russia by first settling in Russia’s new capital and then taking on British nationality.94 Joining the Russia Company opened the doors to London’s money and finance market, as many leading international British bankers belonged to the company. Besides Samuel Holden, other company members were the Thorntons, the Barings, and the proprietors of Amsterdam’s trade and banking institutes Hope & Co. and Prescott & Grote. Edward Forster, governor of the Russia Company from 1781 until after the turn of the century, was also the president of the London Stock Exchange.95 Thus, along with membership, naturalized merchants gained access to a network of influential persons in the world of finance. In light of the limited commercial and financial means of their hometowns, joining the Russia Company was particularly attractive for merchants from Bremen and elsewhere. Unlike the Levant Company, the Russia Company did not jointly own ships that had to meet specific departure dates. Each member of the Russia Company handled his own shipments. This gave members greater commercial freedom and enabled greater profit.96 It cannot be ruled out that the low membership fee enticed some merchants to join the Russia Company for ephemeral reasons, that is, in order not to miss out on an occasional commission transaction. Prestige was certainly not most naturalized merchants’ motive for joining.97 No import or export books exist for the Russia Company; but clues as to the members’ interest in trade with Russia can be gleaned by examining the time that passed between naturalization and joining the organization. A comparison with the Levant Company makes the connection very clear. Generally, merchants sought naturalization when they were at the point of establishing their own business or becoming partners in others’ trade firms. After establishing a business they spent the first five years building it up. During that time they decided on what and where to trade, and then applied to a trade company for membership. Applications made much later may have concerned a change in established trade or overall economic development. How long a

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merchant waited to join a company after being naturalized may provide certain clues as to his trade interests. Fees were low, but neither the Levant nor the Russia Company offered membership for free. Martin Kuyk van Mierop joined the Levant Company soon after membership rules were relaxed. Conrad Heinzelmann, Christoph Henry Martens, and Elise Hubert Desvignes joined within one year of being naturalized, and Henry Peter Kuhff joined thirteen months after being naturalized. Most naturalized merchants joined the trade organizations very late, often ten years after being naturalized. The time when they joined was directly related to an upswing in Levantine trade.98 John Daniel Paul had been naturalized for sixteen years when he acquired membership. He became one of the large-scale Levant merchants who were also naturalized subjects. He and his brother John William Paul joined the Russia Company together, but John William initially dispensed with membership in the Levant Company.99 Costs and the need to keep one foot in the door of Levant trade moved the younger brother to join the Levant Company shortly after the death of John Daniel, his older brother. Neither ever married. After John William died, their nephew John William Vogel from Strehlen (Silesia) came to the business in London, but he did not join the Levant Company until 1795, after his uncle John Daniel Paul died. He joined the Russia Company three years later.100 Whereas many Germans joined the Levant Company several years after naturalization and, for financial reasons (as with the Paul family), normally only one proprietor joined, the situation was different at the Russia Company. Most naturalized merchants joined the Russia Company much sooner. Of the 206 naturalized merchants who became members, 61 percent joined within five years of becoming subjects and 77.5 percent joined within ten years of naturalization (Table 14).101 Table 14. German Merchants: Time Span between Naturalization and Joining the Russia Company Within 1 Month

total 23

% 11

Within 2–12 months

total 48

% 23

Within 2–5 Years

total 54

% 26

Within 6–10 Years

total 36

% 17.5

Within 11–20 Years

Over 20 Years Later

total 32

total 13

% 15.5

% 3.3

The Germans’ increased interest in trade with Russia is evidenced by the fact that more than 34 percent sought membership in the Russia Company within the first year of becoming British subjects, 11 percent even within the first month. Some applicants were foreigners, young merchants under age, or naturalized subjects lacking knowledge of the English language. Some, like Ernst Bardewick from Oldenburg and Nicholas Albert Martinius from Hamburg, applied for membership while their naturalization proceedings were still underway.102 Most of those who became members within the first month or year of

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their new nationality were factors sent to Russia by a British trade house. The company’s charter forced them to join by stipulating that every factor must also be a member. Later applications for admission depended on the initial regional focus of a merchant’s trade and its organization. Proprietors of smaller firms like Hermann Jakob Garrels and Anthony Hinrichs, who were still in the process of building up their businesses and whose trade initially focused on their region of origin, joined the company later. Garrels and Hinrichs did not apply for membership until 1798, two years after naturalization, when their joint business had begun to expand. When a firm had several partners, usually only the senior owner became a member; junior partners often joined much later. Expansion or reorganization of trade activities after a partner had left the firm also prompted traders to join the company. Henry Uhthoff and John Anthony Rücker joined three and six years after naturalization, respectively. Both worked at the house of George Amyand, who as of 1749 sat in the Court of Assistants.103 Initially, Rücker and Uhthoff apparently saw no advantage in becoming members; they did not join the Russia Company until 1751, a year after the firm was reorganized to become Amyand, Uhthoff & Rucker.104 Daniel Henry Rücker did not join the Russia Company until 1797, when he had been a British subject and partner in his uncle John Anthony Rücker’s trade firm for twenty-two years. When John Anthony Rücker resigned from the Court of Assistants at the annual meeting in March 1798, his nephew succeeded him in the Court.105 Some Germans did not join the company until they had been naturalized for ten, fifteen, or even twenty years, because they could not do so until after the reform of 1698. By the time the Russia Company underwent reform, Theodor Jacobsen had already been a British subject for twenty-nine years. His nephew Jacob Jacobsen had become a British subject in 1685, but could not join the company until reaching his majority in 1702.106 Joining the company ten or more years after naturalization should not be interpreted as a sign of fleeting interest in trade with Russia. John Abraham Korten did not become a member until 1730, twelve years after naturalization, having already illegally imported goods from Russia and been in conflict with the company.107 Precisely what he did during those first twelve years is not known, but once he joined the company he pursued trade with Russia (Figure 10). His brother Peter Korten, whom he took into the business in 1730, joined the Russia Company just six weeks after becoming British. The same held for John Abraham Korten’s nephew Godfrey Wichelhausen, whom John Abraham brought into the business after the death of his brother Peter.108 John Abraham Korten was co-opted into the Court of Assistants in 1740; Henry Uhthoff and John Anthony Rücker were elected to the board in the 1750s. We do not know how important trade with Russia was for Paul Amsinck Jr. Throughout the first half of the century, the Amsinck family traded mostly with

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Figure 10. Abraham Korten’s Trade Relations, 1738–1742.

Portugal and Spain; Paul Amsinck Jr. was born in Oporto. Neither William Amsinck (d.1764) nor Paul Amsinck (d.1765), Paul’s two uncles who lived in London, ever joined the Russia Company. Paul Amsinck Jr. and his co-partner Helwig Lewis Tonnies (from Hamburg) both joined the company in 1764, five years after naturalization.109 Amsinck’s decision may reflect the general decline in trade with Portugal. In the 1760s Britain’s flourishing trade with Portugal suffered a huge setback from which it never recovered. Eighteen naturalized subjects belonged to both the Russia and the Levant Company. Fourteen first became members in the Russia Company and later joined the Levant Company. The four who first joined the Levant Company were John Daniel Paul, Paul’s nephew John William Vogel, John Julius Angerstein, and Gerard Berck. Berck joined the Russia Company less than two months after joining the Levant Company. The tempo at which naturalized subjects joined the Russia Company and the fairly high rate at which they did so suggests considerable interest in trade with Russia. In the Russia Company, Germans and Russian Germans sat in the Court of Assistants. In the Levant Company, they did not. The Russia Company was organized in a manner typical of London’s craft and trade associations of the times. Its management—the board of directors—was comprised of a 24-member Court of Assistants, four consuls, and one governor, who together decided what went on in the company. The Russia Company’s charter specified that members of the court be elected for one year. A governor remained in office for life; thus, in the eighteenth century the company only had seven governors. Consuls were elected from among the Court of Assistants

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and left office after two years, but after an absence of another two years, many of them were voted back into the court. Assistants could be reelected any number of times: depending on interests and personal or financial fate, some sat in the Court of Assistants for many years and attended its sessions regularly, while others belonged to the court for just a few years and attended meetings only sporadically. Committees assigned with special tasks supported the court’s work. Some were standing committees, such as the Audit Committee for monitoring finances, and the Committee to Manage the Company’s Law Business and Affairs Relating to Trade. Others were temporary in nature and set up for special purposes only: to launch a bill, for example, or to negotiate with the Board of Admiralty. General assemblies were held annually, leaving the company’s policy basically in the hands of the governor, consuls, Court of Assistants, and committees. Often, the company’s minutes simply noted attendance and the names of new members. They say little about whether immigrants influenced the Court of Assistants or the company’s policy. We can assume that they wielded some influence for the simple reason that some of them sat for many years in Court of Assistants, which shaped the trade organization’s policy and was in touch with Great Britain’s leaders. The first naturalized subject to become a member of the Russia Company’s Court of Assistants was the Dutch-born Henry Muilman110 of the Dutch bank and trade house Muilman & Sons, Amsterdam’s second largest house after Andríes Pels & Sons.111 The first German and German-Russian immigrants to join the court were Mathias Schiffner and John Abraham Korten in 1740. Both remained assistants for the remainder of their lives. From 1740 until the 1820s, the court always held at least one immigrant of German or German-Russian descent. John Anthony Rücker was an assistant for over twenty-seven years, and in 1774 he was made a consul.112 Second-generation descendants of naturalized subjects had been members of the Court before Henry Muilman. Peter Meyer, son of Sir Peter Meyer (d. 1727), was co-opted for the office of assistant as early as 1733.113 Many sons, grandsons, and nephews of naturalized subjects were not only among the company’s ordinary members but in its Court of Assistants as well. Besides John Anthony Rücker’s nephews, descendants of Mathias Schiffner, Henry Sperling, Clement Boehm, Mathew Boehm, Henry Muilman, and Peter Muilman were among the assistants for many years. Continuity in membership, spanning generations, was typical not only of families with roots abroad but also of Britain’s own Russia merchants. Thornton family members, for instance, had belonged to the court since the early years of the century. From the 1780s on, they at times dominated the court by having six or more family members among the assistants.114 Birth in England was a requirement for becoming governor, so the first generation of immigrants was excluded

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from that office. However, one descendant of a German immigrant, Edmund Boehm, was governor from 1774 to 1783.115 Naturalized subjects’ influence on trade organizations was not merely a matter of holding office. There were informal private and commercial ties among the members, and connections to Britain’s political and economic elite. Recent studies on Great Britain’s eighteenth-century political and social leaders stress the importance of such informal networks and their impact on decision-making in politics and commerce.116 These networks were all the more valuable to German immigrants, who were otherwise barred from taking political office. Joining the company put them in touch with prominent circles in commerce, creating opportunities for collaboration with British merchants and obtaining credit—all factors of some weight. In an age of slow communication and cumbersome mobility, these kinds of contacts were essential sources of information and news. The Russia Company network radiated well beyond the immediate circle of its members, far into the realms of politics and commerce. The Russia Company’s records merely hint at what those relationships may have been. They allow the partial reconstruction of some segments of the network. Based on the names of their business associates and close commercial partners, on wills, and on bequeathed estates, for example, we can outline parts of networks surrounding assistants Mathias Schiffner and John Anthony Rücker. Samuel Holden, an associate and friend, was the backbone of Mathias Schiffner’s network in England; George Amyand was at the heart of Henry Uhthoff and John Anthony Rücker’s network.117 Henry Uhthoff was also a close friend of the Briton Walter Shairp, a Russia merchant and later consul in St. Petersburg,118 and married to a daughter of Sir Joshua Van Neck, one of the big moneylenders to the government.119 Joshua Van Neck joined the Russia Company in 1733. Joshua Van Neck is not mentioned in the Russia Company’s minutes. He did not sit in the Court of Assistants. Thus we do not know how much influence he had on the organization’s policies or how much influence he exerted in its name. The same is true for Nicholas Magens. Once he became a member, he was never mentioned in the minutes again. Like Joshua Van Neck, Magens had connections to the English government. He was among the group of merchants that in 1757 loaned the English government eight million pounds. Various transfers from the Secret Service Budget passed through his hands to Germany (Figure 11).120 In other words, ordinary members scarcely mentioned in company records were not necessarily outside the network of influence and power. Unfortunately, in most of these cases the sources do not permit detailed analysis.

The Russia Company’s Struggle with Naturalization Practices In the first years after the Russia Company’s reform, its Court of Assistants had to deal with the issue of nationality. The burning question was whether to consider

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Figure 11. Nicholas Magens’s Trade Relations, 1742–1764.

a Scotsman an English subject, thereby guaranteeing him—according to the act of 1698—a right to membership.121 The precedence case from 1608 (Calvin’s Case) ended with the ruling that all Scotsmen born after James I’s accession to the throne were English, whereas all those born prior to his accession were not. Nonetheless, before England’s union with Scotland in 1707, Scotsmen owning property in England had themselves naturalized as Englishmen.122 In 1703, when Joseph Ormstone from Scotland applied for membership, the Russia Company’s Court of Assistants approached the King’s Council for clarification. Ormstone was not admitted as a member until it had been ruled that a Scotsman should be considered an English subject if he lived in England as the head of a household.123 English nationality law did not include any specification regarding place of residence. Around mid-century a conflict arose between naturalized and nativeborn Englishmen on the issue. As of the early eighteenth century, foreigners began acquiring British nationality, joining the trade company, and then moving immediately to Russia. In the early 1730s, the number of those doing so began to climb. Germans living in Russia, particularly Russians of German and Dutch descent124 like Jacob Wolff and Hermann Meyer, were cases in point. Since the naturalization procedure required appearance in person, they went to London, stated their reasons before a parliamentary committee, and took the oath of allegiance before the bar of the Houses of Parliament. In London many took the opportunity to apply for membership in the Russia Company before returning to Russia. Ernst Bardewick, for example, requested membership even before his petition for naturalization had been approved.125 Occasionally an application for membership to the company arrived after the newly naturalized subject had already left England. In 1744 a request for membership from Joseph Lieutand, a naturalized subject of Swiss origin, reached the

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Court of Assistants when he was already on his way to St. Petersburg.126 Another Swiss gentleman, John James Tournison, returned to Basel after English naturalization and in 1767 sent his request for membership from there. Not only did the Russia Company welcome him as a member, but he was allowed to take the company oath before a Basel magistrate and send a copy to London.127 Occasionally applications for membership came from American and other European merchants, but most requests from abroad were from Russia and were submitted by agents.128 Peter Conrad Swellengrebell, Lorentz Bastian Ritter, and Joseph Lieutand had British merchants and business partners submit their requests for membership on their behalf.129 Hans Bardewick applied for membership from Persia and let Russia merchant Edmund Vaus submit it for him.130 At first the Russia Company asked applicants residing abroad to appear before the court and take the oath the next time they were in England, and issued them a temporary trade permit in the meantime. Occasionally considerable time passed between becoming a member and being sworn in. Peter Holsten, for example, applied for membership through an agent on 15 September 1747 and paid his fee at the same time. He was not sworn into the company until 1 March 1748.131 This practice was common not only among naturalized merchants, but among expatriate Britons as well. It depended on weather conditions and the resultant annual rhythm of maritime trade. The swearing in of new members became cumbersome, and in the 1740s the Russia Company began dispensing with mandatory attendance in person. As early as 1738, John Justin Bruiningk had taken the oath before the Russia Company’s agent in St. Petersburg.132 The Levant Company, on the other hand, did not dispense with oath-taking in London until after the turn of the nineteenth century. In 1752, when Johann Meybohm from Bremen petitioned for naturalization, a conflict arose between the Russia Company and immigrants seeking to become subjects. The dispute came to the public’s attention and soon reached Parliament. On 2 March 1752, Meybohm’s petition for naturalization quickly passed in the House of Lords but met with unexpected opposition in the House of Commons: merchants from the City of London had submitted a petition protesting against Meybohm’s naturalization. “Several Foreigners,” the petition claimed, “have, of late Years, been induced to come over into England, in order to obtain private Acts of Parliament, for their Naturalization, with a View to gain some Advantages to themselves, in point of Trade … but having obtained such Acts, return back to their native Country, where they constantly reside.”133 The petition was signed by the governor of the Russia Company and sixty other British Russia merchants.134 Johann Meybohm had migrated from Bremen to St. Petersburg in 1732 and become a partner in a trade house belonging to the merchant Paul Tamesz (Meybohm later married Tamesz’s daughter Gertrud),135 whose family was originally from the Netherlands. John Tamesz Jr., possibly a brother of the aforementioned Paul Tamesz, had become a British subject in 1728 but lived in Russia. Who and

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what sparked the protest against Meybohm’s naturalization can only be reconstructed in part. The dispute originated in the British factory in St. Petersburg, but who pulled the strings is not known. Not only did the Russia Company’s charter entail the practice of working in Russia as an agent or co-partner with British nationality, but the Britons themselves had also encouraged it to compensate their lack of knowledge of the Russian language and connections in Russia, which Germans and German-Russians already had.136 When Meybohm applied for naturalization, he was neither an agent for a British merchant nor a partner in a British trade house. He also was no longer associated with Tamesz, having instead established his own business with a non-British associate.137 Henry Schiffner—son of a naturalized English subject, the German-Russian–born Mathias Schiffner—led the protest in London. Interestingly, Henry Schiffner had been born in Russia and had been forced to seek legal advice in order to clarify his own nationality and right to membership in the Russia Company.138 The merchant protest did not halt Meybohm’s becoming a British subject, but his naturalization document included a clause to the effect that he would lose British nationality if, upon naturalization, he were to leave the country and not return to the Kingdom within three years.139 The Russia Company was unable to achieve a reform of the naturalization law that denied nationality to naturalized persons with no permanent abode in Britain, or that disenfranchised them. The conflict subsided only temporarily. In 1774 the Russia Company once again sought change in naturalization law. As in the Meybohm case, in March 1774 a letter from the Russia Company’s British factor in St. Petersburg informed the Court of Assistants in London that a few foreigners from Russia were on their way to Britain to be naturalized with the intent of thereafter enjoying British trade advantages.140 The Russia Company’s report to the Secretary of State, the Earl of Suffolk, names two of these foreigners as Nicholas Haeseler (from Hamburg) and John Erich (from Lübeck). A Russia Company representative suggested to the House of Lords that Erich and Haeseler should not be allowed to enjoy the commercial advantages of Britons as long as they remained in Russia. The details of negotiations between the two German merchants, the trade company, and the government are unknown. Ultimately, the Russia Company declared itself willing to bear the cost of Erich and Haeseler’s naturalizations if the two abstained from taking the company to court. On 22 April each was granted nationality, but their document contained the clause that “if either of them [were to] reside in Russia they shall lose their English nationality for so long.”141 The Russia Company had already paid the naturalization fee (£144 7s. 6d.) on 8 April. Both men joined the Russia Company on the day they were naturalized.142 In 1774 the restrictive clause was inserted in another four acts of naturalization: those of two Germans, Gustav Nicholas Eggers (from Hamburg) and Nicholas Hane (from Lehe near the river Ems), and those of two Swiss merchants,

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Jacob Julien Baumgartner and Paul Burnand.143 Of these, only Nicholas Hane actually joined the Russia Company—but not until 5 December 1780, six years after being naturalized.144 At the time, the British government was unable to decide whether or how to bind nationality to a general obligation to residence in the Kingdom. The practice of acquiring British nationality solely for business reasons was thwarted somewhat in 1774 by inserting in naturalization acts a clause specifying that naturalized Britons would not enjoy the full advantages of commerce until seven years after naturalization. That legislation, however, was not initiated by the Russia Company; rather, the occasion was given by Jewish merchants in the Colonies.145 From then on the clause was included in all naturalization documents146 and influenced the practice of naturalization at least temporarily.147 Meybohm’s naturalization paper phrased the three-year stipulation ambiguously: it did not specify whether after three years his place of residence in the Kingdom must be permanent, or whether transient residence sufficed. He returned to Russia after naturalization and died in St. Petersburg in 1773.148 The Russia Company opined that he had not adhered to the three-year clause.149 Nicholas Haeseler also returned to Russia after being naturalized. Whether or not he was barred from British trade privileges in St. Petersburg is unknown. Following his naturalization the Russia Company had sent a copy of the act with the clause underscored to Consul Swallow in St. Petersburg.150 Swallow’s duty was to issue the certificate of nationality that merchants had to present to customs and to the College of Commerce so as to enjoy British trade privileges.151 One year later, Swallow denied John Henry Schneider the certificate on the grounds that one of the partners in the firm was not British. The Secretary of State, the Earl of Suffolk, reprimanded Swallow for not conforming to the intention of the act of 1774 and confirmed that Swallow had no right to deny Schneider the certificate.152 Whether the activities of naturalized British subjects in St. Petersburg were always monitored this closely is not known. The minute books also tell of conflicts over nationality between the Russia Company and sons of naturalized subjects who, having been born abroad, demanded membership by patrimony. The Naturalization Act of 1709 had for the first time introduced ius sanguinis to Great Britain: the right of descent without constraints for subsequent generations. An act of 1730 restricted the inheritance of British nationality for children born abroad to children of the first generation. In 1772 another act added the second generation.153 These acts did not distinguish between the children of native-born Britons and those of naturalized Britons. In 1747 the son of a naturalized Briton living abroad requested membership in the Russia Company on the grounds of patrimony. Henry Norris Jr. asked the company to set up a committee to determine whether the children of naturalized Britons living abroad were considered native-born Britons. The committee was also asked to examine a bill’s chances of success. The company

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sought legal advice from the Solicitor General. The key case was a request for membership submitted on 15 September 1747 by Randolph Meyer from St. Petersburg. He was the foreign-born son of the aforementioned Hermann Meyer, a naturalized British subject residing in Russia.154 The jury was divided, however, and the Russia Company withdrew the case. More than once, children of naturalized subjects found themselves forced to assert their right to membership by presenting legal opinion. One was Jeremiah Meybohm, Johann Meybohm’s son. When Jeremiah applied for membership in 1775 on the grounds of patrimony, the Russia Company denied him admission because his father had disregarded the pertinent clause in his naturalization document. Six months later, Jeremiah Meybohm confronted the company with a legal opinion confirming that he was to be considered a native-born subject and was thus entitled to membership. The company was swayed and declared its readiness to accept him.155 Although, according to an English law of 1772, the second generation of children born to Britons abroad were to be considered British subjects, in 1802 Johann Meybohm, grandson of the abovementioned Johann Meybohm, took the trouble to be formally naturalized, swearing the oath before the consul in St. Petersburg instead of before the company in London.156 Not Russia Company minutes but Schiffner’s surviving records reveal that Mathias Schiffner’s oldest son, Henry Schiffner, first got legal advice on nationality before asking for membership to the company. His situation was only somewhat comparable to those mentioned above. He had been born abroad but raised in England, and his father lived the last years of his life in London.157 The unanimous legal opinion was that Henry Schiffner was a natural-born subject. His younger brother John apparently had no difficulty joining the company. In 1754 Henry’s legal status was confirmed once more when he sought to become a Member of Parliament, although ius sanguinis contained no clause barring descendants of naturalized subjects from public office.158 Many naturalized merchants frequently switched their place of residence back and forth between Russia and Great Britain. In the early 1770s, Adam Kroll from Reval (Tallinn) had a trade house in London. A few years later, he returned to Russia. In the 1790s he again lived in London. The Russia Company did not object to this kind of mobility; bilateral trade made long and short stays abroad necessary. The problem of permanent residence cannot be judged by modern citizenship requirements that demand main residence in one’s host country. Travel and relocation were common for naturalized and native-born overseas merchants alike. One dispute brought before the courts compelled the Russia Company to partially abandon its former exclusion of Jews. In 1724, the Sephardic Jew Abraham Franco applied for membership in the Russia Company based on his denizen status. It was the first time a Jewish merchant had applied. After discussing it with the Crown’s legal counsel, the company denied him membership.159 A few years

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later, in 1727, problems reemerged when Anthony Da Costa applied for membership. His request included his father’s certificate of nationality. Under Charles II, Da Costa’s father had not acquired nationality by denization, as was common for Jews; instead, he had been naturalized.160 After consulting the Crown’s legal counsel, the Court of Assistants informed Da Costa that his request had been denied. Da Costa then appeared before the court, laid £5 for the admittance fee on the table, and left. The court sent a sergeant to Da Costa’s home to return the money. Within weeks, Da Costa obtained a mandamus.161 The Russia Company objected to the writ and approached Parliament to clarify whether Jews had a right to membership. Both parties brought the issue to the public’s attention.162 The Russia Company sent a newsletter to its representatives in English seaports: “… of late the Jews have expected admittance into the freedom of our Company … but … there is no Instance of any Jew having ever claimed Freedom in our Society nor that any of them are admitted to the freedom of our City or any Corporation therein.”163 The company asked its seaport factors to mobilize their local representatives in Parliament in support of the company’s protest. The struggle lasted almost two years, but eventually the trade organization was denied the outcome it desired. On 12 March 1729, Samuel Holden, governor of the Russia Company, offered Da Costa membership on the condition that he abstain from further legal steps.164 Except for a few cases like the Goldsmid brothers, Jews rarely became company members until the turn of the century, after which their numbers rose, and then only slightly. The Russia Company accepted only very highly respected Jews like Nathan Mayer Rothschild, Lionel Abraham Goldschmidt, and Zachary Levy.165 Those described above are the only known struggles regarding the naturalization of foreign merchants and their rights at the Russia Company. In the end, the members themselves supported naturalization and the return of foreign-born merchants to Russia. The British aim, after all, was to establish trade with the Russian market with the help and know-how of the Germans and German Russians.166 Naturally, conflicts between naturalized subjects and native-born Britons did not constitute the entirety of the company’s everyday business. In any case, these conflicts were not confined to London; some originated at the British factory in St. Petersburg and were kept alive there. The effects they had on naturalization practices were not negligible.

Naturalized Subjects and the British Factory in St. Petersburg British merchants in Russia lived in the British Factory, originally located in Moscow. Once Peter the Great had made St. Petersburg the capital of Russian tsardom, the British moved the factory there in 1723. In the early 1720s, only three English families were said to be living in St. Petersburg, but halfway through

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the decade the number of Britons there had climbed to 200.167 During the eighteenth century, St. Petersburg came to have the largest British community in Russia. At first the community grew only gradually, but later it thrived: between 1760 and 1780, the British population of St. Petersburg is said to have doubled. Exact numbers are almost impossible to find, however, because the number of merchants fluctuated considerably. Many of these Britons were young bachelors and stayed in Russia only temporarily.168 In early 1781 the register of the English Church in St. Petersburg listed 482 members.169 Three years later the British congregation had grown so much that Consul Walter Shairp requested an addition to the church building because it had become too small.170 As not everyone was a churchgoer, we can assume a larger number. Contemporary historian Heinrich Storch estimated 930 for the year 1789.171 Three years later another contemporary source reported 1,500 Britons living in St. Petersburg.172 These figures offer a rough idea of the size of the British community there. At no time did Britons constitute the largest group of European foreigners in St. Petersburg; that title went to the Germans. According to Storch, the capital hosted 17,660 Germans, 3,700 Finns, 2,290 French, 1,860 Swedes, 930 Britons, and 50 Dutchmen.173 In the first decade of the eighteenth century, a few German merchants, including Mathias Schiffner, left England for Russia immediately following naturalization.174 Schiffner was naturalized in the autumn of 1711 and opened a trade house in St. Petersburg soon afterward.175 Moscow-born Hermann Meyer (of Dutch descent) acquired British nationality in 1715 and joined the Russia Company the same year. Jacob Wolff from the port and trade town of Narva (taken by Russia in 1704, it now lies in Estonia) followed suit in 1725 and, like Meyer, returned to Russia immediately after being naturalized in Britain. Whether he ever set foot on British soil again is not known. After 1729, when treaty negotiations with Russia commenced, more naturalized British subjects lived there. In 1753, Jonas Hanway, the author of An Account of the British Trade, complained that the British Factory in St. Petersburg had “been for some time blended with foreigners, who, in consequence of their naturalization, have enjoyed a participation of the privileges and immunities of the company.”176 In another context Hanway mentioned a list of twenty-four foreigners who had been naturalized in Britain in the past twenty-five years and now lived in Russia.177 Hanway’s list no longer exists, but Table 15 shows the names of naturalized Britons and some of their sons, all of whom lived in Russia, were members of the Russia Company and traded with Russia. With few exceptions, most of the naturalized British subjects living in Russia had been naturalized before 1774. A conspicuously large number were naturalized in the 1730s following the signing of the treaty. The list is witness to the effects of the act of 1774, which for the most part put an end to purely com-

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Table 15. Naturalized British Subjects Living in Russia178 Year Naturalized

Year of Joining the Russia Company

Schiffner, Mathias / Riga

1711

1711

Meyer, Hermann / Moscow

1715

1715

Weckell, Godfrey / Narva

1717

1717

Wolff, Jacob / Narva

1725

1725

Tamesz, John / Moscow

1728

1729

Bardewick, Ernst / Oldenburg

1731

1731

Timmerman, John / Moscow

1737

Opitz, Ernst Gottfried / Breslau (in Silesia, now Wroclaw)

1732

1732

Hasenfeller, Gottfried / Tartu (now in Estonia)

1733

1733

Reinhold, Jacob / Moscow

1734

1734

Reinhold, Carel / Moscow

1738

1738

Bruiningk, John Justin / Narva

1738

1738

Klencke, Henry / Bremen

1738

1738

Swellengrebell, Peter Conrad / Moscow

1718

1744

Name / Birthplace

Ritter, Lorentz Bastian / Narva

1744

1744

Lieutand, Joseph / Switzerland

–

1745

Bardewick, Hans / Oldenburg

1745

1745

Holsten, Peter / St. Petersburg

1742

1747

Meybohm, Johann / Bremen

1752

1752

Setler, Otto Ewald / Courland (Latvia)

1755

–

–

1763

De Morin, John Henry / The Hague

1752

1763

Klausing, Henry / Bielefeld

1753

1753

Paris, John / St. Petersburg

1761

1762

Schultz, Christopher John / Liepaja (Latvia)

1765

1765

Jäger, Dirk / Moscow

1765

1765

Schneider, John Henry / Switzerland

1768

1769

Blankenhagen, Justus / Tallinn

1766

1771

Häseler, Nicholas / Hamburg

1774

1774

Erich, John / Lübeck

Opitz, Ernst Jacob (Ernst Gottfried Opitz’s son) Russia

1774

1774

Meybohm, Jacob Jeremiah / St. Petersburg (Johann Meybohm’s son)

–

1775

Wistinghausen, Frederick William / Tallinn

1802

1802

Meybohm, Johann / St. Petersburg (Johann Meybohm’s grandson)

1802

1802

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mercially motivated naturalization of persons lacking residence in London. Of the two persons naturalized in 1802, at least Frederick Wistinghausen had lived for some time in London before returning to Russia in 1814. It is not known whether the younger Johann Meybohm lived in London for any length of time prior to naturalization.179 The German and German-Russian practice of leaving Russia for naturalization and returning there afterwards raises the question not only of the Germans’ intentions, but also those of the British in encouraging such behavior. The advantages for Germans and German Russians are clear: privileges of the Trade Treaty of 1734 and access to Britain’s money market and colonial markets.180 Meybohm’s opponents accused him of entering the British money market without justification.181 On the other hand, the British benefited from cooperation with German and Dutch merchants in Russia. While building up their own trade with Russia, they encouraged German and Dutch merchants to become British subjects and then sent them to Russia as factors or made them partners in the Russian branches of British trade houses, profiting from German and Dutch familiarity with the local economy and from the social contacts that they themselves lacked. Moreover, the organization of British overseas trade prevented many British merchants and their families from settling abroad; most British merchants stayed in Russia only temporarily. Their work and thought was focused on Great Britain, and they recruited merchants for Russia exclusively from home. When an apprentice’s training neared completion, his master would send him to Russia to work as a factor. Upon completion of the apprenticeship, the young man could become a partner in the master’s Russian trade house or go into business for himself, always upholding the tie to his former master. Thus the master gained a reliable and experienced partner in Russia while conversely, the young merchant had an important trade partner, his former master, back in Britain. Nonetheless, sooner or later most Britons returned to England and opened their own trade houses there, setting the cycle in motion once more.182 Rapid expansion in bilateral trade raised the need for qualified factors and representatives who were thoroughly familiar with Russian conditions. Gradually the practice of sending older apprentices to Russia was abandoned, and master merchants began sending young merchants to Russia immediately upon the completion of their apprenticeships, making them employees or junior partners in their Russia branches.183 For example, after completing his apprenticeship in Great Britain, William Maister bought a junior partnership in the Russian trade house of the British merchant Consul Walter Shairp. Shairp had been looking for a partner because he wanted to return to Great Britain. In 1757, after seeing that Maister worked to his satisfaction, Shairp left Russia.184 In St. Petersburg, George Napier longed to return to London too, but as he wrote to his brother James in 1732, he could not find a suitable partner and saw himself forced to remain another few years in St. Petersburg.185 Not until he met Gottfried Hasenfeller

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from Dorpat (now Tartu), made him a partner, and handed over the business did George Napier leave St. Petersburg for London. Hasenfeller had been naturalized in 1733 for that very purpose and became a member of the Russia Company about six weeks later.186 Since most Britons considered their stay in Russia only temporary, fluctuation rates at British trade houses were high and partners changed frequently. The British community also was fairly isolated in the overseas post and rarely came into contact with the Russian people. Germans, on the other hand, had traditionally behaved differently in Russia. They not only stayed longer but often settled permanently, joining kin that already lived there. The upper middle class of eighteenth-century Baltic trade towns was comprised of families of German extraction that had arrived in the seventeenth century. Some had resided there since Hanse times.187 They were familiar with Russian customs and had connections and personal ties to Russia’s elite. This made Germans, and especially German Russians, attractive business partners for the British. Cooperation held considerable charm in the first two years after enactment of the trade treaty, when British-Russian trade rapidly increased. It sometimes led to enduring commercial relations and friendship, as in the cases of Holden, Schiffner and Wolff, or Napier and Hasenfeller.188 The list of German-British and Dutch-British trade houses in Table 16 may not be exhaustive. The current state of research and the historical sources allow only an incomplete overview of the business partners mentioned. As in all trade houses, partners changed more or less frequently. British merchants’ submission of their German colleagues’ applications for membership in the Russia Company is also evidence of cooperation. As a rule, these merchants were connected by business. John Thornton, for instance, submitted a request for Lorentz Bastian Ritter from St. Petersburg, who was a partner in both the trade houses Ritter, Thornton & Cayley and Arbuthnot, Thornton & Ritter.189 Being a partner in more than one trade house was fairly common. Mathias Schiffner collaborated not only with Wolff and Holden; from 1741 to 1745 he was also a partner in Thomas Wale’s trading firm in Riga. Together with James Fawthropp he owned one-fourth of the firm; Wale and Thomas Fraser each owned three-eighths. According to Wale’s notes, they limited their partnership to five years.190 In 1748 Schiffner turns up as a partner in Wigor, Schiffner & Co.191 Besides these involvements, naturalized merchants were also partners in non-British houses and/or owned firms of their own. Hasenfeller was a partner in Keiner & Hasenfeller around 1737. Ernst Bardewick began his career as a factor for James and Francis Gardner in St. Petersburg, where he later became a partner. Together with his father-in-law he then established a house called Bardewick & Felthusen in the 1730s.192 In the 1740s he owned a house called Bardewick & Wans. He also sometimes worked with John Dingley. At that time the latter owned a house called Dingley & Klencke, in which at various times the abovementioned John Hanway was also a partner.193

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Table 16. British Trading Firms with Naturalized Partners in Russia (Names of Germans and German-Russians indicated in bold print) Trading House

Location

Arbuthnot & Ritter Bardewick & Wans Weger, Schiffner & Kyl Dingley & Henry Klencke Schiffner & Wolff Donaldson, Thorley & Sutthoff i Sutthoff, Miln & Co Drink & Brüningk Crammond & Timmermann Schiffner, Coole & Watson Napier & Hasenfeller Reinhold & Rex Gardner & Bardewick Bardewick & Felthusen Bardewick & Dingley Ritter, Thornton & Cayley Jacob Wolff & Edwards Wolff & Pickard Crammond, Timmermann & Shard Dingley, Klencke & Hanway Wale, Fraser, Schiffner & Fanthropp

St. Petersburg St. Petersburg & Riga St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg Narva Narva & Riga St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg Riga

i

It could not be ascertained whether the naturalized British subject Godhard Sutthoff was a partner in the firms Donaldson, Thorley & Sutthoff and Sutthoff, Miln & Co. The first of these two firms existed until about 1764/65. Sutthoff’s father died in 1763. We know neither when Godhard went to England nor how long he stayed in Hull or England. In 1768 he became a member of the Schwarzhäupter in Reval (Tallinn). I thank Dirk Erpenbeck for drawing my attention to this. Source: All houses from before 1770 were compiled from A. V. Demkin, Britanskoe Kupečestvo v Rossii XVIII Veka, Moscow, 1998;, Rev. Henry John Wale, My Grandfather’s Pocket Book, 1701 to 1796, London, 1883, Napier GD; Reading, Commercial Treaty, Holden, Account Book, Dorosenko. Quellen zur Geschichte des Rigaer Handels. The firm Sutthoff in Riga is described as being an English house, RCS MSS 11 741/7, 1760–65, 15 April 1760, 15 April 1761, 7 June 1765, fols. 87, 106, 206. The firm of Sutthoff & Miln was dissolved 1788 (I thank Dirk Erpenbeck for this last piece of information).

Most trade houses in Table 16 were established in the first half of the century, when cooperation was particularly close. Britons could gain direct access to Russia’s political and commercial elite through their German-Russian partners, some of whom were relatives and friends of Russian court members and government officials.194 Wolff’s connections to Russia’s leaders prompted British Ambassador Lord Tyrawley to suggest him for the post of British consul.195 Personal connections enabled Thomas Wale to overcome trade obstacles and establish a branch factory for foreigners in Riga. Prior to 1760, aliens could not own a home or even

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a bed in Riga. A foreigner wishing to do business in Riga had to rent quarters secretly from a citizen. Thomas Wale started his career in Riga living with an elderly widow. Then, for more than a decade until the law was relaxed, he, his business partners, and his employees all lived as boarders with Louisa Rudolphina Rathen, whom he had secretly married.196 Britons also tried to reinforce their connections by marrying into the German-Russian commercial elite. Despite the British community’s rapid growth, only an insubstantial number settled permanently with their families. One British family, besides that of Thomas Wale, that did create personal bonds with German families was the British family Cayley. Through his sister Elisabeth’s marriage, John Cayley from the trade house Ritter, Thornton & Cayley (later Thornton & Cayley) became personally acquainted with the Poggenpohl family, a respected, wealthy German-Russian merchant family that was related to influential members of Russia’s bureaucracy and aristocracy.197 Lack of knowledge of the Russian language was another reason for British merchants to seek cooperation with Germans and German Russians. After his partner William Maister committed suicide in 1758, Walter Shairp wrote to his brother about the ideal candidate for work in Russia. Having sufficient capital was not a priority. He wanted a young man “born in Russia & bred here to business, who writes French, Russian, and English very well.”198 He did not mention German, although it was the everyday spoken language in western bourgeois Russia. In a report on Riga, Hanway noted that “German is the language of the people.” Only the farmers in Livonia, he wrote, spoke “unduetch, a dialect entirely different from … German.”199 The upper class and Russian government officials spoke German, especially under Tsarina Anna. It was also the language of convenience in St. Petersburg’s English clubs. The British community’s journals even appeared in German. The English Weekly News in the German Language and The English Magazine were published by Peter Holsten, a naturalized Briton.200 Very few Britons could speak Russian, and many considered this a sizable deficiency. Among the reasons why Tyrawley suggested Jacob Wolff for the position of consul was the latter’s knowledge of the German and Russian languages.201 When James Brogden traveled to Russia in 1787/88, he reported back home that even John Cayley’s children, though born in Russia, had not mastered the Russian language because they rarely met with the Russian population: “All the Russians who are above the condition of peasants speak either German or French, and the intercourse with the common people is so small that very little advantage is to be derived from it.”202 Back in Great Britain, the Russia Company hired Peter Untzelmann to translate German and Russian texts. English-Russian dictionaries and grammars were almost nonexistent, so the company commissioned merchant Adam Kroll from Reval (Tallinn) to write a grammar.203 Walther Kirchner sees the French hesitance to learn Russian or German as a primary reason for the failure to develop trade relations between France and Russia in the eighteenth

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century.204 The British, however, did not allow language challenges to stop trade but compensated for their linguistic shortcomings by cooperating with Germans and German Russians. In the first decades of the eighteenth century, reliance on Russian merchants of German and Dutch descent was invaluable to the expansion of British trade. It facilitated and expedited Britain’s penetration of the Russian market by eliminating or reducing the initial difficulties and risks born of unfamiliarity with the imponderability of a foreign market.205 Even in Russia, conflicts arose between naturalized and native Britons. Ultimately, disputes over naturalization practices were part of the struggle for orders and shares of the market in both Russia and Great Britain. Competition in Russia was tough, but that is another book.206 The struggle was not between naturalized and native Britons alone: it involved merchants of all nationalities who traded there.

The Bank of Scotland’s Right to Naturalize The Coalition Wars and political events in Russia ushered in the demise of the Russia Company. After the death of Catherine II, Paul I introduced policies hostile to Great Britain. Toward the close of the century he expelled Britons from the country and sequestered their property. Relations improved after Paul I was assassinated in 1801, and in 1813 the two countries signed a new trade treaty; but even this could not halt the Russia Company’s decline. Unlike the Levant Company, the Russia Company did not abandon its charter in the 1820s, but in effect it no longer controlled trade. Despite the Russia Company’s increasing obsolescence, membership applications, including those of naturalized subjects, did not decrease. During the Coalition Wars, three new developments affected admission to the company. First, as of 1798, obstacles in the naturalization process led many foreigners to apply for membership in the company even before their requests for naturalization had been processed. Sixteen prospective members were issued provisional approval on condition that they present their naturalization document later. Over half of them never actually became British subjects.207 Some applicants waited more than a year between requesting membership in the Russia Company and finally being naturalized. Daniel Boileau from Berlin waited five years.208 Second, the events of war made it increasingly difficult for the Russia Company to control its member merchants. Native and naturalized Britons were increasingly reluctant to join. Some naturalized subjects presented their naturalization certificates to the company only after repeated reminders. The Dutch-born Charles Theophilus Cazenove, who had become a British subject in 1791, applied for membership in the company in early 1802 but did not get around to presenting his naturalization papers to the Court of Assistants until early 1803.209 Third, after 1807 the

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company began opening membership both to Jews and to denizens like Diederick Willinck.210 Unlike the Levant Company, the Russia Company tried to halt its demise by introducing more liberal admission practices. It was also more lenient toward subjects naturalized by the Bank of Scotland. When naturalization policy disintegrated under Sidmouth, the Russia Company refused membership to foreigners entirely. Some (especially those who had tried in vain to become British subjects after 1810) exploited the new option of being naturalized by the Bank of Scotland and then applying for membership in the Russia Company. Table 17. Russia Company Members Naturalized by Purchasing Shares in the Bank of Scotland Name

Date of Joining the Russia Company

Samuel Ludwig Gross John Christian Blohm Henry Schaaf Lewis Frederick Hulle Frederick Johan Grauthoff John Stevens Barandon John Henry Schröder Charles Henry Stavenhagen

7 July 1818 7 July 1818 27 Nov .1818 27 Nov. 1818 27 Nov. 1818 27 Nov. 1818 23 July 1819 23 Feb. 1821

As Table 17 shows, John Henry Schröder, founder of London’s Schröder Bank, was naturalized through the Bank of Scotland. In late 1801 his brother Frederick Schröder had been naturalized without much trouble, but in 1810 John Henry’s request was denied without explanation.211 Samuel Ludwig Gross, John Christian Blohm, and Charles Lewis Paleske petitioned for British nationality in the same month as John Henry Schröder, but in vain. Henry Schaaf (from Leipzig) was denied naturalization in 1816.212 Between 1813 and 1816, Henry Schaaf, John Christian Blohm, and Samuel Ludwig Gross all had several disputes with the Russia Company. In 1813 and 1814, Schaaf and Blohm had imported large quantities of hemp and other goods from Russia. In 1816, with the help of commodity broker Joshua Metcalfe, the firm Gross & Blohm had again imported hemp from St. Petersburg. The Russia Company brought the case before the Court of Common Pleas. In February 1816 the Russia Company’s Court of Assistants demanded that Metcalfe explain his behavior. His excuse was that the business transaction had been arranged at a time when no one could imagine Gross and Blohm would be denied membership in the company. Both men had lived in the country for years and had taken over the business of Mr. Paleske, a long-time member of the company.213 The company left it at that. In the eighteenth century, the Russia Company protested against Parliament’s naturalization practices several times without success and eventually refrained

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from taking legal action. Meanwhile, the City of London’s Court of Aldermen produced a legal statement advocating the legality of naturalization through the Bank of Scotland. This happened after two persons naturalized by the Bank of Scotland requested the Freedom of the City.214 The Levant Company had only provisionally accepted subjects naturalized by the Bank of Scotland and eventually turned them down entirely, but the lenient Russia Company took them on as members. Overall, Britain’s penetration of the Russian market influenced the practice of naturalization. In the first half of the century, the company’s trade monopoly and rule that only Britons could become members led German and RussianGerman merchants to seek British nationality in order to act as agents or partners of British merchants in Russia. These same circumstances pushed German, German-Russian, and Dutch merchants to exploit a loophole in early modern naturalization law—namely, its failure to require that new subjects reside in Britain—so as to enjoy the advantages procured by the trade treaty. This was advantageous for both sides. As the British community in Russia grew stronger, the treaty elapsed and competition got tougher, and the practice of naturalization was for the most part terminated by paragraphs added to the Naturalization Act. Nonetheless, trade with Russia remained attractive for Germans living in Great Britain. The importance of membership in the Russia Company, even after the turn of the century, is clear from German merchants’ attempts to join even after Sidmouth ended naturalization through the Bank of Scotland. Russia was an important market for London’s naturalized merchants, especially those who, having relatives and knowing fellow-countrymen there, also enjoyed the financial privileges promoted by the British-Russian trade treaty. Their activity was not confined to trade with Russia. Indeed, these merchants helped make London a hub of the global exchange of commodities, for even as they brought raw materials and semifinished products from the East to meet the dire need for industrialization and the expansion of the British Navy, they also imported bullion and colonial wares from across the Atlantic.

Notes 1. See below for more detail. 2. GL, MSS 11 741/6, Russia Company minute books (hereafter RC MSS 11 741) 1 March 1734/35, fol. 9. 3. See RC MSS 11 741/9, 4 Nov. 1796, fol. 127: ref. Sebastian Fridag. For Korten see also RC MSS 11 741/5, 3 Sept. 1730, fol. 340. 4. Davis’s work Aleppo and Devonshire Square: English Traders in the Levant in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1967) and Alfred C. Wood’s History of the Levant Company (London, 1964) remain two relevant studies on the history of the Levant Company. My comments are based for the most part on depictions given in these two works. 5. See below for more detail.

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6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

Davis, Aleppo, 97. Ibid., 95. See also Davis, Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade, Leicester, 1979, 21. See the table in Wood, Levant Company, 193. Ibid., 192. On the history of British-Russian trade relations in the eighteenth century see Herbert Kaplan, Russian Overseas Commerce with Great Britain during the Reign of Catherine II, Philadelphia, 1995; Arcadius Kahan, The Plow, The Hammer, and the Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Russia, Chicago and London, 1985; and Susan Jennifer Newman, “Russian Foreign Trade 1680–1780: The British Contribution,” (Ph.D. diss., Edinburgh, 1985). Herbert Kaplan, “Russia’s Impact on the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain during the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century: The Significance of International Commerce,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 29 (1981): 12. On this treaty see Douglas K. Reading, The Anglo-Russian Commercial Treaty of 1734, New Haven, 1938. The treaty expired in 1758 but was temporarily extended by Tsarina Elizabeth and replaced by a new trade treaty in 1766. Two further treaties followed in 1793 and 1813. Dietrich Gerhard, England und der Aufstieg Russlands, Munich and Berlin, 1933, 40–41. Ibid., 43. The extent of these advantages is evident in a petition to the Council of War in Berlin from the year 1796, wherein merchants from Emden demand a trade treaty modeled on the treaty enjoyed by the English. The petition is reprinted in Wilhelm Connemann, 200 Jahre Firmengeschichte. Ein Spiegel ostfriesischer Wirtschaftsentwicklung, Leer, 1950, 62–63. See Kaplan, Overseas Commerce, 9, and Kaplan, “Russia’s Impact,” 17. Kaplan refers to the import of forty different kinds of wares from Russia. Kaplan, “Russia’s Impact,” 8. Peter Mathias in Kaplan, Overseas Commerce, 55, and Newman, “Russian Foreign Trade,” 58 and 76–77. Sven-Erik Aström, From Cloth to Iron: The Anglo-Baltic Trade in the Late Seventeenth Century, vol. 1, Helsingfors, 1963, 36–37. Ibid., 26. Kaplan, Overseas Commerce, 213. Ibid., 214. For the economic impact of Britain’s linen industry see Negley B. Harte, “The Rise of Protection and the English Linen Trade 1690–1790,” in Negley B. Harte and K. G. Pointing, eds., Textile History and Economic History, Manchester, 1973, 74–76, 108–109. Ibid. Kaplan, Overseas Commerce, 215, and 65ff.; idem, “Russia’s Impact,” 30. Kaplan, “Russia’s Impact,” 21–22. Ibid., 226–227. Harder-Gersdorff, “Riga im Rahmen der Handelsmetropolen und Zahlungsströme des OstWest-Verkehrs am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 44 (1995): 521. Kaplan, “Russia’s Impact,” 11; Kaplan, Overseas Commerce, 7. According to Gerhard, shipping was very profitable. Gerhard, England, 61. Kaplan, Overseas Commerce, 12, 16, 40. See also Walter E. Minchinton and D. Starkey, “British Shipping, The Netherlands and the Baltic 1784–1795,” in W. J. Wieringa, ed., The Interactions of Amsterdam and Antwerp with the Baltic Region, 1400–1800, Leiden, 1983, 181–191. Kaplan, Overseas Commerce, 267–268, and Kaplan, “Russia’s Impact,” 7–8. Kahan, The Plow, 198. Wood, Levant Company, 9, 151, and Davis, Aleppo, 50. G. Ambrose, “The Levant Company, 1640–1753” (M. Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1935), 45. See also Davis, Aleppo, 61.

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35. Davis, Aleppo, 60. These were the trading houses Snelling & Fawkener (11 percent), R., E. & J. Radcliffe (10.4 percent), H. J. & T. March (9.5 percent), H. J. & C. Bosanquet (8.3 percent), and J. C. & S. Lock (7.7 percent). 36. Davis, Aleppo, 64. 37. Wood, Levant Company, 153. 38. In 1744 the petition passed the House of Commons, but the House of Lords rejected it. See Wood, Levant Company, 153 for details. 39. Jews could only be members in Great Britain. They were not allowed to act as agents in the Levant. 40. Prior to 1753 the trade company excluded retailers from membership, accepting only persons whom it considered “mere merchants”; for problems with that definition, see Davis, Aleppo, 50. 41. TNA, State Papers, SP 105/333, Levant Company; Ina Russell, “The Later History of the Levant Company 1753–1825” (Ph.D. diss., Manchester, 1935), 285; Wood, Levant Company, 195. 42. SP 105/333, Levant Company, fols. 24–25 and 56. Kuhff is first mentioned in Kent’s 1770 directory, where he is listed as a Turkey merchant (the term used to designate merchants for the Levant) along with his partner Meyer. Meyer was not found on the membership list. 43. For details, see below. 44. For their possible contribution to smuggling, see below and Russell, “Later History,” 133–134. 45. See above. 46. See above, and Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, “Conflicting Aims. Die britische Einwanderungsund Einbürgerungspolitik zwischen Asylrecht und konterrevolutionärer Strategie 1789–1818,” in Dittmar Dahlman, ed., Unfreiwilliger Aufbruch. Migration und Revolution von der Französischen Revolution bis zum Prager Frühling, Essen, 2007, 31–50. 47. SP 105/333, Levant Company, fols. 99–100. Their applications were rejected on 10 Feb. 1820. 48. TNA, HO 5/24 under each name. 49. Malta was a hub for Levantine wares. During the French-British conflict on the Mediterranean, the British factory was temporarily stationed on Malta. 50. TNA, SP 105/338 Register Assemblies Oaths, fol. 68. 51. TNA, HO 5/24. 52. TNA, SP 105/338, fol. 106. 53. Davis, Aleppo, 52. 54. Another book exists for the 1731–1736 period, but it is of little interest here because at that time none of the Levant Company’s members were naturalized subjects. 55. He was naturalized in 1762. Kent’s London Directory, 1766–1773: Kuhff & Meyer, Turkey merchants. 56. Holden’s London Triennial Directory, 1790; see below for more on insurance. 57. Kent’s London Directory, 1770. Until 1769 his firm was listed as Kuhff & Meyer, Turkey merchants. 58. See below for details. 59. Russell, “Later History,” 166. After 1761 we find no more information on Mierop’s trade with the Levant. 60. Henry Crockat and Angerstein both joined the trade company. TNA, SP 105/333, fol. 56, 31 August 1784. 61. Ibid., fol. 56. 62. For Nathan Mayer Rothschild see Niall Ferguson, Die Geschichte der Rothschilds. Propheten des Geldes, Stuttgart, 2002, vol. 1, chap. 3, 109f. John Henry Schröder imported predominantly cotton in the early 1790s. Shaw II, 172; TNA, SP 91/99, fols. 5f. 63. See table in Wood, Levant Company, 194.

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64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82.

83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

Ibid., 192. TNA, SP 105/171, Levant Company. Russell, “Later History,” 58–59, 61. Kent’s London Directory, 1780s and 1790s; Prob 11/1170 and 11/1262. Prob 11/1170 and 11/1262. TNA, BH 1/475, Hudson’s Bay Company. The brothers both joined the Russia Company on 31 Oct. 1777 (GL MSS 11 741 Vol. 7, 442). TNA, SP 105/170–172, Levant Company. John Daniel died in 1788, and after John William’s death the trade house was run by their nephew John William Vogel. Vogel had become a British subject in 1789. Kent’s London Directory, 1779–1789. Murrel died in 1789. No tax was collected for cotton. TNA, SP 105/170–171, Levant Company. For more on this issue and the following matter see the chapter on interloping trade in Russell, “Later History.” Families like the Amsincks with their Dutch branches or the Wienholts (a brother of John Birkett Wienholt’s father lived as a merchant in Leghorn) could easily evade the Levant Company’s monopoly. TNA, SP 105/170, Levant Company, Sept. and Oct. 1781. Ibid., SP 105/172, Levant Company, esp. 1798 and 1799. Ibid., Impositions Book, 14 May 1806. John Roger Teschemacher had acquired two patents, one each for a spinning machine and a steam machine. (Woodcraft, Patents of Invention, Part 2, Chronological Index of Patents, No. 1917 and 1808). TNA, SP 105/171, Levant Company, 28 Feb. 1792. Naturalized merchants may have influenced company decisions through informal personal and commercial relations among its members, particularly when these were highly respected persons such as Peter Henry Kuhff, John Julius Angerstein, and Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who was well acquainted with politicians at both the local and the national level. RC MSS, 11 741/3, 14 April 1699, fol. 2 On this liberal naturalization act see above. Between 1707 and 1710, no naturalized subjects were admitted to the company, but thirteen merchants were accepted between 1710 and 1713. More than half of them acquired the nationality based on Queen Anne’s Naturalization Act of 1709. Besides Huguenots, these included, among others, Adolph Rodde, Mathias Schiffner, Christian Meyer, and Henry Voguell. The latter, however, did not join the Russia Company until 1725. Figures compiled from RC MSS 11 741/4–5. See also Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, “Staatsangehörigkeit und Fremdes Know-How. Die deutschen Kaufleute im britischen Russlandhandel,” VSWG 89 (2002): 389. Figures compiled from RC MSS 11 741/2–11. In most cases, the books mention the fact of naturalization, but evidently they remain silent about some, such as the naturalizations of Jacob Jacobsen, Sir Peter Meyer, and John Julius Angerstein. The total number may thus be somewhat higher. For more detail see Schulte Beerbühl, “Staatsangehörigkeit,” 389. See above for the general trend. See Hermann Kellenbenz, Unternehmerkräfte im Hamburger Portugal- und Spanienhandel. 1590–1625, Hamburg, 1954, and Hans Pohl, Die Beziehungen Hamburgs zu Spanien und dem spanischen Amerika in der Zeit von 1740–1806, Wiesbaden, 1963. Gerhard, England, 69, n. 113. See Christoph Friedrich Menke, “Die wirtschaftlichen und politischen Beziehungen der Hansestädte zu Russland im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert” (Ph.D. diss., Göttingen, 1959), esp. 190–199.

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90. See above. 91. Figures compiled from RC MSS 11 741/6–9. 92. For the names of Bremen merchants involved in trade with Russia, see Menke, “Beziehungen der Hansestädte,” esp. 190 and 198–99. 93. Shaw II, 141, 149; Prob 11/1039; Kent’s London Directory, 1755–1778. 94. Menke, “Beziehungen der Hansestädte,” 199. 95. RC MSS 11 741/9, 12 Feb. 1796, fol. 101; Gerhard, England, 63–64. On Hope & Co. see Marten Gerbertus Buist, At Spes non Fracta. Hope & Co 1770–1815, The Hague, 1974. 96. In the first half of the century, the constraint that members use ships chartered by the company drew complaints from members and outsiders alike. Davis, Aleppo, 53; Wood, Levant Company, 210–211; Gerhard, England, 63. The practice was abandoned in 1744. 97. Two likely exceptions were Sebastian Fridag Sr. and Julius Angerstein, who both joined the Russia Company near the end of their active careers. These were probably what were called “complimentary elections.” In the late phases of their histories, the Russia Company and Levant Company offered respected members of society a kind of honorary membership. For the Levant Company’s handling of this see Wood, Levant Company, 195. 98. See table 14 below. 99. Both brothers were furriers; see above for more about them. 100. Shaw II, 193; RC MSS 11 741/9, 19 Jan. 1798, fol. 182; TNA, State Papers, SP 105/333, Levant Company, fol. 72. 101. The Russia Company’s records generally noted when naturalization documents were presented to the board, but not the date of naturalization. Jewish members of the trade organization are not included in this evaluation (for more on them, see below). 102. RC MSS 11 741/8, 28 Jan. 1791, fol. 307. Martinius applied for membership on 28. Jan. 1791 and received British nationality on 23 March that year. In the interim the Russia Company granted him the right to trade with Russia. On Bardewick see RC MSS 741/5, 3 May 1731, fols. 355–56. Bardewick applied for membership on 3 May 1731 and became a British subject on the seventh of that month. 103. RC MSS 741/6, 1 March 1748/9, fols. 42–44. 104. They were both accepted as members on 21 February 1751. 105. RC MSS 11 741/9, 26 Oct. 1797, 157-6, 1 March 1798, 168. After the turn of the century two nephews, Siegmund and Henry John Rücker, arrived in London. Siegmund Rücker became a member of the company that same year; Henry John Rücker did so four years later. Henry John had been a partner in his uncle Daniel Henry Rücker’s firm since 1797, so his joining the company in 1809 may have been related to a change in partnership. Although the trading firm Rücker focused increasingly on Atlantic trade in the last two decades of the eighteenth century, trade with Russia remained a pillar of their business because Russia was a promising market for sugar from the West Indies and other colonial wares. 106. Shaw I, 168; RC MSS 11 741/2, 25 Feb. 1698/99, fol. 255. The Russia Company’s charter restricted membership to persons over the age of twenty-one. Theodor Jacobsen had had his nephew naturalized at the age of four. When naturalized subjects were first admitted to the company in 1698/9, he was still underage. Paul Westhoffe had British nationality, but in 1702 the Russia Company denied him Moscow membership because he was underage. RC MSS 11 741/3, 24 June 1702, fol. 77. John Anthony Rücker Jr. was sixteen years old upon naturalization in 1796 and waited until early 1802 to apply for membership to the company. RC MSS 11 741/9, 4 May 1802, fol. 331. 107. RC MSS 11 741/5, 3 Sept. 1730, fol. 340. 108. Peter Korten, naturalized on 9 April 1731, joined the Russia Company on 20 May that year. John Abraham Korten had become a member the previous September. Godfrey Wichelhausen became a British subject on 22 April 1737 and was accepted by the company on 2 June the

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109.

110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115.

116.

117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128.

129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135.

same year. Shaw II, 136, 141; RC MSS 11 741/5, 3 Sept. 1730, 20 May 1731, fols. 340, 358; 11 741/6, 2 June 1737, fol. 102. Both were naturalized on 20 December 1759 and joined the Russia Company on 27 Jan. 1765. The trading firm Amsinck, Paul & Co., Great St. Helen’s, was mentioned for the first time in 1759 in Kent’s London Directory. After 1761 it was called Tonnies & Amsinck, Great St. Helen’s (Kent’s London Directory, 1763). RC MSS 741/6, 1 March 1737/7, fols. 92–93. Buist, At Spes non Fracta, 5–6. RC MSS 11 741/7, 1 March 1774, fols. 367–8. Ibid., 11 741/5, 1 March 1732/3, fol. 427. See RC MSS 11 741/8, 23 Sept. 1785, fol. 175. After Edward Forster’s death in 1811, a member of the Thornton family became the company’s next governor. Boehm began his career in the 1740s as a Hamburg merchant and maintained close ties to Hamburg. He is said to have been very knowledgeable of German and Baltic conditions. David S. MacMillan, “The Russia Company of London in the Eighteenth Century: The Effective Survival of a ‘Regulated’ Chartered Company,” Guildhall Miscellany 4 (1973): 231. See Richard Grassby, The Business Community of Seventeenth-Century England, Cambridge, 1995; Lucy Sutherland, “The City of London in Eighteenth-Century Politics” in Richard Pares and Alan J. Taylor, eds., Essays Presented to Sir Lewis Namier, New York, 1956, 59–74; and Gary De Krey, A Fractured Society: The Politics of London, Oxford, 1985. See Samuel Holden’s will (Prob 11/709), in which he called Mathias Schiffner his friend. Holden named Schiffner’s son as executor of his will (East Sussex Record Office, Shiffner MSS 5, Shiffner Correspondence, Hylton to Lady Shiffner, 27 Feb. 1928). On the Amyands, see above. TNA Edinburgh, GD 30/1 583/7, Shairp to Houston, 17 August 1753. DNB, 688. Joshua van Neck was raised to peer rank in 1751; for more on him, see above. Lewis B. Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George II, 2nd ed., London, 1957, 54 and 190–191. RC MSS 11 741/3, fols. 101 and 109. See Naturalization Acts in Shaw I. RC MSS 11 741/3, fol. 109. Ormstone and his family had already lived in London for twelve years. See below for a list of naturalized Britons living in Russia. RC MSS 11 741/5, fol. 355. RC MSS 11 741/6, 22 Feb. 1744/45, fol. 312. RC MSS 11 741/7, 28 Aug. 1767, fol. 252. Henry Laurence from Charlestown, South Carolina, and William Mair from Amsterdam applied for membership through agents (ibid., 13 Jan. 1768). In 1753 Dirk Vander Heyden from New York petitioned the Court of Assistants for membership in person, but whether he stayed in London is unknown. RC MSS 11 741/6, 7 Aug. 1753, fol. 499. RC MSS 11 741/6, 31 Aug. 1744, 26 Oct. 1744, 22 Feb. 1745, fols. 301–2 and 312. John Thornton, for example, submitted the request for Lorentz Bastian Ritter from St. Petersburg. Ibid., 24 Oct. 1744, fol. 302. Ibid., fols. 301–2 and 312. The Vaus family owned a trade house in St. Petersburg. Ibid., fols. 392, 421. Ibid., 25 May 1738, fol. 126, 22 Feb. and 14 Aug. 1745, fols. 312 and 334. JHC, vol. 26, 11 March 1752, 488. BL, B1 SPR 357 d.9 (39), Case John Meybohm. East Europe Institute Munich, Amburger File, No. 33.460. Erik Amburger, Deutsche in Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Russlands. Die Familie Amburger in St. Petersburg 1770–1920, Wiesbaden 1986. On Meybohm see esp. 250–51.

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136. Schulte Beerbühl, “Staatsangehörigkeit,” 394. 137. See A Supplement of Facts to The Case of the Merchants of Great Britain, in Reference to Acts of Naturalization of Foreigners Not Residing in the British Dominions, BL 357.d.9 (39). 138. Shiffner MSS 1737; RC MSS 11 741/6, 17 Jan. 1752, fol. 472, 3 April 1752, fol. 485. 139. JHC, vol. 26, 19 March 1752. See also JHL, vol. 27, 25 March 1752. Meybohm appeared at the bar of the House of Lords and was asked whether he would accept the clause or dispense with British nationality. Meybohm accepted naturalization under the condition stated in the act “rather than lose the benefit of said bill.” 140. RC MSS 11 741/7, 15, 17, and 25 March 1744, and 22 April 1744, fols. 371–3, 379. 141. Shaw II, 178. 142. RC MSS 11 741/7 (See note 140). 143. Shaw II, 178–79. 144. RC MSS 11 741/8, 5 Dec. 1780, fol. 43. 145. Vaughn Bevan, The Development of British Immigration Law, London 1986, 110; SP 91/95, fols. 99, 123, 140, 145. 146. 24 Geo III c. 84. See also Bevan, British Immigration Law, 110. 147. See below for further detail. 148. Amburger File, No. 33.460. 149. RC MSS 11 741/7, 16 June 1775, fol. 404. 150. RC MSS 11 741/7, 22 April 1774, fol. 379. 151. SP 91/99, fols. 5–6. 152. Ibid., Suffolk and Swallow St. James, 14 July 1775, fol. 7. 153. 7 Anne c.5; 4 Geo II c. 21; 13 Geo III c.21. 154. RC MSS 11 741/6, 25 Sept. 1747, fol. 393. For more on his father, see below. 155. RC MSS 11 741/7, 16 June 1775, fol. 404, 20 Feb. 1776, fol. 420. 156. HLRO, 42, Geo III c. 116 (22 June 1802); RC MSS 11 741/9, 12 Nov. 1802, fol. 345. 157. Shiffner MSS 1727. After being naturalized, his father had returned to Russia in 1711, where Henry and John were born. He placed them both in the custody of his partner Samuel Holden in England and had them raised there. 158. Naturalized subjects were barred from all passive political rights, see above; Schiffner MSS 1 737. 159. RC MSS 11 741/5, 28 April 1724 and 25 Aug. 1724, fols. 149–50. 160. RC MSS 11 741/5, 22 March 1726/7, fol. 248. For his father’s naturalization see Act of Naturalization 19 Car.2 c. 19 from 19 Dec. 1667, in Shaw I, 99. 161. A writ issued by a superior court ordering a public official or body or lower court to perform a specified duty in the name of the King in order to correct certain deficiencies of Common Law. 162. RC MSS 11 741/5, 23 Feb. 1727/8, fol. 274. 163. RC MSS 741/5, 9 June, 17 July, 20 Oct., 16 Nov., 1 Dec. 1727, fols. 254, 255–257, 259; 12 Jan. 1728, fol. 264. 164. Ibid., 12 March 1728/9, fol. 304. 165. Ibid.; RC MSS 11 741/8, 23 Aug. 1783, fol. 173, 1 March 1779, fol. 14; RC MSS 11 741/10, 6 Nov. 1807, fol. 88, 5 Feb. 1808, fol. 90, 10 Dec. 1813, fol. 201, 9 Feb. 1816, fol. 206. 166. See Schulte Beerbühl, “Staatsangehörigkeit,” 379–399. 167. Newman, “Russian Foreign Trade,” 138; Anthony Cross, By the Banks of the Neva: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in Eighteenth-Century Russia, Cambridge, 1997, 16. 168. Menke, “Beziehungen der Hansestädte,” 133. 169. RC MSS 11 192/3, fol. 82. 170. RC MSS 11 741/8, 24 Feb. 1784, fol. 129. 171. Heinrich Storch, Gemählde von St. Petersburg, 2 parts, Riga, 1793/94, 111.

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172. Cross, Banks of the Neva, 16, quoting numbers by Storch. 173. Ibid. See also Natalija Juchneva, “Die Deutschen in einer polyethnischen Stadt. Petersburg vom Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts bis 1914,” Nordost-Archiv 3 (1994): 11–12. 174. Neither Paul Westhoffe nor Peter Twisk from Archangel (naturalized in 1706) presumably remained in England. 175. See Shiffner MSS 1735. In 1720 he married Agneta Bruiningk in St. Petersburg. See also Hermann Baron Bruiningk, Das Geschlecht von Bruiningk in Livland. Familiengeschichtliche Nachrichten, Riga, 1913, 125. English sources anglicized the name Bruiningk as Brewer. Cf. East Sussex Record Office, Shiffner Archives: A Catalogue, Lewes, 1959, p. xii, n. 6. 176. Jonas Hanway, Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea, vol. 2, London, 1753, 151. 177. Ibid., 393. 178. This list does not claim to be exhaustive. There may have been other Russian Germans who returned to Russia. Paul Westhoffe is not listed here because the Russia Company did not accept him as a member on the grounds of minority (see above). We do not know when he returned to Russia, except that he lived there in 1719 (Amburger File 50.659) and established the first sugar refinery in St. Petersburg. 179. The Russia Company’s minutes state simply “late of London, now of Petersburg.” RC MSS 11 741/9, 12 Nov. 1802, fol. 345. 180. Colonial wares like tobacco and sugar were the main import goods to find their way from the British Colonies to Russia via England. Aström, From Cloth to Iron, vol. 1, 127; Dirk Erpenbeck, “Die Engländer in Narva zu schwedischer Zeit,” ZfO 38 (1989): 486. 181. The Meybohm Case, 1752. 182. Newman, “Russian Foreign Trade,” 134–135. 183. Ibid., 140. 184. TNA Edinburgh, Shairp GD 30/1583/7–10. 185. TNA, Napier GD 1/850/31, George Napier to James Napier, St. Petersburg, 6 May 1732: “I believe it will be yet two years before I can leave this place, for I have no partner and when a man is fixed in a course of business neither his inclination nor his interest will permit him to leave quickly. However, as soon as I can, I intend to settle my affairs so as to get home to London.” 186. Shaw II, 138; RC MSS 11 741/5, 4 July 1733, fol. 441. 187. Menke, “Beziehungen der Hansestädte,” 148–149. 188. These sometimes lasted until one of the partners died. Holden died in 1740, Mathias Schiffner in 1756, Jacob Wolff in 1759, George Napier in 1759, and Hasenfeller in 1764. 189. Ritter’s request for membership, dated 26 Oct. 1744. RC MSS 11 741/6, 26 Oct. 1744, fol. 302. Ritter had been naturalized on 2 March 1744 (Shaw II, 147). Edward Vaus submitted Peter Conrad Swellengrebell’s request for membership. RC MSS 11 741/6, 31 Aug. 1744, fol. 301. 190. Wale, Pocket Book, 78–79. 191. Demkin, Britanskoe Kupečestvo, 237–238. 192. Frederick Felthusen was from Walgada and had been naturalized in 1736, perhaps at the request of his son-in-law. 193. Henry Klencke from Bremen had become a British subject in May 1738. Demkin, Britanskoe Kupečestvo, 237–238; Shaw II, 141; RC MSS 11 471/6, fol. 128. 194. On Schiffner and his wife’s relation to the Royal Court of Russia, see below. 195. RC MSS 11 741/6, 5 Dec. 1744, fol. 309. 196. Wale, Pocket Book, 85. 197. Cayley began as an apprentice for Napier & Hasenfeller. On the Poggenpohl and Cayley marriage, see church records for the British congregation in St. Petersburg, GL, MSS 11 192 B,

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198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205. 206. 207.

208. 209. 210. 211. 212. 213.

214.

Russia Company Transcript of Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials 1706–1815, fol. 74. William Henry Poggenpohl married Elisabeth Cayley on 19 Dec. 1782. Other British and German marriages were, e.g., those of Thomas Ronaldes and Dorothea Mahs on 6 Jan. 1787 and of William Yeames and Elisabeth Vernezobre on 15 Feb. 1790 (GL, MSS 11 192 B, Russia Company Transcript of Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials 1706–1815). NA Edinburgh, Shairp, GD 30/1583/13a. Hanway, Historical Account, vol. 1, 79. For further detail see Cross, Banks of the Neva, 26 and 394. RC MSS 11 741/6, 5 Dec. 1744, fol. 309. See also Cross, Banks of the Neva, 57. James Carcraft, “James Brogden in Russia 1787–1788,” Slavonic and East European Review 47 (1969): 219–244, esp. 232, James Brogden’s letter to his sister dated 11 Oct. 1787. RC MSS 11 747/6, 19 Feb. 1748 and 11 747/9, 11 Nov. 1800. For more details on problems concerning language see Cross, Banks of the Neva, 392–395. Walther Kirchner, Commercial Relations between Russia and Europe 1400–1800, Bloomington, IN, 1966, 139–140. For details on the challenges involved with the Russian market see Menke, “Beziehungen der Hansestädte,” 132–133. See the German edition of this book, Deutsche Kaufleute in London: Welthandel und Einbürgerung 1660–1818, Munich, 2007, 255–297. After 1808 the Russia Company did not always note whether applicants were aliens, but instead simply remarked “not … entitled to their freedom.” Thus we cannot exactly determine how many of the applicants were foreign. John Henry Schröder’s application dated 12 Feb. 1808 does not mention that he was an alien. His request for naturalization was denied a year later (see above). His brother John Frederick Schröder joined the company in Nov. 1807, six years after being naturalized. RC MSS 11 741/10, 6 Nov. 1807, fol. 86. On 23 November 1798 Boileau made his request from Russia, together with Giles Christoph Hedernberg. Boileau was naturalized on 23 March 1804 (GL MSS11741/9, 290 44 Geo III c 10); Hedernberg was never naturalized. RC MSS 11 741/9, 7 Jan. 1803, fol. 349. RC MSS 11 741/10, 6 Nov. 1810, fol. 132. 42 Geo III c.9; JHL 1810, vol. 47, 449–450. JHL vol. 47, 19 Feb. 1810, vol. 50, 26 Feb. 1716; TNA, HO 5/24. Schaaf had lived in England since September 1801. RC MSS 11 741/10, 10 Dec. 1813, fol. 202, 9 Dec. 1814, fol. 235, 23 Feb. 1816, fol. 263. This was probably Nathaniel Lewis Paleske from Gdansk, who was naturalized in 1780 and joined the Russia Company in 1783. Shaw II, 186; RC MSS 11 741/8, 8 April 1783, fol. 112. Charles Lewis Paleske (also from Gdansk and probably Nathaniel Paleske’s nephew) had petitioned the House of Lords for naturalization on 19 February 1810 (JHL, vol. 47, 19 Feb. 1810) only to be denied repeatedly. In his request for a certificate he stated that he was eighteen years old and had come to England at the age of twelve for training (TNA, HO 5/24). His request was first denied on 2 May 1810 and for a third time on 17 February 1812. Samuel Ludwig Gross had also submitted a petition for naturalization on 19 February 1810; he, too, was denied British nationality (JHL, vol. 47, 19 Feb. 1810). They were born in Switzerland. CLRO, Misc. MSS 39/14.

Chapter 5

BOOM AND BANKRUPTCY

? Insurance and Trade at London’s German Trade Houses In Europe, the introduction of colonial goods revolutionized consumption habits and marked the onset of the transition from subsistence to consumer economy. British merchants made huge profits trading with America and Asia, where–in contrast to Russia and India–trade was not monopolized by trade companies but was private enterprise instead. Most merchants had a loose network of reliable partners on both sides of the Atlantic.1 This chapter deals with the Atlantic trade of German merchants in London, focusing not only on successful merchants but on those who were less successful as well. Success and failure were tightly intertwined. Worldwide trade offered unimaginable opportunities but also meant increased risk. Vagaries of the sea, war, and uncertainties related to the remoteness of trade regions and unreliable business partners all outweighed expected profits. The findings presented in this chapter are based on two main kinds of materials: insurance policies and bankruptcy records, rarely exploited sources that proved rich in information. Though the history of many firms has never been written and business records are missing, insurance policies and similar records often provide clues as to a trade house’s size and structure and suggest its position within England’s commercial society. Using this material it is possible to reconstruct the long-term fates of a few trade houses, as it reveals various aspects of the merchant life. The two types of source complement one another. Beyond shedding light on individual destinies, they also relate to groups as a whole, thus allowing a few general conclusions about the fate of German merchants in London. Scattered and fragmentary private records for some naturalized merchants add to the information already gleaned from serial sources and extend our knowlNotes from this chapter begin on page 233.

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edge of the geographical scope of German merchant networks and how they were organized. A multifaceted picture of German trade activity emerges from these sources. Stanley Chapman has identified insurance policies as one of the most valuable sources for historians of commercial London. These documents provide unique data on the commercial constitution of England’s towns and how it changed under the pressure of industrialization.2 They note the size and furnishings of workshops, offices, and factories, and provide clues to the accumulation of personal wealth. Robin Pearson has recently called them one of Britain’s most neglected historical resources.3 One reason for the oversight is perhaps that these sources are difficult to access. Few records have been indexed. Only one index (from 1775 to 1787) exists for the Sun, the largest and most important fire insurance company of the century, and for Royal Exchange Assurance (REA).4 Not all of London’s eighteenth-century insurance policies have survived, but many still exist for the Sun and the Hand-in-Hand. With only a few years unrecoverable, most of the policies of these two insurers still exist, whereas just fragments of the policies by the London Assurance and the REA have survived—only a third of originally circa half of a million policies, in the latter’s case. No policies have survived for Phoenix, another large eighteenth-century insurance company.5 The present study examined indexed Sun policies and the REA and London Assurance policies for 1760 and 1761.6 From the outset, both London Assurance and the REA offered not only fire insurance but maritime insurance as well. London Assurance files contain shipping policies from the first half of the eighteenth century. These were particularly valuable for this study because they mention the owners of transported goods, thus showing how smaller merchants participated in the large overseas undertakings of the times. The documents list the ports of departure and arrival, providing a good sketch of the geographic span and volume of trade handled by London’s German merchants during the first half of the eighteenth century.

London’s Early Insurance Business The rise of modern insurance was a result of urbanization and industrialization. A fast-growing awareness of the value of personal property and business assets created an enduring market for fire insurers. Insurance, as Trebilcock has noted, is a function of wealth.7 The spread of the insurance business was not simply a result of an increase in capital accumulation; it was also related to rising risks and attempts to calculate them.8 The first insurance companies were founded in London in the late seventeenth century. Although soon after the Great Fire of 1666 there had been proposals to establish fire insurance, the first “fire office” did not open until the 1680s. The

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Hand-in-Hand—the first of the eighteenth century’s four large insurances—was founded in 1696. A surge of new insurers came after the turn of the century: the Sun Fire Office was founded in 1710, the REA and the London Assurance followed ten years later. Between 1710 and 1720, the number of fire insurers in London alone went from five to fourteen.9 The insurance business quickly spread beyond limits of the City. The first insurance business in Bristol was founded in 1718. Edinburgh and Glasgow followed suit just three years later. By the mid-eighteenth century the people of London could choose from various fire insurance companies.10 Phoenix Assurance, established in 1782, was the last substantial fire insurer created in that century. Founded by London’s sugar refiners, it responded to the special needs of London’s sugar industry. It quickly succeeded outside the City of London and Britain, too, propelling major change in the insurance scene late in the century. More than 60 percent of all eighteenth-century British insurance policies concerned property in London. The fast-expanding capital’s housing density and uncontrolled building entailed great risk of losing one’s valuables to fire. The damage caused by the Great Fire of 1666 has been estimated at one-quarter of the entire national income of the times.11 Extreme losses were caused by more fires in 1748, 1764, 1783, and 1793. Most major fires between 1735 and 1800 broke out in the City and in eastern districts, where craftsmen and merchants were numerous and losses were considerable. Almost 64 percent of the recovery money went to those districts.12 Huge warehouses along the Thames were vulnerable to fire, as were breweries, salt, and sugar refineries. The Times reports on London’s sugar refineries suggest how frequent these fires were and how much damage they caused. The site of German-born Henry Engel’s sugar refinery alone burned to the ground three times in twenty years.13 Fires spread easily from one building to the next, threatening large areas at once.14 The Times estimated fire damage to the Engel refinery at £30,000 and damage to the refinery Severn, King & Co. at £80,000.15 The Sun Fire Office was the largest and most important insurance firm. In 1783 it handled more than 53 percent of London’s entire insurance business. The Hand-in-Hand (established in 1696) covered over 15 percent, and the REA had about 11 percent.16 By 1805 Phoenix handled more than Hand-in-Hand.17 The growing need to protect property is evident in the increase in insurance volume. Between 1725 and 1800, insurance in total climbed from nominally £31 million to £206 million.18 Insurances were stock companies organized in the manner typical of societies of the time, meaning that they had a 24-member board of directors, a governor, a vice governor, and a deputy governor. The staff of paid employees was small.19 Members of the board were normally merchants. The board of directors at the REA consisted mostly of Levant Company members. After mid-century a few naturalized merchants of German origin were on the board. Helwig Lewis Tonnies (from Hamburg) was on the REA’s board of directors starting in 1767. In

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1777 Henry Peter Kuhff (from Frankfurt) was elected to the board.20 Henry Schiffner and merchant Arnold Mello (from Hamburg) were on the board of directors at London Assurance. Mello served on the board for over forty years and was vice governor for many years. He did not become governor after the turn of the century because of his age.21 In the nineteenth century, descendants of the families Rücker and Boetefeur still shaped the policy of London Assurance. German merchants and their descendants were particularly to be found on the board at Phoenix, where they were influential for several generations.22 Research by Schwarz and Jones shows that while some members of the lower classes bought insurance,23 most customers came from the middle and upper classes. Three occupations were particularly frequently represented: butchers, shoemakers, and chandlers most often bought insurance coverage. Merchants were tenth on the list.24 The value of individual policies for butchers, shoemakers, and chandlers was almost always below £1,000. From 1769 to 1777, the average value of all insurance policies was £672, the median being only £200. Only 12.8 percent of policies were for £1,000 or more.25 Merchants, though, bought insurance for high sums. According to Schwarz and Jones, only 43 percent of merchants’ policies were for less than £1,000. Barnett’s findings for the 1770s are similar: 38 percent of the large houses bought insurance for more than £3,000.26 Average capital value was £4,059, and the median value was £1,790. Insurance policies reveal the following scenario for naturalized Britons of German origin. Among naturalized subjects of German descent, merchants constituted the largest group of policyholders, followed by sugar refiners and fur dealers. The sugar refiners’ considerable need for insurance is striking. As we saw in chapter 1 of this book, only seventeen German sugar refiners were naturalized between 1715 and 1800; they were a minority among the German sugar refiners in London. An equal number of sugar refiners became denizens. Not everyone wanted to become a full subject. Throughout the second half of the century London had between 100 and 215 sugar refineries.27 The Sun’s insurance policies indicate that in the 1770s there were about 140 sugar refineries in London.28 About one-third of sugar refinery owners were of German origin. The total number of sugar refiners who were either German or of German descent and held insurance policies was several times higher than the number of sugar refiners who had become naturalized subjects. Twelve of the latter who still lived and worked in London between 1776 and 1786 had insurance at the Sun.29 The threat of fire and the considerable amount of capital involved in constructing a sugar refinery made insurance desirable for this branch. Between 90 and 100 percent of London’s refineries were insured, and for striking amounts. The lowest was often £2,000. As early as 1738, merchant and sugar refiner Conrad De Smeth got insurance for £6,000.30 These coverage sums do not even reflect the total value of an owner’s business assets.31 Because sugar refineries are a special case, they have been omitted from the following evaluation.

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Between 1775 and 1787, fifty-six naturalized subjects of German or RussianGerman origin (not including sugar refiners) owned Sun insurance policies. Because their names occur very frequently, two others could not be clearly identified as German-born.32 Forty-seven of these persons were merchants. They worked at forty-three different trade houses. The rest were craftsmen and entrepreneurs. London Assurance policies for the years 1760 and 1761 include nine naturalized subjects from eight different trade houses, along with John and Henry Schiffner, Mathias Schiffner’s two sons who were born in Russia. REA policies from 1775 to 1787 include only four naturalized subjects; three were merchants and the other, a pharmacist.33 Two things must be kept in mind when evaluating insurance habits: special occupational groups’ need for insurance coverage, and insurance company politics. Merchants and sugar refiners had a strong need for insurance, and they insured circulating capital, not fixed capital. Whenever they insured their fixed capital, it was only a small part of the whole sum. Fire insurance for merchants covered only goods stored on land; the risks of sea transportation and ships themselves were covered by separate marine insurance. However, fire insurance did not exclude ships and the goods they held from coverage when both were in the harbor. Uhthoff & Co. insured the 190-ton ship Guadeloupe against fire for a period of up to one year, on condition that the ship lay on the Thames or in the docks.34 The trade house Tonnies & Amsinck took out insurance with London Assurance for wares valued at £2,000 on the ship Anna Maria, which became stranded on the coast of Sussex en route from France to Hamburg, necessitating temporary storage of the wares in Brighthelmstone.35 Merchants normally took out general policies that did not specify the insured goods in detail, calling them instead simply “stocks and goods on own account, in trust, or on commission.” We rarely find any indication of the kinds of goods covered by the insurance. Only in one known case are they mentioned, namely, in a policy for Theophilus Christian Blanckenhagen for a shipment of flax and hemp.36 Dispensing with exact details as to the nature of the wares allowed the substitution of goods without changes to the policy, as long as the insured amount, storage location, and risk class did not change.37 When monetary amounts or risks changed considerably, new insurance was needed.38 A change in storage location, even in the immediate vicinity, also necessitated new insurance.39 Insurance policies were renewable for up to seven years. As far as the policies indicate, most naturalized merchants signed contracts for one year. Clues as to whether contracts were renewed occur only when premiums were raised. The insurance companies sorted property into three categories of risk—“common, hazardous, and doubly hazardous.” With a few exceptions, the wares of naturalized merchants and craftsmen generally were found to be “not hazardous.”40 Sugar refineries and breweries, in contrast, were “doubly hazardous.” Some insur-

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ance companies refused to insure them at all. The Sun and the REA insured them only on special conditions, and from time to time the Sun’s directors deliberated excluding refineries from their program.41 Refineries posed a constant problem for insurance companies. The risk was so great that refiners had to meet certain building requirements42 and accept high premiums. Sugar refiners Henry Schwebe and Henry Gutzmer, for instance, paid £45 to insure their refinery on Wellclose Square, worth £5,000. Meanwhile the trade house Commerell & Lubbock paid only £5 10s. to insure goods or property worth the same amount.43 Further, sugar refiners were unable to insure the entirety of their business property. To limit the risk, the Sun’s board of directors restricted maximal coverage to £5,000 in 1771. In 1785 they raised it to £7,000.44 Upper limits were fixed for other commercial branches as well. In 1785 the Sun raised the ceiling for normal insurance coverage from £3,000 to a maximum of £10,000.45 Even higher amounts were not explicitly refused; they simply cost more in premiums. In practice, both merchants and sugar refiners exceeded the official amounts. Upper limits for insurance compelled some big merchants and businessmen to buy insurance from more than one insurance company. Insurers did not object to the practice but asked to be informed; policies of naturalized merchants and craftsmen therefore often include remarks about other, supplementary policies. The trade houses Molling, Rasch, Spitta & Co. and Murrell & Martens were simultaneously insured by the Sun and London Assurance.46 In the 1780s, merchants and sugar refiners alike bought more supplementary policies than before.47 The amounts covered by the policies generally reflect the cost of replacement. In the eighteenth century, fire insurance companies did not yet themselves assess the value of the property to be insured but frequently relied on the customer’s estimate. They even took the policyholder’s word when notified of losses. Only in cases of large-scale damage or loss did they send their own inspectors to assess losses and monitor replacement costs—it was not the rule.48 Whether actual insurance sums were concealed and false amounts deliberately or accidentally stated cannot be explored here. More important for the financial situation of German merchants is whether they insured their commercial assets fully or only partially, irrespective of an insurance company’s upper limit. Research is divided on the issue. Cockerell and Green believe that insurance companies aimed for full coverage. Stanley D. Chapman and especially Trebilcock stress that some companies refused full coverage, expecting the policyholder to shoulder some of the financial risk.49 At a parliamentary hearing in 1863, insurance agent George Coode said that normally only one to two thirds of a firm’s assets were insured.50 This seems to be true for some of the large cases of damage or loss. For instance, losses due to fire at the sugar refinery Severn, King & Co. were estimated at £80,000, but the firm was insured for only £65,000.51 A comparison of merchant assets with the amount of insurance coverage they purchased suggests that they only insured a fifth or a fourth of their total assets.52

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Figure 12. Portrait of Commerell. Source: Tansey Miniatures Foundation, Celle.

Whereas merchant insurance policies say little about which wares were traded, they detail where and how wares were stored, indicating how storage places were built (of wood or brick) and where they were found (in one’s own home, in the cellar, in an adjacent building, in a shed in the yard, or in one of the large pro-

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fessionally run warehouses and storage yards on the Thames). For risk assessment these documents also noted a storage place’s location, be it directly on the river or further from it, because the large storage buildings along the Thames were at increased risk, depending on how they were built and where they stood.53 Smaller merchants often stored their wares at their trade offices or in their own homes, and sometimes at the homes of smaller packers or warehousemen.54 That option was naturally not open to merchants trading larger quantities. Amyand & Rucker stored their goods in any space they could find in the vicinity. According to an insurance policy for over £25,000 dated 24 December 1760, they stored wares not only in firm-owned living quarters and office rooms on Laurence Pountney Hill, but in their own cellars, and in rooms and cellars of adjacent buildings. The value of wares stored there amounted to £12,000. They stored additional wares worth £10,000 at the Hanseatic Steelyard and wares worth another £3,000 on Suffolk Lane.55 John Wienholt stored little in his own rooms. At home he had wares worth £1,500, and in a separate room nearby he deposited wares worth another £200. His insurance policy covered goods worth £11,000, mostly stored in various warehouses on Leadenhall Street and at the Home Yard dockyard.56 At the time, a considerable amount of storage was managed by professional warehousemen. Merchants were fairly consistent in their choice of a warehouse. Commerell & Lubbock preferred Bull Porters and Perkins & Robinsons; Theophilus Blanckenhagen relied on East India Company warehouses for some time and Amyand & Rucker used the Steelyard. Insurance policies contain much data that supplements what is known from directories and naturalization papers. John Anthony Rücker, for example, appears in directories for the first time in the early 1750s as a partner in the trade house Amyand, Uhthoff & Rucker, Laurence Pountney Hill. After George Amyand died in 1766 and the partnership was dissolved, the directories list John Anthony Rücker’s own trade house at No. 2, Suffolk Lane. London Assurance policies show that Amyand & Rucker’s building on Laurence Pountney Hill was simultaneously George Amyand’s place of residence. John Anthony Rücker, however, already lived at No. 2, Suffolk Lane in 1760 (six years before Amyand died and the business was liquidated). In other words: as early as 1760, Rücker used that address for business purposes, too.57 London directories’ first mention of Jacob Gottfried Hippius’s trade firm Hippius & Co. lists it at No. 4 America Square in 1783. Insurance policies show that in 1781 Hippius was a partner in John Wray’s wood business in Kingston upon Hull.58 In the early 1780s Hippius’s brother Frederick also lived in Kingston upon Hull at the house of John Bromby, a merchant who in 1783/84 became the third partner at Wray & Hippius.59 In 1782 Frederick Hippius’s insurance covered only his household. Insurance covered private and business property—sometimes separately, but often combining both, at various places within and outside of the City—in one and the same document. In one policy Amyand & Rucker insured houses they

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owned and used for storage adjacent to the yard of their business building on Laurence Pountney Hill. Molling, Rasch & Spitta owned a warehouse near Mill Stairs in Rotherhithe.60 Some policies reveal merchants as being active entrepreneurs. The Sun lists merchants Conrad De Smeth and Sir Peter Meyer as partners in sugar refineries.61 Others had workshops on their premises. Paul Amsinck, for instance, took out insurance to cover not only his house and property in Eastwick, Hertfordshire, but a brewery on the premises as well. William Amsinck Jr. (son of immigrant William Amsinck who died in 1764) had premises that included a brewery, a wire and paper mill with a drying house, and assorted workshops.62 In the past, historical research has generally used eighteenth-century insurance policies to determine not only how these firms were organized but also how large they were. Although historians Schwarz, Jones, and Barnett have pointed out that insurance policies do not reflect the actual size of a firm, they do provide valuable clues. With respect to German firms, they show that some of the naturalized subjects built up sizeable firms.63 According to Schwarz and Jones’s analysis of Sun and REA policies for the year 1780, more than half of the merchant buyers bought insurance to cover valuables worth more than £1,000, while most policies purchased by craftsmen covered valuables worth about the same amount or less.64 David Barnett’s findings for policies from the 1770s are similar.65 Sixty percent of the merchants obtained insurance to cover property worth £1,000. Twenty-two percent insured property worth £1,001 to £2,999, and 37.6 percent insured property valued at £3,000 and more. Breaking these figures down specifically for naturalized subjects of German origin gives a slightly different picture. Naturalized subjects purchased few policies. Only forty-five naturalized merchants bought insurance to cover their business assets.66 About half purchased policies covering more than £3,000 worth of assets. Thirteen percent of the policies were for £1,000 to £3,000, and 36 percent of them covered up to £1,000. The latter group included more craftsmen than merchants. With one exception, craftsmen bought insurance for the lowest overall coverage. The exception was the tanner John Daniel Hose, whose policy was for £1,500. Table 18. Insurance Policies of Naturalized Subjects Policies

Above £3,000 £1,001 to £2,999 Below £1,000

Naturalized Subjects

%

23 6 16

51% 13% 36%

Table 18 does not include sugar refineries,67 most of which were in the upper coverage bracket. When craftsmen are excluded from the analysis, we find German merchants among those buying insurance for the greatest amounts of coverage. A random sample shows their median lying at £4,000—far above that of English merchants.68 A sample of thirty-five insurance buyers (Table 19) shows

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that they held policies covering valuables worth more than £9,000. Twelve more held policies covering between £3,000 and £9,000. Together these two groups owned 92 percent of the insured capital belonging to naturalized merchants. Table 19. Business Insurance Coverage among Naturalized Subjects Policies

Above £9,000 Starting at £3,000 £1,001 to £2,999 Below £1,000 Total

Number of Trade Houses

£

%

10 12 5 8 35

143,700 57,200 11,400 6,500 218,800

66% 26% 5% 3% 100%

Schwarz and Jones list at least fifty persons or firms that in 1780 bought Sun insurance for property worth more than £9,000. The highest-value policy, for Elliot’s Stag Brewery in Pimlico, was worth £47,000. Third place was taken by London’s trade house Hanson & Clark, insuring property worth £29,000. Among the top fifty policyholders we find the names of two naturalized subjects: T. Wilson & T. Blanckenhagen, 37 Broad Street, is fifteenth on the list, holding policies covering property worth a total of £15,000. Nineteenth on the list is the firm J. W. Smith, J. Wienholt & T. Woodrouffe, 29 Great St. Helen’s, holding policies for total coverage of £14,500.69 These figures were drawn from an analysis of policies from 1775 to 1785. Simultaneous supplementary policies were also reviewed. Besides the firms Wilson & Blanckenhagen and Smith, Wienholt & Woodrouffe, the analysis revealed nine other instances of coverage that were in part even greater than those of these two. Table 20. London’s Eleven Largest Firms with Naturalized Subjects as Partners, 1775–1787 Name

Year

The Sun (£)

Otheri (£)

Totalii (£)

Molling & Co. Murrell & Martens Wilson & Blanckenhagen Heineken & Ludham Wienholt Commerell & Lubbock Rasch Falck Everth Fuhrer Paul Bros.

1778 1780 1780 1778 1782 1781 1786 1786 1779 1777 1783

10,900 15,500 15,200 10,000 11,000 10,600 10,000 7,600 2,250 7,000 3,200

6,000

16,900 15,500 15,200 15,000 13,000 10,600 10,000 7,600 7,250 7,000 6,200

i

Insurance taken out with insurance companies other than the Sun. Includes only business assets, not private property.

ii

5,000 2,000

5,000 3,000

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Table 20 shows that Molling & Co. and Murrell & Martens each had more insurance than Wilson & Blanckenhagen. Going by the number of shares it held in the Levant Company, Murrell & Martens—like the firm of the brothers John William and John Daniel Paul—was one of the largest import firms for the Near East.70 Decades later, when Blanckenhagen and Molling & Co. failed, each was still a major trade house in London.71 Table 20 suggests that naturalized merchants could not easily exceed the highest limit set by the Sun. Few British trade houses insured greater amounts in the 1770s. According to Barnett, about 11 percent of firms exceeded £10,000.72 These were mostly leading British merchants like Godfrey Thornton, Andrew Thompson, and the brothers Francis and Charles Baring, who bought insurance for property worth up to £47,000. For sums above the official limit, the Sun seems to have been more willing to insure Britons than foreigners. Naturalized merchants coped with the restrictions by taking out additional insurance with other companies. Molling & Co. had policies covering another £6,000 at London Assurance. London Assurance appears to have set higher limits, and some German merchants bought coverage there (Table 21). Table 21. Naturalized Subjects’ Policies with London Assurance Name

Schiffner & Co. Amyand & Rucker Uhthoff & Co. Grote & Co. Richter Wynantz Tonnies & Amsinck Dick & Angerstein Schuman

Year

Total (£)

1760/1 1760/1 1760/1 1760/1 1760/1 1760/1 1760/1 1760/1 1760/1

55,900 29,000 10,500 9,500 3,800 3,350 3,000 1,000 1,000

Note: This table combines the years 1760 and 1761 because all policies were signed within a period of twelve months.

In 1760/61, policies for the greatest amounts were taken out by the brothers John and Henry Schiffner (£55,900) and Amyand & Rucker (£29,900). With considerably less coverage, Uhthoff & Co. came third. Just a few years earlier, Uhthoff had been a partner at Amyand & Rucker but then left.73 The sum shown for Tonnies & Amsinck in Table 21 reflects only a fraction of their policies at London Assurance. According to a note, just one day after signing a contract on 13 May 1761 they signed four additional contracts covering £1,000 each. These contracts, however, are not listed in the ledgers, so it is impossible to conclude what their total assets may have been.74

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In drawing conclusions about the size of a trade house, the stage of a merchant’s career must be taken into account. Some, like John Julius Angerstein, were just starting their careers in 1760. Angerstein had just completed his training with Andrew Thompson, one of the large Russia merchants, when he entered Dick & Angerstein, his first partnership. For starting up a business, he insured only the fairly modest amount of £1,000. When he died in 1824, he was one of the wealthiest merchants of his time. In contrast to Angerstein, Frederick Teusch (from Bergzabern in the Palatinate) was approaching the end of his career when he bought one insurance policy in 1781 and another in 1782. Both covered personal as well as business assets. The ratio of personal to business property in the first policy (dated 28 September 1781, for a total of £3,500) was 50:50. One year later he reduced the business segment to 40 percent. Both his son Samuel and his nephew John Adam Hecker already worked in his business at the time. In 1781, shortly after his father bought a policy, Samuel Teusch insured wares stored at his father’s location that were worth £1,000. In a will written up in 1783, Frederick Teusch stipulated that his son and each of two nephews (John Adam Hecker and John Henry Hecker, also from Bergzabern) would get £3,000 in seed capital at an interest rate of 4 percent per annum and “all [his] warehouse and accompting [sic] house implements and utensils,” on condition that they continue the business together for at least another four years.75 His son and nephews apparently complied with his wish by founding the trade company Teusch & Hecker. After Frederick Teusch died, his son and nephews moved their principal office to Coleman Street No. 17 in the northern part of the City. There they had more space, having bought a warehouse adjacent to the office where they stored goods worth £2,000.76 Although he and his son took out little insurance compared to other large German-born policyholders, Frederick Teusch had considerable assets. He had coverage for private real estate and other businesses. His other policies indicate that he owned not only his trade house at Star Court on Bread Street, but also a building at Basing Lane, No. 25 that he rented out to merchant Albert Beyer and also used as a warehouse himself. He owned agricultural land in Waltham Holy Cross in Essex, including grain mills, smelting and heating rooms, stables, and garages that were insured for £1,500.77 He owned real estate, inherited property, and business property in Saint Leonard Shoreditch.78 The records suggest that he was prosperous. His trade volume was smaller than that of other German merchants because he was growing old and withdrawing from active business. When multiple insurance policies existed for a single merchant or trade house, do they conclusively reveal anything about the financial development of that business? Wilson & Blanckenhagen bought ten policies. The first, purchased in 1777, was for household insurance. The other nine insured commodities. Between 21 October and 30 November 1778, the firm bought four more smaller, business-related policies. The first, dated 21 October, insured imported wood

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worth £2,000 that Wilson & Blanckenhagen stored at two sites to the west and east of Noah Arch Alley on Queen Street, Ratcliff. The second and third policies, for £3,500 and £1,500, insured wares including hemp and flax deposited in four separate storehouses in Southwark. The fourth was a joint policy for hemp worth £2,600 taken out under the business address of merchant John Christian Schreiber from Leipzig.79 The insured amount for which Wilson & Blanckenhagen bought policies in 1778 equaled £9,600 (see Table 22). Table 22. Amounts Insured for Wilson & Blanckenhagen, 1777–1781 Name

Year

Personal (£)

Blanckenhagen Blanckenhagen Blanckenhagen Blanckenhagen Blanckenhagen

1777 1778 1779 1780 1781

1,000

Business (£)

Total (£)

2,600 + 3,500 + 1,500 + 2,000 12,900 2,300 + 12,900 12,900 + 300

1,000 9,600 12,900 15,200 13,200

When the policies expired in November of the next year, Wilson & Blanckenhagen bought new policies covering more than £12,900. These were renewed for the same amount in 1780 and in 1781.80 Just a few months after buying coverage for £12,900 in February 1780, they also bought a smaller policy to insure wares worth £2,300 and stored at the East India Warehouse.81 In 1781 Blanckenhagen bought another policy covering just £300, addressed for Broad Street Buildings, 37. This transaction involved Edmund George Wilson, not Blanckenhagen’s partner Thomas Wilson.82 From 1778 to 1780, the amounts for which Blanckenhagen and Thomas Wilson took out insurance rose from £9,600 to £12,900 and finally to £15,200 (Table 22). This suggests that their business grew. Blanckenhagen had gone bankrupt in 1772 and had started anew as a partner in 1773/74. Thus not only the sum covered by his insurance policies, but also the fact that his business flourished by the end of the decade, is startling.83 In 1781 the amount insured dropped to £13,200. This may have been contingent, as after 1781 the firm bought no more insurance from the Sun. At about that time, Thomas Wilson withdrew from the company and Blanckenhagen took on a new partner. Whether these events were related is not known. After 1783 the firm Blanckenhagen & Cutler was listed at 37 Broad Street Buildings.84 Several policies from 1778 to 1782 have survived for Commerell & Lubbock (Table 23).85 In 1778 the house held two insurance policies for a total coverage of £9,000; £5,000 was insured by the Sun and another £4,000 by the REA.86 That autumn the Sun policy was extended to Michaelmas Day 1779, and in early November a second policy was signed for £6,000, pushing their total coverage up to £11,000.

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Table 23. Commerell & Lubbock’s Insurance, 1778–1782 Name

Year

Sun (£)

REA (£)

Commerell & Lubbock Commerell & Lubbock Commerell & Lubbock Commerell & Lubbock Commerell & Lubbock

1778 1779 1780 1781 1782

5,000 6,000

4,000

Extended by (£)

5,000 6,000

10,600 10,000

Total (£)

9,000 11,000 6,000 10,600 10,000

Commerell & Lubbock renewed the £6,000 policy the next year but did not purchase more insurance at the Sun until 1781, when a small policy for £600 was issued pertaining to wares in Manchester and naming Commerell & Lubbock as merchants and salt factory owners, and another policy was issued for £10,000 to cover goods stored in London. This policy was renewed in late 1782. Except for the year 1780, Commerell and Lubbock fairly consistently took out considerable insurance. No policies have survived for subsequent years. We can assume that business grew when John Tuckwell became a partner. After he entered the firm in 1786/87 it was renamed Commerell, Lubbock & Co.87 Values insured by other trade houses fluctuated. Whereas Blanckenhagen and Commerell took out considerable insurance during the period under study, other German merchants such as Murrell & Martens and Molling, Rasch & Spitta bought much less. At over £15,500, Murrell & Martens’s first policy, taken out in 1780, was their largest. The next year they had insurance for only £13,000. They did not take out insurance again until four years later, and then for just £2,000. The small sum may have been an odd case. The sources are too sketchy to allow conclusions about how their business developed. Until 1785, Murrell & Martens is listed in the Levant Company’s “Imposition Books” as a large importer of silk and cotton.88 Five insurance policies have survived for Molling, Rasch, Spitta & Co. for the time from 1778 to 1786 (Table 24). In 1778 and 1782 this trade firm, with policies for over £16,900 and £16,000 respectively, headed the list of German merchants. Table 24. Molling, Rasch, Spitta & Co.’s Insurance, 1778–1786 Name

Year

Sun (£)

London Assurance (£)

Total (£)

Molling & Co. Molling, G. Molling & Co. Molling & Co. Rasch

1778

10,000 + 900

6,000

16,900

1782 1784 1786

10,000 300 10,000

6,000

16,000 3,000 10,000

In 1778 Molling, Rasch, Spitta & Co. took out insurance for more than £16,000, split between the Sun (£10,000) and London Assurance (£6,000).

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The wares were deposited at their storage site on Mill Stairs in Rotherhithe. Two months later they bought a smaller policy for £900 to insure goods and buildings. Issued in Godfrey Molling’s name alone, it covered two buildings rented out to warehousemen named Carrington and Campbell, as well as hazardous goods kept in various storehouses and sheds near Molling’s home at Scotch Yard. Molling & Co.’s policies from August 1782 were renewals of the £16,000 worth of insurance from 1778, likewise split among the Sun and London Assurance. Like Murrell & Martens, Molling & Co. began buying less insurance toward the middle of the decade. They bought only £3,000 worth of coverage for wares at their storage place at Mill Stairs in Rotherhithe.89 As was the case for Murrell & Martens, this does not necessarily mean that business at Molling & Co. slumped. Frederick Rasch had left the company and opened his own business at Laurence Pountney Hill, No. 25,90 where he worked until his death in 1793. No further policies have survived for Molling & Spitta, but in 1786 Rasch insured wares worth over £10,000.91 When bankruptcy papers were issued for the company in 1816, Molling & Spitta still counted as one of London’s major German trade firms.92 Although extant business insurance policies do not permit conclusions as to the development of businesses, household and building insurance policies allow inferences about German merchants’ accumulation of private wealth. Georg Soltau (from Hamburg) insured his private property with two policies from the Sun. The first policy, bought in 1779, covered £700; the second, purchased two years later, covered £1,500.93 Neither policy specifies what items were insured, but the difference is so striking that, even taking rising prices or false assessment into account, it looks as though Soltau increased his assets considerably within just two years.94 Between 1778 and 1786, merchant Peter Henry Kuhff (mentioned above), himself a director at the REA, bought six insurance policies from the Sun that reveal something of his private assets. The first policy, dated 1778, was for £1,900 and covered his household, including books, wardrobe, glass, porcelain, and silverware at his home and office at Little St. Helen’s Street, No. 12. Eight years later these were worth £3,000. By then he had twice as many books and twice as much clothing and porcelain. He had meanwhile also purchased a house on Brick Street, for which he bought another policy worth £300 in 1784. A year later he raised the amount covered by that policy to £500 after buying a neighboring house.95 From the amount of insurance he took out, we can conclude that Kuhff was accumulating wealth. The amounts of business insurance purchased thus suggest that some German merchants were among London’s commercial elite. Of all the pertinent policyholders, more than half of the naturalized merchants had businesses that were larger than what Barnett has defined as “large firms” for the times.96 Even

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so, various factors (gaps in records, insurance company interests, and merchant behavior with respect to taking out insurance) restrict the notion that the actual size of any one business that can be gleaned from insurance documents. Policies did not mirror the entire value of commodities, in part because of ceilings on coverage. A client’s prestige may have swayed an insurer to handle the upper limit flexibly, but generally, in order to reduce risk, merchants purchased more than one policy from more than one insurer. Extant insurance data therefore do not provide exhaustive evidence of trade volumes. Examining longer periods could shed more light on how businesses fared. One remarkable discovery is that several of the German trade houses’ policies at the Sun terminate in the year 1782— precisely when Phoenix Assurance was founded. Unfortunately, Phoenix’s early records have not survived. Some extant London Assurance and Royal Exchange policies pertain specifically to shipping. More than just insured amounts, these documents say something of the geographical scope of the naturalized merchants’ trade.

Networking Europe with the Americas and Asia The London Assurance and the Royal Exchange Assurance were originally founded to insure shipments, but for economic reasons they soon offered fire insurance. In the eighteenth century, shipping insurance policies still constituted a substantial part of their income. From the London Assurance’s early phase three registers exist from the Marine Department: a marine index for the years 1720 and 1721 (including the company’s very first insurance policies), a “label book” for the years 1725 and 1726 (“daily entries of ships insured”), and two books for the years 1742–1748 and 1753–1764 (“outstanding adventures”).97 These policies state the name of the ship, its captain, ports of departure and arrival, insurance number, and the amount insured. They do not specify the freight. Significant for this study is that these policies do not mention ship owners but indicate instead which individual merchants or groups took out insurance for a given shipment. In 1748 and 1753 they clearly also had more policies in the £1,000 and higher range than they did in 1725/26, but the level was not much higher than that already reached in 1720/21. The London Assurance records mainly concern long, high-risk overseas voyages; they say little about shipping in nearby European waters such as the North and Baltic Seas. Most policies involve journeys to and from Europe’s Atlantic ports or, occasionally, to the Mediterranean. Two registers of outstanding adventures from the 1740s and 1750s comprise lists of insurance for adventures that had not yet ended when the books were balanced. Some entries are about missing ships, others about traversing the Atlantic or sailing to India and China. They shed light on the London German merchants’ non-European, long-distance trade

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and on how—beyond the reach of colonial trade monopolies and restrictive national law—remote trade regions were linked to Europe in the early phase of a nascent world economy. These records mention few German merchants—just thirty-six in all. Insured amounts were much lower in the 1720s than they became in the 1740s and 1750s. Entries in the book for 1720 to 1721 are reserved and cautious—a sign of the insurer seeking to keep risk at a minimum. The insurance company often refused at first to sell policies and then did so only after gathering considerable information and raising premiums. On average, amounts insured for 1725 and 1726 were even smaller. With one exception, all thirty-four of the German merchants’ policies listed in the label book are for less than £1,000. Twenty-six German merchants bought policies for £500, and of these, twenty-one had policies worth less than £300. In the first file, just sixteen out of a total of thirty-eight policies exceeded £500. The book for 1720 and 1721 contains names of some German merchants from the 1790s that have already been mentioned: Raymond De Smeth, Sir Peter Meyer, Abraham Henckell. The label book for 1725 and 1726 includes Sir Peter Meyer and Frederick Voguell, but none of the other older names. New policyholders turn up, however: Daniel Vernezobre, Guertz & Koep, and Mello & Amsinck.98 Together, Meyer, Vernezobre, and Guertz & Koep held twenty-three of the thirty-four policies issued, insuring a total value of £7,954, which makes up 78 percent of all insurance purchased by German merchants and recorded in that book.99 In the registers for “outstanding adventures”, policies for trade voyages from 1742 to 1764 involve much higher sums. The first and larger of these two registers contains more than one hundred policies. The other (covering 1753 to 1764) indicates only thirty-one policies signed by German merchants. The two volumes differ in terms of both the amounts insured and the ships’ origins and destinations. Compared to the records for the 1720s, the register for outstanding adventures clearly shows a greater range of amounts insured. On the one hand, more merchants insured values for less than £100; on the other, more policies were issued for the high end of the scale. Table 25. German Merchant Percentages of the Overall Amount Insured Total in £

Below 100 100–499 500–999 Above 1,000 Unknown

1720/21 (absolute 36)

1725/26 (absolute 34)

1748–1753 (absolute 108)

1753–1764 (absolute 31)

2.8% 55.6% 25% 13.9% 2.8%

5.9% 76.55% 14.7% 2.9%

17.6% 50% 17.6% 14.8%

3.2% 22.6% 19.4% 54.8%

Source: Based on data from the London Assurance. GL, MSS 30 488, Marine Registers 1720–21.

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In the mid-1720s, 6 percent of the insurance policies were for less than £100. By mid-century (the period covered by the first volume of “outstanding adventures”) these had risen to 17 percent. In 1748 and 1753, demand for policies for £1,000 and more was growing, after shrinking from about 14 percent in 1720/21 to less than 3 percent in 1725/26. This most expensive bracket underwent striking change. In the 1720s the highest amount insured was £1,800 in a transaction with Raymond De Smeth for shipping goods from Dublin to Leghorn. In the 1740s the highest amount was £14,500 in insurance for a shipment of goods from Cadiz to Vera Cruz commissioned by Nicholas Magens.100 Almost twothirds of the policies over £1,000 also exceeded £2,000. In the second register for outstanding adventures (1753 to 1764), the most expensive policy bracket showed another increase in values insured. About 55 percent of all insurance policies fell into that group, while policies at the opposite end of the scale were fewer. The second, middle-range group of policies between £100 and £499 was smaller. Until the 1740s it had been the largest group. At its peak in the mid-1720s it had covered 72 percent of all freight insured. By the 1740s that figure had dropped to 50 percent, and in the 1750s it fell again to less than 23 percent. Absolute values covered by individual insurance policies, mentioned in the third register, did not differ from those for 1742 to 1748. Nicholas Magens (from Hamburg) had purchased most of the expensive policies found in the insurance registers for outstanding adventures. Between 1742 and 1748, sixty-one out of 108 insurance contracts were in his name, as were more than half—namely, seventeen—of the contracts signed between 1753 and 1764. Of the sixteen policies worth more than £1,000 listed in the first and second volume of outstanding adventures, eleven (vol. one) and nine (vol. 2) were in Magens’s name. Besides Magens, the group of large insurance policyholders of German origin included Amyand, Rucker & Co. and the Amsinck trade house.101 Ports of departure and arrival changed considerably from the 1720s to the 1740s and 1750s. In the 1720s more than half of all ships listed in the insurance registers departed from London. By the 1740s and 1750s the number of ships from London had dropped drastically—they made up less than 5 percent in the 1740s, although a decade later they again comprised 19 percent. Since these registers reflect only a small portion of all ship movements, it cannot be said whether that drop reflects a general trend. Research by Christopher French and others (mentioned above) on the growth of English ports and turnover has shown that London’s port did continue to grow in the eighteenth century, but not as much as other English ports.102 Shipping policies issued by London Assurance appear to underscore that development. During the 1720s, only one English port besides London was registered as a port of departure, but by the 1750s the number had risen to four.103 In the 1740s, London’s naturalized merchants began shipping more from German ports and from Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the Iberian Colonies. It was

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mostly exports from Hamburg that accounted for the increase in shipping out of German ports. At the same time, these merchants shipped slightly less to Hamburg. They used more Portuguese and Spanish harbors as ports of departure and arrival. Trade with Spain grew faster than trade with Portugal. Most of the naturalized merchants’ shipments were headed for Cadiz, Spain’s gateway to the colonies. Insurance policies indicating Cadiz, and later Seville, as destinations, jumped from 5.6 percent to 21 percent and then to 41 percent. Portugal’s ports of Oporto and Lisbon were more frequently used as ports of departure. By the mid-1750s, Italy’s Leghorn and Genoa were being mentioned as ports of arrival twice as often. In the 1740s and 1750s, naturalized merchants also increasingly sent goods to Smyrna and Alexandria. These shipments did not depart from English ports and were insured by merchants who were not members of the Levant Company. The earliest insurance records mention German merchants trading with England’s American colonies. These included turn-of-the-century merchants like Sir Peter Meyer, Raymond De Smeth, and Theodor Jacobsen.104 The sole newcomer was Mello & Co., in which Paul Amsinck was a partner. Only one insurance policy names London as the port of departure and Virginia as the destination.105 All other transatlantic shipments departed from Cadiz or Lisbon, destined for Vera Cruz and Rio de Janeiro. Ships also headed for North America from Spanish and Portuguese ports.106 In the 1740s and 1750s, more voyages traversed the Atlantic, but that increase was not necessarily related to British colonies. Ships to North American colonies increased only minimally. German shipments to and from the Caribbean remained the same. The increase in shipments in the 1740s involved trade between Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch ports. Traffic to Spain’s colonies became particularly frequent. In the 1740s one-third of all of the naturalized merchants’ insurance policies for trade abroad concerned trade with Spanish colonies, their main destinations being Central America, Vera Cruz, and Cuba. In the 1740s and 1750s, the number of ships departing from transatlantic colonial ports doubled. In the 1740s these were ports of arrival ten times more often than had previously been the case. Insurance records have been found for voyages between the British and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. Frederick Commerell, for instance, insured merchandise worth £2,000 on a vessel from Jamaica to Cuba and back again.107 Many of the policies from the registers for the 1740s and 1750s relate to trade with India, but only three insurance policies for naturalized merchants mention India as a destination or point of departure. Ten of their policies mention China. In the sample taken for this study, almost the entirety of the naturalized merchants’ trade with China was done by Heldt, Vasmer & Co.108 Heldt and Vasmer deployed Swedish and Danish vessels and insured their shipments from Gothenburg or Copenhagen to Canton and back, with occasional stopovers in Cadiz. Some insurance policies for voyages to the Dutch colonies of Curaçao (Caribbean) and Ceylon list Amsterdam as the port of departure and return.

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Various factors accounted for the increase in German merchants’ trade with Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Treaties between England and both Iberian Peninsula nations enhanced the attractiveness of trading there. The Asiento Treaty could not prevent frequent trade-interrupting conflicts between Great Britain and Spain. During the Anglo-Spanish Wars (1739–1748 and 1756–1763), Spain banned all imports from Great Britain. Naturalized subjects used their connections to their country of birth to circumvent the restrictions by going through politically neutral ports like Hamburg.109 Precious metals found in Central American colonies also encouraged naturalized merchants to increase trade with Spain and Portugal. Mexico’s silver and gold mines, as well as those elsewhere in the Americas, were crucial for the European economy.110 On the other hand, Spain and Portugal’s colonies were important markets for German textiles. Spanish merchants’ lack of capital and Spain’s insufficient commercial infrastructure had left trade between Spain’s own ports and colonies in the hands of northwest European merchants who had settled in Spain’s port towns.111 More Germans than Englishmen lived in Cadiz and Seville, Spain’s ports to its colonies, making these towns attractive destinations for naturalized Britons of German origin. With their help, trade between Great Britain, German territories, and the Iberian Peninsula bypassed mercantilist restrictions. The registers for outstanding adventures do not always list the true point of departure for Atlantic voyages; they omit the European part of the journey, namely from London to Hamburg, because that segment was insured elsewhere. Hans Pohl, Klaus Weber, and Harold Fisher’s studies on Iberian-colonial trade show that merchandise shipped from Cadiz and Lisbon to the New World rarely came from Spain and Portugal, often originating instead in England or Germany. Throughout and following the Anglo-Spanish War right up to the 1760s, shipping insurance policies for naturalized merchants disclose a clear pattern. Merchandise was first shipped from English or German ports on British, German, or neutral ships to Cadiz, Lisbon, or Amsterdam. Because national legislation limited trade with the colonies to domestic merchants, in Cadiz, Lisbon, and Amsterdam the cargo was then reloaded onto Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch ships, which then set sail for the colonies. This not only allowed evasion of the trade bans but also extended the Asiento Treaty, which permitted English merchants to trade for one year only.112 The procedure was reversed for the trip back to Europe: under the flag of the respective colonial empire or neutral country, ships from Iberian, French, and Dutch colonial ports set sail for European ports, where the cargo changed vessels and then reached its destination safely under yet another flag. In the 1720s Sir Peter Meyer sent freight on English ships under English captains to Lisbon. From there it was sent on Portuguese vessels to Rio de Janeiro.113 Nicholas Magens sent all of his insured merchandise to Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese colonies under the flag of the corresponding country. The many

190 | The Forgotten Majority

policies in his name give an impression of global trade from 1742 to 1764.114 Magens’s trade had various focal points, one of which was the Dutch colonies. In the 1740s, seventeen ships set sail from the port of Amsterdam for the Dutch colony of Curaçao in the Caribbean, and for Batavia (Jakarta) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the East. Others left Amsterdam bound for St. Malo, Cadiz, St. Lucar, and Smyrna. The Spanish colonies were another of Magens’s focal points. Almost every ship from Bremen and Hamburg with his goods on board was headed for Cadiz, where the cargo was reloaded onto Spanish vessels and sent to colonies in Central America. Vera Cruz was the most frequent destination, followed by Cuba and Buenos Aires. He also had trade connections from Lisbon to Brazil. Judging by the values Magens insured, his trade with Spanish colonies involved the most money. From Cadiz alone he sent goods insured for more than £38,000, mostly to Vera Cruz. From there, he at first imported comparatively little (worth only £2,818). A decade later, though, the export-import relation was reversed: he was importing goods from Vera Cruz and Honduras worth more than £13,000 while exporting goods worth only £2,200 to the Spanish colonies via Cadiz. Amsterdam shipments were Magens’s second largest trade investments; from Amsterdam he shipped goods worth more than £8,800. The largest single shipment was merchandise to Curaçao worth over £3,220. From Lisbon Magens exported wares worth £715 to Portugal’s colonies, but he imported merchandise from there back to Lisbon for more than £2,000. Another of Magens’s trade routes ran from the French ports of St. Malo and La Rochelle to Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic) and North America.115 He shipped these goods on French ships under the French flag. Magens also shipped some goods to Canton (China). Like the trading house Heldt & Vasmer, he used a Swedish ship that departed from Gothenburg.116 According to insurance records this was, however, a one-time affair. In the 1750s Magens sought trade through a connection via Hamburg, Genoa, and Trieste. From Trieste to Hamburg and Genoa he shipped wares worth £23,000. The insured values of individual shipments on the Mediterranean are striking: from £3,000 to £10,000. The highest amount insured for an individual shipment was £14,550 for a shipment from Cadiz to Vera Cruz in November 1748.117 Family ties were involved in much of Magens’s trade with Spain and the Spanish colonies. Of the two brothers Nicholas and Wilhelm Magens, Wilhelm went to London first and was naturalized there in 1731. Nicholas apparently first went to Cadiz. He was supposed to become a consul for Hamburg but did not take office, and in the mid-1730s the two brothers switched places.118 Nicholas was naturalized in 1737, and Wilhelm moved to Cadiz, where he became a partner in the Hamburg trade house Stenglin.119 In London, Nicholas had close business and personal relations with Mello & Amsinck. The latter had had a trade connection from London via Cadiz to Vera Cruz as early as 1726.120 Later Magens

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became a third partner in the trade house Mello & Amsinck. The partnership agreement lasted until his death.121 Magens’s trade with Portugal, Holland, and the Portuguese and Dutch colonies was surely related to the fact that his business partner, Paul Amsinck, had relatives in both countries. As mentioned above, close members of the Amsinck family lived in Portugal, Spain, and Amsterdam.122 The Amsterdam branch of the family traded with the Levant, and their connections could also be used from London. Insurance policies taken out by Magens and other naturalized merchants at London Assurance illustrate not only the geographic scope of their trade relations, but also how these merchants—in an era of emerging global economy—exploited legal and illegal means to overcome national trade barriers, combining hitherto independent trade networks. Insurance policies say nothing of Magens’s trade in Russia. Like many other merchants of German origin, he was a member of the Russia Company. And then there was Magens’s trade with North America, about which this source is almost silent. Even though trade with America is more difficult to evaluate because it was not governed by trade companies, it was not negligible. To mention just one example: Langkopff, Molling & Rasch, Sutton & Schombart, and Andrew Grote & Son were all large tobacco customers of American merchant Joshua Johnson, and these three houses were in turn the major suppliers of the German linen Johnson sold in America.123 Some naturalized subjects of German origin were large-scale merchants of North American fur. Trade in North American and Canadian fur and hides fell for the most part under the monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Hudson’s Bay Company, chartered by the British government in 1670, had unquestioned command of the St. Lawrence River area after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. From there it imported to England various kinds of fur and hides, including beaver, bear, marten, wolverine, wildcat, elk, fox, and otter. In terms of value and quantity, beaver was the largest export commodity. Naturalized subjects of German origin were shareholders and merchants in the Hudson’s Bay Company. These included John George Liebenrood, Nicholas Lewis Well, Herman and Godfrey Zurhorst, Charles Schreiber, and the Paul brothers, John Daniel and John William, (from Strehlin).124 Like the Paul brothers, Liebenrood, Herman Zurhorst, and Schreiber were members in the Russia Company. The Paul brothers and Schreiber were members of the Levant Company as well. These merchants’ membership in organizations covering such geographically opposite regions of the world once more highlights London’s role as a leading hub of worldwide trade. German merchants in London not only participated in London’s dominance but also actively helped to organize and shape it. Up to this point we have regarded the trading areas of naturalized subjects as being fairly isolated. Surviving documents for the business of Abraham Korten and his nephew John Roger Siebel illustrate how goods moved around the world,

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with trade occurring in such geographically distant places as America and the Caribbean in the West and Russia and Persia in the East. They also show how Abraham Korten tied Elberfeld into British world trade, making his hometown a part of it. Although they cover just a few years, these documents reveal what kind of goods he traded with and who his business partners were in both the East and the West. They disclose profits and losses, financial risks, and the problems the company had in finding a successor. As mentioned above, shortly after the mid-seventeenth century, merchant brothers from the Kaus family in Elberfeld went to London and opened the first branch of an Elberfeld family business there. Chain migration continued for over a century, ending with John Roger Siebel’s return to Elberfeld in 1772. When John Abraham Korten, the successor of the Teschemacher business, died in 1742, he left a list of his assets and two small account books for the years 1738 and 1746. Among his remaining papers there is also a partnership agreement from his nephew, John Roger Siebel, and two annual balance sheets. John Abraham Korten was born in 1690 in Elberfeld and naturalized in March 1718. The surviving account books start late in his life, just a few years before he died. One of the books is a diary for the years 1738 to 1746. As of 1740, business notes in it are fewer. After Korten’s death in 1742, his executors, his wife Anna Maria (née Siebel), and Gerrard Van Neck, a Dutch-born English merchant, continued making entries in the “day book” until 1746. After Korten’s death they used the diary increasingly as a budget book. It ends in 1746, when Korten’s daughter Anna Maria married the London merchant George Amyand. The second book, a general ledger for the years 1738 and 1739, contains information about only Korten’s own transactions, not those of the entire house.125 When Abraham Korten’s two remaining books were begun, the trading firm Abraham Korten & Co. was a partnership between John Abraham Korten, Godfrey Wichelhausen, and Philip Delahaize. As the head of the firm, Korten held three-fourths of the partnership, while his nephew Godfrey Wichelhausen and the other partner, Philip Delahaize, together owned the last fourth.126 In 1738 Korten’s capital deposit had been £15,000. In 1739 he invested another £12,200 at an interest rate of 4 percent “for the better carrying on the joint Trade.”127 When he died in 1742, Abraham Korten’s share was worth £27,000. The company had one employee, Thomas Achyelis, and an apprentice, J. Norris.128 Korten gave all his partners and employees room and board and wrote off £25 annually for it, except for Godfrey Wichelhausen, for whom he wrote off £40 annually.129 Henry Klencke from Bremen worked temporarily as Korten’s accountant during that period.130 Korten withdrew from most of the business in 1740 for reasons of health and lived part of the time in Bath. He sold a quarter of his share to Delahaize. He did not retire entirely, however; in 1740 he became a member of the Russia Com-

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pany’s Court of Assistants and also alderman for the Dutch church of St. Austin Friars. The surviving documents tell us nothing of what happened to his trade house after he died in 1742. His nephew, Godfrey Wichelhausen, died just a year after him.131 George Amyand, who later married Abraham Korten’s daughter, had begun his career in the trade house of Henry Voguell (from Herford) and became his co-partner at Nicholas Lane, Lombard Street until Voguell died in 1746. The year Amyand married Korten’s daughter, the directories listed a trade house under his name for the first time on Laurence Pountney Hill, No. 5. After the wedding, Korten’s widow Anna Maria (née Siebel) moved in with the new couple. Korten’s business address on Mincing Lane suggests that he traded with the New World. His records reveal the very broad geographic scope of his business, from Russia in the East to the Caribbean in the West. Although not all of the places that Korten traded are identifiable (his records often do not mention where his trade partners are), his house was obviously a hub of East–West trade. According to his records, Korten’s chief trade priorities were Russia, the Caribbean and New England, and his old hometown Elberfeld. Korten’s network conspicuously consisted to a large extent of fellow-countrymen and relatives. In Russia his main trade partners were naturalized Britons of German, German-Russian, or Dutch descent. Among them were Bardewick & Co., later Bardewick & Felthusen, Napier & Hasenfeller, and the St. Petersburg trade firm of British merchants James and Francis Gardner. Francis Gardner and Bardewick took care of Korten’s trade with Russian merchants Petronelly & Königsfeld, Zaroskoy, and Timofe. Schiffner & Wolff, and John Tamesz were also Korten’s trade partners in Russia, but his transactions with them were few. Korten imported linen, hemp, and iron from Russia, but unfortunately his records do not reveal what part of the total volume of his business these imports constituted. Bardewick & Co. and Napier & Hasenfeller had been involved in opening the trade route to Persia and had established offices there.132 Korten also traded with Martin Kuyck van Mierop, who like Bardewick had gone to Persia. These business connections ran through Martin’s father, Isaac van Mierop, who lived in London.133 Korten’s partners in Russia exported goods to Persia for him. It is not known whether he bought Persian silk through them or whether he made any profit off trade with Persia. The converse appears to be the case: he had irretrievable debt worth £2,000 that Anna Maria Siebel wrote off in 1746, almost half of which was for unsold wares in Persia; the rest was irretrievable debt from John Elton exceeding £1,045.134 Korten’s trade partners in the Caribbean were Cardell & Co. in Jamaica and John Fairchild & Co. and Edward Shewell on Barbados. In North America he traded mainly with Henning & Shute in Carolina and John Alford in Boston. He sent mostly various linen textiles to the Caribbean: Russian linen, Swiss linen, heavy duck linen fabric and other cloth from Lübeck, and black wool and

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“spinnal” [sic] yarn (probably produced near Elberfeld).135 From the Caribbean he imported sugar, ginger, dyes, and other colonial wares. From North America he apparently only imported tobacco. Korten’s third trade priority was his old hometown Elberfeld and its environs. Among his most important business partners were his relatives Jacob Wichelhausen, John and Anthony Wulffing, John Jacob Hochstein, and Henry Lomberg. Korten’s trade house in London was an important commercial entrepôt for his relatives in Elberfeld, as it probably was for trade from the entire region. His firm opened the door to British colonial and world trade for his relatives. Besides acting as a commissary for his relatives, he also persuaded them to participate in adventures to the Caribbean and North America. In 1738, for example, John Rutger Wuppermann owned shares in a shipment of linen to Cardell & Co. in Kingston, Jamaica. And through Korten, Jacob Wichelhausen participated in joint ventures under the direction of Barclay & Co.136 Korten also enabled the merchants of Elberfeld to exploit the advantages of the 1734 trade treaty between Great Britain and Russia. Jacob Wichelhausen’s connection to Bardewick & Co. in Russia was via London.137 In London Abraham Korten worked closely with naturalized subjects of German and Dutch origin. Among them were his relatives, Peter Lucas from Elberfeld (naturalized one year after Korten) and descendants of John William Teschemacher. Others were Nicholas Magens, John Duntze (in Exeter), and Conrad De Smeth. Korten imported large quantities of sugar. De Smeth owned two large sugar refineries in Whitechapel.138 Korten had remarkably close ties to London’s Dutch community. One of his closest trade partners, with whom he organized most of his trade journeys to the Caribbean, was Isaac Van Assendelft, a naturalized Briton of Dutch origin.139 Although the Reformed German Church of St. Paul’s had existed since 1697, Korten probably did not belong to it.140 He was a member of the more prestigious Dutch church congregation at St. Austin Friars, as was his entire family, his brother, and Jacob Wichelhausen. Korten had his daughter baptized there.141 Korten himself, as well as his wife, brother, and Jacob Wichelhausen, were all buried there. Religious affiliation and traditional trade relationships between Elberfeld and Amsterdam certainly encouraged Korten’s affinity to the Dutch community in London.142 Van Assendelft was not only Korten’s business contact, but also his friend. Joshua and Gerrard Van Neck, two of the most influential and probably richest Dutchmen of his times, were Korten’s friends, too.143 Korten’s account book does not mention doing business with the Van Necks. His will names both of them as its executors and as guardians for his daughter, who was still a minor. Gerrard Van Neck was a trustee for money that Korten had bequeathed to in-laws in Elberfeld.144 Korten worked with various interconnected trade networks. His core network—the commercial and social backbone of his trade—consisted of kin and

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other relatives in Elberfeld and London. Another network of direct economic and social relevance for his daily private life and business in London consisted of the City’s naturalized subjects who were of either the same national background or the same religious faith. These were mostly members of the Dutch congregation, like Van Assendelft. Complementing that network was a small group of native British merchants in London that included David Barclay & Son (later Barclay & Sutherland) and the brothers Francis and James Gardner. These networks were additionally linked by membership in the Russia Company, which in turn enabled trade contacts in the East that themselves pivoted on shared national background and religious affiliation. Despite the span of his trade, Korten did not make huge profits between 1738 and 1740: profit in 1738 was £2,380 3s. 2d., and the following year it was £3,253 12 s. 9d. If we add Wichelhausen’s profits, in those two years the whole firm made profits of £3,174 and £4,373 respectively. In 1740, after Korten reduced his share of the business from three-quarters to one-half, he made £1,193 17s. 1d. in profits.145 At the end of 1740, his capital assets totaled £31,800.146 After deducting the money bequeathed to third parties in his will and business losses equaling more than £2,838, Korten’s final business balance for 1746 equaled £27,088 6s. 0d. This included real estate in Weston Green worth £2,000. Korten bequeathed his wife and his daughter each three-eighths of his estate, that is, £9,408 2s. 3d. each. The last two-eighths he left to in-laws in Elberfeld. The final balance includes profits from sales of shares in ships and his financial capital. Korten’s capital assets, consisting of South Sea annuities and bank stock, equaled only £1,100.147 He owned shares in three German and two Dutch ships that sailed under captains Luder Bringmann, Govert Cassau, and William Kloppenburg. In 1745 the family sold his shares of one-twelfth and one-sixteenth, respectively, in the two ships “Jost Henry” and “Christian” for a yield of £110.148 Compared to Vansittart’s and Raymond De Smeth’s wills and inventories, the figures in Korten’s will do not suggest extraordinary wealth.149 There is evidence, however, that the will does not mention everything he owned. Even the executor’s final tally does not offer a complete picture of his total assets. The value of edifices on Mincing Lane and St. Martin’s Lane, for instance, is missing. Korten’s account books register rent received for these two buildings but do not say what the buildings were worth. Neither do they mention that his wife had assets of her own worth £10,000.150 If we take Korten’s real estate as an indicator of his financial situation and compare it to John William Teschemacher’s real estate, Korten was not particularly wealthy. Teschemacher bequeathed much more real estate to his children. Cornfoot property alone, which he willed to his son Merry Teschemacher, was worth £3,000. Teschemacher bequeathed several houses in downtown Edmonton to his daughter Sarah Birch, and he also left other property to his second son, John William.151 All in all, as much as the historical sources reveal, the most

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important assets of the immigrant generation do not appear to have revolved around real estate. When Abraham Korten’s son-in-law George Amyand died in 1766, his capital share in the firm was similar to what Korten had accumulated, although at the time of his death Amyand was considered the largest western European Russia merchant, and he and Nicholas Magens were the government’s largest lenders. At his death Amyand was said to leave behind an estate worth at least £160,000.152 Unlike Korten’s will, Amyand’s testament shows ownership of considerable real estate acquired especially during the last years of his life. However, £41,000 of the amount Amyand left to his children had come from his parents-in-law. Anna Maria Amyand, née Korten, had brought this money with her to her marriage, and both her marriage contract and her will stipulated that it be passed on to their children.153 Although Korten was probably not among London’s wealthiest merchants of foreign origin, in terms of the geographic spread of his trade he must be seen as one of the more important German-born merchants. He had social and occupational contacts within a network of the leading merchants of his time. That he was one of the first naturalized subjects in the Russia Company’s Court of Assistants and fulfilled countless obligations in managing the bankruptcies and estates of others underscores his reputation and status among London’s merchant elite. George Amyand’s nephew John Roger Siebel (1736–1808) went to London at the age of twenty-two and was naturalized in March 1761. Around that time he became a partner in George Amyand’s trade house. Siebel had amassed considerable wealth within just fifteen years of business activity in the firm.154 Following Siebel’s naturalization, the trading firm went by the name of Amyand, Rucker & Siebel, Laurence Pountney, No. 2. George Amyand’s will states not only that his son John (at the time still a minor) should eventually take over the firm, but also that meanwhile the firm should be led by John Roger Siebel for the “further promotion of the Establishment in Trade.”155 Amyand named John Anthony Rücker and John Roger Siebel as his executors. John Anthony Rücker left the firm shortly after George Amyand’s death, and John Roger Siebel and Amyand’s son John took over.156 The firm was then called Amyand & Siebel, and later Amyand, Siebel & Co. As guardians for John Amyand, who was still a minor, John Roger Siebel and Claudius Amyand, brother of the deceased George Amyand, signed a new partnership agreement in 1769.157 The company was located at the “dwelling House of … John Roger Siebel, situated on Laurence Pountney Hill, London.” Their joint starting capital amounted to £32,000. John Roger Siebel contributed five-eighths, or £20,000; John Amyand made up the other three-eighths, or £12,000. The contract was limited to two years but contained an option for a five-year extension if John Amyand contributed another £8,000 before 31 December 1771. That did not happen. The trade house was dissolved in late 1771 and its obligations were transferred to a new firm run by John Amyand and Isaac

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Osborne. In 1773 John Roger Siebel returned to Elberfeld,158 where his fiancée had waited ten years for him. It is also possible, of course, that economic factors, the textile crisis of 1772, or disputes with John Amyand’s second guardian motivated his return to Elberfeld. The extant annual balance sheet for 1771 shows a fortune of over £95,000. Another, written in 1772, shows a remainder of £2,774. The latter reflected only “sundry balances” for unfinished business taken over by the new society. The list contains the names of those with whom they traded, including some addresses and debts due. Like John William Teschemacher and Abraham Korten, Amyand & Siebel still traded heavily in textiles, especially linen, and had special accounts specifically for these products, according to the balance sheet. The separate account for Russian linen underscores how important it was for the firm. Amyand & Siebel’s crucial Russian contact was John Tamesz. The list shows that their business with him amounted to £8,900, making him their largest single trade partner. The names and addresses of their other trade partners show that Silesia and Saxony were important regions supplying linen items for them. They had many business contacts in Schmiedeberg, Hirschberg, Bautzen, and Zittau. The largest were Böhl & Kaller in Glatz and Christian Freudiger in Zittau. Their circle of trade partners in Germany included numerous merchants whose relatives, ancestors, or descendants lived or had lived in England. One of their Silesian trade partners was Franz Hasenclever, a younger brother of Peter Hasenclever from Remscheid.159 Their customers in Bremen included Henry Uhthoff Witwe & Sohn, and John Abraham Retberg.160 Oddly, the balance sheet features no names from Elberfeld.161 Besides German and Russian trade partners, the balance sheet mentions a few Dutch houses, including the two largest banks of the time, the Dutch houses Hope & Co. and Raymond & Theodore De Smeth. There is no indication that Amyand & Siebel traded with America or the Caribbean, but it cannot be ruled out. Amyand, Rucker & Siebel did trade with India. George Amyand served as a director of the East India Company, and according to a list of assets from 1768 he also traded in diamonds, a very lucrative segment of East India trade.162 We do not know whether John Amyand and John Roger Siebel traded in diamonds, too. Chain migration from Elberfeld to London ended with John Siebel’s return to his hometown. Emigrants from Elberfeld were mostly textile merchants and like others were increasingly attracted the growing textile regions in England’s north—namely, Nottinghamshire and Liverpool—in the last quarter of the century.163 In summary, insurance policies and scattered business documents show London as a hub of worldwide trade for naturalized Britons who integrated their birthplaces into their business networks. Their familial, confessional, and compatriotic ties did not play a role in every transaction; for example, they seem to have been fairly insignificant to the Hudson’s Bay Company fur trade. Member-

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ship in a company created a network of trust that elsewhere rested on reliable relatives and fellow countrymen. In most of the cases examined, like that of the merchants from Elberfeld, family ties and friendship with merchants of a similar background were the backbone of worldwide enterprise. Worldwide trade relations, however, presented London’s merchants not only with great opportunities but with great risks as well.

The Bankruptcy Trend and Naturalized Subjects’ Bankruptcies The rapid expansion in British overseas trade, especially during the second half of the eighteenth century, increased the risk of bankruptcy or insolvency. Wars, piracy, unreliable business partners, and misconceptions of distant, complex markets could quickly turn expected profits into losses. Until recently, historians have overlooked the fact that expansion in trade and climbing profits are accompanied by losses and setbacks as well.164 Korten’s account book shows the risks of long-distance trade. It contains a list of irrecoverable foreign debt totaling £3,052 for the period from 1726 to 1736. Most of the losses were due to business partners’ deaths or bankruptcies: eleven partners died; eight went bankrupt.165 Five other suppliers are marked as either missing or too impoverished to pay, or simply that “nothing [is] to be expected” of them. The list of bad debts features mostly business partners in America and Russia, including Edward Shewell in Barbados and Henning & Shute in Carolina. Korten’s losses were small compared to those suffered by John and Henry Schiffner, who within eight years had to write off a total of £112,963. When they went bankrupt in 1761, others still owed them a total of £160,606.166 Success and failure were two sides of one coin. Bankruptcy papers disclose not only the scope of British trade, but also a merchant’s attitude toward risk. How great was the risk of bankruptcy for German merchants, and how did their risk compare to that of British merchants? How far did bankrupts’ trade reach, and how was it organized? Did they find ways to start all over again? Bankruptcies were widespread in the eighteenth century.167 Although they were not rare, they were comparatively few in the first half of the century. After mid-century the rate of bankruptcy rose, reaching unprecedented heights after the turn of the nineteenth century (Figure 13). The first half of the eighteenth century saw an average of 172 to 278 bankruptcies per year. After 1770 these numbers mounted; the annual average of 478 bankruptcies from 1771 to 1780 jumped to 762 bankruptcies per year in the last decade of the century. After the Napoleonic blockade took effect, the number of bankruptcies passed the mark of 1,000 per year. Between 1811 and 1820 there were an average of 1,622 bankruptcies per year, and from 1821 to 1826 the yearly average was 1,353.168

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1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790 1800 1810 1820 1826

Figure 13. General Trend in Bankruptcy in England, 1710–1826 (yearly averages per decade).

The causes of collapse related directly to Great Britain’s overall economic development. Julian Hoppit’s research shows a clear correlation between expansion in overseas trade and industrial growth on the one hand and an increase in bankruptcies on the other. In the first half of the century, when the economy grew incrementally, the number of bankruptcies remained fairly stable. They occurred more frequently during the phase that Phyllis Deane and W. A. Cole have shown to encompass a rapid rise in industrial production and expansion in overseas trade.169 The thriving economy increased willingness to invest in both distant trade and novel industrial enterprises. The deals looked lucrative, but the risks were difficult, if not impossible, to assess.170 Rising English industrial areas like Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire saw more bankruptcies than agrarian counties like Cumberland and Cambridgeshire.171 More bankruptcies also occurred in places with direct access to the coast and international trade. London took the lead in bankruptcy statistics. Between 1688 and 1800, 46 percent of all bankruptcies occurred there,172 for several reasons. First, London was a leader in consumption and services. Second, short-lived fashions caused sharp fluctuations in demand that generated profits but also increased the risk of making poor decisions. Third, overseas trade was disproportionately represented in the country’s capital. Trade abroad was the main cause of the frequent economic collapse in the City. And fourth, it may have been easier in London than

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elsewhere for creditors to pursue bankruptcy claims, where proceedings began with a petition to the Lord Chancellor. Together these factors appear to have elevated the number of bankruptcies in London as compared to other places. In the first two decades of the century, more than 52 percent of all bankruptcies occurred in London. By the century’s end, London’s share had sunk to less than a third. This was not decline in absolute numbers; rather, there simply were more bankruptcies in emerging industrial areas and other port towns. In absolute numbers, between 1700 and 1800 the number of bankruptcies in London rose nearly sevenfold. From 1740 to the early 1780s, the number doubled.173 Among London’s merchants of German origin in the first half of the century, bankruptcies were too few to allow any development to be traced or to bear comparison with the overall numbers for England. Only twelve were found for the time between 1700 and 1750. Historical sources, however, are sketchy for that period. After 1761 there were more cases of bankruptcy among German merchants. They peaked at the end of the century: there were seventeen in the 1780s and twenty-nine in the 1790s. Contrary to the general trend, however, German merchants suffered fewer bankruptcies after the turn of the century. Their number did not rise again until after 1810, and even then it did not reach the level of the 1780s and 1790s. Comparing the bankruptcies of naturalized subjects of German origin with the total number of bankruptcies in Britain distorts the picture because most of

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790 1800 1810 1820 1826

Figure 14. Bankruptcies among Naturalized Merchants of German Origin, 1710–1726 (yearly average for each decade).

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the failed Britons were craftsmen or artisans, or pursued other occupations. Only about 12 percent of British bankruptcy cases involved overseas merchants.174 The German merchants’ number of bankruptcies does, however, bear comparison to figures for London’s merchants. London was home to the great majority of Britain’s overseas merchants of both native and foreign origin, and merchants were responsible for three-fourths of all bankruptcies in the capital. Julian Hoppit has compiled bankruptcy data for the period from 1740 to 1783.175 According to this data, only one of 381 cases of merchant bankruptcy in the 1740s involved a merchant of German origin. In the 1750s the ratio was 1:204, and in the 1760s it was 1:137. In the course of the 1770s the ratio improved slightly to 1:226, but the general trend toward bankruptcy continued. Overall, after mid-century, business became riskier for naturalized merchants. For each decade, it is worth considering the risks for merchants of German origin as compared to risks for naturalized subjects of German origin who were not merchants. Comparing the number of all naturalized subjects of German origin with those who went bankrupt would be imprecise, because not all of those who were naturalized were also merchants. Many of them were, though, and a few trends are discernible. As more German immigrants were naturalized after mid-century, the number of those who were merchants with established businesses also rose. Despite all reservations, a few things can be said about their risks. Table 26. Risk of Bankruptcy among Naturalized Merchants Period

Naturalizations

Bankruptcies among Naturalized Subjects

Ratio

1720s 1730s 1740s 1750s 1760s 1770s 1780s 1790s 1800s 1810s

41 54 38 38 51 60 68 80 86 19

2 1 3 5 10 10 17 29 11 10

1 : 20.5 1 : 54 1 : 12.6 1 : 7.6 1 : 5.1 1:6 1:4 1 : 2.8 1 : 7.8 1 : 1.9

Source: Shaw II, Docket Books (NA, B 4), Register of Certificates (NA, B 6), Gentleman’s Magazine.

Whereas in the 1720s and 1730s merchant bankrupts were few compared to the total number of newly naturalized subjects, the ratio worsened in the 1740s. For every twelve newly naturalized immigrants, one went bankrupt. But this points to the low number of new naturalizations more than to a rise in the number of bankruptcies. A real change for the worse came in the 1750s. On average between 1720 and 1750, only one in 22 new naturalized subjects failed, but

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after mid-century this figure was one in 4.2. The rapid growth of British foreign trade, frequent war, and industrialization raised the risk of failure for German merchants. Circumstances worsened in the 1760s and 1780s, and by the 1790s one in three merchants failed. Conditions improved after the turn of the century, but it is not possible to draw a comparison for the second half of the nineteenth century because Sidmouth’s restrictive naturalization policy discouraged petitions for naturalization. War was a major cause of the increased number of failures after 1750. Overseas trade was a risky business in itself; extremely long distances made risk almost incalculable. The farther away the markets, the more difficult it was to control what occurred there. Storms and piracy were also challenges. Although more merchants bought insurance in an attempt to lessen the risks caused by storms and pirates, premiums skyrocketed in times of war. War cut merchants off from their suppliers. As Ian Duffy has shown for the Coalition Wars, swings from peace to war caused intense and fast drops in demand, followed by bankruptcy.176 Hoppit’s research shows that merchants generally countered the early risks of war fairly well, but they often misinterpreted the markets as wars ended and immediately thereafter. The promise of peace misguided their hopes. Hoppit shows that whereas rates of bankruptcy did not rise when war broke out, they generally increased about two or three years into a war and then peaked when the war was over. Instances of bankruptcy were especially numerous for the war years 1742, 1758–1759, 1778, and 1796. The final years of war and first postwar years of 1712–1713, 1748–1749, 1763–1764, 1783, 1810–1812, and 1816 also saw peaks in the number of bankruptcies.177 The low number for the first half of the century permits no conclusion as to whether and how bankruptcy was directly related to war at that time. Yet the number of bankruptcies toward the end of the Spanish War of Succession is striking. In 1711—immediately following the financial crisis of 1710—four German merchants went bankrupt. Three were from Hamburg, one from Bremen. The first to fail was John J. Von Strassen in January, followed by Theodor Stahl in April, Francis Heilman (from Bremen) in July, and Peter Hollander and his co-partner Herman Louis in December.178 A year before, Hollander had sustained considerable losses from his shares in the slave ship Nancy, which sank on the African coast en route to the Caribbean.179 In early 1727 William Amsinck could no longer pay his bills. Most of his trade had been with the Iberian Peninsula. War had been threatening to break out between Spain and England since 1726, and it was not entirely averted until 1729. At the same time, a severe financial crisis hit England. In 1727 and 1728 liquidity squeezes caused a number of bankruptcies.180 While the available data do not support any conclusion about precisely what triggered each individual collapse, they clearly occurred during times of overall crisis.

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Random comparisons, however, show that bankruptcies among naturalized subjects coincide only partially with Great Britain’s crises. No bankruptcies were identifiable for German merchants in London in the years 1748–1749 (the last years of the Austrian War of Succession), 1758–1759 (the start of the Seven Years’ War), or 1778 (following the outbreak of the American War of Independence). Only one naturalized merchant went bankrupt in each of the years of crisis 1763 and 1783. In 1763 the problem was perhaps not so much the end of the war as it was a severe financial crisis that forced not only many British merchants but John David Ziegel (from Bremen) too to go out of business. Yet at the peak of war-related bankruptcies in 1783, the only German merchants to go bankrupt were Hane & Bercks.181 In 1784 three German trade houses failed; a fourth, Soltau & Amsinck, initially reported bankruptcy, but it was later made void.182 It is not known whether these bankruptcies were consequences of the crisis of 1783. The firms may have escaped the immediate threat but eventually been drawn into the undertow. The German merchants seem mostly to have made it through the worst of times, when large numbers of British merchants and businesses stopped payments. Remarkably, however, and contrary to the development described above, several naturalized merchants of German origin went bankrupt just prior to the Seven Years’ War.183 Besides war, financial crises in particular caused many waves of bankruptcies. Some were chain reactions. Credit transactions were highly unstable affairs that depended to a considerable extent on trust. Lending and borrowing was the daily business of a merchant. Eighteenth-century lenders were often widows, single women, gentlemen, and yeomen who tended to respond rashly in difficult times and demand immediate repayment.184 Long-distance trade and young branches of industry in northern England relied on loans. Merchants who extended longterm loans to manufacturers, sellers, and trade partners in remote regions often waited years for remittance. Meanwhile, merchants had to borrow money themselves. They were thus often plagued by bottlenecks in liquidity because slow communication and transportation made punctual payment difficult. It was difficult to balance liquidity with debt payments. Bad debt, inadequate paying behavior, or the bankruptcy of a trade partner could create urgent problems. The government’s demand for money also generated bankruptcies. Financing war frequently created severe short-term fluctuation on the money market. Competing directly with business owners, the state borrowed from banks and private lenders alike, siphoning off considerable liquidity. The result was bottlenecks on the money market that further heightened the eighteenth century’s financial crises. Eighteenth-century Great Britain went through thirteen big financial crises.185 As mentioned, in the first half of the century these caused few bankruptcies; and whereas the financial crises of 1701, 1710, and 1726 did slightly increase

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the number of bankruptcies, the financial crises of 1715, 1720, 1745, 1761, and 1763 had no noteworthy effect. This changed later in the century. In 1772 Alexander Fordyce’s bankruptcy and failure at the Ayr Bank triggered an enormous chain reaction. The collapse in trade with the New World in 1778 and the failure of calico printers and bankers Livesey, Hargreaves, Anstie, Smith & Hall in 1788 were equally devastating. The century’s two last waves of bankruptcy were induced by financial crises in 1793 (the onset of the Coalition Wars) and in 1797, when cash payments were stopped. The low number of failures among German trade firms in the first half of the century appears, at least partially, to indicate that the later increase in bankruptcies was related to overall financial crises. Although the financial crisis of 1761 saw no great number of bankruptcies among British firms, it did correlate with the failures of the German firms Francis Wynantz and Uhthoff & Battier. Walter Shairp, consul and merchant in St. Petersburg, called the collapse of Uhthoff & Battier one of the largest and most spectacular of his time.186 Historical sources do not reveal the reason for the firm’s collapse. In Walter Shairp’s opinion, Uhthoff & Battier’s failure was a result of personal misconduct, especially “great irregularity” in Battier’s “counting house & excessive speculation.”187 It is impossible to know whether that was the cause. Like many of his contemporaries, Walter Shairp saw bankruptcy as an outcome of personal failure and left the general state of the economy out of the picture. Similar arguments were used to explain Henry and John Schiffner’s failure. While Henry Schiffner found fault in John’s “imprudence or rather infatuation,” contemporaries considered the failure to be due to Henry’s own “vanity and extravagance” because he “lived more like a lord than a merchant.”188 Even at the close of the century, when contemporaries became more aware that failures were generated by factors of the overall economy, many still saw bankruptcy as an expression of personal incompetence.189 As mentioned above, in 1772 the failures of Fordyce and the Ayr Bank sparked a chain reaction. The exchange crash of 1770, caused by England’s conflict with Spain over the Falkland Islands, also contributed to the bank’s problems. For a while it stayed afloat by selling fictitious papers, but by June 1772 it was bankrupt. The subsequent wave of bankruptcies kept rising until the second quarter of the following year.190 In August 1772 August Kroll gave up. One month later Nicholas Lutyens did the same, and in December H. & C. Meyer followed. Two other firms held on for the rest of the year, but in February 1773 Blanckenhagen and Burmester & Amsinck went bankrupt, too.191 Though the outbreak of the American War of Independence caused a collapse in trade and a new wave of bankruptcies in England, the crisis seems to have left the firms of naturalized merchants unscathed. Not a single bankruptcy among the naturalized merchants of German origin was found for the year 1778. The crisis had begun when American colonists stopped paying their debts. Before the outbreak of war, they owed British banks and businessmen about five million

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pounds. London’s banks and merchants had invested over 2.3 million pounds in America.192 No naturalized merchants of German origin numbered among the creditors who, with the support of the English government, brought their demands before the American government in 1790. Of course, this does not mean that they had barely traded with American colonies. Some of the largest British-American trade houses, like Norton & Co., are not on the list from 1790, either. The Americans had primarily refused to pay money owed to Loyalists, but Norton & Co. had an American partner who was not a Loyalist.193 Since little is known about German houses’ trading partners in the New World, we can only speculate as to why they did not suffer from the British-American conflict. Katherine Kellock has shown that some American firms paid their British partners despite the boycott by sending their payments through continental European ports.194 The next sizeable financial crisis, in 1788, did not spare naturalized merchants. Four were ruined immediately in the aftermath of the breakdown of Livesey, Hargreaves, Anstie, Smith & Hall in Lancashire and London. Another German trade firm followed in early 1789.195 It is not known whether the collapse of Thomas & Paul Amsinck in November of that same year was also an outcome of the financial crisis of 1788. A major cause of the waves of bankruptcies after 1772 was the growing readiness of many business partners to shoulder sizeable risk, especially in novel industrial enterprises and fast-growing long-distance trade. “Risk-taking,” Hoppit wrote, “had got out of hand.”196 Leslie Pressnell maintained that inefficient banks themselves were at fault for financial crises that might have been absorbed by a better banking system.197 Duffy and Hoppit both suggested a role played by incorrect assumptions about a market’s capacity to deal with problems, considering that the years just prior to the crises were marked by very high export rates.198 For quite some time, much Anglo-Saxon research into bankruptcy has sought the causes of the eighteenth-century crises solely within national contexts. The effects of foreign events on immigrant trade houses and those working internationally has yet to be taken into account. Frederick Bode’s and Mathias Giesque’s bankruptcies around the year 1700 cannot be explained by looking at national events alone. By the end of the Seven Years’ War, at the latest, international trade was so entwined that waves of bankruptcy crossed national borders.199 Of course, the extent to which individual bankruptcies upset places abroad was hardly uniform. Problems on the Continent in 1763 seem to have left England fairly untroubled. Fordyce’s collapse, for example, caused problems across the Channel in Amsterdam and even affected firms in German regions. England and Holland’s third war at sea and the continental crisis of 1782–1783 had consequences for the trade firms of naturalized subjects in London. At present the historical sources do not allow deeper investigation into the overall European context of entrepreneurial collapse prior to 1790. The waves of bankruptcy from the 1790s, however, show that they were part of a pan-European context.

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Waves of Bankruptcy during the Coalition Wars The era of the Coalition Wars deserves special attention. The financial crises and waves of bankruptcy in 1772, 1778, and 1788 were modest compared to the events of the 1790s. The total number of bankruptcies in 1772 had been 537, in 1778 it was 682, and in 1788 it was 705.200 The onset of the Coalition Wars brought severe financial crisis upon England. From 1793 to 1794, the number of collapsed firms doubled and then remained high. The absolute peak for the eighteenth century was 1,276 bankruptcies in 1793,201 when even otherwise healthy trade houses gave up. As in previous decades, in the 1790s the fate of German merchants in England did not necessarily follow the English pattern. Between 1788 and the end of the century, with the exception of the year 1791, at least one German merchant in London went bankrupt every year. In contrast to the overall trend, however, the number of German firms that failed in 1793 was not particularly high—on the contrary, it was lower than the previous year. On the Continent in the summer of 1792, a wave of bankruptcies rolled from France across Holland to Poland and Russia. Hamburg seems have to been less troubled by it.202 In London the crisis in Russia created problems for Theophilus Blanckenhagen.203 Although only 546 of the British merchants in London went bankrupt in the year 1799—the least bad year of the entire decade for the British merchant community—a surprisingly high number of London’s naturalized merchants failed that year. Eleven trading firms that involved naturalized subjects went bankrupt. Two more followed early the next year. These bankruptcies had more to do with events on the Continent than with those in Great Britain. Early in the year, France was hit by a severe crisis. The Times reported on 4 January 1799 that bankruptcies in Paris, Lyon, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Rouen, and other large cities in France had reached alarming dimensions. Half a year later, the paper wrote, “Bankruptcies multiply every day, and every person who formerly wished to be rich now complains of distress and poverty.”204 In Hamburg the first problems cropped up in February. One of the first trade houses to fail was Lutterloh & Söhne. Another went bankrupt in April. After Eimbcke went bankrupt in April, more and more companies were drawn into the crisis. In August several “smaller bankruptcies” happened by the week. The drama intensified in September as large firms like Milow, Henckel & Eimbcke, and De Dobbeler & Hesse went bankrupt. As the lawyer Beneke wrote that month in his diary, “the waters of the market are no longer navigable … every [merchant] sits at his dock and cannot earn a penny.”205 The Times wrote: “We are concerned to hear of more failures in the City in consequence of the many stoppages that have happened at Hamburg. Yesterday a very principal Mercantile House stopped payment, which is the fourth within the last fortnight. It had paid its drafts very regularly, even on Saturday last.”206

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The first to go of London’s troubled trade houses were Persent & Bodecker and Cox & Heisch. They stopped payments on 12 and 13 September, respectively, and declared bankruptcy on 24 September.207 Their problems began with the bankruptcies of the Hamburg firms Milow and De Dobbeler & Hesse. Milow’s failure in Hamburg brought down Cox & Heisch in London. Dobbeler & Hesse’s washout had grave consequences, according to The Times: “De Dobbeler and Hesse’s bankruptcy involves the greatest number of sufferers in this country.”208 In Hamburg 152 trading houses went bankrupt.209 In early October, Garrels & Hinrichs in London were forced to give up trading. They wrote off £20,000 of crisis-related losses. When a rumor spread that they had lost £15,000 because of Persent & Bodecker’s failure, false claims that their firm in London was already bankrupt circulated in Hamburg and Bremen, forcing them to close their business.210 C. M. Schröder (from Hamburg) and J. Schröder had been willing to lend Garrels £9,000 to cover business losses, but once Persent & Bodecker fell apart, C. M. Schröder refused to support Garrels & Hinrichs’s endangered drafts. Besides that, their two business partners in Hamburg had accepted £70,000 for which they no longer had securities. After Garrels & Hinrichs declared bankruptcy on 3 October, Charles Gruneisen and Schedel & Zernitz followed on 18 and 19 October. Kent & Pemberton declared bankruptcy on 28 October, and two days later Philip Frederick Behrends followed suit. On 6 November Simon Maurice Bethmann went bankrupt, followed on 15 November by Jacob William Luning and Van Spangen & Willinck. Besides these trade houses of naturalized subjects of German origin, other London businesses that traded primarily with Hamburg also went down. On 7 October Knapp & Rymer went bankrupt. On 16 October it was H. Gentzen, on 23 October Richard J. Dohmer & Brune, and on 18 November Battier & Zornlin.211 Signs of crisis showed up in Denmark in September and October, and by the end of the year it had hit Russia, too. The Times wrote about Copenhagen: “[T]he bankruptcies there had put a complete stop to all trade in the City for the two preceding days. There was no course of Exchange, nor were any bills current; the only payments made were in ready money.”212 The outbreak of the second Coalition War, stagnant sales, and a huge drop in prices hurled Europe into one of the century’s most difficult crises. The Times’s correspondent ascribed France’s bankruptcies to the destruction of the nation’s overseas trade, the demise of various branches of production, and the formation of a new coalition against France. That summer, the French government’s compulsory loan exacerbated the situation.213 Of interest for this study are the links between bankruptcies in Hamburg and London. The picture is murky because each side faulted the other. Contemporaries Beneke and Büsch saw Persent & Bodecker as responsible; however, they gave up only after many houses in Hamburg had gone bankrupt.214 In mid-October, as the crisis mounted, The Times printed a long article from the British per-

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spective. The author believed that the crisis could have been prevented, had the Hamburg merchants responded in a timely fashion. Since the French Revolution began, The Times said, trade between Great Britain and Hamburg had reached unknown dimensions. The loss of business with other European ports such as Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam had made Hamburg the most important Continental port for Great Britain. The increase in trade with Hamburg had also encouraged an increase in trade with America and the West Indies. The financial market could not keep pace with Hamburg’s trade activity, so “the circulating medium, between the increase of sellers and purchaser, has frequently been found insufficient to the augmentation of trade.”215 In depicting the crisis of 1799 in Hamburg, Johann Georg Büsch also saw the problem in “excessive circulation bills and even fictitious bills” and other inappropriate practices.216 The problems originated not only in the bills business but also in an oversupply of colonial goods on the market.217 The Times wrote that the crisis should have been foreseen because a few months earlier, trade in coffee and sugar from the West Indies had broken down.218 Merchants in Hamburg who knew about it could have arranged public loans and established a “discount society” that would have prevented most of the collapses.219 The Hamburg Senate and the Hamburg bank had taken measures in September and established a loan company to enable loans and discounts on good drafts, but these measures came too late. According to The Times, London’s announcement of financial aid was the first relief in sight. Enterprise collapses in Hamburg had already considerably choked liquidity in September, even before the first trade houses in London were affected. When the exchange rates in London dropped by more than 25 percent, bills drawn on Hamburg were stopped. As Hamburg’s crisis threatened ever more London firms, a few London merchants decided to send one and a half million pounds sterling in currency and precious metals to Hamburg. This news, though conveyed to Hamburg by express messenger in early October, came too late to help prevent bankruptcy at four large houses, including Berend Roosen Solomon’s Son.220 The house Goldsmid was supposed to transport the money. On 9 October a ship named Lutine left Yarmouth with more than 1.5 million English pounds in precious metals on board. It never arrived.221 How much the crisis shook London’s world of trade is evidenced by a note in The Times from July 1804. Napoleon’s occupation of northern Germany in the autumn of 1803 caused another wave of bankruptcies among enterprises there. Two large trade houses in Hamburg went bankrupt, one with debt of 500,000 marks and the other with debt totaling 1.3 million marks. These, wrote The Times, “are the only failures of any magnitude since the blockade of the Elbe; an evident proof of what obstacles and difficulties a commercial spirit will surmount.”222

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Once another Coalition War was under way, anxiety on the Continent filtered through to some London trade houses. In 1803 and 1804, events on the Continent entrained primarily the young and the fragile, smaller merchants. Among them were Frederick Wistinghausen, Charles Frederick Schmoll, and Ulrich Anthony Hinrichs, formerly Hermann Jakob Garrels’s partner. Hinrichs’s surviving bankruptcy papers show that his losses and debts were less than £10,000. Reasons for his failure this time were the failures of several firms in Bremen, a tumble in prices for colonial wares in northern Germany, losses from draft transactions, and obligations remaining from his bankruptcy in 1799.223 That year, Daniel Boileau in Kingston upon Hull went bankrupt for a second time, too, having also failed first in 1799.224 Initially, the blockade of 1806 seems not to have seriously affected the firms of naturalized merchants in London. It forced English merchants to seek new markets outside Europe. There were also numerous ways, both legal and illegal, to continue trade with the Continent.225 It was dangerous, and it is likely that some of London’s naturalized merchants suffered losses after 1806. Overall, though, relatively few of them went bankrupt until 1810. Between 1806 and 1810, we find only three cases of German merchant failure, even though the overall number of bankruptcies in England had again begun to rise since the beginning of the blockade. As of 1807 over one thousand bankruptcies occurred per year, and when a new severe financial crisis hit in 1810, their number climbed to 1,800, peaking the following year at 2,112. After June 1811 the number began to drop, but it remained at 1,813 for the year 1812 and at 1,583 for the year 1813, which was still comparatively high. That number was exceeded again only in 1816 and 1826.226 As in 1792 and 1793, in 1810 the crash of two banks triggered a domino effect that toppled some German immigrants’ firms too. Two factors were the stricter enforcement of the blockade of the Continent and the shutdown of markets on the Baltic Rim, but the satiation of markets in both South America and at home also played a part.227 In July 1810 the crash of the bank Brickwood & Co. shook the City. It had been considered one of London’s soundest houses.228 A few days after Brickwood stopped paying its obligations, the West End bank Dawes, Noble & Co. followed suit. Brickwood’s demise had greater consequences on the business world, however. It swept away businesses whose loans depended on the Brickwood Bank. In 1810 Russian-German merchant Frederick William Wistinghausen, who had already once gone bankrupt in 1804, was ruined by the crisis, along with Johan Gotlob Werninck from Gdansk. Werninck had settled in Plymouth and, like Wistinghausen, had also already once failed in 1804. John Christian Splitgerber from Jacobshagen saved his firm at the last minute.229 Aldebert, Becher & Co. at St. Paul’s Churchyard had less luck: it lost more than £17,800 through the failure of Greaves & Co., which had been ruined by Brickwood. On 12 October

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1811 Aldebert, Becher & Co. stopped payments.230 Charles Cummerow, formerly the accountant at Garrels, had already given up in December 1810.231 The year 1812 was difficult for Germans and German-Russians in England. Four of their firms were liquidated, including one of the largest, namely Oom, Hoolboom, Knoblock & Fenton.232 In 1816 Spitta, Molling & Co. went bankrupt, too.

The Size of Failed Trading Houses during the Era of the Coalition Wars The surviving bankruptcy files hold papers of German and German-Russian trade houses that went bankrupt between 1793 and 1826. The data vary considerably. For some, for example Frederick William Wistinghausen, the remaining papers say nothing about to whom he owed or lent money. Others’ papers are more informative. Bankruptcy rules gave a debtor forty-two days following the commencement of proceedings to lay open his books. Many could not meet the deadline. Several of the surviving balance sheets were written up by the bankrupt person himself or by an assignee. Since many foreign creditors learned nothing of the bankruptcy for years, balance sheets do not reveal the full extent of debt. The bankruptcy files enable us to group the failed businesses by size. In 1987 Hoppit grouped them as follows: Small enterprises had debts of up to £1,000. Middle-sized enterprises owed between £5,000 and £10,000. Large enterprises’ debt ranged from £30,000 to £50,000, and giant enterprises owed more than £100,000. A total of 46.7 percent of the bankrupt firms had less than £10,000 in debt. About 33 percent had debt from £10,000 to £50,000; 12.5 percent had debt up to £100,000, and 7.9 percent were in debt for more than £100,000.233 None of the bankrupt German and German-Russian merchants in London owed less than £5,000. Thus for the purposes of this study, the groups need changing. The smallest German and German-Russian merchants had between £5,000 and £10,000 in debt. One of the two who were below £10,000 was the broker George Baumer.234 The other was Anthony Hinrichs in 1804 (his second bankruptcy). Most of the firms were in debt for between £10,000 and £100,000. This group can be divided into middle-sized firms with debt up to £50,000 and large firms whose debt was between £50,000 and £100,000. Of the ten firms with £10,000–100,000 of debt, four had more and six had less than £50,000. The last class, namely, that of the giant firms, can be divided into those exceeding £100,000, £200,000, and £400,000 of debt. Six of the immigrant merchants’ enterprises were among the giants. The largest by far, with £457,510 of debt, was Muilman & Nantes, which stopped payments in February 1797. The second-largest, Persent & Bodecker, had debt of £292,344 when it went bankrupt in 1799. Cox & Heisch, Theophilus Blanck-

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enhagen, Spitta, Molling & Co., and Oom, Hoolboom, Knoblock & Co. all had debt between £100,000 and £200,000. Table 27. Amount of Debt at the Time of Bankruptcy Current Debt

Name

Year of Bankruptcy

More than £400,000 More than £200,000 More than £100,000

Muilman & Nantes Persent & Bodecker Cox & Heisch Theophilus Blanckenhagen Spitta, Molling & Co. Oom, Hoolboom, Knoblock & Co. Hippius & Co. Gottlob Schwieger Henry Siffken Christian Henry Kauffmann Simon Bethmann Frederick Schroder Ulrich Riethmüller Riesenbeck, Eschke & Fähndrick Gustavus Flindt White & Lubbren Ulrich A. Hinrichs George Baumer

1797 1799 1799 1792/93 1816 1812 1796 1826 1814 1809 1800 1813 1822 1807 1821 1812 1804 1809

£50,000–£100,000

£10,000–£50,000

Less than £10,000

All of the trading houses listed in Table 27 went bankrupt during times of more or less severe financial and economic crises. Muilman & Nantes, Cox & Heisch, Oom & Co., and White & Lubbren were not exclusively German-owned companies. Henry Nantes (Figure 15), from Bremen, had a British partner of Dutch descent; partners in the other three German merchants’ businesses were Britons. Some of these enterprises, like Cox & Heisch and Persent & Bodecker, were still very young.235 They had expanded rapidly under favorable market conditions. In contrast, Theophilus Blanckenhagen had been doing business steadily for twenty years.236 Molling, Spitta & Co.’s history stretched back to the first half of the eighteenth century. By the time they went bankrupt, the company was no longer run exclusively by the immigrant generation but in part by their sons. Three of the trade firms on the list belonged to German Russians: besides Blanckenhagen and Hippius, other partners of German-Russian origin were Thomas Oom, James Ecbert Hoolboom, and Thomas Adolphus Knoblock. A deterioration in England’s relations with Russia and the Continental blockade both contributed to their failure. A closer look at individual cases of bankruptcy, patterns of debt and credit, and the organization and scope of their credit networks is now in order. Below, examples from each of the abovementioned categories of small, middle-size, large, and giant trading houses are given to present a broad yet representative range of trade and failure.

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Figure 15. Portrait of Henry Nantes. Source: Private collection of Robert Nantes.

Muilman & Nantes The bankruptcy files for Muilman & Nantes contain a unique document recording a questioning of some of the persons involved, including Henry Nantes and one of his employees. Due to the sheer amount of debt involved, Muilman &

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Nantes’s failure in early 1797 was considered one of the most spectacular of its time. The house owed 753 creditors a total of £457,510. Richard Muilman Trench Chiswell was the son of Dutch immigrant merchant Peter Muilman, who had come to England early in the century. The Muilmans were a respected merchant family in Holland. Richard’s father Peter Muilman and his uncle Henry Muilman both sat in the Russia Company’s Court of Assistants for many years and were considered two of the most influential representatives of the Dutch community in London. At the time of his death in 1790, Peter Muilman’s estate was said to be worth £350,000. Richard Muilman was a Member of Parliament for Aldborough in Yorkshire from 1790 until his suicide in 1797.237 Henry Nantes was born in Bremen and naturalized in 1789. When he joined Muilman & Co. he allegedly brought no money with him,238 but that seems improbable as he came from a wealthy family. His uncle Daniel Nantes already resided in London.239 The bankruptcy assignees appointed for the Muilman & Nantes bankruptcy proceedings were neither asked to explore the reasons for failure nor obligated to disclose them, but obituaries in contemporary newspapers, including The Times, say that a series of poor speculations and investments in the West Indies triggered the bankruptcy after the company suffered heavy losses from an East India loan.240 According to the documents, the firm owned property and had assets on the islands of San Domingo and Grenada, on Long Island, and in South American Demerara, Berbece, and Buenos Aires. Muilman & Nantes had established the San Domingo branch while the island’s economy was on an upswing, increasing coffee exports and making it one of the Caribbean’s largest sugar producers. San Domingo exported almost as much sugar as all of Great Britain’s Caribbean possessions combined. Muilman & Nantes decided to open a branch there after a slave revolt drove the French from the island in 1791.241 They planned to invest £40,000 to £50,000 in the venture and sought four persons to entrust with the work. Richard Dalton, recommended by a friendly trade house, was asked to manage the branch; Le Riche, one of Muilman’s former employees, was chosen for his French skills and salesmanship; a man named Bauman was brought in because he had already worked in St. Marks and was familiar with local conditions; and Gerard Janson, a confidant of the house Muilman & Nantes, and was asked to monitor the branch’s activities. The main trade house intended to control the remote branch. The San Domingo branch was to work exclusively on commission. Its agents were not allowed to trade at their own cost because they had brought no capital to the project. Testimonies made before the bankruptcy commission are inconsistent. The plan was apparently Henry Nantes’s idea; Richard Muilman was left insufficiently informed. Presumably without telling Muilman and the others involved, Nantes signed an additional contract with Janson, guaranteeing him a share of the profits. The document was destroyed before the commission

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could get it. Contrary to the stipulations of the first contract, Dalton borrowed money in the name of Muilman & Nantes without their authorization or even knowledge of it; and all the while, the branch generated not a shilling in profits. Nantes apparently made similarly flimsy deals with business partners in North America, Canada, and Spain. Orders for the purchase of over £30,000 worth of grain from North America in the company’s name, for which Muilman had given guarantees, were simply doubled in quantity without authorization. Missing and inaccurate cost sheets, cancellations, and customers that did not pay all resulted in high losses, for which Henry Nantes was more or less responsible. In order to save the firm, Nantes tried to get Muilman to invest his personal and inherited estate in the firm. When Muilman refused to do so, the company failed.242 Later the bankruptcy commission also discovered that Nantes had pulled more money out of the firm than he was entitled to get.243 Neither the balance sheets nor the books that Henry Nantes presented to the bankruptcy commission have survived. However, a list of those books, written up by the bankruptcy commission, is extant and provides an idea of the firm’s almost global trade. Besides several books of transaction copy, sales, and current accounts in trade with the West Indies, it separately lists individual books pertaining to trade with East India, America, Buenos Aires, and the Dutch East India Company, as well as records of insurance transactions, ships, and ship materials.244 Besides sugar and coffee, the house traded large quantities of wheat and flour. In wartime Muilman & Co. did some of their North America trade through a partner in Cadiz. When they went bankrupt, several of their vessels were on their way to the West Indies, to Copenhagen, and to Batavia.

Theophilus Blanckenhagen In contrast to the record of Henry Nantes’s business demeanor, the bankruptcy papers for another large trade house run by a naturalized merchant describe a healthy firm. Theophilus Blanckenhagen’s stoppage of payments in 1793 was due less to his own misjudgment than to the bankruptcies of Hill, Cazalet & Co. and M. G. Trosien in St. Petersburg. Blanckenhagen was a merchant banker whose trade house acted as an acceptance bank. When he went bankrupt, his bank had accepted drafts for more than £133,000. The total value of all accepted drafts from Russian firms was £127,702. Of that, £71,000 was for Hill, Cazalet & Co., and another £44,000 was for Trosien.245 Bankruptcy loomed in late December 1792. Blanckenhagen’s attempts to save his firm failed when Great Britain entered the war in late January, setting off a financial crisis.246 The balance sheets attest to a well-managed firm. It had a balance due of £159,887 and assets of £168,675.247 After determining and examining creditor claims, the bankruptcy commission ultimately only discovered debt of £129,742.248

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The documents say little about what Blanckenhagen traded. His accountant William Hogermolen said he imported and exported “large quantities of goods to and from Russia.” The papers themselves mention trade in calico, flax, madder, and particularly rhubarb.249 Blanckenhagen seems to have traded mainly in four regions. Foremost was Russia. His business partners there were in St. Petersburg and Riga, the main seat of the family enterprise, but also in Reval (Tallinn), Moscow, and Jelgava (Latvia). Only two of his business partners had Russian names (Guchiatnikov and Tourtcheninov). All others were of western European background or origin. Blanckenhagen also traded with Warsaw and Stockholm. Holland was Blanckenhagen’s second major trading region. He had fourteen business partners in Amsterdam alone. These strong business relations were based on family ties. In the early eighteenth century, one of his uncles had settled as a merchant in Amsterdam at a time when the town was still a leading finance market and hub of monetary transactions between Russia and the West.250 Blanckenhagen’s third major trading region was Germany. Most of his commercial contacts there lived in the trade towns of Hamburg and Frankfurt, and some were in Leipzig. He also had trade partners in Gdansk, Stettin, and Königsberg, and a few in Wroclaw, Hanover, and Slovakian Bratislava, as well as Vienna. His fourth major trading region was Italy, but according to the bankruptcy documents his business there was small-scale. He had only three Italian business partners: two in Leghorn and one in Turin. Judging from the name, Brooke & Co. in Leghorn was probably an English house.251

Persent & Bodecker Like Blanckenhagen, Persent & Bodecker also acted as an acceptance bank. On 12 September 1799, the day they halted payments, the bank’s acceptances due were worth £197,887.252 The total of all of their drafts drawn in Hamburg was £273,944.253 Augustus William Bodecker ceased payments while his partner Walter Persent was visiting Hamburg,254 the major place of their trade. They had eighty business partners there; the largest were Henckel & Eimbcke, Eimbcke & Hereshoft, Luis & Jencquel, C. C. Schutt, De Dobbeler, and Gaedechens. Persent & Bodecker had merchandise worth more than £25,800 stored at Henckel & Eimbcke’s warehouse and goods worth almost £20,000 stored with Luis & Jencquel. They had also accepted drafts for the latter worth almost £20,000. The amounts were similar for their other business partners. Persent & Bodecker’s trade differed from Blanckenhagen’s. Their accountant John Francis Kahn testified that they bought large quantities of Madeira wine and “other wares.” Wine trade is not evidenced in the bankruptcy files, but they do mention “other wares,” such as rhubarb, iron, wood and beams, seeds, indigo, Spanish fur, logwood, and large quantities of sugar. They traded sugar both on

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their own account and on commission. In London they entertained business relations with eighteen sugar refineries, among them the largest German-run sugar firms: Wackerbarth, Detmar, Dirs & Holthouse, and Samler.255 Persent & Bodecker had fifteen trade partners in Bremen, but their total debt there was negligible compared to their debt in Hamburg.256 They also had business partners in Bielefeld, Brunswick, Cologne, Stuttgart, and Berlin. To the east and southeast of Germany, their trade connections stretched as far as Königsberg and Gdansk, and to Hirschberg in Silesia. They also maintained business contacts in Russia, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and across the Atlantic in Demerara. Most of their trade partners on the European continent were of German or British background, like Martens & Von Lengerke and Lameyer in Cadiz, Krohn in Malaga, and Haeseler and Schonberg in St. Petersburg. Geographically, Persent & Bodecker’s network of trade was wider than Blanckenhagen’s. In terms of goods traded and geographic reach, it resembled that of Cox & Heisch.257

Oom, Hoolboom, Knoblock & Co. and Hippius & Co. The business of two smaller trading firms run by naturalized merchants of German-Russian origin—namely, Jacob Gottfried Hippius and Oom, Hoolboom, Knoblock & Co.—focused on the Baltic Sea area. Bad debts amounting to almost £88,000 ruined Oom & Co. in 1812. They had good debt for just a bit more than £21,000.258 They traded primarily with Gdansk and with the East Prussian and Pomeranian port towns Elbing, Königsberg, and Stettin (Sczcecin), as well as with the Russian cities of Riga, St. Petersburg, and Archangel. Their largest payments due were with Woodbine Paris (perhaps in London) for about £14,000 and Richard Cowle in Elbing for about £13,400, followed by London’s James De Drusina for £7,800.259 Despite the war and the blockade, Oom did business with Schröder & Schyler in Bordeaux and Charles Bremer in Paris.260 Though the bankruptcy proceedings once again do not list what goods they traded, files from the Privy Council dating from 1806 to 1810 do. According to those records, Oom and his partners imported large quantities of wood, masts, hemp, flax, grain, sailcloth, and naval stores from Gdansk, Königsberg, and Memel, as well as other ports not barred by the blockade. They also traded diverse colonial wares, dyes, food (butter and salted fish), furs, potash, tar, and other goods.261 In contrast, Jacob Gottfried Hippius’s bankruptcy papers describe his trade. His business was much smaller. He traded mainly in wood, but also in iron, coal, and grain. His creditors fell into three groups: merchants and bankers who had lent him money, ship owners, and craftsmen. His largest creditors were William Tooke Robinson, who had lent him capital of more than £5,200, and the abovementioned Thomas Oom and Oom’s former partner Charles Bremer. Hippius

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owed them more than £1,800.262 Hippius had additional debt from bills of exchange and commodities. As in the cases of Blanckenhagen’s and Oom, Hoolboom, Knoblock & Co.’s bankruptcies, Hippius’s major region of trade was the eastern and southeastern part of the Baltic. The bankruptcy records allow no conclusion as to any trade in other regions. His largest creditors abroad were Adolf Schenling in Stockholm, whom he owed over £6,600, and Archibald MacLean in Gdansk, whom he owed over £3,600. With the exception of Melchior Trompowski & Co. in Riga, all of his trade partners in Russia were of western and northern European descent. Most of his creditors lived in England. Besides other merchants, he was indebted to ship owners, commodity brokers, dock managers, coal barge owners, and lighter men for freight costs, brokering charges, transport, port and unloading costs, and warehousing. The records show that the owners of ships hired by Hippius resided in various towns in northern England and Scotland, such as Northumberland, Sunderland, Northshields, Whitby, York, Newcastle, and Dysart, and also often mention the ports of departure and arrival for those vessels. Six of the twelve journeys described in more detail departed from Memel, another three departed from St. Petersburg, one left from Stockholm, and one was on its way from London to Bybourg (Sweden) and back. In only one case is the port of departure not stated. London was the destination for nine of these journeys, and Hull that of another three. Freight is specified for seven vessels.263 All of these shipments involved wood; only the ship from Stockholm transported iron as well. Why Hippius went bankrupt is not known. No balance sheet has survived. Hippius’s accountant Hans Peter Engstrom, testifying before the bankruptcy commission, spoke only of “various losses and unfortunate affairs.”

Ulrich Anthony Hinrichs Less than five years after his first bankruptcy, Ulrich Anthony Hinrichs gave up again in May 1804. His trading house, the smallest of those examined here, was not yet fully established when it was hit by the economic crisis of northern Germany. Bankruptcy documents reveal his profits and losses since leaving Hermann Jakob Garrels in 1799. According to Garrels, Hinrichs started his own business in 1800 without financial backing.264 Hinrichs’s balance sheet shows that he made £1,614 in profits just one year after going into business for himself.265 In 1801 he had small losses but still made a profit of £1,932. His income came mainly from commissioning.266 In 1802, however, his situation took a turn for the worse. After the signing of the peace treaty, prices for colonial wares began to fall and his losses mounted. He incurred additional losses when several firms in Bremen went bankrupt and he lost ten barrels of uninsured sugar. Losses from currency fluctuations and unsold mer-

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chandise followed.267 His income for 1802 was less than half of that for the previous year.268 For Hinrichs, the year of peace, 1802, ended with a debt of £942. In 1803 and until he was declared bankrupt in 1804, he had more expenses than income.269 To cover his deficits, Hinrichs received credit from (among others) William Prest and Fridag, Bourcard & Giese. Five years earlier, Prest had acted as an assignee for Garrels & Hinrichs.270 Hinrichs’s obligation to repay Fridag, Giese & Co. brought about his failure in May. According to the balance sheet that Hinrichs presented to the bankruptcy commission, he had a debit of £3,014 and assets of £9,241.271 Wartime conditions prevented him from recovering his claims. Likewise, because German ports were blockaded by the English, many of Hinrichs’s creditors were unable to submit their claims. By 1808 the bankruptcy commission acknowledged a total of £5,215 in demands on Hinrichs.272 Hinrichs had mostly commissioned grain and colonial wares.273 His biggest deal was with W. G. Rolfes & Co. in Liverpool. Only one other transaction— with the grain merchant Prest, in the sum of £1,700—was worth more than £1,000. Hinrichs’s second-largest trade partner was Jürgen Lubbers in Varel, with whom he had business worth £915, followed by P. J. Abegg in Emden with business worth £600. Most of his transactions involved less than £100. Hinrichs’s business focused mostly on the northern regions of Germany. Twenty-nine of his business partners were located in Bremen, seven in Leer, and five in Emden. Others were in Norden, Carolinensiel, Varel, and other small towns in the area. He also had ten business partners in Hamburg. Few of his German connections went beyond the triangle marked by the rivers Elbe and Weser. He had one business contact in each of Osnabrück, Münster, and Stuttgart. As was usual for merchants from his area, he had business connections in Holland, particularly to houses in Amsterdam. Besides these, he had business partners in Bordeaux and Baltimore, where his French and American contacts were of German descent.274 Many merchants in England, both in London and in Liverpool, were of German descent.275 Hinrichs’s business partners in London included John Frederick Schröder, Charles Frederick Hennings (from Elbing), G. C. Oncken, and W. Camphausen. Hinrichs’s dependency on trade with his native country and his lack of financial backing were certainly crucial factors in his bankruptcy. When the rivers Elbe and Weser were blockaded in 1803 and the area occupied by the French army, trade in northern Germany stagnated. Many firms gave up under these circumstances. Among them was Hermann Jakob Garrels’s brother’s firm in Leer. Hermann Jakob himself was not pulled into his brother’s bankruptcy affairs. Not much is known about how the Garrels business fared in London after 1799. According to Privy Council minutes for the years 1806–1808, Garrels imported large quantities of grain and prize salt. The Privy Council licensed him to trade with the enemy, France.276 During the years of the Napoleonic blockade, his trade relations stretched from France to the Netherlands to Norway, Sweden, and

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Russia. His former home region remained a main pillar of his business.277 The commercial success that he reported to his parents just after starting anew seems to have continued until his untimely death in 1808.278 The organization, geographic concentration, and scope of Riesenbeck, Eschke & Fähndrick’s trade business seems to have been quite similar to that of Hinrichs. In their case, lack of capital led to bankruptcy in 1806, in the early phase of the Napoleonic blockade. The firm had few capital resources: Riesenbeck had contributed £1,700; Fähndrick, £1,190. Eschke brought no money at all to the firm.279 They failed when the French seized a ship, exchange rates dropped, and several houses in Hamburg also went bankrupt. Papers for Riesenbeck, Eschke & Fähndrick include a calculation showing that Riesenbeck and his partners would have made a profit of £3,947 had circumstances been otherwise.280 The examples discussed here illustrate once more the extent to which London had become a hub of worldwide trade for England’s naturalized subjects. These failures were in part due to insufficient capital, extraordinarily rapid expansion, carelessness, considerable risk-taking, and unreliable or bankrupt business partners. Another crucial factor was the oscillation between war and peace. Constantly changing battlegrounds meant unforeseen risks and trade interruptions.

Estates of the Failed In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, bankrupts were held liable with both their business and personal assets. On the day that a bankrupt person presented his estate to administrators, he had also to hand over all personal valuables like watches, signets, and even the last cash from his pocket. Hinrichs, apparently, had almost no money left. He put a metal clock, a gold and two other signets, a miniature painting, one diamond ring, and one gold watch on the table, along with £9 in cash. The bankruptcy commission had already confiscated his household belongings, furniture, and business records.281 The debtor’s clothing and that of his family was not confiscated. Merchants owned very different amounts of property, and bankruptcy proceedings rarely say much about real estate. Files for Muilman & Nantes are an exception. Compared to the others discussed above, Muilman & Nantes had substantial property and assets in the West Indies and South America, too. The files do not reveal the size, location, or type of their property overseas. They do say that Nantes owned shares in several theaters on Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Apart from that, however, Muilman & Nantes’s property differed from that of other merchants less in kind than in quantity. They had leased or rented numerous warehouses in Battersea, Wapping, Rotherhithe, and on Twin Wheel Alley. When Nantes stood before the bankruptcy commission, he put a gold watch and numerous pieces of diamond-studded jewelry on the table.282

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As far as the bankruptcy records indicate, merchants had much more circulating than fixed capital. Asset lists often mention not only the firms themselves, but warehouses and shares in ships also. Besides his own office on Throgmorton Street in the City, Hippius also held leases for a moorage and warehouses in Lambeth, and two houses and warehouses in Shoreditch. Some of the bankrupts had warehouses on Heligoland during the Napoleonic blockade.283 Among bankruptcy papers, only Charles Spitta’s property is mentioned as a freehold (privately owned). He owned the trade house on Laurence Pountney Lane and a private home in Peckham. Blanckenhagen had a private home in Walthamstow, but the file does not say whether it was leased or owned. The value of his home, including furnishings, was estimated at £1,000.284 Both Persent & Bodecker and John Frederick Schröder had leased their trade office space and living quarters.285 It is doubtful whether the bankruptcy papers consistently mention all real estate and building ownership. Documents for Muilman & Nantes, for example, do not mention Henry Nantes’s possessions in Sherwood House, although they were part of the bankrupt’s estate. The Times noted in mid-March 1797 that the house had been offered for sale at Christie’s for the fire-sale price of £1,660.286 Muilman & Nantes, Hippius, and John Frederick Schröder all owned ships or shares in ships.287 Many of the bankrupt German merchants also had stock, life insurance policies, and shares in other businesses. Bodecker & Persent had stock in Pelican Life Insurance, the Globe Insurance Company, and the Wheel Jewell Mine, as well as lottery tickets. Bodecker and Riethmüller also had life insurance policies. Oom & Co. owned somewhere between two and ten shares of the Commercial Dock Company. In general, merchants were not devoted stock buyers.288 Blanckenhagen and Bethmann both had larger savings in banks. Blanckenhagen had deposited £40,000 at the Bank of England and held South Sea stock worth £215; Bethmann had £12,734 in an account at Wills, Wood & Co.289 It is almost impossible to tell whether (and if yes, how many) assets the bankruptcy assignees did not record, either because the debtor concealed them or because the assets were somewhere abroad. Some disputes seem to indicate that this was the case. One creditor later discovered that Nantes owned several ships registered in his name at the Custom House—a fact he left unmentioned during bankruptcy proceedings. Nantes claimed these ships had belonged to his deceased business partner Muilman and were registered in his name only because a Member of Parliament was not allowed to use his own vessels to transport goods and provisions for the marines. This did not convince the commissioners, who confiscated and sold the ships.290 The bankruptcy commission did not always deprive a debtor of all his assets. Seizure depended on several things: reasons for bankruptcy, debtor conduct, size of the estate, and the individual’s social status and reputation on the one hand; and the relationship between the bankruptcy assignee, creditors, and debtor on

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the other. In 1799, when Garrels & Hinrichs went bankrupt, the moral and financial support Garrels got from his family and relatives, as well as his reputation in London, was crucial to handling the case. As soon as bankruptcy loomed, Garrels had sought money to fulfill his obligations to his creditors. And he had been equally careful not to lose the trust of his first employer, Sebastian Fridag in London, who supported him throughout the entire bankruptcy proceedings. Together with his partner William Prest, Fridag managed a large part of Garrels’s bankruptcy process.291 Because both Blanckenhagen and Spitta had excellent reputations in the City and considerable estates, both bankruptcy officials and creditors were most obliging toward them. Like the others, Blanckenhagen had to lay personal valuables— his gold watch, diamond rings, and cash amounting to more than £453—on the table. The bankruptcy commission explicitly noted that these things were returned to him and he was granted permission to continue residing in Walthamstow for the time being.292 In 1816, both the creditors and the bankruptcy commission were equally accommodating toward Spitta, Molling & Co. All four partners were allowed to keep their personal valuables, such as watches and so on, as well as the cash they carried with them. Charles Spitta was allowed to keep his home on Great Coram Street with all its furnishings. The personal property of the other partners, Frederick and Godfrey Molling and Henry Arthur Spitta, was to be auctioned off, but they were to get a £15 commission for every £100 the auction brought in. Charles Spitta was allowed to keep money stipulated for him in the marriage contract with his meanwhile deceased wife. The bankruptcy administrators were divided on the question of whether they should mortgage or lease Charles Spitta’s freehold property in Peckham.293 When bankrupt persons were helpful in collecting assets, they received some financial support to do so. The commissioners noted explicitly that as compensation for their active support in the bankruptcy process, Cox and Heisch were allowed to keep their household belongings at New Court and in Surrey.294 Henry Siffken was given a £50 allowance for cooperating in the bankruptcy process. In 1814, when bankruptcy threatened, he had tried to reach an out-ofcourt agreement with his creditors. His efforts failed because he worried he could not pay the dividend of 14s. in the pound demanded by his creditors. He had no choice but to go the official route. The bankruptcy commission was not always so accommodating. Eschke’s household belongings and furniture were auctioned off.295 Gottlob Erdman Schwieger begged in vain to be able to keep his bed and a few pieces of furniture.296 Most personal and business items were compiled in catalogues and then auctioned off publicly. One such catalogue has survived for London’s sugar refiners Travers & Esdaile, who went bankrupt in 1806 just before starting operations. Their equipment was bought up by Charles Elliot and Martin Dietrich Rücker.297

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The bankruptcy commission attempted to seize assets abroad but was not always successful. Records of Peter Hasenclever’s bankruptcy have not survived, but we know from biographical information that he was a partner in a trade house in Cadiz. His share in that business and the profits he made there were not involved in his bankruptcy affair, and he later used them to start anew in Silesia.298 The officials tried to get at overseas assets of Gottlob Erdman Schwieger, John Frederick Schröder, Riesenbeck & Eschke, and Simon Bethmann. Riesenbeck, Eschke & Fähndrick owned a building in Berlin. The bankruptcy administrator noted: “no value can be fixed under the present circumstances in Prussia.”299 The officials also had difficulty confiscating Muilman & Nantes’s assets on San Domingo. Entrusted with that task, the Sephardic merchant Montefiori wrote on 19 March 1804 that he hoped to come to some agreement with the island’s “black generals.”300 Simon Bethmann’s bankruptcy assignees initially had no idea that he had a claim to an inheritance from his deceased father. After learning of it through Bethmann’s creditors Goldsmid & Eliason, they forced him to hand over to his creditors a right to the inheritance for the amount that he owed them.301 Gottlob Erdman Schwieger’s creditors confiscated wares that were still on a ship owned by his brother Nicol Daniel Schwieger that had docked in Dover on its way to Hamburg. They also negotiated access to another brother’s assets in Rio de Janeiro, but he denied the claim.302 The 1732 law on bankruptcy safeguarded bankrupts from prison as soon proceedings had begun.303 However, the period between a firm’s stoppage in payment and the setting up of a bankruptcy commission was critical. To avoid danger, company owners developed a stable pattern of behavior: they informed their accountants of the possibility of bankruptcy, then walked out the door and remained absent. The accountants informed the first creditors to knock on the trade house’s door that payments had been halted. They also said that the debtor had either left the City for an unknown destination or was staying in an unknown place “for fear of being arrested.” Ulrich Anthony Hinrichs had, in the words of his accountant Reinhard Meyer, left the house “and … was going into the country to be out of the way on account of some writ being against him.”304 Cox and Heisch hid in the apartment of one of their employees.305 Others, like Oom, Spitta, Molling, and Gustavus Flindt, simply stayed in the back rooms of their firms. Sometimes this ritual surrounding the procedure of announcing bankruptcy was performed with the approval and knowledge of the creditors. Although it had advantages for both parties, this concerted behavior was illegal and could be nullified by the Lord Chancellor.306 Bankruptcy laws gave only creditors, not debtors, a right to initiate proceedings. The creditors had to bring forth evidence that circumstances implied bankruptcy as defined by the law. Creditors also had to deposit a security of £200 at the bankruptcy office on Chancery Lane, along with a statement made under oath and a petition to the Lord Chancellor. A few days later, the setting up of a commission was approved.307 The procedure

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was so cumbersome, and the danger of absconding bankrupts so great, that creditors preferred to have the debtors simply arrested. Some bankrupt merchants of German origin thus spent some time in debtors’ prison. Among the unfortunate were Christian August Eschke and Simon Bethmann.308 Although the bankruptcy files give us only fleeting impressions of trade and the overall picture remains unreliable because we cannot assume that all assets were disclosed, they do offer an idea of how these trade houses were organized and what kinds of capital they worked with. They show what kinds of contacts they had and how the Coalition Wars threatened their businesses. While the bankruptcy procedures described above illustrate how dependent bankrupts were on the benevolence of their creditors, they also reveal a fairly flexible handling of circumstances in countering the deficiencies of early modern bankruptcy law in times of war, when solutions outside of statutory law were often more advantageous for the parties involved. Besides the actual reasons for bankruptcy, the social network to which a merchant belonged, the quality of his relationships to his creditors, and his own willingness to cooperate in the collection of his assets were crucial to the procedure and outcome of a bankruptcy case.

The Certificate of Conformity and the Ware Broker: Starting Over A merchant’s release from debt hinged on the goodwill of creditors and bankruptcy assignees.309 Release depended on the consent of four-fifths of the creditors, representing four-fifths of the amount due. When they consented, a “certificate of conformity” could be issued that permitted the bankrupt merchant a new start.310 A larger creditor’s refusal might considerably delay or even prevent the issuance of the certificate. Between 1786 and 1795, only about 62 percent of all bankrupt persons received a certificate of conformity. From 1796 to 1805, only 57 percent were issued such certificates.311 The large number of missing certificates may reflect gaps in the sources, and it is not possible to assess just how carefully the issuing of such certificates was recorded. If (as was the case for Garrels & Hinrichs), after having been first recorded in the docket book, a case of bankruptcy was not further pursued in the courts, or if creditors and debtors had come to a private agreement, no certificate was issued. No certificate exists for Garrels & Hinrichs. The social and moral stigma of bankruptcy led many debtors to commit suicide. A spectacular case was that of Abraham Goldsmid on 28 September 1810.312 Peter Hollander was another naturalized merchant to commit suicide (in 1713 or 1714). Others fled to escape the threat of arrest, like sugar refiner and merchant Cornelius Kettler from Leer, who retreated to Russia after his bankruptcy in 1769. Simon Maurice Bethmann also left England and wandered around Europe for several years before finally settling in Bordeaux.313 After going

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bankrupt in 1772, Justus Blanckenhagen returned to his former hometown, Riga.314 Although merchant Peter Hasenclever from Remscheid had taken almost £40,000 out of his personal estate to satisfy his creditors, for more than a decade they refused to issue him a certificate. In 1774 he finally left England and went to live with his brother in Hirschberg (Saxony) because, as he wrote, “deprived of all my possessions, and forbid … to trade or to carry on any commerce … I was reduced to the most deplorable situation.”315 After a long struggle, he finally got the certificate in 1787—six years before he died. In 1759, general discontent with creditors’ right to withhold a certificate led to the institution of a parliamentary committee. In 1772 Parliament passed an act that granted the certificate of conformity to all merchants who had previously been denied it and were not guilty of fraud.316 Otherwise, however, the law remained unchanged throughout the eighteenth century. A merchant could return to trading without the certificate, but not without risk, because following a declaration of bankruptcy, creditors retained the right to confiscate any newly generated fortune. When Mathias Koops (from Pomerania) went bankrupt in 1790, some of his creditors refused to consent to a certificate of conformity. He nevertheless became a partner in a paper factory and within a few years obtained patents for paper-producing techniques. Some years later his creditors heard of his success and had his assets and household belongings confiscated. The paper company was rescued because his former creditors could not conclusively prove that he was a partner in it, and the proprietor placated them with £1,000.317 Henry Nantes’s creditors apparently did not forgive him, either. In 1814 his uncle Daniel bequeathed £5 monthly to him for the rest of his life on the explicit condition that the money be used for subsistence, not to repay his debts.318 As numbers of bankruptcies rose during the final quarter of the century, creditors issued certificates more quickly. Between 1733 and 1780, in the forty-four cases involving naturalized merchants in which both the date of bankruptcy and the date on the certificate are known, 56 percent of certificates were issued within a year, whereas 43 percent were issued more than a year later (see Table 28).319 Some delays are remarkable: Hasenclever waited eighteen and Charles Frederick Schmoll sixteen years for the desired document.320 These were exceptions; most certificates were issued within six years. Table 28. Time between the Commencement of Bankruptcy Proceedings and the Issuance of a Certificate of Conformity Year

Before 1780 1780–1816 Total

Up to 3 Months

Up to 6 Months

Up to 1 Year

Up to 2 Years

Over 2 Years

Total

3 6 9

3 13 16

3 4 7

1 2 3

6 3 9

16 28 44

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Waiting times became shorter after 1780. More than 82 percent got the document within a year, and of those, 68 percent received it within the first six months after bankruptcy. This was due not only to the mounting frequency of bankruptcies but also to a growing awareness that bankruptcy often was not a consequence of incompetence but of external factors such as economic crises and war. It is almost impossible to reconstruct why one individual got a certificate quickly while others waited. Divided creditors, mistrust of the debtor, resentment, and a lack of support from London’s merchant community may have played a role. Hasenclever’s wait was prolonged by malevolence and marginalization. Soon after founding a trade house in London, he left its management to two English partners and went to America to establish a manufactory without having first sufficiently explored his partners’ trustworthiness and reliability.321 Merchants who had good reputations in London’s commercial community and influential family networks acquired the certificate sooner and with less difficulty. This was true of Henry Uhthoff, Charles Spitta, and Theophilus Blanckenhagen.322 In the 1790s, recognition of the significance of markets and war as causes of bankruptcy accelerated the issuance of certificates. Many merchants of German origin who failed in 1799 received their certificates within a year.323 Nominating friends and fellow countrymen to act as one’s bankruptcy assignees could decisively influence how the bankruptcy was handled. When Garrels & Hinrichs went bankrupt in 1799, Sebastian Fridag’s partners William Prest, John Rogers, and Henry Heyman Jr. were chosen to manage the bankruptcy. Prior to officially announcing bankruptcy, Garrels contacted Sebastian Fridag and discussed his plans with him, even before speaking with his partner Hinrichs. Once Garrels had told his employees the bad news and informed his bankers in writing, he left the house and hid at the home of the Prest family. “Good old Fridag and Prest do everything a father would do for his son,” Garrels wrote to his parents during the proceedings.324 Within a short time, Garrels’s largest creditors forfeited their claims and agreed to dividend payments. Garrels also expected bankruptcy assignees to leave negotiations with foreign debtors and creditors in Bremen (and elsewhere) up to him. Garrels attached importance not just to reaching agreement with his creditors, but also to being able to start business again as soon as possible. He requested the certificate “because I find it particularly useful not to let my trading die, nor to let my customers turn to other houses—because it takes much effort get them back.”325 In closing the bankruptcy case and starting over, the financial and emotional support of his family and friends, and his good reputation in Britain’s capital, were vital to him: “Once I have all my affairs in order I will get enough business because here I have many friends and the community believes in me; I have no doubts about future success—while Hinrichs’s prospects are not so rosy … one rarely speaks of him because he has no friends.”326 In June 1800 Garrels opened his new business.

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A bankrupt with a reliable network of family, friends, and business partners had real chances to start over. Garrels and Theophilus were not the only ones to rapidly regain their footing. After failing with Amsinck, George William Soltau became successful again. Just six years after Soltau went bankrupt, Hermann Jakob Garrels remarked that he was “doing very big and … very good business.” Soltau had trade relations to Portugal, Spain, Sweden, France, Holland, and the East.327 The importance a merchant’s reputation in the City had for starting over is clear in Crabb Robinson’s remark about his friend, Isaac Aldebert from Frankfurt, who went bankrupt in 1711: “On the day on which by law a Certificate could be granted, Aldebert was invited by the Creditors to a dinner at the Lacton Coffee House. After dinner Aldebert found on his dessert plate his Certificate allowed by the Chancellor that morning!!!”328 Success and failure went side by side. Ulrich Anthony Hinrichs and Theophilus Blanckenhagen and his brothers were not the only merchants to go bankrupt more than once. A total of fourteen naturalized merchants of German origin went bankrupt twice, some even thrice,329 including Frederick Wm. Wistinghausen, if we count a bankruptcy in Russia.330 Even after failing a second time, both Hinrichs and Theophilus Blanckenhagen made a comeback. Although they took very different routes, for each of them the financial support of friends or family was paramount for moving on. After his second bankruptcy in 1793, Theophilus Blanckenhagen first became a partner at the Dorrien trade house and bank.331 He left Dorrien in 1802 and founded the new trade company of Blanckenhagen, Chambers & Merchts, 2 Camomile Street.332 After experiencing bankruptcy with his partner Hieronymus Henry Burmester in 1773, Paul Amsinck Jr. became the next Steelyard master (after John Martin Elkin) and moved in there. A few years later he became the “Commissionary for the Royal Wine Company at Oporto.”333 Together, the two offices provided a secure income. In early 1784 he went bankrupt with a new co-partner, George Soltau, and was forced to resign as the Steelyard’s master. He then opened a new business with his son Thomas and called it Amsinck, Paul & Son, Merchts, located on 16 Sise Lane. The business failed in 1789.334 After that failure, Paul Amsinck’s name is no longer found in directories,335 and nothing more is known of his fate.336 His son established a new firm on Laurence Pountney Lane, no. 16. Cox and Heisch remained partners and started business again together even after going bankrupt once. During the blockade they again traded large quantities of British goods and colonial wares from India and the New World, shipping most of them to the Baltic Sea area. From there they imported hemp and grain, especially from Gdansk and Stettin (Szczecin).337 Others, like Jacob William Luning, who shunned the risk of opening a new trade house or lacked capital, went into accounting or became commodity brokers. Luning became Sebastian Fridag’s accountant;338 Jacob Gottfried Hippius became a commodity broker, and after going bankrupt a second time in 1804, Hinrichs did likewise.

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Commodity Brokers and the Freedom of the City Little research has been devoted to the history of brokering commodities. In the eighteenth century, few could become brokers because the City’s administration was the sole issuer of broker’s licenses. Foreigners were discouraged by legal and financial hurdles: they had to become both British subjects and freemen of the City of London, and getting Freedom of the City was, in turn, bound to guild membership. In the first half of the century, then, naturalized Britons had little chance of becoming brokers. Restrictions on becoming a freeman of London were not relaxed until the latter half of the century, and then again during the Napoleonic Wars. These changes, along with the softening and widespread disregard of brokers’ statutes, made brokering an attractive alternative for failed merchants. The occupation was regulated, but changes in legislation also changed brokering. Freedom of the City could be acquired in one of three ways: by apprenticeship (servitude) followed by membership in a guild, by inheritance (patrimony), or by purchase. Since this Freedom was bound to membership in a guild, a merchant had to first obtain guild membership and then buy Freedom. Foreigners and naturalized subjects were excluded from Freedom of the City. An old City act from 1574 ruled that neither children born in the country to non-naturalized foreigners (who by ius soli were nonetheless native-born Britons) nor children born to naturalized subjects could become freemen of London.339 The section of the act of 1737 pertaining to children of naturalized Britons was modified to permit Freedom of the City for children born in the country after their fathers’ naturalization. Children born prior to their fathers’ naturalization were not automatically excluded, but they had to petition to the Court of Aldermen in order to gain said Freedom.340 Despite restrictive legal regulation, the Court of Aldermen occasionally pursued a more liberal policy. Faced with massive Huguenot immigration, it granted numerous Huguenot denizens and Sephardic and Dutch merchants the Freedom of the City.341 Their nationality was noted in separate registers that record only a few Germans. Names of naturalized persons of German origin can be found in the common admission books for new freemen of the City. These registers do not indicate place of birth. Among the freemen admitted in 1709 was, for example, German-born pharmacist Henry Scheibel.342 Until well into the nineteenth century, London’s Court of Aldermen opposed fundamental liberalization of the Freedom for financial reasons. The monetary aspects of the issue ensnarled the City in ambiguous policy. London did not want to reform the law because the City’s aliens paid handsome sums in “foreigners’ taxes.”343 The sale of Freedom filled the treasury, which sometimes motivated the members of the court to pursue a more lenient policy. Both the City and the aldermen profited from selling Freedom. Respected members of the Court

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of Aldermen bought a right to sell a certain number of Freedoms. Bosworth, for example, sold Freedom of the City fifty times in 1748, and John Wilkes sold it the same number of times in 1797. A merchant from Bremen, Christian Heineken, was among those who bought Freedom of the City from Alderman Bosworth.344 Many naturalized subjects intending to establish themselves as brokers bought the Freedom of the City. Neither petitions for broker’s licenses, nor documentation for obtaining Freedom of the City, nor the licenses themselves mention a person’s place of birth. However, petitions for Freedom of the City brought before the Common Council in cases where the father of a son born in England was a naturalized subject prompted inclusion of a remark on a father’s foreign birth in the journal of the Common Council.345 In the first half of the century, Freedom of the City was basically attained through apprenticeship, but the number of persons purchasing Freedom rose in the second half of the century. The trend was related to the decline of the craft guilds. Common Council acts from 1712 and 1750 deprived the guilds of their economic privileges, and purchasing Freedom became widespread. From then on the number of German-born naturalized subjects who sought and bought the Freedom of the City rose, though with the exception of those who became brokers, whose number remained fairly small. Among them were brothers Andreas and John Valentine Gottlieb (from Biberach) and Charles Frederick Loudonsack (from Stendal).346 Toward mid-century, fees for obtaining City Freedom were £27 6s. 8d.347 Since Freedom was bound to guild membership, an applicant paid guild fees, too, which varied depending on the guild’s prestige.348 After the Great Fire of London, the existence of smaller guilds was threatened by financial losses and reduced membership. Some, like the musicians’ and cobblers’ guilds, began luring new members with low fees, which in turn facilitated the admission of naturalized persons.349 Licensed brokers of German origin preferred these smaller guilds: the majority joined the musicians; the second-largest group joined the cobblers.350 The City of London controlled the activity of commodity brokers and stockbrokers. In 1697 the City limited the number of broker licenses to 100, twelve of which were reserved for Jewish or foreign brokers. In 1708 openings were created for another twelve alien brokers to accommodate the rising numbers of Dutch and Huguenot refugees.351 The license cost an admission fee of £2 and thereafter an annual fee of £2. Applications for broker licenses had to include a certificate of good character signed by “several eminent merchants and other subjects” as evidence of good repute, honesty, and skill. Most signatures were those of respected fellow countrymen and close business partners: naturalized merchants from Russia relied on their strong network of English and German-Russian merchants, while naturalized merchants from Germany counted on their networks of naturalized fellow countrymen, especially those from their native regions and hometowns.352

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A sworn and licensed broker wore a silver medal engraved with his name and the City arms. Law prohibited that a broker trade on his own account. Commission was fixed at 10 percent of the value of the goods. Every broker was obligated to deposit a bond of £500 with the City as a guarantee of good conduct. In 1817 the broker’s bond doubled to £1,000. Although £500 was a considerable sum, a share in a trade house cost more. Brokers did not always pay immediately, and licenses were often withdrawn because of failure to pay the bond.353 From the seventeenth century on, the Council of London struggled with unlicensed brokers but failed to control or limit the number of brokers and to rigorously enforce trade interdictions. In 1766 the City had 400 licensed brokers, and the number continued to rise throughout the remainder of the century.354 Frequent complaints about brokers ignoring the ban on trading on their own account, along with frustration with the number of unlicensed brokers, show that the City struggled in vain to keep the situation under control.355 Even by occasionally withdrawing licenses from large numbers of brokers, the Corporation was unable to achieve stricter observance of the law.356 As of mid-century, a distinction began to emerge between the work of a stockbroker and that of a commodity broker. In 1767 a court decision suspended the requirement to license stockbrokers dealing exclusively with government bonds. Thereafter, stockbrokers began increasingly evading supervision by the City Corporation. By the early nineteenth century they had split off so entirely that they founded their own institution: The Exchange.357 The history of the London Stock Exchange and its brokers has been well researched. The history of commodity brokers, however, finds marginal mention at most.358 As far as the historical sources allow any quantification, it appears that more naturalized persons of German origin became commodity brokers than stockbrokers. Soon after stockbrokers separated from commodity brokers, further specialization began to appear. Stockbrokers specialized in brokerage, jobbing, billing, and government brokering.359 Commodity brokers increasingly specialized either in commodities (sugar, wood, etc.) or services (shipping, insurance, etc.). Commodity brokers remained subject to supervision by the City Corporation. City broker registers from 1710 to 1821 include twenty-nine naturalized Britons of German origin, most of whom became licensed brokers after mid-century. Six obtained their license before 1750; fifteen got theirs between 1750 and 1800. In the first twenty-two years of the nineteenth century, another eight naturalized persons of German origin were granted broker licenses. Naturalized brokers of German origin were of three kinds. Some had aspired to brokerage from the start and obtained their licenses within two years of naturalization. These include Gerrard Swartz (from Osnabrück), Detlev Bonaventura Eicke (from Holstein), and Wilhelm Conrad Korff. They were the smallest group. Others got their licenses after a few, or occasionally many, years. Nothing is known about their motives or whether they had previously gone bankrupt. Martin Ludolph (from Lübeck), for

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instance, got his broker license fourteen years after being naturalized; in the case of John Frederick Jales it took twenty-one years.360 The largest group was that of persons who obtained a broker’s license after undergoing bankruptcy. It is not coincidental that the greatest rise in the number of brokers occurred during the era of the Coalition Wars, with its swelling bankruptcy rolls. A broker summoned before the committee of the City of London complained that the number of brokers had risen so drastically “that now no business is readily done by a merchant without a broker at his elbow.”361 Most of the licensed brokers of German origin worked as so-called general brokers among the commodity brokers.362 Only a few, known as exchange brokers, turned to stockbrokering. These included Paul Jordis and Conrad Lang.363 John Jacob Appach364 specialized in insurance.365 Jacob Gottfried Hippius became a broker for wood, tar, and iron; his son Charles was a timber broker. William Conrad Korff (from Verden in Lower Saxony) was a sugar broker.366 Brokering had advantages for failed merchants: income was regulated, and neither exchange brokers nor commodity brokers were threatened by the imponderables of long-distance trade.367 They may have earned less money, but it involved less risk. For failed merchants it therefore presented a promising opportunity to reenter commerce, inasmuch as evading the ban on trade was easy. Brokering enabled a merchant to rebuild a financial foundation for later returning to trade. Moreover, it was an opportunity for young, failed merchants who had little or no capital. In 1815 a committee of aldermen noted “that … of late the brokers have increased so wonderfully that it is surprising—every young man who has no capital to go into business sets up as a broker.”368 Throughout the eighteenth century, the City Corporation dealt repeatedly with complaints that brokers were not observing the ban on trade.369 The struggle involved two groups: merchants desiring to enter the broker business to their own advantage; and licensed brokers. The latter fought on two fronts, opposing both merchants illegally acting as brokers and brokers acting as merchants. At mid-century, brokers justified their violation of the ban on trade by reference to the practices of long-distance trade. They had to adapt, they said, to the rhythm of East India sales and were forced to buy commodities on their own account, since they would have incurred losses if they had had to broker them. After the turn of the century, these disputes intensified and the arguments changed. The increase in the number of brokers led to a drop in income, so that—as a committee noted—respectable brokers could no longer live off brokering alone. One broker testified that “very generally … brokers are dealers themselves as well as brokers … they cannot get a living without being dealers.”370 Both brokers and merchants cleverly evaded the restrictions of broker legislation. In 1800, licensed brokers protested that a growing number of employees at the Bank of England were acting as brokers, collectively threatening to with-

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hold annual fees if the Court of Aldermen did not intervene. After negotiations, the bank finally agreed to monitor its employees’ activities more carefully. One employee was fired.371 The bank also consented to posting a list of licensed brokers in its business premises.372 Nevertheless, in 1805 some brokers refused to pay annual fees. The courts called upon to settle the dispute decided in the City’s favor.373 Stricter regulation was not a solution. Brokers began hiring employees or took on partners to trade for them. Conversely, merchants begin hiring licensed brokers or taking them on as partners to broker for them. After the turn of the century, established brokers no longer went to the Exchange but worked from home. One food broker remarked that he merely sent his son to the Exchange to look around. Detachment from the Royal Exchange made it even more difficult to enforce the ban on trade for brokers. Since the old law of the City prohibited brokers from trading on their own, they could not formally go bankrupt. During the final years of the Napoleonic Wars so many brokers went bankrupt because of their illegal trading activities that the Court of Aldermen installed a committee to look into the bankruptcy cases and to write up a list of bankrupts. The list shows just how widespread trading was among brokers, sixteen of whom went bankrupt from 1813 to 1816.374 Aliens were also occasionally involved in the various parties’ dispute over the lack of adherence to broker regulation. Non-naturalized alien merchants tried to evade the City’s taxes on foreigners by cooperating with native Britons, who declared the foreigners’ goods under their own names. The many complaints submitted by native British merchants to the Court of Aldermen suggest that the brokers were the leading figures in this maneuver.375 Following anonymous reports, a rise in the number of unlicensed brokers and the involvement of aliens in the broker business moved the Council to set up a committee in 1814. The committee heard many complaints and then elaborated a catalogue of stricter control measures that was enacted in 1818.376 Sidmouth’s hostile naturalization policy adversely affected foreign merchants who chose to become brokers. In its struggle to improve the supervision of brokering, the Court of Aldermen’s committee took action against trade houses and brokers that cooperated with aliens, forcing several trade houses to cancel their partnership agreements. Riethmüller & Ripley, Hellman & Little,377 Gurlack (Gerlach) & Co, and Zurhorst & Langeveldt were all summoned to appear before the committee. Ripley, Little, Gerlach, and Zurhorst were summoned and instructed to dissolve their companies with Riethmüller, Hellmann, Reimers,378 and Langeveldt.379 The case involving Zurhorst380 had been triggered by his application for a broker’s license.381 He was not accepted as a broker until 10 December 1816, after presenting an agreement that ended his partnership with Langeveldt.

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After 1812, the conservative government under Lord Liverpool refused to naturalize foreigners. The only option left for immigrants was to establish joint businesses with licensed brokers. Between 1813 and 1815, Riethmüller, Hellmann, and Reimers had all made several unsuccessful attempts at naturalization.382 Reimers finally became a British subject in 1820 and two months later was admitted as a broker. Following several unsuccessful petitions for naturalization, Riethmüller bought shares in the Bank of Scotland in 1810 and became a subject in 1818. He got his broker’s license in 1820.383 Turning to brokering did not prevent his bankruptcy two years later.384 Another who first got his broker’s license (in July 1819) after obtaining nationality through the Bank of Scotland was the founder of the well-known brokerage De Zoete & Gorton.385 Faced with an unstable market and the risks posed by the Coalition Wars, many sons of naturalized merchants opted for brokering. Many sons of merchants also became brokers after experiencing bankruptcy, Jacob Gottfried Hippius’s among them. In summary, during the Coalition Wars an estimated 90 percent of all Continental trade houses in London went bankrupt.386 Although that percentage can hardly be verified, during the Coalition Wars the numbers of bankruptcies clearly reached unprecedented peaks. In the early phases of the war and as it came to a close, even large and well-established houses went under; those with insufficient capital were the first to falter. Between 1720 and 1820, almost a third of all naturalized merchants of German origin went bankrupt. They seem, however, to have been less prone to failure than their English counterparts. Hoppit has calculated that more than 58 percent of London’s British merchants went bankrupt during the same period.387 The German merchants’ financial foundation and family support was probably somewhat sounder, especially when they could rely on a broad, international family network. This gave immigrant merchants greater security and steered them through financially difficult times. Just how dependent they were on that network became evident during the Coalition Wars, when northern German port towns themselves experienced enormous crises and the subsequent blockades cut off London’s naturalized merchants from their most important markets. For merchants, the era of the Coalition Wars was a time of losses, but also of gains. Speculators found unprecedented opportunities to make a profit. Great Britain not only gave refuge to those fleeing the French Revolution; it also accommodated Dutchmen, Germans, and other Europeans fleeing the French army. These included merchants and bankers of French, Dutch, and German origin like Henry Hope, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, John and Frederick Schröder, Frederick Huth, and Emanuel Brandt, who during the final years of the war all laid the foundations for their later ascent and eventually made their mark on the history of British trade and banking in the nineteenth century. Success and failure went hand in hand and both are part of Great Britain’s success story.

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Notes 1. See Hancock’s study of the Oswald Group of British transatlantic merchants. David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785, Cambridge, 1995. 2. Stanley D. Chapman, The Devon Cloth Industry in the Eighteenth Century: Sun Fire Office Inventories of Merchants and Manufacturers’ Property 1726–1770, Devon & Cornwall Record Society 23, Torquay, 1978, vii. 3. Robin Pearson, Insuring the Industrial Revolution: Fire Insurance in Great Britain, 1700–1850, Aldershot, 2004, 218. 4. The index was compiled as part of a large research project supervised by Barry Supple and Roderick Floud in the 1980s at the University of Sussex; see D. T. Jenkins, Indexes of the Fire Insurance Policies of the Sun Fire Office and the Royal Exchange Assurance 1775–1787, York, 1986. The Museum of London has compiled a card index for London’s craftsmen of the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, it does not include merchants. Another current project sponsored by the National Lottery Fund, indexing the years 1803–1839, can be accessed online. Also see the London Archive Users Forum, “A Place in the Sun,” Bulletin 3–4 (2003). 5. Two volumes of insurance policies from London Assurance exist for the years 1722–1727 and 1760–1761. The first volume, however, contains no policies for London. See also Barry Supple, “Insurance in British History,” in Oliver M. Westall, ed., The Historian and the Business of Insurance, Manchester, 1984, 12. 6. The large group of Hand-in-Hand policies was not included. 7. Clive Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance, vol. 1: 1782– 1870, Cambridge, 1985, 3. See also Supple, Insurance, 4. 8. Trebilcock, Phoenix, 3. 9. Pearson, Insuring the Industrial Revolution, 18. 10. By the end of the eighteenth century the number of insurance companies in Great Britain had climbed to a total of twenty-seven. See Robin Pearson, “Ein Wachstumsrätsel: Feuerversicherung und die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung Großbritanniens 1700–1850,” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 44 (1999): 221. 11. Ibid. 12. Calculated based on data from Pearson, Insuring the Industrial Revolution, Table 2.2, 80. The largest portion of the recovery money, namely £174, 318, went to the City. The cost of rebuilding the eastern districts amounted to £154,149. Insurances paid the lowest amounts for damage in northern districts, namely only £14,568 of a total sum of £515,041. 13. The Times, 13 Dec. 1791, 2, col. c. 14. Jenkins, Indexes of the Fire Insurance Policies, 11. 15. The Times, 13 Dec. 1791, 2; see also Trebilcock, Phoenix, 10. 16. Jenkins, Indexes of the Fire Insurance Policies, 11. 17. Ibid. See also Trebilcock, Phoenix, 10. 18. Pearson, “Ein Wachstumsrätsel,” 222. 19. See A. B. Dubois, The English Business Company after the Bubble Act, 1720–1800, New York, 1938. For more on the REA see Bernard Supple, The Royal Exchange Assurance: A History of British Insurance 1720–1970, Cambridge, 1970, esp. 44–45. 20. Kent’s London Directory, 1777. 21. Bernard Drew, London Assurance: A Second Chronicle, Plaistow, 1949, 160. 22. Trebilcock, Phoenix, 38–39. 23. Leonard D. Schwarz and L. J. Jones, “Wealth, Occupation, and Insurance in the Late Eighteenth Century: The Policy Registers of the Sun Fire Office,” EcHR 36 (1983): 366–367.

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24. Ibid., 371. 25. See David Barnett, London, Hub of the Industrial Revolution: A Revisionary History, 1775–1825, London, 1998, 7–8. 26. For the lower-value policies see Schwarz and Jones, Wealth, Occupation, and Insurance. For the larger policies of the merchants see Barnett, London, Hub of the Industrial Revolution, 204–205. According to Barnett, 60 percent of these policies were for more than £1,000. 27. Trebilcock, Phoenix, 17. 28. Calculation based on the index and the Sun’s policies for the years 1776 to 1786. 29. Two of the refiners had left England in the early 1770s; the others had died or lived in other English cities. 30. GL, MSS 11 936, Sun Fire Insurance policies (hereafter Sun, MSS 711 936), vol. 52, nos. 79 648 and 79 649. According to insurance policies, Conrad De Smeth & Comp. owned two refineries, one on Lambert Street, Goodman’s Fields, and one on Angel Alley in Whitechapel. 31. See below for details. 32. There were two John Hoffmanns, one a brewer and the other a chemist druggist, both listed in Cambridge. Several persons were named Levi Barnard. 33. The pharmacist was Alexander Ferdinand von Mayersbach from Erlangen. GL, REA, MSS 7 253, vol. 6, no. 82 989. 34. Supple, Royal Exchange Assurance, 57. 35. GL, MSS 8 747, London Assurance policies (hereafter LA, MSS 8 747), vol. 2, no. 297 880, p. 8. 36. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 260, no. 390 840, vol. 268, no. 404 727, and vol. 290, no. 440 419. 37. D. J. Jenkins, “The Practice of Insurance against Fire, 1750–1840, and Historical Research,” in Westall, ed., The Historian and the Business of Insurance, 33. See also Theophilus Blanckenhagen’s insurance policy for “hemp or flax” worth more than £12,900 (Sun MSS 711 936, vol. 279, no. 420 840). 38. Jenkins, Indexes of the Fire Insurance Policies, 21–22. 39. Trade house Amyand & Rucker bought new insurance after moving wares worth £4,000 from storage in the yard of John Anthony Rücker’s house on Suffolk Lane to another warehouse on the same street. LA, MSS 8 747, vol. 2, no. 23 557 Y 384, p. 143. 40. One of the few instances of insuring hazardous goods was a policy for Henry and John Schiffner dated 10 Dec. 1760 (LA, MSS 8 747, vol. 2, no. 28 656, p. 197). 41. Peter G. M. Dickson, The Sun Insurance Office, 1710–1960: The History of Two and a Half Centuries of British Insurance, Oxford, 1960, 145–146. 42. Refineries had to have “arched stoves with iron doors.” A later special requirement was the addition of chimneys over fireplaces. 43. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 300, no. 456 956, and vol. 267, no. 402 283. 44. Dickson, Sun Insurance Office, 86. 45. Ibid. 46. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 267, no. 401 573. 47. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 299, no. 454 945. Sugar refiners in particular bought multiple insurance policies. 48. Jenkins, Indexes of the Fire Insurance Policies, 24. 49. H. A. L. Cockerell and Edwin Green, The British Insurance Business, 1547–1970: An Introduction and Guide to Historical Records in the United Kingdom, London, 1976, 31; Trebilcock, Phoenix, 370; Chapman, Devon Cloth Industry, xii, n. 1. 50. Statement by George Coode in Revised Report on Fire Insurance Duties, BPP 1863 (3 118) vol. 36, p. 9–10. 51. The Times, 19 Nov. 1819, p. 2, col. e. 52. Chapman, Devon Cloth Industry, xii.

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53. For further detail see Dickson, Sun Insurance Office, 86–90, and Supple, Royal Exchange Assurance, 88–89. 54. John Everth, for instance, stored wares worth £1,000 at the home of “Tomlinson, warehouseman in Bush Lane.” Sun, MSS 11 936, vol. 263, no. 393 746. Lewis Schuman on New Broad Street stored insured goods worth £1,000 at the home of packer Elderton on Winchester Street. LA, MSS 8 747, vol. 2, no. 24 811 T 325, p. 207. 55. LA, MSS 8 747, vol. 2, no. 23 557, p. 208. 56. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 304, no. 465 222. 57. LA, MSS 8 747, vol. 2, no. 23 557, p. 143. 58. REA, MSS 7 253, vol. 6, nos. 82 549, 81 587, 87 027. 59. Ibid., vol. 7, no. 83 947, and vol. 8, no. 90 452. 60. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 302, no. 496 650; LA, MSS 8 747, vol. 2, no. 23 557 Y 384, p. 143. 61. Ibid., vol. 52, nos. 79 648 and 79 649; Prob. 11/825. 62. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 273, no. 409 978, and vol. 319, no. 487 198. The policies do not say whether the property owner had income from these businesses or whether the workshops and buildings were leased. 63. Barnett, London, 8. 64. Schwarz and Jones, Wealth, Occupation, and Insurance, 372. 65. Barnett, London, 304. 66. These numbers do not include John and Henry Schiffner’s business. 67. Neither Schwarz and Jones nor Barnett includes them in analysis. 68. Barnett, London, 203. 69. All numbers taken from the analysis done by Schwarz and Jones in Wealth, Occupation, and Insurance, 369. See Sun Fire Insurance Policies, vol. 286, nos. 434 593 and 435 401. John Wienholt from Bremen was naturalized in 1766. 70. On the latter see above. 71. See below. 72. Barnett, London, 204. 73. The years 1760 and 1761 are combined because all policies were signed within a period of twelve months. 74. LA, MSS 8 747, no. 29 780, 316. 75. Prob 11/1519. 76. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 335, no. 513 254; Lowndes, A London Directory, 1784. Samuel Boxwell Teusch died in 1788. After his death the trade firm was run by his two cousins John Adam Hecker and John Henry Hecker at the same address (Kent’s London Directory, 1794). The Teusch and Hecker families were related: Frederick Teusch’s sister married a man named Hecker. 77. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 288, no. 436 217, and vol. 260, no. 389 194. 78. Prob 11/1 111. 79. John Christian Schreiber’s trade house was located at Budge Row, No. 23. Wilson & Blanckenhagen’s firm was at Broad Street Buildings, No. 37. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 260, no. 390 840. 80. Ibid., vol. 279, no. 420 840, vol. 286, no. 435 401, vol. 296, no. 451 595. 81. Ibid., vol. 281, no. 425 140. 82. Ibid., vol. 290, no. 440 419. 83. See above for the history of the Blanckenhagen business. 84. Kent’s London Directory, 1783. 85. Frederick William Commerell was born in 1716 in Heilbronn and naturalized in 1752. He was a partner at Wildmann & Commerell before establishing his own business on Mincing Lane. In 1771 his daughter Elizabeth Christiana married John Lubbock. About that time,

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86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

Commerell made John Lubbock his partner. One year after the wedding, John Lubbock (1744–1816) also became a partner at the bank Lemon, Buller, Finlay & Lubbock, which carried on under the name Forster, Lubbock & Bosanquet as of 1785. Within the context of a partnership agreement between himself, Lubbock, and Richard Tuckwell, Commerell loaned his son-in-law £10,000, which the latter had not yet repaid by the time his father-in-law died. Commerell’s will (Prob 11/1 305) stipulated that besides an inheritance of £3,000, his son-inlaw would get another £1,000 on condition that he first pay back the loan and that his share in the brokerage be paid out within two years. The partnership agreement for the bank Forster, Lubbock, Bosanquet & Co. was dissolved in 1799. London Gazette, 1799, 318. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 267, no. 402 283, vol. 279, no. 420 486, vol. 296, no. 446 582, vol. 298, no. 452 735 (The insurance sum at the REA is mentioned in the Sun policy vol. 267, no. 402 283. Kent’s London Directory, 1787, Prob. 11/1 305. Imposition Book entries end with the year 1785. Murrell (Prob. 11/1 176) died in 1789. No data on Christoph Henry Martens appear until after William Murrell’s death. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 267, no. 401 573, vol. 268, no. 403 315, vol. 302, no. 463 513, vol. 324, no. 496 650. Kent’s London Directory, 1786; Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 338, no. 520 715; Prob. 11/1 236. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 336, no. 520 715. See below for details. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 273, no. 412 068, vol. 303, no. 460 824. This insurance covered Soltau’s household items, including books and clothing. An interesting case of incorrect self-assessment is that of German merchant Andrew Fuhrer from Liverpool. In 1778 he insured his private home (still under construction) for £600, but upon completion, the house was insured for only £500. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 266, no. 402 115, and vol. 276, no. 417 196. Ibid., vol. 266, no. 399 284, vol. 275, no. 415 294, vol. 322, no. 493 149, vol. 335, no. 515 951, vol. 337, no. 516 431. For the definition of a “large firm” in London for the period in question see Barnett, London, 204, and above. GL, MSS 30 488, Marine Registers 1720–21; MSS 8 743A Label Book; MSS 8 753, vols. 1 and 2, Outstanding Adventures. On the Vernezobre name see chapter 4, note 197; for Otto Geerts (Guertz) see Table 7. Benedikt Koep from Hamburg was naturalized in 1721. The total amount was £10,214. For Nicholas Magens see chapters 3 and 4. At this point John Roger Siebel from Elberfeld was already a partner at Amyand & Rucker; see the next chapter for more detail. Christopher J. French, “Crowded with Traders and a Great Commerce: London’s Domination of English Overseas Trade, 1700–1775,” London Journal 17 (1992): 28–29. The register for outstanding adventures mentions Hull, Milford, Cork, Dover, Exeter, Falmouth, and Chester as export ports. See above. Policy of Sir Peter Meyer dated 7 Nov. 1720 (MSS 30 488 Marine Registers 1720–1721). TNA, Bankruptcy Records, C 104/226 Boureyeau/Schaffer v Sedwick, 1743. GL, MSS 8 753/1, Nov. 1748. John Jacob Heldt was from Hamburg; John Henry Vasmer was from Hanoverian Barenburg. Heldt and Vasmer were both naturalized in July 1717. Vasmer died in 1750, Heldt in 1763. See Hans Pohl, Die Beziehungen Hamburgs zu Spanien und dem spanischen Amerika in der Zeit von 1740–1806, Wiesbaden, 1963, 98. Insurance records from London Assurance support

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110.

111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130.

131. 132. 133.

Pohl’s suggestion that merchants of Hamburg exploited the city’s neutrality to bring English wares to Spain. For more detail see Stanley Stein and Barbara Stein, Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe, Baltimore and London, 2000. Although Magens’s insurance policies do not list his wares, he presumably traded precious metals. A particularly interesting license issued by the English government to Charles Baring and other merchants from Exeter allows them, during the Napoleonic blockade, to transfer “gold and silver in bars or coins, fur, tallow, and other wares from the Spanish colonies” on a neutral ship from Cadiz to Vera Cruz and then to London. TNA, Privy Council Registers, PC 2/170, p. 423, 21 June 1806. Stein, Silver, Trade, and War, esp. 16–17. Ibid., 148. GL, MSS 8 743A, Label Book, e.g., 28 Sept. 1725. Nicholas Magens died in 1764. An obituary dated August 1764 reads: “Nicholas Magens, Esq., merchant worth £100,000.” Gentleman’s Magazine 34 (1764): 398. The policies do not mention the American ports of arrival for his ships that departed from St. Malo. We can assume that his connections to Heldt & Vasmer encouraged him to do so because twice he used a ship chartered by that firm (April and Dec. 1747, the ship Gotha Lyon under captain Alksboom). The only other policy above £10,000 was for a shipment from Honduras to Cadiz insured for £12,000. Due to wars in the Caribbean, that shipment was listed as an “uncertain adventure.” Hans Pohl, “Die diplomatischen und konsularischen Beziehungen zwischen den Hansestädten und Spanien in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter 83 (1965): 46–93. Ibid., 63. Wilhelm Magens later returned to Hamburg. GL, MSS 8 743A, Label Book, 2 Feb. 1726. The owner was Luder Mello from Hamburg (1693–1753). His nephew Arnold Mello and John Dorrien were partners with Magens as of the 1750s. Besides being a partner in that trade firm, Magens had a trade house of which he was the sole proprietor. See his will, Prob. 11/901. See above, and also Notary Archive (Amsterdam), nos. 5851/123, 312; 4606B/136–137; 7956/459, 203, 417. Price, Joshua Johnson, xxv–xxvi. Hudson’s Bay Company, TNA, BH 1/474, 475, BH 1/459. HRO, Korten Account Book J56/VI/1–3. The record does not say how this amount was divided among them. HRO, Korten Account Book J56/VI/2, 19. J. Norris completed his apprenticeship in early 1745 and applied for membership to the Russia Company “by servitude to Messrs. John Abraham and Peter Korten” (GL, RC MSS 11 741/6, 1 March 1744 [1745], 317). HRO, Korten Account Book, J56/VI/2, Dec. 1738. On Klencke see above and also A. V. Demkin, Britanskoe Kupečestvo v Rossii XVIII Veka, Moscow, 1998, 240. Klencke was temporarily also given room and board. His name appears frequently within a context of invoicing errors that Korten corrected. The records do not show how long Korten kept him on. Nothing is known of Delahaize’s fate. See above for more on trade with Persia. Isaac van Mierop’s trading house was located on St. Martins Lane in the immediate vicinity of both Teschemacher’s and Korten’s firms. GL, MSS 11 316, Land Tax Registers, vol. 97 and vol. 100 for St. Martin’s Orgar.

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134. HRO, Korten Account Book J56/VI/3, 14. 135. Duck is a durable, closely woven heavy fabric of cotton or linen used for small sails and trousers. 136. HRO, Korten Account Book J56/VI/2, 2 Oct. 1738, 2 (only part of the account book indicates precise dates). 137. Ibid., 2 Oct. 1738. 138. Sun, MSS 711 936, vol. 52, nos. 79 648 and 79 649. The refineries went by the name Desmeth & Heathcote. 139. Isaac Van Assendelft came from Delft and was naturalized in 1732. Shaw II, 137. 140. In 1739/40 Korten made a gift of a silver pitcher to St. Paul’s Church. E. Alfred Jones, The Old Silver Sacramental Vessels of the Foreign Protestant Church in England, London, 1908, 38, and picture no. 20. I thank Rudolf Muhs for bringing this to my attention. 141. William J. C. Moens, ed., The Marriage, Baptismal and Burial Registers, 1571 to 1874, and Monumental Inscriptions of the Dutch Reformed Church, Austin Friars, Lymington, 1884, 42, 8 July 1725. According to Moens, a son, Johan Abraham, was born in 1721. Ibid., 19 October 1721. The original baptismal book does not mention this son. GL, MSS 7 382. 142. On Elberfeld’s relations to the Netherlands see Stefan Gorissen, “Bergish-märkische Kaufmannschaft im 18. Jahrhundert: Handels- und Verwandtschaftsnetze,” Zeitschrift des Bergischen Geschichtsvereins 99 (1999–2001): 43–70. 143. Joshua Van Neck was naturalized in 1720 and Gerrard in 1731. Joshua Van Neck was made a baron for mediating between the French and the English government during the Silesian Wars and the Seven Years’ War. When Joshua died in 1777, he was considered the richest man in Europe. DNB, Missing Persons, Oxford, 1993, 688. 144. HRO, Korten Account Book J56/VI/2, 75; Prob. 11/721. 145. HRO, Korten Account Book J56/VI/1, 7. 146. Ibid. 147. He owned shares in the bank worth £1,000 and South Sea annuities worth £100. His interest from the South Sea annuities worth £100 was £15 15s., and the interest on his bank stock worth £1,000 was £372 10s. HRO, Korten Account Book J56/VI/2, 44, 46, 63. 148. Korten owned 1/12 and 1/16 of the ship Christian under Captain Govert Cassau, 1/12 of the ship Jost Henry under Captain Luder Bringmann, and 1/16 of the ship St. Paul under Captain William Kloppenburg. Whether this Govert Cassau is the Briton originally from Augsburg and naturalized in 1763 is not known. HRO, Korten Account Book 56/VI/2, 64. 149. See above. 150. Prob. 11/801. 151. See John William and Esther Barbara Teschemacher’s will, Prob. 11/534, 537, 688. 152. In 1764 George Amyand was made a baron for his service to the government. In 1761 he had become an MP representing Barnstable. Lewis B. Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd ed., London, 1957, 54–56, 201, n. 5. 153. Prob. 11/921. 154. Johann Victor Bredt, Geschichte der Familie Siebel. Ein Beitrag zur Kultur- und Kirchengeschichte des Niederrheins, Marburg 1937, 99. 155. Prob. 11/921. 156. The partnership ended on 15 June 1768 (see STAB, 7,42 fascicle 1.I Retberg Book of Correspondence). 157. HRO, Amyand/Korten Records, BA 89/8/7 Articles of Partnership Mr. John Amyand & Mr. John Roger Siebel, April 1769. 158. Kent’s London Directory, 1776; Lowndes, A London Directory, 1779. John Amyand died in 1780, Bredt, Siebel, 99. 159. Peter Hasenclever first worked as a merchant in Lisbon and Cadiz, but then went to England where he was naturalized in 1763 and opened a trade house with two English partners.

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160. On Uhthoff and Retberg see above, on Peter Hasenclever see below. 161. The only name possibly from Elberfeld was Carnap. In the eighteenth century, members of this family were found in both Dutch and German towns, leaving it unclear precisely whom it refers to. 162. HRO, Korten Account Book J56/VI/6, The Estate of the late Sir George Amyand with Amyand, Rucker & Siebel, March 1768. On the diamond trade see Gedalia Yogev, Diamonds and Corals: Anglo-Dutch Jews and Eighteenth-Century Trade, Leicester, 1978. 163. See chapter 3. 164. Julian Hoppit, Risk and Failure in English Business, 1700–1800, Cambridge, 1987, 1. 165. HRO, Korten Account Book J56/VI/3, 14. 166. East Sussex Record Office, Shiffner MSS 2802, 2808. 167. Bankruptcy data were first edited by N. J. Silberling and T. S. Ashton and then revised by J. Hoppit. Norman J. Silberling, “British Prices and Business Cycles, 1779–1850,” Review of Economic Statistics (1923), Supplement no. 2: 251; Tomas S. Ashton, An Economic History of England: The 18th Century, London, 1955, 254; Hoppit, Risk and Failure, appendix 1; and Ian P. H. Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency in London during the Industrial Revolution, New York and London, 1985, appendix 2.2, 372). 168. Data taken from Hoppit, Risk and Failure, appendix 1 and Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, appendix 2. 169. Hoppit’s study also finds this correlation. Phyllis Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth, 1688–1959, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1969, 49, 51. 170. Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 51–52 and 176–181. 171. Ibid., 62. 172. Ibid., 59. 173. In 1700 there were 95 bankruptcies; in 1800 there were 721. Hoppit, Risk and Failure, appendix 4, 67 and 187–196. 174. Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 96. 175. Ibid., 67. Hoppit calculated only the first three years of the 1780s. Reference data for German merchants for these three years have not been calculated here because during that period only three firms of naturalized merchants went bankrupt. A larger number failed during the latter half of the decade. Since the total number of bankruptcies among German merchants was fairly high between 1780 and 1790, it would distort the picture to calculate it based on only the years 1780–1783. 176. Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, esp. 169–181. 177. Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 98–99. 178. London Gazette, 2–4 Jan., 21–24 April, 19–21 July, 15–18 Dec. 1711. 179. Database Transatlantic Slave Trade, no. 21 389, 1710. 180. Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 112. 181. See above for more on their trade with the Levant. 182. TNA, Bankruptcy Records, B4/22, 187, 189. 183. Two bankruptcies—those of Conrad Lang and Hermann Meyer—were found for 1754; for 1755 only one was found, that of Sir Charles Le Blon. 184. On the social structure of lenders see Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 145–146. 185. Ibid., 131. 186. NA Edinburgh, GD 30/1583/14, Walter Shairp to Thomas Shairp, London, 21 May 1761. 187. Ibid. 188. Lewis Namier and John Brooke, eds., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, Members, 1654–1790, London, 1964, 435. 189. See Hermann Jakob Garrels’s reasons for his firm’s collapse in Ernst Esselborn, Das Geschlecht Garrels aus Leer, Berlin-Pankow, 1938, 146. In Garrels’s opinion, in 1799 Ulrich Anthony

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190.

191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197. 198. 199.

200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211.

212. 213.

Hinrich’s bad speculations and incautious contracts ruined the firm just three years after they had founded it. Hoppit, Risk and Failure, appendix 4, 193–194. See also Richard B. Sheridan, “The British Credit Crisis of 1772 and the American Colonies,” Journal of Economic History 20 (1960): 161–186, and Henry Hamilton, “The Failure of the Ayr Bank, 1772,” EcHR 1–3 (1955–56): 405–417. The general decline in business also hit some of the sugar refiners of German origin or descent, like Cornelius Kettler, Henry Illies, and H. Bartels, among others. Gentleman’s Magazine 1772–73; TNA, B4/21. Katherine A. Kellock, “London Merchants and the Pre-1776 American Debt,” Guildhall Studies in London History 1 (1974): 114. Ibid., 114, 116. Ibid. The ruined German firms were those of Daniel Gottfried Hintze, De Drusina & Julius Conrad Ridder, Charles Frederick Schmoll, Hermann Graumann, and George Christopher Degen. Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 135. Leslie S. Pressnell, Country Banking in the Industrial Revolution, Oxford, 1956, 536–538, and Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, 169, 205–206. Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, 172. Duffy notes just one year between the peak in exports and a rise in bankruptcies. Ferdinand Braudel, Sozialgeschichte des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts. Aufbruch zur Weltwirtschaft, Munich, 1986, 294–295. Wilfried Reininghaus says that German bankruptcies were embedded in a context of worldwide business. Reininghaus, Die Stadt Iserlohn und ihre Kaufleute (1700–1815), Dortmund, 1995, 376–381. See also Christian Kleinschmidt, “Weltwirtschaft, Staat und Unternehmen im 18. Jahrhundert. Ein Beitrag zur Protoindustrialisierung,” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte (2002): 76. Compilation based on Hoppit, Risk and Failure, appendix 4, 193–196. Ibid. Between 1792 and 1797 apparently only four of Hamburg’s trade houses failed. See Johann Georg Büsch, Geschichtliche Beurtheilung [sic] der am Ende des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts großen Handelsverwirrung, Hamburg and Mainz, 1800, 15. See below for more detail. On the crisis in Europe see Reininghaus, Iserlohn, 386–387. See also The Times, 22 Feb. 1793, p. 3, col. b, and 10 Oct. 1793, p. 2, col. c. The Times, 4 Jan. 1799, p. 3, col. c, and 31 July, p. 2, col. c. Frank Hatje et al., eds., Ferdinand Beneke (1774–1848). Die Tagebücher, Erste Abteilung 1792– 1801, Göttingen, 2012, 13 Sept. 1799. I thank Frank Hatje for bringing this diary to my attention. The Times, 24 Sept. 1799, p. 2, col. b. TNA, Bankruptcy Records, B3/824–827 Cox & Heisch, B3/3862 Persent & Bodecker. The Times, 30 Sept. 1799, p. 3, col. b. Franklin Kopitzsch, “Zwischen Hauptrezess und Franzosenzeit, 1712–1806,” in Werner Jochmann and Hans-Dieter Loose eds, Hamburg. Geschichte der Stadt und ihrer Bewohner, 2 vols., Hamburg, 1982, vol. 1, 375. See also Esselborn, Garrels, 146. See Garrels’s letter to his parents dated 11 Oct. 1799, ibid., 145–148. On Battier, see further below. Zornlin and Battier were both of Swiss origin. John Jacob Zornlin from St. Gallen was naturalized in 1751. On Battier & Zornlin’s trade see TNA, B3/205–206 and Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 156–q57. The Times, 29 Oct. 1799, p. 2, col.c and 20 Nov., p. 2, col. d. The Times, 4 Jan. 1799, p. 3, col. c and 31 July, p. 2, col. c.

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214. 215. 216. 217.

218. 219. 220. 221.

222. 223. 224. 225. 226. 227. 228. 229. 230.

231.

232. 233. 234.

235. 236. 237. 238. 239.

On Beneke Tagebücher, 13 Sept. 1799. See also Büsch, Handelsverwirrung, 91–92. The Times, 19 Oct. 1799, p. 2, col. d. Büsch, Handelsverwirrung, 91. See Heinrich Sieveking, “Die Hamburger Bank, 1619–1875,” in Festschrift der hamburgischen Universität ihrem Ehrensenator Herrn Bürgermeister Werner von Melle zum 80. Geburtstag, Hamburg, 1933, 84–89. See also Karl Heinrich Kaufhold, Das Gewerbe in Preußen um 1800, Göttingen, 1978, 461–462, and Reininghaus, Iserlohn, 387. See also Büsch, Handelsverwirrungen, 21–22. The Times, 19 Oct. 1799, p. 2, col. d. Ibid., 19 Oct. 1799, p. 2, col. b, and 21 Oct., p. 1, col. d. It sank near the Borkum Reef. Also on board was Daniel Wienholt, son of the London immigrant from Bremen John Wienholt (see Wienholt, Gray Folders). See Büsch, Handelsverwirrungen, vol. 2, 7. According to Büsch, the money was obtained elsewhere. Frederick Martin told the story of the Lutine’s fate in The History of Lloyd’s and of Marine Insurance in Great Britain, London, 1876, chap. 11. The Times, 24 July 1804, p. 2, col. a. TNA, B3/2128. The Times, 13 Aug. 1804, p. 2, col. a, and London Gazette, 19 to 23 Feb. 1799, p. 184. See above. In 1816 there were 2,145 cases of bankruptcy and in 1826 there were 2,950 cases (data taken from Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, Table 2.2, p. 372). For details on the crisis of 1810 see Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, chap. 6. Ibid., 240. For details on the crash of Brickwood & Co. see chapter 8. Splitgerber was among the creditors of the bankrupt trade house Harrison & Co., which owed him £1,875. See Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, Table 8.3, p. 383. For details on Aldebert, Becher & Co. see Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, “Zwischen Selbstmord and Neuanfang: Das Schicksal von Bankrotteuren im London des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in Ingo Köhler and Roman Rossfeld, eds., Pleitiers und Bankrotteure. Geschichte des ökonomischen Scheiterns vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt, 2012, 107–128. Charles Cummerow, from Stralsund, was not naturalized until 1809 but lived in London as of at least 1799. After Garrels’s bankruptcy, Anthony Hinrichs took him on in 1799 as a partner in his own newly founded firm. After 1800 Cummerow returned to Garrels and worked as his accountant until Garrels’s death in 1808. Garrels named Cummerow his executor (Prob. 11/1485). On Cummerow’s partnership with Hinrichs see Esselborn, Garrels, 151. The other three were Peter Godeffroy, Johan Lubbren & White, and Herman Gerhard Hilbers. Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 142–143. On brokering, see below. George Baumer was possibly the son of immigrant George Henry Baumer from Mittau (Jelgava, Latvia). He was naturalized in 1765 and received a broker’s license the same year (CLRO BR/C 1.5). In the 1780s he owned a trade house at Budge Row, No. 20. He died in 1811 in Cambridge, leaving two sons, Charles and George, and one daughter. Frederick Heisch had been naturalized just two years before (Shaw II, 207). Persent and Bodecker were naturalized in 1794 (Shaw II, 200). For the history of the Blanckenhagen firm see the passages on Russian Germans and on insurances. For Richard Muilman Trench Chiswell see R. G. Thorne, ed., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1790–1820, vol. 4, Members, London, 1986, entry for Muilman. TNA, Bankruptcy Records, B1/98, fols. 54–57, 22 Nov. 1800. Daniel Nantes was naturalized the year before Henry and joined the Russia Company in 1789. Shaw II, 192; GL, RC MSS 11 741/8, 272, 12 May 1789.

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240. Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 67, part I (1797), pp. 173 and 249–250; The Times, 18 Feb. 1797, p. 3, col. a. 241. TNA, B3/3688, statements made by Henry Nantes and Gerard Janson on 25 March and 30 March 1797. 242. TNA, B3/3681, statements by Henry Nantes. Shortly after his suicide, the press published Muilman’s will in which he bequeathed his entire estate to his wife in an obvious but vain attempt to keep his personal assets out of the bankruptcy claims. A year later, Christie’s sold his house (The Times, 21 Feb. 1797; 10 May 1798, p. 4 col. d). 243. TNA, B1/98, fols. 54–57, 22 Nov. 1800. 244. TNA, B3/3681, 21 April 1797. 245. TNA, B3/191. See also testimony by the accountant William Hogermolen from 19 Feb. 1793. 246. See Docket Books under 20 Dec. 1792, saved on 23 Jan. and entered once again on 16 Feb. TNA, B4/23 under B, nos. 577, 595, and 613. 247. TNA, B3/191, Balance Sheets. 248. Ibid., 28 June 1793. 249. On the importance of rhubarb see Clifford M. Foust, Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug, Princeton, NJ, 1992. 250. Elisabeth Harder-Gersdorff and Vasilij Dorosenko, “Ost-Westhandel und Wechselgeschäfte zwischen Riga und westlichen Handelsplätzen: Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen und Amsterdam (1758/59),” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 62 (1982): 103–153. On the Blanckenhagen family see Adelmann, Revaler Ahnentafeln [Tallinn’s Genealogies], 123, and Johan E. Elias, De Vroedschap van Amsterdam 1578–1795, Haarlem, 1905. The intimacy of these relationships is evidenced by the fact that one nephew, Simon Blanckenhagen (from Amsterdam), spent his school years in England and shortly after the turn of the century did an apprenticeship with his uncle Theophilus in London. TNA, HO 1/4 Blanckenhagen to Ryder, 12 March 1810. 251. The second firm he traded with there was called Bertie. TNA, B3/191, specification C. 252. In his book Große Handelsverwirrung, Büsch alludes to Persent & Bodecker when mentioning a house in London whose young partners incurred close to £900,000 in debt by kiting (Büsch, Handelserwirrungen, part 2, p. 6, “The Bankruptcy of P.B.”). His guess was probably inaccurately high. 253. TNA, B3/3862, balance sheets. 254. The sources do not say whether Persent was in Hamburg to inspect the critical situation or to save the firm. 255. TNA, B3/3805, balance sheets under creditors. 256. Individual debts there were generally lower than £100. In Bremen only Gorrissen & Carprou had markedly high commitments with Persent & Bodecker. 257. TNA, B3/824–827. 258. Ibid., 12 Oct. 1812. 259. Ibid., balance sheet E, see also TNA, Privy Council Registers, PC 2/155. James De Drusina was a descendant of William De Drusina from Hamburg. 260. This Parisian banker is probably not the same as Charles Frederick Bremer (see above for the latter). Besides Charles Bremer in Paris, another C. F. Bremer was among Oom’s creditors. Oom & Co.’s debt with the latter amounted to £1,016. TNA, B3/3805, balance sheet E. 261. TNA, PC 2/169–172, 176. 262. TNA, B3/2116, 2 July, 24 Dec. 1796. 263. Once these were simply called “goods.” 264. See above. 265. In comparison, Garrels cleared £3,000 in profits that year. Esselborn, Garrels, 152.

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266. Commissioning brought in £4,180 and trade only £855. TNA, B3/2128. 267. The bankrupt firms in Bremen that owed him money were N. L. Franck, J. J. Becker, and J. H. Weber & Sohn. Ibid. 268. That year his income from commissioning was £1,964 and from trading £78. 269. In 1803 his commissioning transactions brought in £620 and in 1804 just £50; his income from trade was £85. 270. TNA, B3/2128, balance sheets. 271. Ibid. 272. Ibid., 28 May 1808. 273. How much he traded in colonial wares is unclear. 274. C. S. König in Baltimore and J. J. Dahmen in Bordeaux. TNA, B3/2128. 275. These included Wilckens, Migault & Co., Kearsley, Muller & Co., and W. G. Rolfes & Co. In contrast to merchants Henry Wilckens and John Gabriel Migault, Rolfes and Muller were never naturalized. Wilckens was from Bremen and Migault from Zelle, and they were relatives. See Karl H. Schwebel, Salz im Alten Bremen, Bremen, 1988, 89, n. 281. 276. TNA, PC 2/172, pp. 77–78, 175, 207, 423–424, 426, 468, 532. 277. TNA, HO 91/1, 21, 23, and 27 June, 3 and 9 July 1806, 15 Oct., 1 and 14 Nov. 1806; PC 2/171, 172. For details on Garrels’s trade during the blockade see Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, “Ostfriesische Kaufleute und Unternehmer in London (1760–1814)” Emder Jahrbuch für historische Landeskunde Ostfrieslands, 84/2004 (2005): 112–113, 115–125. 278. Esselborn, Garrels, 110. 279. Christian Augustus Eschke of Sherborne Lane, City of London, came originally from Zittau in Saxony and had been naturalized on 27 June 1805. John Godfrey Riesenbeck was probably the descendant of a master tailor from Osnabrück who immigrated to England in the first half of the eighteenth century (Shaw II, 138). Augustus Wilhelm Fähndrick was from Berlin. 280. TNA, B3/4171, balance sheets. 281. TNA, B3/2128, 3 July 1804. 282. TNA, B3/3681, 21 April 1797. 283. Schwieger and Schröder both owned warehouses or shares in warehouses on Heligoland. TNA, B3/4523, 10 Nov. 1813 and B3/4682, balance sheet P. Schwieger said his warehouse was worth £50, but the bankruptcy commission noted that it was “worth nothing” because the Napoleonic blockade had been lifted and Heligoland was no longer used to smuggle English wares. After England had occupied Heligoland, the number of active merchants there sprang from nine in 1808 to ninety-one in 1811. It then dropped just as quickly: in 1814 only fourteen were left. See Wernher Mohrhenn, “Helgoland zur Zeit der Kontinentalsperre” (Ph.d. diss., Cologne, 1926), 31–32. 284. TNA, B3/191, balance sheet. 285. TNA, B3/4523, 13 Nov. 1813; B3/3861, 13 Nov. 1799, sheets M and O. 286. The Times, 22 March 1797, p. 3, col. c. The advertisement described the home in detail. 287. Hippius owned a fourth of a share of the ship Resolution. TNA, B3/2116, 22 March 1796. Schröder, who worked as a ship agent, owned the ships Patriot and Patriarch. TNA, B3/4523, 3 Nov. 1813, 12 April 1814. 288. Bodecker had a tontine debenture; Riethmüller had life insurance policies with the London Assurance worth over £1,500 and with the REA worth more than £2,000. 289. TNA, B3/191, balance sheet; B3/1208, balance sheet. 290. TNA, B1/98, fols. 54–57, 22 Nov. 1800. 291. See letters in Esselborn, Garrels, 143–150. 292. Ibid., 21 March 1793. 293. TNA, B3/4549, 10 May 1816. 294. TNA, B5/825, 24 April 1800.

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295. TNA, B3/4171, 22 April 1807. 296. TNA, B3/4682, 19 Oct. 1827. 297. See the catalog in TNA, Bankruptcy Records, C 217/61. On Martin Dietrich Rücker see above. 298. Adolf Hasenclever, ed., Peter Hasenclever aus Remscheid-Ehringhausen. Ein deutscher Kaufmann des 18. Jahrhunderts. Seine Biographie, Briefe und Denkschriften, Gotha, 1922, 49. 299. TNA, B3/4171, 22 April 1807. 300. TNA, B3/3681, remark dated 19 March 1804. 301. TNA, B1, fol. 254, 9 May 1801, fols. 320–322, 25 June 1801; B3/208 and 209, 12 Nov. 1800. See also Wolfgang Henninger, Johann Jakob von Bethmann 1717–1792. Kaufmann, Reeder und kaiserlicher Konsul in Bordeaux, Bochum, 1993, 529. 302. The bankruptcy commission rejected John Schwieger’s creditors’ claims to assets in Rio. Anxious that his own firm in Rio might be dragged into his brother’s bankruptcy proceedings in London, John Schwieger traveled to London. After lengthy negotiations with the bankruptcy commission and creditors, he finally obtained a title giving him priority for the receipt of dividend payments. TNA, B3/4682, Court of Commissioners, 19 Oct. 1827, fol. 128ff.: The Assignees of Messrs. Schwieger Buchanan, Business in General. 303. The punitive nature of seventeenth-century bankruptcy regulation was gradually dismantled by early eighteenth-century legislation. As early as 1718, debtors were protected from arrest on their way to and from sessions of the bankruptcy commission. For details on the changes in legislation see Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, chap. 1, esp. 11. 304. TNA, B3/2128, 19 May 1804. 305. TNA, B3/826, 24 Sept. 1799. 306. Details can be found in Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, 24–25. 307. Ibid., 15. 308. TNA, B3/208 and 209. On 17 December 1799 Bethmann was arrested at the request of merchants George Goldsmid and Daniel Eliason, whom he owed £6,000 (ibid., fol. 4). For Eschke see B3/1523, 18 April 1807. 309. Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, 12. 310. After 1809 only three-fifths of one’s creditors had to approve (49 Geo III c. 121); see Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, 33. 311. Sheila Marriner, “English Bankruptcy Records and Statistics before 1850,” EcHR 33 (1980): 384; Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, 32–33. 312. Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, 225; S. R. Boyd Cope, “The Goldsmids and the Development of the London Money Market during the Napoleonic Wars,” Economia N.S. 9 (1942): 205. 313. Henninger, Bethmann, vol. 2, 529. 314. His brother Theophilus retreated to a place near Birmingham, where he married in 1774. 315. Hasenclever’s memorandum to Count Maltzahl, the Prussian Ambassador to London in 1774, in Hasenclever, Peter Hasenclever, appendix 3, 243. See also Hermann Kellenbenz, “Peter Hasenclever (1716–1793)” in Bernhard Poll, ed., Rheinische Lebensbilder, vol. 4, Düsseldorf, 1970, 79–99, and Sylvia Eichelkraut-Naumann and Tania Ündülag, “Peter Hasenclever— Kaufmann und Unternehmer der Aufklärung,” in Karl-Hermann Beeck, ed., Bergische Unternehmergestalten im Umbruch zur Moderne, Neustadt an der Aisch, 1996, 41–120. 316. Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, 33. 317. TNA, B3/2804, 21 July 1812. 318. Prob. 11/1552. 319. The first register for certificates begins in 1733. 320. Schmoll, from the principality of Nassau, was naturalized in 1782. He went bankrupt in 1788. A certificate was not issued until 1804. He may have gone bankrupt again before 1804.

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321.

322. 323. 324. 325. 326. 327. 328. 329.

330. 331. 332. 333. 334. 335. 336. 337. 338. 339. 340. 341.

342. 343. 344.

In June 1805 he failed again; this time he was issued a certificate after just five months. TNA, B4/26; TNA, Bankruptcy Records, B6/11, p. 138; B4/27, no. 166; B6/12, p. 79). Seton, one of Hasenclever’s partners, had not even paid in his share of the business starting capital; the other, Croft, left the business prematurely. Seton took too much money from the firm for his own personal use, and the firm failed. Hasenclever, Peter Hasenclever, 33. The trade house Hasenclever, Seton & Croft declared bankruptcy in July 1769, but Hasenclever waited until April 1787 for his certificate of conformity. TNA, B4/19; B 6/7. The volumes of certificates of conformity have a gap from 1772 to early 1774, so we do not know when Blanckenhagen got the certificate after his first bankruptcy. TNA, B6/10 1798–1801. Esselborn, Garrels, 148. Ibid., 149–150. Ibid. Letter dated 26 Jan. 1790 in Esselborn, Garrels, 119. Hertha Marquardt, ed., Henry Crabb Robinson und seine Deutschen Freunde. Brücke zwischen England und Deutschland im Zeitalter der Romantik, 2 vols., Göttingen, 1967, vol. 2, 20 (Robinson’s exclamation marks). Paul Amsinck Jr. and Charles Christian Becher went bankrupt three times. Burmester & Amsinck, listed in directories as of 1769, went bankrupt in February 1773. In the late 1770s Paul Amsinck Jr. became partners with William Soltau, with whom he went bankrupt again in the 1780s. After 1785 his firm was called Amsinck, Paul & Son. This company went bankrupt in 1793. Bailey’s List of Bankrupts, Dividends, and Certificates from the Years of 1773 to 1793, vol. 1, London, 1794; see entry for 1773: TNA, B4/23. Charles Christian Becher went bankrupt three times between 1811 and 1818. Marquardt, Henry Crabb Robinson, vol. 2, 20–22, 45–46. Eric Amburger, Die Anwerbung ausländischer Fachkräfte für die Wirtschaft Russlands vom 15. zum 19. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden, 1968, 155; Henning von Wistinghausen, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Familie von Wistinghausen, Ludwigsburg, 1957, 108–111. CLRO, Court of Aldermen Papers, 12 Aug. 1799, Petition of Adam Kroll. London Gazette, 1802, p. 38. He died in November 1814. Kent’s London Directory, 1774–1777. Kent’s London Directory 1783–1784; TNA, B4/22, nos. 189 and 72. Bankruptcy proceedings from 1774 were superseded. TNA, B4/23, no. 66; B6/7. Paul Amsinck Jr. died in 1812 in Norwich. His son Thomas went bankrupt again in 1811 (TNA, B3/33–34). TNA, PC 2/170, p. 9; vol. 171, p. 156; vol. 176, pp. 71, 73, and 104–105. Prob. 11/1553. 26 Oct. 1574 (16 Eliz I); CLRO, Journal of the Common Council, vol. 20, part 1, fol. 176vf. Act of Common Council dated 18. Nov. 1737. CLRO, Journal of the Common Council, vol. 58, fols. 56–57). CLRO, Misc. MSS 18/35 and MSS 42/2: Lists of persons made free by the Letter of patents under the Great Seal of England and made free of the City of London 1684, 1688 and 1726. Within this context the Jews Sampson and Rowland Gideon, John Robbes, and Moses Francia, among others, became freemen of London. CLRO, Alphabetical List of Freedoms 1701–1713. For details on the taxation of nonsubjects see Andreas Fahrmeir, Ehrbare Spekulanten. Stadtverfassung, Wirtschaft und Politik in der City of London (1688–1900), Munich, 2003, 288–89. Freedom of the City granted freedom from local tributes. CLRO, Court of Aldermen Papers, Sept. 1748.

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345. CLRO, Journal of the Common Council, e.g., vol. 61, fol. 26b, 28 Nov. 1755: “John Ohlsen, born in England, son of Leer Ohlsen, a native of Germany” petition for the Freedom of the City. The remark explicitly notes that his father was not naturalized. 346. CLRO, CFI/1047, 5 Nov. 1776; CFI/1049, 11 Feb. 1777; DFI/1063, 17 Feb. 1778; Freemen Admissions 1769–1784. 347. CLRO, Journal of the Common Council, vol. 62, fol. 70, vol. 63, fol. 58b, 71. 348. See Fahrmeir, Ehrbare Spekulanten, 291. 349. For the membership guidelines of the musicians’ guild see Richard Crewdson, Apollo’s Swan and Lyre: 500 Years of the Musicians’ Company, London, 2000, esp. 147–148. 350. Of the twenty-nine licensed brokers of German origin, six belonged to the Company of Musicians, five to the Company of Pattenmakers (wooden shoemakers), and three each to the Company of Spectacle Makers and the Company of Glovers. The others were distributed across other small guilds. Only one, William Conrad Korff, belonged to a large, esteemed livery guild, the Company of Haberdashers (data from CLRO Br/R8, R9). 351. CLRO, MSS 344.2 Lists of Brokers, Aliens admitted. 352. Christian Heineken’s character witnesses, for example, were Kruger & Grote and Lang & Hackmann (CLRO, Court of Aldermen Papers, 6 Sept. 1748). All except Kruger were from Bremen. 353. CLRO, Br/R 8. 354. CLRO, BR/C 1.2 The Humble Petition of the Brokers in Goods, Wares, and Merchandise within the City of London, 4 March 1766. 355. CLRO, BR/C 1.2 Brokers Committees 1766. 356. In 1778 and 1779, eighty-seven brokers lost their licenses; in 1785 and 1786, another sixty-three lost theirs. CLRO, Br/R 8, Brokers Registers 1772–1817: Admissions and Discharge of Brokers. 357. Fahrmeir, Ehrbare Spekulanten, 303; Peter G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756, London and New York, 1967, 516–520. 358. For the history of the London Stock Exchange see, among others, Ranald Michie, The London Stock Exchange: A History, Oxford, 1999, and Edward V. Morgan and William A. Thomas, The Stock Exchange: Its History and Functions, London, 1962. 359. See Charles Duguid, The Stock Exchange, London, 1904, esp. chap. 5, 44–45. 360. The latter, from Hamburg, was naturalized in 1721 and got his broker’s license in October 1742. He may have been a second-generation immigrant. 361. CLRO, BR/C 1.5 Committee of Aldermen on Brokers, 13 May 1815. 362. Ibid. 363. Mortimer, The Universal Director, London, 1763; see list of sworn brokers. 364. John Jacob Appach (or Happach) was from Bremen. 365. The New Annual Directory for the Year 1800, London, 1800. 366. CLRO, Br/R 2 Register 1787–1815. 367. Michie, London Stock Exchange, 21–22. 368. CLRO, BR/C 1.5 Brokers, Alderman Bridges before the Committee on Brokers, 20 May 1815. 369. See committees for 1766 and 1778, CLRO, MSS 344.6, Br/C 1.2, 1.4. 370. CLRO, BR/C 1.5 Committee of the Court of Aldermen Respecting Brokers, 29 April 1815. 371. CLRO, Misc. MSS 4.8 Minutes of a Committee of the Court of Aldermen appointed to examine the allegations of the memorial and representation of Thomas Davis, Anthony Cler and several others respecting frauds committed by persons not admitted as sworn brokers 1800–1803, 8 Feb. 1803. 372. This practice was upheld until the early twentieth century; see Duguid, Stock Exchange, 43.

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373. Morgan and Thomas, Stock Exchange, 65–66. 374. CLRO, BR/C 1.5 Committee of Aldermen on Brokers, 13 May 1815; a List of Bankrupt Brokers Showing their Place of Residence and Date of Insertion in the Gazette 1813, 1814, and 1815. This list does not mention any naturalized Britons of German origin, but it does include their descendants, among others: Godin Schiffner and Gabriel Hesse. In 1812 stockbrokers introduced a new rule, justified by Goldsmid’s failure in 1810, stating that no new member could trade or work as a banker. Michie, Stock Exchange, 39. 375. CLRO, BR/C 1.2 Memorial of several merchants of London…, 25 Feb. 1766. 376. CLRO, Br/C 1.5 Memorial of Sundry Sworn Brokers, 22 Jan. 1819. The Court of Aldermen passed the new regulations on 15 September 1818. 377. The Broker Committee noted Hellman’s first name as being Christian Wm. Among the petitions for naturalization we find one Henry Hellmann who unsuccessfully requested naturalization between November 1813 and February 1815. His petition states that he “wishes to become a broker” and “follows up the business of a merchant combined with brokerage concerns.” This may be one and the same person. TNA, HO 5/24 Register of Applications. 378. As of 1799 John Christian Henry Reimers, from Hamburg, lived in London, where he worked as a “drug and colonial produce broker.” Between 1811 and 1819, he tried three times to get British nationality. He finally was naturalized on 16 July 1820. That June he had already gone bankrupt with his partner Gottlob Henry Gerlach. TNA, B6/15, p. 95, 139. 379. CLRO, BR/C 1.5 Minutes & Papers of the Committee of the Court of Aldermen Respecting Brokers 1815–1823, 23 and 25 Sept.; 7, 11, and 25 Nov. 1815; 24 Oct. 1816. 380. Frederick William Zurhorst was descended from an immigrant merchant from Hamm in Westphalia. Two brothers, John Herman and John Godfrey Zurhorst, had immigrated to England in the first half of the century and were naturalized in 1724 and 1743, respectively (Shaw II, 130, 146). 381. CLRO, BR/R 8 Brokers Register 1772–1817 under 1816/17; BR/C 1.5, 16 Oct. 1816. He was soon crossed off the list. In the spring of 1819 he once again petitioned for a broker’s license. CLRO, BR/R 9 Registers of Brokers admitted, discharged, deceased 1818–62; and BR/C 1.5, Committee on Brokers, 24 April 1819. 382. Riethmüller, Hellman, and Reimers all petitioned for naturalization on the grounds that they wanted to work as licensed brokers. TNA, HO 5/24 Register of Applications 1810–1819. Godfrey Lyons from Hamburg, Edward and Isidor Heilbronn from Hanover, ship broker John Frederick Hamstede from Bremen, and Anton Jacob Hentz from Bremen had all given the same reason but were denied naturalization. 383. They tried to be naturalized through the Bank of Scotland (see chapter 1). Riethmüller had gone bankrupt in 1822, but his name appears on the List of Licenced Brokers, 1824 (BL 141b 71). 384. TNA, B3/4285. 385. James Hurford, De Zoete & Gorton: A History, London, 1963, 16. 386. Stanley D. Chapman, “Enterprise and Innovation in the British Hosiery Industry,” Textile History 5 (1974): 54. 387. Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 97.

CONCLUSION

? Research into English naturalization law and practices produced surprising findings about the economic function behind them. This led in turn to the discovery of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ forgotten majority of German merchants in London. Traces began to emerge of just how closely immigration, naturalization, and individual merchant interests were linked to Britain’s imperial and hegemonic ends. National goals and immigrant aspirations converged to contribute to Britain’s rise. The English Navigation Acts passed in the mid-seventeenth century barred foreigners from participating in profitable trade with the colonies. At the same time, the country aimed to attract qualified immigrants with skills, money, and trade relations to England. These interests marked England’s naturalization policy until the outbreak of the French Revolution. The purpose of naturalization was not only to attract skilled craftsmen and prosperous merchants, but to keep them in the country to contribute to the common weal, for one of the government’s greatest concerns was that landed foreigners might take their wealth elsewhere. Thus, after the Restoration in 1660, there began a debate over modernizing the old practice of naturalization by private law. The result was a short-lived liberal act on naturalization that took effect in 1709. Unforeseen mass immigration of destitute Germans from the Palatinate region created such social problems and tension that the act was repealed within just three years and the former method of naturalization by private law was reintroduced and reserved for Protestants. The Hanoverian ascent to the throne brought a return to more conservative practices dominated by commercial ends. With very few exceptions, only Continental European merchants from well-established trade families and successful tradesmen were naturalized. They, in turn, had almost no choice but to become British, if they wanted to buy real estate or inherit or bequeath property, participate in colonial trade, own a ship or shares in a ship, or become a member in one of the powerful Trade Companies. Thus, up to the outbreak of the French Notes from this chapter begin on page 256.

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Revolution, the predominant rationale behind England’s naturalization policy was to expand the economy. Stimulating the economy was the primary reason for reforming trade companies late in the seventeenth century so that all native and naturalized Britons could join them, and for founding the Bank of England and establishing the first large insurance companies. The fact that early modern naturalization law involved no language or residential requirements facilitated access to the Russian market. After 1720, and especially after the signing of the trade treaty of 1734, trade with Russia grew rapidly, stoking England’s need for merchants who spoke Russian and were familiar with the local customs. The British community in Russia was too small to meet the demand. Germans, in contrast, constituted a large segment of the upper class in Russia. They had close connections to Russia’s political and commercial elite and some even belonged to it, making them useful partners. The monopoly on trade and the charter of the Russia Company stipulated that German and German-Russian business partners must acquire British nationality before joining the company. The rule held also for agents and co-partners who worked for British merchants in Russia. The result was that an exceptionally high number of naturalized merchants in the Russia Company were of German origin. Comparison to the number of naturalized merchants in the Levant Company highlights that fact. And not only did Germans become members in England’s Russia Company, but for decades naturalized subjects of German birth also sat on its executive committees. In the first decades after the signing of the treaty of 1734, the British community in Russia grew rapidly. Concerns about competition grew along with national prejudices, and even before the loss of trade privileges in 1768, conflicts had already begun to arise between native-born British Russia merchants and naturalized British merchants of German origin. The main issue concerned the absence of specific residence requirements in the naturalization acts. Despite the fact that the very lack of any such requirement had helped Britain’s trade with Russia to flourish, the question was whether a British subject was obliged to reside on British territory. In 1774 the government thus added a paragraph to the naturalization acts that did not require new subjects to reside permanently in Great Britain, but granted commercial privileges to naturalized subjects after seven years of residence. Although certain residence expectations were thus linked to acquiring nationality, the state’s interest in furthering the economy and increasing its power had greater force. From this standpoint, a merchant’s multiple national loyalties, insufficient command of the English language, and physical absence from the country were entirely acceptable, as long as the nation grew and prospered. To some extent, trade families operating internationally considered foreign nationality acquisition a business-related issue. It was a rational decision for achieving a certain end. If, as was the case for Great Britain, a particular nation-

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ality brought an economic advantage, and if the cost was less than the expected profit, they took on a new nationality. In some countries—for example, Spain— it was more profitable to retain alien status. Obstacles to cooperating with native merchants were more easily overcome because foreigners were allowed to trade with Spain’s colonies. In such cases, German merchants dispensed with naturalization. An analysis of the birthplaces of naturalized subjects revealed that the migration of German merchants began not when the Hanoverians came to power, but in the second half of the seventeenth century. After the Hanse’s Steelyard was shut down, a small group of Hanseatic merchants remained in London. Whereas merchants of the Lutheran faith began joining the small nucleus of Hanseatic merchants after 1660, German immigrants from the Reformed Church were associated with the Dutch church. There were incentives to migrate on both sides of the Channel. As of the mid-seventeenth century, England’s colonial and commercial expansion attracted increasing numbers of Continental Europeans to London, the center of England’s overseas trade. Devastation from the Thirty Years’ War burdened various regions in Germany for a long time. The wage and price differences between England and German regions were considerable. Proto-industrial textile regions in Germany had always been prone to export and found overseas colonies lucrative markets for their own linen. Starting around the mid-seventeenth century, all of these factors encouraged the migration of German merchants to the Britain. In terms of overall numbers of immigrants, however, they could not compete with the number of Huguenot refugees that came after 1685; nor did the Christian Germans constitute the largest group of immigrants in the eighteenth century. Most eighteenth-century immigrants were Jews from eastern European countries, but they were excluded from naturalization. This book has focused on those who acquired British nationality. After 1714 Protestants of German origin constituted the majority of all immigrants seeking naturalization. They were followed in number by Swiss immigrants. In the eighteenth century, Protestant French immigrants ranked third. Like most naturalized persons from Holland, France, Italy, and Russia, most of the Germans and Swiss who became naturalized were merchants. Many of the German merchants came from the two Hanseatic cities of Hamburg and Bremen. An almost equal number came from the scattered protoindustrial regions of Germany’s northwest, from Saxony and Silesia. Migration from these areas was marked by a step and chain pattern that connected the textile regions from the hinterland to German port towns and, via London, to the British Empire and beyond. After the mid-seventeenth century, merchants migrated from Elberfeld, Herford, and other towns in Germany’s northwest, usually in small groups of siblings or other close relatives. Part of the group settled in Bremen or Hamburg, while the others crossed the Channel. Sending sons to

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England kept connections with the British capital alive. This pattern of migration was upheld for more than one hundred years and in terms of trade and succession secured immense continuity for German trade houses in London. Until the mid-eighteenth century, most German migrants to Britain settled in London. In the second half of the century, rising industrial towns in the north and other ports began to attract a growing number of merchants. In the nineteenth century, the majority settled in London. Liverpool attracted more Germans than any other port town. In the seventeenth century the decline, or respectively, the reform of the old trade companies created new market opportunities. In the second half of the century, when England’s native merchant community began protesting the trade companies’ exclusive monopolies, naturalized merchants took the same side as the native British opponents. In the case of the Merchant Adventurers, they considerably contributed to undermining the monopoly and finally breaking it. In struggles with the East India Company and Russia Company, German merchants tended to remain in the background behind the major opponents, namely, the English tobacco and wine merchants. Besides joining trade companies, German merchants also took advantage of new investment opportunities in the nascent banking and insurance businesses. Most of them, however, were fairly reserved in this respect. From the last quarter of the seventeenth century onward, London became a hub for German merchants exchanging commodities between their native regions and New World colonies, as well as Asia, Russia, and the Mediterranean. From Asia they imported a wide range of diverse products, while tobacco, sugar, and dyes dominated Atlantic trade. From Germany they supplied the empire and its colonies with various kinds of linen as well as wood, beer, and other goods. German trade families sent their sons and other young relatives not only to London, but more or less simultaneously to other European port towns and commercial centers. The custom dated back to the days of the Hanseatic League, when Hanseatic merchant families established a practice of sending sons abroad for training and experience. They thus acquired knowledge of foreign market practices and built trustworthy networks for international trade. The tradition lived on well after the Hanse’s demise. Through this pattern of migration, German trade families created European networks that gave them access to both foreign European local markets and markets in the colonies. Cross-border relations based on family and kinship formed core networks that were surrounded by more extensive trade networks consisting of compatriots and co-religious or unrelated merchants. The transnational networks of siblings described in the study were hubs of information and control for the regional distribution of merchandise and sometimes for financial transactions, too, by family and kin that were far away. Their practice of migrating and creating networks allowed them to circumvent mercantile trade barriers

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and further the development of global trade. In this way, like the Huguenots, the Dutch, and the Sephardic Jews, German trade families had built up European family empires before the turn of the eighteenth century. The trading business of naturalized merchants of all origins gave the British Empire access to foreign markets that were otherwise unknown or just barely known. The cost of creating trade relations in new places where England’s merchant elite had little or no access, and where lack of familiarity with local conditions made risks incalculable, was kept low by integrating immigrant merchants and using the foreign trade relationships they already had. Britain could invest the money thus saved in economically more favorable projects, in politics, the Navy, and the colonies. This access to European trade networks via naturalized merchants allowed the British economy to respond very flexibly to political change, trade restrictions, and war-related interruptions in trade. Settling in Great Britain had advantages for foreign merchants. Overseas trade, especially in times of war, was done under the protection of the English Navy—a boon to German merchants. The worldwide dimension of British overseas trade brought with it prospects of profits that the German market on the Continent could hardly offer. Many a German merchant accumulated considerable wealth and esteem within just a few years of living in Great Britain. At the end of the seventeenth century, a small circle of wealthy elite crystallized within the larger German community. They were linked, some of them through marriage, to London’s merchant elite and thus had access to their commercial and political activities. Two were even raised to nobility. Some became the founders of English dynasties, and their descendants became Members of Parliament. And while migration to Britain profited the individual merchant and his family, it also had favorable economic repercussions for his region of origin. Emigrated merchants contributed to the density of proto-industrial manufacturing regions in the German landscape. Overall, the migration and resident behavior of mercantile families encouraged the development of a European merchant elite related to other merchant families abroad. It promoted the integration of European trade to create a worldwide economy under British influence. The epoch of industrialization and Great Britain’s rise to power in world trade and colonialism was by no means a series of successes alone but also a time of considerable risk. Rise and fall were neighbors, and at times failures and bankruptcies were many. A look at the networks of debt and credit reveals not only the size and the scope of the merchants’ undertakings, but also how their trade was embedded in international commercial and political circumstances and what challenges that entailed. Failure cannot be explained by national context alone. Financial crises caused by war and events abroad sometimes triggered border-crossing chain reactions. During the period examined in this study, almost a third of all naturalized merchants went bankrupt at least once in their lives. As high as that number

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may seem, the number of bankruptcies at the trade houses of native-British merchants in the same period was higher still. Financial backing from their families and native markets apparently gave naturalized merchants greater stability. Most of their bankruptcies occurred during the Coalition Wars. Reasons for failure included increased speculation, risk-taking, and lack of capital. Other factors were the Coalition Wars and the Continental system that impeded the flow of commodities, money, and information and split up border-crossing family networks. Given the frequency and the size of repeated waves of bankruptcy, the legal procedure for dealing with bankruptcy became increasingly impractical. In and out of the courts, a tendency formed to settle conflicts through arbitration and allow bankrupt persons to start afresh. Bankruptcy did not necessarily mean the end of a merchant career. Reentry into commerce depended on family support, the reasons for bankruptcy, and a merchant’s reputation in the mercantile community. Returning to trade without help from family or fellow countrymen was difficult. Unlucky merchants had various options, depending on available means: one could become an accountant, partner, or ware broker—though after Sidmouth refused to naturalize foreigners (at the end of the Coalition Wars), the last option was no longer viable.

The Coalition Wars Era: A Time of Decline or Transformation? In terms of commerce and law, the era of the Coalition Wars was a transitional period. It marked the end of mercantilism and the move toward free trade. In terms of the history of law, those years brought forth the foundations of modern English law on immigration and nationality, even though legislation was not fundamentally changed until 1844. A new type of entrepreneur originated during that era, according to Chapman. Tumultuous and short-term fluctuation on the market and a considerable willingness to speculate ruined imprudent merchants, even as more judicious colleagues withdrew from the market in despair. This is said to have led to a premature demise of the former, old-fashioned kind of merchant.1 Taking his place were new kinds of entrepreneurs—the so-called manufacturer-merchant, or merchant-manufacturer, the merchant-banker, and the commissary or agent. Weber assesses German merchants in Spain and France similarly: during the Coalition Wars, these merchants withdrew from their trading activities, invested in rural estates, and sought titles of nobility and public office.2 For the German merchant elite residing in England during the Coalition Wars, however, this pattern does not apply without qualification and modification. For one, only few were found to have withdrawn from trade. Even during the war years, many German merchants continued working at their trade

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houses until a very old age.3 Moreover, the considerable number of merchants who returned to trade after experiencing bankruptcy speaks less of desperation than of belief in success. That merchants and craftsmen arrived in high numbers during the war years despite immigration control and rigorous restriction of their freedom of movement within Great Britain would also seem to indicate positive, not negative, expectations.4 Men of the first generation—merchants of the old kind—who did withdraw rarely quit prematurely but bowed out for other reasons. During the long, protracted wars, the customary succession of the next generation (said to happen every thirty years) continued. Besides failure, one decisive factor in some merchants’ dropping out of firms was that many German merchants either did not marry or had no children. In the past those merchants had drawn successors from the ranks of nephews or other kin. That pattern of succession was interrupted by the wars and their social implications, such as war-induced epidemics, premature death, and military service, which affected the young generation at home. It is supposedly a widespread phenomenon that members of subsequent generations, especially of the third generation, abandon a family business. This seems not to apply wholly to English entrepreneurship.5 For merchants of German origin who were active in Great Britain, we find a few examples of descendants who chose other occupations, but often they did not give up trade entirely.6 Some of the firms mentioned in the study were founded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and still existed three generations later.7 The merchant-banker or merchant-manufacturer was nothing new among German merchants in England during the war years. The late seventeenth century knew all kinds of merchants who also worked as bankers, entrepreneurs, or stockbrokers. In sugar refining and salt production, trade and craftsmanship were frequently entwined.8 The manufacturing sites of German merchants are harder to identify because they were often set up elsewhere. That we find little entrepreneurial activity among eighteenth-century merchants reflects the challenges of historical sources more than it depicts the true situation. German merchants did act as bankers and insurers in the early eighteenth century—increasingly so, as the century proceeded. Banking or insurance was often considered a side line; trade remained the pillar of the business. These sorts of side lines were attractive because they brought additional income and reduced the risk of mercantile undertakings.9 Aware that these activities also created useful social contact with the native British elite in commerce and politics, German merchants entered the fields of finance, insurance, and lending at a very early stage. Then, during the Coalition Wars, industrialization and the expansion of overseas trade induced the professionalization of services. The increasing workload and growing specialization turned what had been side jobs into full-time occupations. We found that in England’s trade families of German origin, the impact of specializa-

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tion after the turn of the century led to combining the various branches of trade, banking, entrepreneurship, and insurance not in one person, but across several members of the extended family.10 The Coalition Wars marked the end not just of mercantilism but mercantilist naturalization policy as well. The mass migration of Palatinates in 1709 created the social nightmare of the impoverished, destitute migrant, while the French Revolution created the nightmare of the political migrant, a new kind of refugee bearing the threat of political upheaval. For the first time, the British were aware of the danger of migration causing political upheaval. Anxiety over homeland security led them to abandon naturalization as a means of supporting the economy, and the traditional practice of naturalization broke down. In 1798 a decision by the Lords turned the granting of nationality into a political instrument. Prior to the Coalition Wars, an immigrant whose petition had been accepted by Parliament was almost certain to be naturalized. In 1798, when the Lords transferred the granting of nationality to the Home Office Secretary, who then had the right to grant or withhold certificates as he thought conducive to public welfare, the uncertainty of the outcome made petitioning for naturalization an expensive, incalculable affair. As the result of a short-lived act of 1818, the early-modern practice of naturalization broke down, depriving many foreign merchants of their occupation. They sought a remedy in naturalization through the Bank of Scotland. Overall, the legal inclusion of Continental merchants, including Germans, contributed to the profound economic entanglement of Britain and Europe. From the end of the Napoleonic Wars until World War I, industrialization and migration strengthened that interdependence even more. Britons cherish their insularity—a propensity fueled by the current euro crisis—but it often causes cultural and commercial connections to be overlooked. Migration was not a oneway street; migration and economic entanglement went both ways.11 In light of the high economic growth rates for the eighteenth century, research in Britain has focused one-sidedly on Atlantic trade and neglected the Continent’s role as a significant buyer of colonial goods. Statistics on trade with Germany are hard to come by because much was transported via Holland and the data available in Germany are incomplete. As mentioned at the outset, however, the appraisal has undergone some revision in recent years.12 This study of German merchants and British naturalization policy shows how immigrants used their border-crossing familial ties, religious affiliation, and contacts to former fellow countrymen to overcome mercantilist and war-related trade restrictions, thus contributing to the European Continent’s interconnection with Britain and the non-European world. London’s financial and insurance sector attracted leading European merchants, and Britain’s powerful navy provided the infrastructure required for worldwide trade. Ultimately, Atlantic trade flourished

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as it did because Continental Europe supplied the empire, and especially its fleet, with the resources it needed and was simultaneously a lucrative market for Britain’s colonial goods.

Notes 1. Chapman, Merchant Enterprise, 69–70. 2. Klaus Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute im Atlantikhandel, 1680–1830, Munich, 2004, 306–307. 3. John Anthony Rücker died in 1804 at the age of 84. He had not withdrawn from active business until about the age of 80. Frederick Commerell, who was born in Heilbronn in 1716 and died in 1798, also retired at a very old age. Blanckenhagen died in 1814 at the age of 77 and likewise had worked until shortly before his death. 4. Many of the eminent internationally operating merchants and bankers of Continental European origin who would shape the countenance of British trade in the nineteenth century came to Britain and settled there in wartime to lay the foundations for their subsequent economic success. 5. See the study of English entrepreneurs in the second half of the nineteenth century by Hartmut Berghoff, Englische Unternehmer, 1870–1914, Bielefeld, 1991, 285–286. 6. E.g., historian George Grote, a grandson of the abovementioned merchant-banker Andrew Grote, remained associated with his grandfather’s bank even though he pursued a career in science. 7. E.g., Henckell, Du Buisson & Co., founded in England in 1697 by two brothers from Hamburg, Abraham and Jacob Henckell, existed until 1949. Norton Breton, History of Henckell, Du Buisonn & Co., 1697–1947, London, 1948. Grote’s banking house and Rücker’s trading house existed for similarly long times. The name Grote was removed from the bank’s designation in 1875. The bank continued to exist until 1903 when it merged with the Union of London and Smith’s Bank. Martin L. Clarke, George Grote: A Biography, London, 1962, 1. 8. See above and also the two merchants Henry Wilckens and Arnold Meyer from Bremen, who owned a salt mine in Northwich. Theodore Wilckens, Aufzeichnungen und Hilfsmittel zu einer Geschichte der Familie Wilckens, private publication, Schwetzingen, 1895, 84b. 9. Members of the board did not get salaries; they were given allowances. Banking and insurance did not emerge as professions until the nineteenth century. 10. In the Pritzler family from Herford in the early eighteenth century, one brother took over managing the sugar refinery while the other directed the trading house. The Rücker family similarly divided themselves among the new service professions, as did the Boetefeurs and Burmeisters shortly after the turn of the century. Martin Diederich Rücker opened a refinery in 1806. John Anthony Rücker (1848–1883), a nephew of the first immigrant from that family, went into insurance. Edward Burmeister and Alexander Boetefeur also went into insurance. Bernard Drew, London Assurance: A Second Chronicle, Plaistow, 1949, 321, 324. 11. Stephen Conway, Britain, Ireland & Continental Europe in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 2011. 12. See the introduction to Conway, Britain, Ireland & Continental Europe.

ABBREVIATIONS

AHR

American Historical Review

BL

British Library

BPP

British Parliamentary Papers

Cal SPD

Calendar of State Papers Domestic

CLRO

Corporation of London Record Office

CMH

Centre for Metropolitan History London Database

DNB

Dictionary of National Biography

EcHR

Economic History Review

EHR

English Historical Review

EIO

East India Office

FO

Foreign Office

Fs.

Festschrift

GG

Geschichte und Gesellschaft [History and Society]

GL

Guildhall Library

GWU

Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht [History in Science and Education]

HAHR

Hispanic American Historical Review

HJ

Historical Journal

HLRO

House of Lords Records Office

HO

Home Office

HRO

Herefordshire Record Office

HSQS

Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland Quarto Series

HZ

Historische Zeitschrift [Historical Journal]

IGI

International Genealogical Index

IMIS

Instutiut für Migrationsforschung und interkulturelle Studien

IMR

International Migration Review

258 | Abbreviations

JEEH

Journal of European Economic History

JHC

Journals of the House of Commons

JHL

Journals of the House of Lords

JMH

Journal of Modern History

LA

London Assurance

MP

Member of Parliament

NA Edinburgh

National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh

PC

Privy Council

PHSL

Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London

RC

Russia Company

REA

Royal Exchange Assurance

Shaw I

William A. Shaw, ed. Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland, 1603–1700. HSQS 17. Lymington, 1911.

Shaw II

William A. Shaw, ed. Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland, 1701–1800. HSQS 27. Manchester, 1923.

STAB

Staatsarchiv Bremen (State Archives Bremen)

STA Hamburg

State Archive Hamburg

TNA

The National Archives London (formerly Public Record Office)

VSWG

Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte

WMQ

William and Mary Quarterly

ZfO

Zeitschrift für Ostforschung [Journal for Research of the East]

HISTORICAL SOURCES

Unpublished Sources 1. The Corporation of London Records Office (London)

Alphabetical List of Freedoms 1701–1713. BR/1.2 Brokers Committees. Committee to examine the memorial of the merchants respecting brokers 1799. BR/3 3.1 Brokers Bankrupt List of 1813–1815. Br/BI 2 vols. Index to Brokers Bonds. BR/C 1.2 Memorial of several merchants of London… 25 Feb. 1766. BR/C 1.2 The Humble Petition of the Brokers in Goods, Wares, and Merchandise within the City of London, 4 March 1766. BR/C 1.5 Brokers. Minutes and Papers of the Committee of the Court of Aldermen respecting brokers 1815–1823. BR/C 1.6 Brokers Committees. Memorial, answer & evidence respecting the complaint of John Christian Splitgerber, merchant, against Joshua Israel Brandon, broker, 1815–1816. BR/C 3.1 Brokers. Miscellaneous papers 1807–1856. Br/R 1 Register of Brokers Admitted 1708–1869. Br/R 2 Register 1787–1815. Br/R 8 Brokers Register 1772–1817, Admission and Discharge of Brokers. Br/R 9 Register of Brokers admitted, discharged, deceased 1818–1862. Brokers Rent Ledger 1784–1810. Brokers Rent Ledgers 1811–1834. CFI/1047, 5 Nov. 1776; CFI/1049, 11 Feb. 1777; DFI/1063, 17 Feb. 1778. Court of Aldermen Papers. Freemen Admissions 1769–1784. Journal of the Common Council, vols. 20, 58–82. Misc MSS 18/35. Misc MSS 4.8 Minutes of a Committee of the Court of Aldermen appointed to examine the allegations of the memorial and representation of Thomas Davis, Anthony Cler and several others respecting frauds committed by persons not admitted as sworn brokers 1800–1803, 10 papers (8 Feb. 1803). Misc. MSS 39/14 Copy of a Report of the City Solicitors in Relation to Foreigners 1819. MSS 344.2 Lists of Brokers, Aliens admitted. MSS 344.6, Br/C 1.2, 1.4. MSS 42/2: Lists of persons made free by Letter of patents under the Great Seal of England & made free of the City of London 1684, 1688 and 1726. Orphans Inventories 2718 Box 40 fol. 150b; CSB IV, 1691, Box 29 fol. 278b.

260 | Historical Sources

2. Bank of England Archive (London)

AC 27/382 21 June 1694 Sundry Accounts: 2. Subscription for £1,001.171.10s, 26 April 1697. AC 27/383 Bank England stock subscription 1694. AC 27/384 List of the Proprietors in the Addition Stock of the Bank Sept. 1709. AC 27/388 4 July 1722, subscribers … to enable the South Sea Company to sell part of their Fund… AC 27/392 Bank Stock Subscribers Journal 21 June 1694–8 Aug. 1694 vol. 2. AC 27/393 By an act of Parliament George II for Establishing an Agreement with the Governor and Company of the Bank of England for Advancing the Sum of 1,600,000 towards the Supply for the Service of the Year 1742 Subscriptions. AC 27/393 Subscribers book 1722. AC 27/395 Additional Stock 1742. AC 27/403 Additional Stock of the Bank of England Dec. 1742. AC 27/413 Bank Stock Duplicate Alphabet 1694–1697. AC 27/414–430 Stock ledgers 1694–1725. AC 27/436.

3. Schroder Bank Archive (London) Box SH 1075 Early papers.

4. The Royal Bank of Scotland Archive (London)

Ledgers 2, 19th cent: Dorien, Rucker & Carlton 1770, known as Dorrien, Rucker, Dorrien & Martin 1775; Dorriens, Mello & Martin 1779; as above 1794, absorbed by Curries & Co 1841.

5. National Westminster Bank Archive (London)

2 155 Partners’ biographies, various papers. 2 193 Grote family. 2 899 A Grote & Co. ship’s bill. 2 942 Three letters relating to his partner in A. Grote & Co merchants. 11 519 Prescott & Grote, balance sheets 1786–1864. 28 233 Members of the Grote family.

6. Guildhall Library (London)

MSS 11 228 Russia Company, Records of St. Saviour’s Church Riga. MSS 11 192 B Russia Company, Church records for the British congregation in Petersburg, Transcript of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials 1706–1815. MSS 11 741 Vols. 1–12 Russia Company, Minute Books. MSS 11 936 Sun Fire Insurance policies. MSS 11 936D Ground Plan, sketches of business premises insured 1802–1806. MSS 14 316 London Assurance Plan Book. MSS 15 057 Memorandum book: list of London wharves, warehouses, list of breweries 1710–1830. MSS 15 637 Rucker & Bencraft. MSS 15 742 The Fire Office Insurance Claims 1770–1788. MSS 30 488 Marine Registers 1720–1721.

Historical Sources | 261

MSS 31 388 Claims of loss or damage 1770–1788. MSS 8 743A Label Book 1726. MSS 8 747 London Assurance policies. MSS 8 753 Outstanding Adventures. MSS 7 253 Royal Exchange Assurance. MSS 11 758 Eastland Company. MSS 11 892 Treasurers Account Book 1661–1868. MSS 11 758 General Reference Book, names and addresses of members of the Court 1877. MSS 11 316/97 and 100 Land Tax Registers. MSS 7 382 Baptism St. Austin Friars. MSS 31 571/1 Lloyd’s Minute Books, 13 Dec. 1771 to 14 Aug. 1804. L19/MSS 8 356 Hamburger Lutherische Kirche (Hamburg Church), London.

7. House of Lords Record Office (London)

Lords Committee Books. Naturalization Acts 1800–1842. Main Papers, Aliens Regulation bill 306 a–c. Manuscripts of the House of Lords, vol. 2, 1695–1697.

8. The National Archives (London)

ADM 49/29–32. BH 1/459, 474–476 Hudson’s Bay Company. State Papers SP 19/A.49 Parliamentary Assessments Lists 1642–1643. SP 28/162 Loan for £50,000. SP 105/333, 338, 343 (Levant Company). SP 105/170–172 (Levant Company). SP 91/13, 24, 26, 33, 34 99. SP 99/95. SP 28/162. SP 29/429 Pt 2. SP 89/52. SP 100/39. RG 4/4 568 Church records for the Royal Chapel. RG 4/4 650 Hamburg Lutheran Church: baptism, marriages, burials 1660–1836. C8/270/50 (African Company). CO 388 2–14 (1662–1712) Petitions of Merchants, Foreign Trade. CO 388/10 H 21 Memorial from Several Merchants Trading to Germany Relating to the Tolls upon the River Elbe, 12 April 1706. CO 388/11/17. CO 388/41 Capt. Elton’s Journey to Persia Anno 1739. CO 388/14/541 Merchant Adventurers/Hamburg Company. CO 388/8 E24 Merchant Adventurers/Hamburg Company.

262 | Historical Sources

CO 388/10/E 63 Merchant Adventurers/Hamburg Company. CO 388/25 Hamburg. CO 389/11/164 Hamburg. CO 389/15/208–16 Merchant Adventurers/Hamburg Company. CO 389/15/240–243 Eastland Company/Russia. CO 391/10/356, 374 Eastland Company/Russia. CO 388/6/353 Eastland Company/Russia. CO 390/12/130–170 Eastland Company/Russia. CO 388/18 Portugal merchants. CO 388/47 Portugal merchants. CO 389/22 Portugal merchants. Port Books E 190: 107/3, 114/2, 114/5, 114/6, 114/7, 114/8, 115/1, 117/1, 118/4,118/5, 118/9, 119/1, 119/3, 121/1, 148/6, 150/1, 154/1, 156/2, 156/3, 156/4, 156/5, 157/1, 158/1. Foreign Office FO 65/15. FO 97/341. Bankruptcy Records B1/98 Order Book. B3/191, 205–206, 208–209, 824–827, 879, 1208, 1523, 1865, 1870, 2116, 2128, 2804, 2814, 3215–3216, 3681-88, 3805, 3861, 3862, 4171, 4285, 4523, 4549, 4682, 5104– 5105, 5106–5107, 5593, 5628, 824–827. B4 Docket Books. B5/825 Office of the Commissioners of Bankrupts. B6 Certificates of Conformity. Chancery C 114/16 List of Million Bank Subscribers 1695–1700. C 114/16 Dividend Books 1701–1701. C 114/60 1763–90 Trade with Germany and Holland. C 104/226 Boureyeau/Schaffer v. Sedgwick 1743. C 217/61 Travers & Esdaile. C 108/287 Fuhrer &Wagner. C 107/147 Campbell v. Rucker. C 109/348 Rucker v. Taylor. C 104/126–27 Mathias Giesque. C 104/141 Heath & Cook. High Court of Admiralty HCA 42, 45. Home Office HO 1/4 Naturalizations. HO 1/6 Naturalizations.

Historical Sources | 263

HO 5/1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 23, 24, 25, 42. HO 91/1 Licences. Privy Council Registers PC 2/62–74, 154–172. Treasury T1/311/101, 106, 108 Metzner & Spellerberg. T70/88–90, 180, 182, 185–188 Royal African Company. T1/93/65 Merchant Adventurers/Hamburg Company. Wills Prob 6/88, Prob 6/94, Prob 6/105, Prob 6/108, Prob 6/111, Prob 6/133, Prob 6/202, Prob 6/11/582. Prob 11/359, Prob 11/461, Prob 11/489, Prob 11/499, Prob 11/534, Prob 11/537, Prob 11/582, Prob 11/600, Prob 11/619, Prob 11/656, Prob 11/688, Prob 11/696, Prob 11/702, Prob 11/710, Prob 11/721, Prob 11/751, Prob 11/799, Prob 11/801, Prob 11/825, Prob 11/835, Prob 11/840, Prob 11/870, Prob 11/895, Prob 11/901, Prob 11/907, Prob 11/921, Prob 11/928, Prob 11/1025, Prob 11/1039, Prob 11/1170, Prob 11/1176, Prob 11/1236, Prob 11/1262, Prob 11/1263, Prob 11/1305, Prob 11/1410, Prob 11/1485, Prob 11/1519, Prob 11/1552, Prob 11/1553, Prob 11/2082. Prob 12/202. Prob 31/878/889, Prob 31/108, Prob 31/212, Prob 31/52, Prob 31/807, Prob 33/17/889, Prob 33/21/268.

9. British Library (London)

BL 1851 c9(191) 13 June 1683: Proclamation of the Privy Council. BL ADD MS 39892 Journal of a Journey from Petersburg to Reschd by George Thompson 1740. BL 1851 c9(86) Proclamation for Recalling Dispensation with Some Clauses in the Acts for Encouragement .. of Shipping 1673/4. BL 190g13(185)Protection of Merchant Adventurers 1683. BL ADD MSS 45227 Wolffs Briefe. BL MS 32419–32, Jacob Wolff. BL MS 32845 Jacob Wolff. BL MS 32862 Jacob Wolff. BL Egerton MSS 3463. BL ADD MSS 45117. BL 1414b 71 List of Licenced Brokers, 1824. BL ADD MSS 12.497 List of Indicted Merchant Strangers. BL ADD MSS 41824/33, 175f. BL ADD MSS 25,494-25,584, South Sea Company. BL Harlean MSS 7497–8 A List of Subscriptions of £3,000 or over to the South Sea Stock dated 10 July 1711 and 8 August 1711. BL ADD MSS 5138/147–150v Proposals for Free Trade 1651. BL ADD MSS 28079 Hamburg Company. BL Cup 651 e 2(54).

264 | Historical Sources

East India Office (British Library, London) L/AG/1/1/10 Personal Account. L/AG/1/1/11. L/AG/1/1/12 General Ledger from 30 June 1705 to 30 April 1709. L/AG/1/1/13 General Ledger from 1 Mai 1709 to 30 June 1714. L/AG/14/2. L/AG/14/5/1-2. L/AG/14/5/8–14 (1723–1767). A/1/54 Stockholders 1698. L/AG/14/3/9 Transfer of Stock of the New India Company. BL IOR L/AG/14/3/3 1693–1694 Transfers. BL IOR L/AG/14/3/4 1698–1699 Transfers. BL IOR H/Misc/3 List of Stockholders 1701 Alphabet. IOR L/AG/14/5/5 A–Z 25 March 1723–25 March 1728. IOR L/AG/14/5/8 A–Z 1738–1743. IOR L/AG/14/5/9 A–Z 25 May 1743–25 May 1748. IOR L/AG/14/5/10 A–Z 25 March 1748–5 April 1752. IOR L/AG/14/5/11 A–Z 25 March 1752–5 April 1756. IOR L/AG/14/5/12 A–Z 5 April 1756–5 April 1761. IOR L/AG/14/5/14 A–K 1664–1667. IOR L/AG/14/5/15 L–Z 1664–1667. L/AG/14/5/22 A–K 1783–1791. L/AG/14/5/23 L–Z 1783–1791. A List of Names of the Subscribers to a Loan of £2 Million 1698. A List of Names of the Subscribers for Raising the Sum of 1 Million Sterling as a Fund for Insuring Ships, London 1718.

10. Bank of Scotland Archive (Edinburgh) BS 1/1/1 List of Proprietors Oct. 1818. BS 1/46/4 Stock Journal 1816–1822. BS 1/388/2–3 Stock Ledgers 1816–1822. BS 20/32/140 Melville Papers. BS 20/5/3 Papers re William Macao.

11. The National Archives of Scotland (Edinburgh) GD 30/1583/1–30 Shairp Papers. GD 24/1/454. GD 1/850/31–8 Napier Correspondence.

12. East Sussex Record Office (Lewes)

The Shiffner Archives. Shiffner MSS 5, 439, 1235, 1236, 1727, 1734, 1735, 1737, 2798, 2802–2808.

13. Cambridgeshire Record Office (Cambridge) Thomas Wale’s Papers. Houghton MSS.

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14. Herefordshire Record Office (Hereford) Amyand/Korten Records. BA 89/8/7. J56/VI/6. J56/VI/1–3.

15. Somerset Record Office (Taunton) DD/HY Box 45 Holden Accounts.

16. University of Illinois

Emanuel H. Brandt Collection.

17. Notary Archive (Amsterdam)

111263/4, 10399/2186, 899/1339, 12676/1339, 12676/95, 12352/284, 8744/1974, 4900/319, 4909/39, 4604A/86, 5007/57, 7992/170, 3864/310v, 864/306, 8571/779, 7999/807, 7999/1777, 7999/1947, 8000/541, 8000/1337, 8001/187, 8001/1075, 8001/1203, 7176/15, 8037/24, 5851/123, 5851/234, 5851/312, 4606B/136–137, 7956/459, 7956/551, 7959/203, 7959/417, 7960/263, 7962/99, 7962/535, 7967/224, 7969/746, 7970/47, 7975/239.

18. State Archive Bremen

7, 42 Fasz. 1.I Retberg “Book of Correspondence.” 2-SS.2.a. 4a 3 Angabebücher der Schlachte, vols. 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. 7, 2078 Englische Kompanie. 2-P-8a.12.b.1-2 Kündigung des Bürgerrechts und Erteilung von Emigrationscheinen. 1.P.8.A 12 Bürgerrecht. 2-R.2.B.1–3 Einnahmen von Abzugsgeldern [revenue from emigration fees]. 2-R.10.aa.13.a.2 and 4 Englandconvoye 1690–1700, 1704–1710. C.4.b.2.a–c Henry Eelking. 7,2089-3-4 Reisetagebuch des Christoph von Kapff. 7, 2075 Briefbuch von Johann Bode 1683–1694. P.1.s.22.c.1 Chronik des Peter Koster. A 620.147 Leichenpredigt für Herrn Henry Voguell. Familiengeschichtliche Sammlung (Graue Mappen). Wilckens, Friedrich. Geschichte der Familie Wilckens, n.p., 1964 (in Grauen Mappen). Schwebel-Nachlaß (Privatbesitz Frau Dr. M. Schwebel).

19. Berlin

Remaining papers Uhthoff (Private property of Rainer Uhthoff, Berlin).

20. State Archive Hamburg

621-1 Fa. Rudolph Octavio Schröder (Handlungsbücher). 622-1 Soltau. 622-1 Chapeaurouge. 622-1 Eggers. 622-1 Mappe I/2, Marchtaler, Hildegard, “Die Fa. J.H. Schröder & Co in Hamburg 1819– 1903” (unpublished manuscript).

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622-1 Godeffroy. C.2 Familienarchiv Beneke: Diaries of Ferdinand Beneke.

21. Rhenish Commerce Archive Cologne Abt 36 Nr 45 Fasz 8. Abt 36 Nr. 79 Fasz 2. Abt 36 Nr. 83 Fasz 3.

22. City Archive Wuppertal Cleffsche Tabellen.

23. East Europe Institute Munich Amburger Datei.

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Child, Josiah. New Discourse of Trade. London, 1693. Chitty, Edward, and F. Foster. A Digested Index to the Common Law Reports Relating to Conveyancing and Bankruptcy, Commencing with the Reign of Elizabeth in 1558, to the Present Time. London, 1841. Cobbett, William. The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. 36 vols. London, 1806–1820. Collyer, Joseph, Esq. The Parent’s and Guardian’s Directory and the Youth’s Guide in the Choice of a Profession or Trade. London, 1761. “Convention between Great Britain and the Netherlands Relative to the Dutch Colonies Signed at London 13 August 1814.” In Clive Parry, ed., The Consolidated Treaty Series, vol. 63, 1813–1813. New York, 1969. Cooper, William Durrant, ed. Lists of Foreign Protestants, and Aliens, Resident in England 1618–1688: From Returns in the State Paper Office. Camden Society 82. London, 1862. Crossley, David, and Richard Saville, eds. The Fuller Letters 1728–1755. Sussex Record Society 76. Lewes, 1991. Davenant, Charles. “An Essay upon the Probable Methods of Making a People Gainers in the Balance of Trade.” In Sir Charles Whitworth, ed., The Political and Commercial Works of that Celebrated Writer Charles Davenant. 5 vols. London, 1771. ———. The Political and Commercial Works of Charles Davenant. London, 1771, repr. Farnborough, 1967. Defoe, Daniel. The Complete English Tradesman. 2nd ed. London, 1717. Fielding, John. Description of the Cities of London and Westminster. London, 1776. Georgi, Johann Gottlieb. “Versuch einer Beschreibung der Russisch Kayserlichen Residenzstadt St. Petersburg und der Merkwürdigkeiten der Gegend.” St. Petersburg, 1790. Hansard, T. C., ed. Parliamentary Debates: Forming a Continuation of the Work Entitled “The Parliamentary History of England” from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Reprint, New York, 1970. Hanway, Jonas. Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea. 2 vols. London, 1753. Hatje, Frank et al., eds., Ferdinand Beneke (1774–1848). Die Tagebücher, Erste Abteilung 1792–1801, Göttingen, 2012. Hessel, J. H., ed. Register of Attestations or Certificates of Membership, etc. preserved in the Dutch Reformed Church Austin Friars 1568–1872. London, 1892. Hessels, J. H., ed. Ecclesiae Londino—Batavae Archivum I–III (1–3). Cambridge, 1887– 1897. Hoppit, Julian, ed. Failed Legislation, 1660–1800: Extracted from the Commons and Lords Journals. London, 1997. Insh, George Pratt, ed. Papers Relating to the Ships and Voyages of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies 1697–1707. Edinburgh, 1924. Inventories of the Estates of the South Sea Directors of 1720 (1721). Journals of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations. Repr. Nendeln, Liechtenstein 1925. Journals of the House of Commons. Journals of the House of Lords. Kaufhold, Karl Heinrich, and Susanne Albrecht, eds. Gewerbestatistik Preußens vor 1850, vol. 2, Das Textilgewerbe. St. Katharinen, 1994.

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INDEX

Abegg, P. J. 218 Achyelis, Thomas, 192 African trade, 48–49, 60, 87. See also Royal African Company Albers, Johann Heinrich, 41, 97, 141 Aldebert, Becher & Co., 209–210, 241n230, 245n329 Aldebert, Isaac, 226 Aldgate, 30 Alexandria, 188 Alford, John, 193 Alksboom (captain), 237n116 American trade, 48, 52, 70–71, 90, 101, 108, 137, 170, 188, 191–192, 197–198, 205, 208, 214, 225. See also North American trade Amsinck & Soltau, 138, 226 Amsinck family, 23, 94–95, 109–110, 121n54, 125n137, 126n147, 143, 164n76, 191 Amsinck, Cornelius, 110 Amsinck, Paul, 93–94, 144, 178, 188, 191, 245 Amsinck, Paul, Jr., 143–144, 226, 245n329 Amsinck, Wilhelm, 94, 113 Amsinck, William, 21, 94, 144, 178, 202 Amsinck, William, Jr., 178 Amsinck, Paul & Co., 166n109 Amsinck, Paul & Son, 226, 245n329 Amsterdam, 32, 45–46, 49, 51–52, 76n82, 90, 110–111, 115, 118, 122n83, 140–141, 145, 188–191, 194, 205, 208, 215, 218 Amyand & Rucker, 93, 177, 180, 234n39 Amyand & Siebel, 41, 92, 105–106, 196–197

Amyand family, 71, 100 Amyand, Claudius, 85n319, 94 Amyand, George, 85n319, 89, 92–95, 99, 121n56, 123n83, 143, 146, 177, 192–193, 196, 197, 238n152 Amyand, John, 89, 94, 196–197, 239n158 Amyand, Rucker & Co., 187 Amyand, Rucker & Siebel, 93, 95, 104, 121n59, 196–197, 239n162 Amyand, Rucker & Uhthoff, 89 Amyand, Siebel & Co., 41, 196 Andríes Pels & Sons, 145 Angerstein, John Julius, 71, 79n150, 136, 144, 164n80, 164n84, 165n97, 181 Angerstein, John, 69 Anglo-Dutch, 32. See also under war Antwerp, 208 Appach (Happach), John Jacob, 230, 246n364 Appelbaum, Richard P., 5 Arbuthnot & Ritter, 157 Arbuthnot, Thornton & Ritter, 156 Archangel, 46, 216 Asian trade, 5, 29, 170, 185, 251 Asiento Treaty, 112, 189 Assendelft, Isaac Van, 24, 194–195, 238n139 Atlantic trade, 1–2, 7–8, 20, 37, 47–48, 87, 89, 100, 140 Austria, 34 Austrian Netherlands, 31 Aveman, Rath, 79n161 Ayloff, Benjamin, 42, 51 Ayr Bank, 204 Baltic trade, 19, 24, 42, 44–46, 51–54, 57–58, 87, 156, 209, 217

Index | 301

Baltic Sea, 2, 185, 216, 226 Baltimore, 106–107, 124n119, 218 Bank of England, 58–66, 71, 122, 220, 230, 249 Bank of Scotland, 16–17, 135, 159–161, 232, 255 Barandon, John Stevens, 160 Barbados, 48, 50 Barclay & Co., 194 Barclay & Son, 195 Barclay & Sutherland, 195 Bardewick & Co., 193–194 Bardewick & Dingley, 157 Bardewick & Felthusen, 156–157, 193 Bardewick & Wans, 156–157 Bardewick, Ernst, 142, 147, 154, 156 Bardewick, Hans, 148, 154 Baring family, 7, 23, 92, 109, 141 Baring, Charles, 180 Baring, Francis, 69, 180 Baring, John, 69 Baring, John & Francis & Company, 92 Barnett, David, 173, 178, 180, 184 Bartels, H., 240 Basel, 56, 108 Batavia (Jakarta), 190, 214 Batchellor, John, 90. See also Kruger, George Battier & Zornlin, 207, 240 Battier, Nicholas, 89, 93, 204, 240n211 Bauman, 213 Baumer, George Henry, 210–211, 241n234 Baumgartner, Jacob Julien, 150 Becceler & Co., 44 Becceler, David, 43 Becher, Charles Christian. See Aldebert, Becher & Co. Beck, Abraham, 31–33, 74 Beckhoff, Cornelius, 81 beer, 36, 46, 49–50, 251 beeswax, 51 Behrends, Philip Frederick, 207 Belgians. See Flemish people Belich, James, 2 Bencraft, Stephen, 121n60. See also Rucker & Bencraft Beneke, Ferdinand, 206–207 Benson, William, 44 Berbece, 213

Berchem, Henry Van, 43, 83n254, 111 Berchem, Jacob von, 77n110 Berck, Gerard, 141, 144 Berckenhout, Benjamin and John, 23, 27 Berenberg family, 38, 40, 109 Berenberg, Andreas, 38 Berenberg, Johann, 127n187 Berenberg, John Henry, 42, 57, 94 Berenberg, Sara Anna, 121n54 Berenberg, Widow (of Andreas), 37–39 See also Meyer family (German) Berens family, 24, 78n127 Berghoff, Hartmut, 5 Bergmann, Caspar, 63, 122n79, 122n83 Berlin, 20, 216, 222 Bertie, 242n251 Bethmann family, 108–109, 111 Bethmann, Simon Maurice, 207, 211, 220, 222–223, 244n308 Beyer, Albert, 181 Bich Luu, Lien, 3 Biedermann, 100 Bilbao, 50–51, 110 Birch, Sarah (née Teschemacher), 195 Blanckenhagen & Co., 116, 182 Blanckenhagen & Cutler, 182 Blanckenhagen family, 204, 220 Blanckenhagen, Johann Christoph, 115 Blanckenhagen, Justus, 117, 154, 224 Blanckenhagen, Oom & Co., Blanckenhagen, Peter Heinrich, 115–116 Blanckenhagen, Simon Gerhard, 242n250 Blanckenhagen, Theophilus Christian, 115, 117, 174, 177, 179, 182–183, 206, 210–211, 214–217, 220–221, 225–226, 256n3 Blohm, John Christian, 160 Bode family, 49–50, 77n110, 79n160, 101, 118, 205 Bode, Johann, 49–50, 81n206 Bodecker, Augustus William, 115, 215, 220, 241n235, 243n288 Boehm family, 32, 145–146, 166n115 Boehm, Clement, 43

302 | Index

Boetefeur family, 173, 256n10 Bohemia, 20 Böhl & Kaller, 197 Boileau, Daniel, 159, 169n208, 209 Bonsanquet, Jacob, 135 Boode, Andreas Christian, 118, 128n195 Bosworth, Alderman, 228 Bourcard & Giese, 218 Bourcard (Burckhardt) family, 24, 108– 109, 122n62 Bourcard, Benoît, 125n131 Bowen, N. V., 66 Bowen, Huw V., 1 boxwood, 138 Brabant, 54 Brandenburg, 21 Brand, Markus, 74n35 Brandt & Co., 120 Brandt, Emanuel Henry, 92, 108, 111, 120n41, 232 Brandt, Marcus, 31 Brandts, John Reynold, 43 Bratislava, 215 Brazil, 43, 48, 118, 190 Bremen, 19–20, 23, 31–34, 36–37, 40, 46, 49–52, 55–57, 74–77, 79, 81, 85, 89–90, 92, 94, 97–98, 101–107, 111– 112, 115, 121–125, 138, 140–141, 148, 154, 165, 168, 190, 192, 197, 202–203, 207, 209, 211, 213, 216–218, 225, 228, 235, 241–243, 246–247, 250, 256 Bremer & Oom, 93 Bremer, Charles Frederick, 92, 242n260 Bremer, Charles, 216–217, 242n260 Brenner, Robert, 53–54 breweries, 172, 174, 178–179 Brickwood & Co., 209 Bringmann, Luder, 195, 238n148 Brion, Pierre, 115 British Empire, 1–2, 4, 29, 48, 250, 252 Britons, 118, 136, 148–153, 180, 189, 201, 211 native, 61, 68, 130, 150–152, 159, 195, 227, 231, 251, 253–254 naturalized, 22, 27n51, 95, 130, 150– 154, 157–159, 173, 189, 193–194, 197, 227, 229, 247n374, 249

and Russia, 129, 133, 149, 151–153, 155–161 Brogden, James, 158 Bromby, John, 177 Brook, John Henry, 43 Brooke & Co., 215 Browne, Wm. 81n207 Bruiningk, John Justin, 148, 154 Buccell, Charles, 74n42 Buenos Aires, 190, 213–214 Bull Porters (warehouse), 177 Burckhardt. See Bourcard family burlap, 51 Burmester family, 226, 256n10 Burmester & Amsinck, 204, 245n329 Burnand, Paul, 150 Büsch, Johann Georg, 207–208, 242n252 cacao, 132 Campbell, R., 38, 88 Camphausen, W., 218 Canadian trade, 111, 137, 191, 214 Canning, George (Secretary of State), 25n29 Caracas, 48 Cardell & Co., 193–194 Caribbean trade, 10n19, 36, 47–49, 51–52, 87, 90, 96, 114, 117–118, 165n105, 188, 190, 192–194, 197, 202, 208, 213–214, 219 Carnap, 239n161 Carolina, 87, 193, 198 Carruthers, Bruce G., 60–61, 65 Cary, John and Joseph, 57 Cassau, Govert (captain), 195, 238n148 Casson, Mark, 5 Catherine II of Russia, 133, 159 Catholics, 15, 17, 19–20, 25n20, 26n35, 28, 54, 112–113, 129 Cayley, John and Elisabeth, 158, 168n197 Cazenove, Charles Theophilus, 159 C. C. Schutt, 215 Central America, 188–190 cereals, 87 Ceylon, 188, 190 Chancellor of the Exchequer Townsend, 70 Chapman, Stanley D., 3, 107–108, 171, 175, 253

Index | 303

Charles I of England, 34, 57 Charles II of England, 54, 152 Chesapeake trade, 89 Child, Josiah, 13–14 China, 87, 185, 188, 190 citizenship, 93, 112, 118, 126n157, 126– 127n163, 151 Clayhills & Sons, 121n44 Cler, Anthony, 246 Clignet, Nicholas, 84n282 cloth. See under textiles coal, 35–36, 38, 50, 216–217 Cockayne Project, 55 Cockerell, H. A. L., 175 coffee, 87, 92, 106–107, 112, 124n119, 131–132, 208, 213–214 Cohlbrandt (Colebrant), 27 Cole, W. A., 199 College of Commerce, Russia, 131, 150 Collyer, Joseph, 88–89 Cologne, 33, 216 Colquhoun, Patrick, 74n25 Commercial Dock Company, 220 Commerell & Lubbock, 95, 116, 175, 177, 179, 182–183 Commerell family Commerell, Elizabeth Christiana, 116, 235n85 Commerell, Frederick William, 116, 121n53, 188, 235–236n85, 256n3 Commerell, John Ulrich, 121n53 Conen, Jacob, 43 Conradus, Frederick, 33 Conway, Stephen, 2 Coode, George, 175 Copenhagen, 188, 207, 214 Cornelisson, William Henry, 81n215 cotton. See under textiles Cowle, Bremer & Oom, 93 Cowle, Richard & Co., 93 Cowle, Richard, 93, 121n45, 216 Cox & Heisch, 207, 210–211, 216, 221– 222, 226 Cramer, Charles de, 135 Crammond & Timmermann, 157 Crammond, Timmermann & Shard, 157 Cressy, David, 116

Crockat, Henry, 136, 163n60 Croft, Charles, 89, 245n321 Cromwell, Oliver, 75n58, 132 Crop, Abraham, 65 Crop, James, 40, 43, 44, 48, 50, 70, 78n146, 82n251, 85n321 Cuba, 188, 190 Culverdon, William, 90 Cummerow, Charles, 210, 241n231 Cumming & Fenton, 121n46 Cunningham, William, 3 Curaçao, 115, 188, 190 currants, 47, 51, 138 Da Costa family, 26n35, 152 Dalton, Richard, 114–115, 213–214 Darien Company, 53, 60 David, Jacob, 38, 39 Davis, Ralph, 89, 119n3, 119n7, 119n14, 125n142, 127n186, 161n4, 162n6, 162n7, 162n33, 162n34, 163n35, 163n36, 163n40, 163n53, 165n96 Dawes, Noble & Co., 209 Dawsonne, William, 58 De Dobbeler & Hesse, 206, 207 De Dobbeler, 215 De Drusina & Julius Conrad Ridder, 240n195 De Drusina, James, 216, 242n259 De Krey, Gary S., 53, 66 de Missy, Caesar and Hendry, 27n52 De Morin, John Henry, 154 De Smeth family, 109–110, 197 De Smeth, Conrad, 125n135, 173, 178, 194 De Smeth, Nicolo, 110 De Smeth, Raymond, 43, 48, 62–65, 84n293, 109–110, 186–188, 195, 197, 234n30 De Veer, Giesque & Le Clerque, 50 De Visscher, Samuel and William, 31 De Zoete & Gorton, 232 Deane, Phyllis, 199 Debary, David, 42–44, 55, 62, 65, 70 debtors, 52, 210, 219–220, 222–223, 225, 244 Defoe, Daniel, 38

304 | Index

Degen, George Christopher, 240n195 Delahaize, Philipp, 89, 192, 237n131 Demerara (Guayana), 118, 119, 213, 216 Desmeth & Heathcote, 238n138 Desvignes, Elise Hubert, 142 Detien, Segeba, 81 Devalpergen, Isaac, 43, 85n321 diamonds, 10n19, 197 Dick & Angerstein, 180, 181 Dickson, Peter G. M., 60, 75n49 Die Englische Kompanie. See English Company, the Dingley & Klencke, 156–157 Dingley, John, 156 Dingley, Klencke & Hanway, 157 Dirs & Holthouse, 216 Dobbertin, George Nicholaus, 83n254 Dominican Republic, 190 Donaldson, Thorley & Sutthoff, 157 Dore, Peter La, 26n35 Dorpat (Tartu), 156 Dorrien family, 23, 37, 43, 48, 77n110, 85n307, 226 Dorrien Magens, Magens, 69, 85n307 Dorrien, Frederick, 47, 63, 84n286 Dorrien, John, 85n307, 237n121 See also Magens family Dort (Dordrecht), 44–46 Dorville, Peter, 52 Drink & Brüningk, 157 Droop, Friedrich Ernst, 77n110 Duffy, Ian, 202, 205 Dunt, Georg Ludwig, 42–43, 58, 62, 139 Duntze family, 23, 84n305, 141 Duntze, Sir John, 69, 103–104, 194 Dupuy & Compton, 52 Dutch trade, 30, 32–33, 35–38, 42, 45–47, 50–52, 54–56, 80n190, 86, 90, 95, 102–103, 109, 111, 118, 130–131, 138–139, 155–156, 161, 188–191, 197, 215–216, 218, 226–227, 255 East Friesland, 54, 90, 111, 118 East India Company, 5, 12n45, 47–48, 53, 59–66, 130, 177, 197, 214, 251 Old (OEIC), 44, 52, 54, 58–60 New (NEIC), 47, 53, 58–60, 62

East India Warehouse, 182 East Prussian trade, 42, 46, 50–52, 57, 92, 215–216, 226 Eastland Company, 38, 52–54, 57–58 Eggers, Gustav Nicholas, 149 Eicke, Detlef Bonaventura, 229 Eimbcke & Hereshoft, 215 Eliason, Daniel, 244 Elizabeth I of England, 29–30 Elkin, John Martin, 41, 43, 51, 55–57, 79n161, 83n264, 226 Ellermann family, 126n149 Elliot, Charles, 97, 221 Elton, John, 193 emigration, 7, 19–21, 28, 71, 100, 102– 103, 197, 252 Engel, Henry, 172 Engelsing, Rolf, 4 English Company, the (Die Englische Kompanie), 36, 40, 41, 50 Engstrom, Hans Peter, 217 epidemics, 88, 254 Erich, John, 149, 154 Erichs, Henry, 43, 48 Eschke, Christian August, 219, 221, 223, 243n279 Esselborn, John, 43, 47, 55–56 Everth, John, 235n54 Ewert, Ulf Christian, 108 fabric. See under textiles Fähndrick, Augustus Wilhelm, 243n279 Fawthropp, James, 156 Felthusen, Frederick, 168n192 Fenton, Philip Ibbetson, 93 Fentzel (Fentsall/Fencel), John, 82 Fesser, Uhthoff & Co., 125–126n145 fish, 13, 51, 106, 123n105, 132, 216 Fisher, Harold, 189 Flanders, 19, 36, 44, 54, 57 Fordyce, Alexander, 204–205 Forster, Edward, 141, 166n114 Forster, Lubbock, Bosanquet & Co., 235–236n85 French trade, 35, 38, 59, 70, 102–103, 105, 107, 111–113, 123n104, 158–159, 189–190, 206–207, 218, 226

Index | 305

Francia, Moses, 44, 245n341 Franco, Abraham, 151 Frankfurt, 20, 43, 56, 108, 215 Fraser, Thomas, 156 Freudiger, Christian, 197 Fridag & Bourcard, 122n62 Fridag, Bourcard & Giese, 218 Fridag, Giese & Co., 218 Fridag, Sebastian, 27n57, 41, 88, 92, 97, 165n97, 221, 225–226 Fuhrer & Wagner, 103, 105–106 Fuhrer, Andrew, 179, 236n94 fur, 22–23, 47–48, 106, 132, 137–138, 173, 191, 197, 215–216 Fürstenau, Anthony, 121n56, 123n92 Gaedechens, 215 Gardner & Bardewick, 157 Gardner, James and Francis, 156–157, 193, 195 Garrels & Hinrichs, 207, 218, 221, 223, 225 Garrels, Hermann Jakob, 37, 40–41, 88–93, 111, 115, 118, 120n24, 143, 207, 209–210, 217–218, 221, 225–226, 239–240n189, 241n231 Gauci, Perry, 1, 53, 66–67 Geerts (Guertz), Otto, 43 Gerlach (Gurlack), Gottlob Henry, 231, 247n378 George I (King), 17, 21, 27n51 Gideon, Sampson and Rowland, 245n341 Giesque, Mathias, 50–51, 205 Gildemeister, Christopher, 111–112 Gildemeister, Henrich Daniel, 111, 125n139 ginger, 48, 106, 194 Globe Insurance Company, 220 goatskins, 46, 51, 138 Göbel, Florian, 121 Godeffroy, Peter, 241n232 Goldschmidt, Lionel Abraham, 152 Goldsmid & Eliason, 222 Goldsmid, Abraham and Benjamin, 134, 152, 223 Gompertz, Barent, 134 Gore, Sir William, 26n43, 42, 44, 60

Gorrissen & Carprou, 242 Gottlieb, John Valentine, 228 Goughe, Stephen Le, 74n42 Gould, Nathaniel, 57–58 grain, 13, 87, 181, 214, 216, 218, 226 Graumann, Hermann, 240n195 Grauthoff, Frederick Johan, 160 Greaves & Co., 209 Greece, 47 Grenada, 79n150, 213 Grenville, Lord (foreign minister), 135 Gronen brothers, 43–45, 60 Groning, Rudolf, 135 Gross & Blohm, 160 Gross, Samuel Ludwig, 160, 169 Grote & Co., 180 Grote & Harksen, 117 Grote family, 27n55, 88, 90, 117, 141, 191, 256n6 Gruneisen, Charles, 207 Guchiatnikov, 215 Guertz & Koep, 186 Guiseppi, 17, 26 Gulick, John Van, 56 Gustuvus Flindt, 211, 222 Gutzmer, Henry, 175 Guayana. See Demerara Haak, Theodor, 75 Haeseler, Nicholas, 149–150, 216 Hake, Christopher, Jr., 121 Haldimand, 24 Hamburg Company, 54–57 Hamilton, Christoph, 50 Hamstede, John Frederick, 247n382 Hancock, David, 1 Hane & Bercks, 138, 203 Hane, Diederick-Jacob, 92 Hane, Nicholas, 149–150 Hanson & Clark, 179 Hanway, Jonas, 153, 156–158 Happach (Appach), John Jacob, 230, 246n364 Harder-Gersdorff, Elisabeth, 132 Harksen, Conrad, 88, 117 Harlah, Frederick, 50, 78n127 Harrison & Co., 241n229

306 | Index

Hart, Moses, 65 Hasenclever, Franz, 197 Hasenclever, Peter, 70, 89, 120, 197, 222, 238n159, 244n315 Hasenclever, Seton & Croft, 245n321 Hasenfeller, Gottfried, 154–156, 168n188 Heathcoate, Samuel, 58 Heathcote, Sir Gilbert, 51, 57, 60, 62, 71, 83n275 Hecker family, 127n183, 181, 235n76. See also Teusch family Hedernberg, Giles Christoph, 169n208 H. Gentzen, 207 Heidtredder (Heidtridder), Andrew, 42–43, 78n123 Heilbronn, Edward and Isidor, 247n382 Heilman, Francis, 202 Heineken & Ludham, 179 Heineken, Christian, 141, 228, 246n352 Heinzelmann brothers, 121, 135, 142 Heisch, Frederick, 221–222, 226, 241n235 Heithuysen, Gerhard van, 50, 79n161 H. J. & C. Bosanquet, 163n35 Held, Johann, 74n35 Heldt, John Jacob, 236n108 Heldt, Vasmer & Co., 188, 190 Hellman & Little, 231 Hellman(n), 231–232, 247 hemp, 46–47, 51, 131–132, 160, 174, 182, 193, 216, 226 Henckel & Eimbcke, 206, 215 Henckell, Abraham, 70, 113, 186, 256n7 Henckell, Du Buisson & Co., 256n7 Henckell, Jacob, 43–44, 78n135, 113, 256n7 Henckin, Johann, 75n54 Henning & Shute, 193, 198 Henning, Caspar Frederick, 63–64, 83n254, 245 Hennings, Charles Frederick, 218 Hentz, Anton Jacob, 247n382 Herewin, Jacob, 33, 74n41, 75n54 Hesse, Gabriel, 247n374 Heyden, Dirk Vander, 166n128 Heyman, Henry, Jr., 225 Heymann family, 141 Heysham, Robert, 42

hides. See fur Hilbers, Herman Gerhard, 241 Hill, Cazalet & Co., 214 Hillers, Ewart, 81n207 Hinrichs, Ulrich Anthony, 89–90, 93, 143, 209–211, 217–219, 222, 225–226 Hintze, Daniel Gofftried, 240n195 Hippius & Co., 177, 211, 216 Hippius, Frederick, 177 Hippius, Jacob Gottfried, 116, 177, 211, 216–217, 220, 226, 230, 232 Hochstein, John Jacob, 194 Hoffham, Luder, 138, 234 Hoffman, John, 234n32 Hogermolen, William, 215 Holden, Samuel, 71, 141, 146, 152, 156, 166n117, 167n157, 168n188 Holland. See Dutch trade Hollander, Peter, 48–49, 202, 223 Holsten, Peter, 148, 154, 158 Honduras, 190 Hoolboom, James Ecbert, 93, 211 Hope & Co., 110, 141, 197 Hope, Henry, 232 Hopkins, John “Vulture,” 65 Hoppit, Julian, 199, 201–202, 205, 210, 232 Hose, John Daniel, 178 Houblon family, 60–62 Hudson’s Bay Company, 137, 191, 197 Hulle, Lewis Frederick, 135, 160 Hungary, 34 Huth, Frederick, 20–21, 77n108, 95, 108, 232 Iberian trade, 7, 44–45, 47, 50, 59, 86, 111, 187–189, 202 Illies, Henry, 240n191 immigration, 2, 8, 13–15, 17, 19, 29, 67–68, 72, 248, 253–254 Indian trade, 7, 42, 47–48, 52–54, 59–60, 82n236, 170, 185, 188, 197, 213–214, 226, 230. See also East India Company Irish trade, 86, 106, 187, 256 Iserloo, Engelbert, 122n79 Italian trade, 17, 34–35, 38, 47, 53, 108, 130–131, 138, 187–188, 215–216

Index | 307

Jacobsen family, 31, 41, 43–44, 47, 50–52, 57–58, 63–66, 74n35, 75n58, 78n127, 78n130, 79n161, 79n166, 83n256, 83n275, 85n318, 88–90, 139, 143, 165n106, 188 Jales, John Frederick, 230, 246n360 Jamaican trade, 48, 118, 188, 193–194 Janson, Gerard, 114, 213 Janssen, Sir Theodore, 60–62, 83n274, 84, 139 J. J. Becker, 243n267 Joh. Abr. Retberg & Sons, 103 John & Gabriel Keyser, 47, 58, 78n137 John Fairchild & Co., 193 Johnson, Joshua, 89, 92, 100, 120n36, 191 Jones, Dwyryd W., 28, 41–43, 59, 81–84 Jones, L. J, 173, 178–179 Jordis, Paul, 230 Juncker, Peter, 38 Kahan, Arcadius, 2, 133 Kahn, John Francis, 215 Kaplan, Herbert, 2, 11n33, 132 Katenkamp family, 111, 125n142 Kauffman, Christian Henry, 211 Kaus brothers, 44, 78n130, 99, 122n77, 192 Kearsley, Muller & Co., 243n275 Keiner & Hasenfeller, 156 Kellock, Katherine, 205 Kent & Pemberton, 207 Kettler family, 23, 223, 240n191 Kirchner, Walther, 158 Klausing, Henry, 101, 154 Klencke brothers, 141, 154, 168n193, 192, 237n130 Klug, David Frederick, 51 Knapp & Rymer, 207 Knoblock, Thomas Adolphus, 93, 211 Koep, Benedikt, 236n98 Koithan, Elard, 77n110 Koops, Mathias, 224 Korff, William Conrad, 229–230, 246n350 Korten family, 27n60, 71, 85n319, 89–90, 94, 99, 143–145, 165–166n108, 191– 198. See also Wichelhausen family

Koster, Peter, 79n162 Kraguelius & Clarke, 121n57 Kraguelius, John Lewis, 94 Krester, Joachim, 52 Kretschmer, Johann, 52 Kroll, Adam, 151, 158, 204 Kruger & Grote, 246n352 Kruger, George, 90, 246n352 Kugelmann, Henry Philip, 81n215 Kuhff & Meyer, 136, 163 Kuhff, Henry Peter, 135–136, 142, 163n42, 164n80, 173, 184 Lameyer, 216 Lampe, Reinier, 50 Lang & Hackmann, 246 Lang, Conrad, 230, 239n183 Lange & Knuth, 124n112 Langford, Paul, 86 Langkopff, Molling & Co., 100 Langkopff, Molling & Rasch, 100, 191 Langkopff, Henry A., 123n91 Latvian trade, 46, 51, 105, 116, 132, 156, 215–217 Laurence, Henry, 166n128 Lemon, Buller, Finlay & Lubbock, 235–236n85 Le Riche, 213 Lethieullier family, 39, 61, 77n99 Levant Company, 39, 52–53, 60, 129–130, 133–139, 141–142, 144, 148, 159–161, 172, 180, 183, 188, 191, 249 Levantine trade, 130, 138, 142, 163n49 Levy, Zachary, 152 Lewis, Thomas, 136 Liebenrood, John George, 191 Lieutand, Joseph, 147–148, 154 linen. See textiles linseed, 131 Lipson, Ephraim, 3 Liverpool, Lord, 16, 232 Livesey, Hargreaves, Anstie, Smith & Hall, 204–205 logwood, 52, 215 Lomberg, Henry, 194 Lord Chancellor, 200, 222, 226 Loudonsack, Charles Frederick, 228

308 | Index

Loveroe, John, 44, 49–50, 57, 78n129, 81n206 Lubbers, Jürgen, 218 Lubbock, John, 116, 183, 235–236n85 Lucas, Peter, 99, 122n82, 122–123n83, 194 Ludolph, Martin, 229 Luetken family, 111, 126–127n163 Luis & Jencquel, 215 Luning, Jacob William, 207, 226 Lutterloh & Söhne, 206 Lutyens, Nicholas, 204 Luu, Lien Bich, 3 Lymen, Mathew, 74n28 Lyons, Godfrey, 247n382 MacLean, Archibald, 217 Magens family, 126n147 Magens, Nicholas, 71, 117, 146–147, 187, 189–191, 194, 196, 237n114 Magens, Wilhelm, 113, 190–191, 237n119 See also Dorrien family Mahs, Dorothea, 168–169n197 Mair, William, 166n128 Maister, William, 89, 155, 158 Maresco & David, 38, 76n88 Maresco, Charles, 38–39 Maresco, Leonora, 39, 77n99 Martens & von Lengerke, 216 Martens, Christoph Henry, 138–139, 142, 236n88 Martin, Sir Joseph, 58 Martinius, Nicholas Albert, 142, 165n102 Matthias, Peter, 132 Maubert, Francis, 25n28 Maxey, Nathaniel, 44 Mayersbach, Alexander Ferdinand von, 234n33 Meacher, Lawrence, 74n42 Mead, Richard, 44 Mediterranean, trade 2, 7, 110, 130, 185, 190, 251 Meinertzhagen, Daniel, 77n108 Melchior Trompowski & Co., 217 Mello & Amsinck, 94, 186, 190–191

Mello & Co., 188 Mello family Mello, Arnold, 173, 237n121 Mello, Luder, 93, 173, 188, 237n121 Menke, Christoph Friedrich, 105 Menner, Widow (of Christian), 51–52 Mercer’s Company, 92 Metcalfe, Joshua, 160 Methuen Treaty, 112, 126n159 Meuschgen. See Muysken, Gerrard Mexican trade, 50, 111, 189 Meybohm family, 151, 155 Meybohm, Johann, 141, 148–151, 154–155, 166–168 Meybohm, Jacob Jeremiah, 151, 154 Meyer & Berenberg, 42–43 Meyer & Co., 48 Meyer family (German), 145 Meyer, Peter, 22–23, 42, 47–48, 70, 78n121, 79n149, 83n251, 145 Meyer, Sir Peter, 49, 62–63, 66, 121n54, 145, 164n84, 178, 186, 188–189 See also Berenberg family Meyer family (British/Dutch), 151 Meyer, Hermann, 147, 151, 153–154, 239n183 Meyer, Randolph, 151 Meyer, Arnold, 256n8 Meyer, Christian, 164n82 Meyer, Reinhard, 222 Meyerhoff, Tunis, 81n207 Meyerhoff, Diederich, 104 M. G. Trosien, 214 Miévilles, 24 Mierop, Isaac van, 193, 237n133 Mierop, Martin Kuyk van, 135–136, 142, 193 Migault, John Gabriel, 243n275 migration, 5–6, 8, 23, 37, 41, 95, 107, 110–113, 192, 197, 250–252, 255 Million Bank, 63–64, 66 Milow, Henckel & Eimbcke, 206–207 mohair, 138 Molling & Co., 100, 179–180, 183–184, 210–211, 221 Molling & Spitta, 184

Index | 309

Molling, Godfrey, 100, 123n90–92, 183– 184, 221–222 Molling, John Frederick, 90, 100 Molling, Rasch & Spitta, 178, 183 Molling, Rasch, Spitta & Co., 175, 183 Molling, Spitta & Co., 211 Montefiori, 222 Morewood, Joseph, 42 Morton & Company, 52 Muilman & Co., 122n62, 213–214 Muilman & Nantes, 114–115, 210–214, 219–220, 222 Muilman & Sons, 145 Muilman family, 37, 213 Muilman, Henry, 145 Muilman, Peter, 76n82, 145, 213 Muilman Trench Chiswell, Richard, 213–214, 220, 242n242 Murrel, 138, 164n72 Murrell & Martens, 175, 179–180, 183–184 Murrell, William, 236n88 Muscovy Company, 57–58 Muysken (Meuschgen), Gerrard, 43, 47, 60, 70, 78n127 Nantes family Nantes, Henry, 79, 114, 122n62, 211–214, 219–220, 224 Nantes, Daniel, 97, 213, 241n239 Napier & Hasenfeller, 157, 168–169n197, 193 Napier, George, 155–156, 168n188 Napoleon, 57, 96, 118, 208. See also under war Neck, Joshua and Gerrard Van, 24, 33, 71, 85n319, 146, 166n119, 192, 194, 238n143 Netherlands, the. See Dutch trade Neufville, Philip de, 27n52 New Lloyd’s company, 71, 136 Newman, Elisabeth Karin, 4 N. L. Franck, 243 Nonnen & Bodecker, 115 Nonnen, Ecbert, 103, 141 Norris, Henry, Jr., 150 Norris, J., 192, 237n128

North American trade, 7, 47–48, 52, 87, 188, 190–191, 193–194, 214 Norton & Co., 205 nutmeg, 46 oak, 49, 79n153 O’Brien, Patrick K., 1 Obwexer, 114–115 Olsen, Alison Gilbert, 66 Oncken, G. C., 218 Oom & Co., 211, 216, 220, 242n260 Oom, Tho. & Co. merchts., 93 Oom, Thomas, 92–93, 121n44, 211, 216, 222, 242n260 Oom, Hoolboom, Knoblock & Co., 116, 211, 216–217 Oom, Hoolboom, Knoblock & Fenton, 210 Oosterland & Keyser, 47, 78n137 Opitz, Ernst Gottfried, 154 Opitz, Ernst Jacob, 154 opium, 138–139 Oppenheimer, George, 16 Oriot & Berens, 43–44, 79n167 Ormstone, Joseph, 147, 166n123 Osborne, Isaac, 196–197 Osterland & Keyser, 43 Otto, Georg, 55 Paggen, William and Peter, 33, 49, 79n151 Paleske, Charles Lewis, 160, 169n213 Paleske, Nathaniel Lewis, 169n213 Panayi, Panikos, 4 Panchaud, Isaac, 122n80 Paris, John, 154 Paterson, William, 60 Paul Bros., 179 Paul, John Daniel and John William, 22–23, 27n54, 40, 137–138, 142–144, 180, 188, 191. See also Vogel family Pearson, Robin, 171 pepper, 47, 51–52, 106 Perkins & Robinsons (warehouse), 177 Persent & Bodecker, 207, 210–211, 215– 216, 220, 240 Persent, Walter, 115, 215, 220, 241n235, 242n254

310 | Index

Persian trade, 130, 136, 148, 192–193 Peterson, Peter, 34 Petronelly & Königsfeld, 193 Phoenix Assurance, 171–173, 185 Pitt, William, the Younger, 15, 71 Poggenpohl family, 158, 168–169n197 Polish trade, 34, 42–46, 50–52, 57, 215– 216, 226 Pollard, Sidney, 2 Poppe, Christian, 121n43 Poppe, Heinrich, 111 porcelain, 47, 184 Portuguese trade, 2, 7, 42, 44–48, 51, 53, 70, 86, 105, 111, 131, 140, 143–144, 187–191, 216, 226 Prange, Ruth, 4 precious metals, 2, 39, 189, 208, 237n110 Prescott & Grote, 141 Prescott family, 90 Prescott, Grote, Culverdon & Hollingworth, 90 Pressnell, Leslie, 205 Prest, William, 218, 221, 225 Pritzler family, 100, 256n10 Pritzler, Theophilus, 89–90, 100, 121n56, 136–137, 256 Queen Anne, 17–18, 26n36, 139, 164n82 Radcliff family, 89 Rasch, Frederick, 123n92, 184 Rathen, Louisa Rudolphina, 158 Ratteene, Derek, 81n207 Raymond & Theodore De Smith, 197 Reimers, John Christian Henry, 231–232, 247n378, 247n382 Reinhold & Rex, 157 Reinhold, Carel, 154 Reinhold, Jacob, 154 Reißmann, Martin, 4 Retberg family, 97, 102–107, 197 Retberg, Hermann Dietrich, 41, 97, 104–107, 124n112, 124n114, 138 Rheden, Johann von, 75n54 rhubarb, 215, 242 Richard J. Dohmer & Brune, 207 Richter & Taylor, 120n40, 180

Riesenbeck, Eschke & Fähndrick, 90, 211, 219, 222 Riesenbeck, John Godfrey, 243n279 Riethmüller & Ripley, 231–232 Riethmüller, Ulrich, 211, 220, 232, 243n288, 247n382–383 Ritter, Thornton & Cayley, 156–158 Ritter, Lorentz Bastian, 148, 154, 156, 166n129, 168n189 Robbes, John, 245n341 Robethon, 27n52 Robinson, Crabb, 226 Robinson, William Tooke, 216 Rodde, Adolph, 164n82 Rogers, John, 225 Ronaldes, Thomas, 168–169n197 rope, 132 Rothschild family, 3, 7, 95, 108 Rothschild, Nathan Mayer, 134, 136, 152, 164n80, 232 Royal African Company, 35, 42, 49 Royal Exchange Assurance (REA), 171– 172, 174–175, 178, 182–185, 231 Rucker & Bencraft, 95 Rucker Brothers, merchts., 96 Rücker (Rucker) family, 23, 79n150, 88, 94–97, 104, 112, 121n60, 122n68, 143–146, 165n105–106, 173, 177, 196, 221, 256n3, 256n10 Rucker, John Anthony & Daniel Henry, 96 Ruland Brothers, 38, 76n88 Russia Company, 7–8, 46, 52–53, 58, 70–71, 105 Russian trade, 2, 7, 45–47, 52, 57–58, 87, 90, 92–93, 100–101, 105, 109, 111, 119, 129–133, 136–160, 181, 191–194, 197–198, 215–219, 228 Russian Tobacco Company, 58 Samler, 216 Scandinavian trade, 18, 45–46, 51–52, 57, 87, 105, 216 Denmark, 34, 36, 57 Norway, 42, 50–51, 57, 132, 218–219 Sweden, 38, 42, 51, 79, 57, 132, 188, 190, 217–218, 226 Schaaf, Henry, 160, 169n212

Index | 311

Schedel & Zernitz, 207 Scheibel, Henry, 63, 227 Schenling, Adolf, 217 Schiffner family, 174 Schiffner, Godin, 247 Schiffner, John and Henry, 69, 89, 149, 151, 173–174, 180, 198, 204 Schiffner, Mathias, 21, 145–146, 151, 153–154, 156, 164n82, 166n117, 168n188, 174 Schiffner, Mathew, 71 Schiffner & Co., 180 Schiffner & Wolff, 157, 193 Schiffner, Coole & Watson, 157 Schmidt, Lionel Abraham, 152 Schmidt, Wilhelm, 79n161 Schmoll, Charles Frederick, 209, 224, 240n195, 244–245n320 Schneider, John Henry, 136, 150, 154 Schonberg, 216 Schröder & Schyler, 216 Schröder family, 3, 7, 40, 95, 108–109, 111 Schröder, Christian Mathias, 90–92, 120n32, 125n133, 126n148, 207 Schröder, John Frederick, 160, 169n207, 211, 218, 220, 222, 232, 243n287 Schröder, John Henry, 16, 20, 81n215, 109, 160, 163n62, 169n207, 207, 232 Schramm, Percy E., 4 Schreiber, John Christian, 182, 235n79 Schreiber, Charles, 138, 191 Schrieber, Peter, 48 Schulenburg, Melusine von, 27n51 Schultz, Christopher John, 154 Schuman, 180 Schutz, Peter Ambrose, 135 Schwarz, Leonard, 173, 178–179 Schwebe, Henry, 175 Schwieger, Gottlob Erdman, 211, 221–222, 243n283 Schwieger, Nicol Daniel, 222 Scottish trade, 36, 60, 86, 100, 103, 172, 217 Scottish Darien Company, 60

Scouloudi, Irene, 32–33 Scoville, Warren, 3 Selcken, Peter, 41, 63, 65, 88, Selzer, Stephan, 108 Setler, Otto Ewald, 154 Seton, Andreas, 89, 245n321 Severn, King & Co., 172, 175 Shairp, Walter, 89, 146, 153, 155, 158, 204 Shaw, William, 17 Shepard, 62 Shewell, Edward, 193, 198 Shum-Storey, George, 69, 85 Siebel, John Roger, 41, 89, 92–94, 99, 104–105, 191–193, 196–197, 236n101 Siffken, Henry, 211, 221 Sirps, Bernard, 100, 123n89 Skelton, William, 56 Skinner, Stephen, 42 Smith, Conrade, 100 Smith, Wienholt & Woodrouffe, 179 Snelling & Fawkener, 163n35 Soltau & Amsinck, 203 Soltau family, 40, 93, 111, 126n149, 184, 226 South American trade, 49, 118, 209, 213, 219 South Sea Bubble, 60, 64 South Sea Company, 62, 64–65 Spanish trade, 20, 35–36, 38, 42, 44–48, 50–51, 53, 86, 110–113, 130–131, 133, 140, 143–144, 187–190, 214–216, 226, 250, 253 Sperling, Henry, 145 Spitta, Charles, 220–222, 225 Spitta, Henry Arthur, 221 Spitta, John, 123n92 Spitta, Molling & Co., 210–211, 221 Splitgerber, John Christian, 114, 209 Stahl, Theodor, 202 St. Austin Friars (church), 31, 33–34, 71, 193–194 Stavenhagen, Charles Henry, 160 Steelyard (warehouse), 177 Stehn & Dorrien, 43, 48 Steinman & Wilson, 121n57 Steinman, Lucas, 94 Stempeel, Jürgen, 74n35

312 | Index

Stenglin, 190 Storch, Heinrich, 153 Strassen, John J. Von, 202 Stridholz, Conradt, 74 Strode & Henning, 43, 48 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, 107 Sultzbergen, John Gottlieb, 118 Sutthoff, Miln & Co., 157 Sutton & Schombart, 191 Swallow, Consul, 150 Swartz, Gerrard, 229 Swellengrebell, Peter Conrad, 148, 154, 168n189 Swiss trade, 56, 95, 108–109 tallow, 132, 237n110 Tamesz family, 148–149, 154, 193, 197 tar, 36, 38, 42, 47, 51, 57, 131–132, 216, 230 Teise, Frederick, 92 Teschemacher family, 22, 37, 40, 42–43, 47–48, 60, 66, 77n110, 78n140, 82n251, 99–100, 103, 111, 122n122, 123n84, 139, 164n79, 192, 194–197 Teusch & Hecker, 181 Teusch family, 181, 235n76. See also Hecker family textiles, 13, 20–22, 30, 35–37, 47, 51, 55, 71, 94, 99–101, 103, 106, 130, 189, 193, 197, 250 cloth, 30, 35–36, 42, 46, 48, 51–52, 54–57, 59, 80n190, 130–131, 193, 216 cotton, 47, 51, 87, 99, 130–131, 136, 138, 164n73, 183 diapers, 46 fabric, 35–36, 47, 50–51, 54–55, 100, 193, 238 wool, 35–36, 51, 54–56, 80n190, 86, 106, 125n142, 193 yarn, 99–100, 193–194 Timmerman, John, 154 Timofe, 193 Tinne, Philp Frederic, 118–119 Toepken, Christian, 65–66 Tonnies & Amsinck, 174, 180 Tonnies, Helwig Lewis, 144, 172

T. Oom, Hoolboom, Fenton & Co., 93 Tournison, John James, 148 Travers & Esdaile, 221 Trebilcock, Clive, 171, 175 Tribekko, 21 Tucker, Josiah, 14–15 Tuckwell, John, 183 Tuckwell, Richard, 235–236n85 Twisk, Peter, 168n174 Tyrawley, Lord, 157–158 Uhthoff & Battier, 122n62, 204 Uhthoff & Co., 125–126n145, 174, 180 Uhtoff & Rucker, 143, 177 Uhthoff family, 107, 111, 125–126n145 Uhthoff, Johann Andreas, 77n110, 111 Uhthoff, Henry, 88–90, 93–94, 111, 123n90, 143, 146, 180, 197, 225 United States. See American trade; North American trade Untzelmann, Peter, 158 Utken, Henry, 43 Vandepitt, Charles and Giles, 33, 74n28 Vansittart family, 51, 66, 69, 111 Vansittart, Peter, 41, 43–44, 47–48, 51–53, 57, 63–66, 71, 84n293, 195 Van Spangen & Willinck, 207 Vasmer, John Henry, 188, 236n108 Vaus, Edmund, 148, 166n130 Vaus, Edward, 168n189 Videband, Christoph, 121n56 Vogel family, 37, 77n110, 142, 144, 164n71. See also Paul, John Daniel and John William Vogeler, W., 118 Vogelsang, Hermann and Wilhelm, 56–57 Voguell & Amyand, 89 Voguell, Frederick, 186 Voguell, Henry, 21, 88, 90–91, 93–94, 100, 117, 121n56, 123n90, 164n82, 193 Wachsel, Pastor Gustav Anton, 41 Wachtendonck, John Van, 48 Wackerbarth, Detmar, Dirs & Holthouse, 216

Index | 313

Wale, Thomas, 156–158 war, 28, 55, 67, 85n319, 86, 88, 102, 108, 113, 130, 132, 170, 202–204, 225, 252 American War of Independence, 87, 100, 102, 106, 133, 138, 203–204 Anglo–Dutch wars, 36, 55 Anglo–Spanish wars, 189 Austrian War of Succession, 203 Coalition Wars, 15, 20, 89, 95, 102, 118, 138, 159, 202, 204, 206–210, 223, 230, 232, 253–255 Dutch War, 59 Dutch–English wars, 34 French wars, 15, 132–133, 106 Mediterranean wars, 130 Napoleonic Wars, 2–3, 6, 8, 15, 17, 19, 118, 123n103, 227, 231, 255 Nine Years’ War (War of the Palatine Succession), 36, 44, 59 Northern War, 133, 139 Seven Years’ War, 133, 140, 203, 205, 238n143 Spanish War of Succession, 35–36, 110, 130, 202 Thirty Years’ War, 32, 37, 55, 250 World War I, 108, 225, 255 Weber, 111, 189, 253 Weckell, Godfrey, 154 Weger, Schiffner & Kyl, 157 Weil, 25 Werninck, Johan Gotlob, 209 West Indies. See Carribbean trade Westhoffe, Paul, 165n106, 168n174 Wetken & Co., 52 Weyman & Comp., 43 W. G. Rolfes & Co., 218, 243n275 White & Lubbren, 211, 241n232 Wichelhausen family Wichelhausen, Godfrey, 89, 100, 122n82, 143, 165–166n108, 192–193

Wichelhausen, Jacob, 194–195 See also Korten family Wienholt family 125n143, 138, 141, 164n76, 177, 179, 235n69, 241n221 Wigor, Schiffner & Co., 156 Wilckens family, 107, 111–112, 118, 243n275 Wilckens, Migault & Co., 243n275 Wildmann & Commerell, 235–236n85 Wildmann, Frederick, 235–236n85 Wilkes, John, 228 Wilkinson, John, 50 Willet, Humphrey, 80n177 Willinck, Diederick, 159–160 Wilson & Blanckenhagen, 117, 179–182, 235n79 Wilson, Edmund George, 182 Wilson, Thomas, 117, 182 Winckelmann, Charles Frederick, 25n29, 135 Wistinghausen, Frederick William, 154– 155, 209–210, 226 Witzendorff, Jürgen von, 102 Wolff & Pickard, 157 Wolff, Jacob, 147, 153–154, 156–158, 168n188 Wolters, Liebert, 21, 40–41, 117 wool. See under textiles Wray & Hippius, 177 Wray, John, 177 Wulffing, John and Anthony, 194 Wuppermann, John Rutger, 194 Wynantz, Francis, 180, 204 yarn. See under textiles Zahedieh, Nuala, 2 Zaroskoy, 193 Ziegel, John David, 203 Zurhorst & Langeveldt, 231 Zurhorst family, 191, 231, 247n380