Sole Traders? The Role of the Extended Family in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Business Networks

Jones, Sophie H.; Talbott, Siobhan

doi:10.1017/eso.2021.15

Enterp. Soc.

2021

DOI: 10.1017/eso.2021.15

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Sole Traders? The Role of the Extended Family in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Business Networks

Sophie H. Jones¹,

Siobhan Talbott²

Abstract: Despite significant developments in understanding the role of women in early-modern business, more is needed to fully understand women’s impact on eighteenth-century trading networks. Further, much less is known about the role of wider family members, especially children, in the eighteenth-century Atlantic economy. The formal documentation that is privileged in business histories does not tell the whole story, and it frequently represents mercantile activity as a pursuit dominated by a patriarch at the center … Show more

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Cited by 4 publications

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“…Histories of women are represented by an article by Jones and Talbott that explored women's impact on eighteenth‐century trading networks in the Atlantic. To do so they studied personal family correspondence of three merchant families – one based in Barbados, another in Kendal, England, and the last one in Bordeaux.…”

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Review of periodical literature for 2022: (iv) 1700–1850

Hutková

2024

The Economic History Review

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The topic of wages, living standards, and the working week attracted considerable attention. Horrell, Humphries, and Weisdorf introduced a novel framework for evaluating real household incomes of English rural working families in the years 1260−1850. They identify the key weakness of studies in economic wellbeing as the fact that family income has been equated with the husband's earnings alone, yet a model with a male breadwinner does not fit well with historical realities of the pre-modern world. The authors took a life cycle approach to resources available to families across the cycle. On the basis of demographic evidence for 1541−1850 that traces changing fertility and dependency and using data on women's and children's earnings, the authors study trends in wellbeing for different types of families and over the long run. Their model goes beyond the male-breadwinner type of family as they also capture families that do not have an adult male earner as the breadwinner. The authors found that intact average-size working class families were able to attain respectability from the eighteenth century onwards without reliance on poor relief and/or child labour. They also found that before the eighteenth century, in the case of families in which men were not capable to earn, women and children's earnings were an even more essential source of income than in the post-eighteenth-century period. On the basis of the demographic data in their model, the authors then equate the expansion of child labour and poor law expenditure in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with the great share of large families and fatherless or non-earning father families in the period. However, they find that the living standard of these type of families -large, fatherless, or with a father who is not a capable earner -started to increase at the turn of the eighteenth century. At the same time, very small families with very few children and a father/husband who was not capable of earning found it challenging to attain respectability in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Crafts and Mills estimate a structural model of economic-demographic interactions for 1570-1850 to study the effect of population growth on wages. On the basis of the simulations of their model, the authors conclude that growth of real wages during the Industrial Revolution was constrained by high population growth. They thus argue that workers benefitted from the Industrial Revolution immediately since without the technological change their living standards would have decreased further. They disagree with interpretations that ascribe the limited wage growth to Marxist exploitation and/or technological

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confidence: 99%

Review of periodical literature for 2022: (iv) 1700–1850

Hutková

2024

The Economic History Review

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A Historical Social Network Analysis of John Pinney’s Nevis–Bristol Network: Change over Time, the “Network Memory,” and Reading Against the Grain of Historical Sources

Buckles¹

2022

Enterp. Soc.

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Social network analysis is an increasingly common tool for historians seeking to understand the interrelations between individuals. A significant concern, however, is how we might measure changes within networks over time and between periods. Historians have favored examining the network as it stands at particular points in time. However, this approach fails to capture the instability within networks and does not incorporate the perceptions of contemporaries. One solution is to integrate network data into a time series that is built around conceptualizations of the “network memory.” In a case study on John Pinney’s late eighteenth-century Nevis–Bristol network, I use a two-year moving total to model the lingering nature of ephemeral interactions on the memories of those involved in the plantation trade. Using this historical social network analysis as the basis for an iterative approach to the primary material, I explore what being a part of this network meant for the enslaved people on Pinney’s plantation and for the women in his family. This article demonstrates the value of the approach and highlights the ways in which historians can use it to contribute to the historiography of early modern business networks.

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Underwriting Empire: Marine Insurance and Female Agency in the French Atlantic World

Wade¹

2022

Enterp. Soc.

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This article offers the first extensive analysis of female agency in the marine insurance industry of early modern Europe. Drawing from a data set of more than four thousand insurance policies signed in the Royal Insurance Chamber in Paris between 1668 and 1672, the article studies the activities of Parisian women within the institution. These policies illustrate that women played a crucial role in the Chamber as underwriters, creditors, commission agents, and policyholders. Moreover, institutional papers and the records of the Parisian admiralty court reveal that women acted ably in defense of their interests when conflicts emerged, although there were limitations to their agency in the Chamber itself. In this way, the article challenges the long-standing perception that underwriting was an exclusively masculine activity in pre-modern Europe. Moreover, it sheds light on the role of women in supporting the maritime and colonial policies of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s eminent minister, thereby becoming underwriters of France’s early Atlantic Empire.

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Sole Traders? The Role of the Extended Family in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Business Networks

Cited by 4 publications

References 39 publications

Review of periodical literature for 2022: (iv) 1700–1850

Review of periodical literature for 2022: (iv) 1700–1850

A Historical Social Network Analysis of John Pinney’s Nevis–Bristol Network: Change over Time, the “Network Memory,” and Reading Against the Grain of Historical Sources

Underwriting Empire: Marine Insurance and Female Agency in the French Atlantic World

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