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Remittance Procedures in the Eighteenth-Century British Slave Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Kenneth Morgan
Kenneth Morgan
Affiliation:
KENNETH MORGAN is professor of history at Brunel Business School, Brunel University, in Middlesex, England.
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Abstract

This article considers the changing nature of remittance procedures in the eighteenth-century British slave trade. It explains why bills of exchange became the preferred form of making payment for slave sales, rather than specie or produce. It also indicates the legal and institutional practices that informed the circulation of bills of exchange in a notoriously risky form of long-distance trade. The growth and complexity of the British slave trade, which was conducted mainly by private merchants, led to procedures such as remitting bills “in the bottom” of ships that had supplied slaves to North American and Caribbean markets and the extension of lengthy credit periods to purchasers. Colonial factors played a role as well, acting as the agents for coordinating remittances, and secure British merchant houses were deployed as “guarantees” for payment by bills. The development of credit practices associated with the slave trade, including remittance procedures, helped to strengthen the British economy by providing sound, complex intermediary instruments for the realization of profits from international trade.

Type
Special Section: Trade in the Atlantic World
Information
Business History Review , Volume 79 , Issue 4: Trade in the Atlantic World , Winter 2005 , pp. 715 - 749
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2005

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77 Cambridgeshire Record Office, Cambridge, [hereafter CRO], Caleb Fletcher to John Tharp, 23 Feb. 1802, Tharp Papers, R.55.7.128 (c).

78 Davies, “The Origins of the Commission System,” 95.

79 E.g., Edward Grace to Day & Walsh, 22 June 1769, in Ashton, ed., Letters of a West African Trader, 32; Williams, Gomer, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade (London, 1897), 550Google Scholar; John Chilcott to Akers & Houstoun, 6 Mar. 1775, in Minchinton, W. E., “The Voyage of the Snow Africa,” The Mariner's Mirror 37 (1951): 193CrossRefGoogle Scholar; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Thomas Deane et al. to Capt. William Llewellin, 30 Oct. 1771, account book of the Hector (1770-73); Lancaster University Library, John Satterthwaite to Richard Hetherington, 8 Sept. 1781, John Satterth-waite letterbook (1781-82); Liverpool University Library [hereafter LUL], Parke Heywood & Co. to Capt. Joseph Fayrer, 10 Sept. 1782, papers of the Ship Harlequin, Dumbell papers, MS. 10.46; LUL, Leyland, Penny & Co. to Capt. Charles Wilson, 12 May 1783, papers of the Ship Madampookata, ibid., MS. 10.47.

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81 PRO, T 70/1549(2), John & William Coppell to John and Thomas Hodgson, 14 Dec. 1782.

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90 ICS, John Taylor to Simon Taylor, 7 Aug. 1793, 2 Nov. 1794, and Simon Taylor to John Taylor, 30 June 1795, Simon Taylor papers, boxes 14 and 14B.

91 Thomas Mills to Richard Oswald & Co., 22 Dec. 1752, in Thorns, D. W., “West India Merchants and Planters in the Mid-Eighteenth Century with Special Reference to St. Kitts” (M.A. diss., University of Kent, 1967), no. 69, n.p.Google Scholar

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93 PRO, C 107/1, Jacob Jarvis to James Rogers, 2 Apr. 1787.

94 E.g., Henry Laurens to Day & Welch, 17 Dec. 1764, in Hamer, Rogers et al., eds., Laurens Papers, vol. 4, p. 538.

95 CUL, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 23 May 1793, Vanneck MSS.

96 UMA, Smith & Baillies to Henry Bright, 21 June 1763, Bright family papers, box 19.

97 Morgan, Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century, 148.

98 Curtis Brett to [?], 4 Apr. 1763, in Curtis Brett letterbook (1762-76). Dr Martin Brett (Robinson College, Cambridge) kindly allowed me to see this manuscript belonging to his family.

99 [Wallace], A General and Descriptive History, 233n.

100 Henry Laurens to Ross & Mill, 2 Sept. 1768, in Hamer, Rogers et al., eds., Laurens Papers, vol. 6, pp. 88-89.

101 PRO, T 70/1549 (1), Charles Bell to Richard Miles, 20 Feb. 1783.

102 PRO, C 107/5, Munro McFarlane to James Rogers, 4 Sept. 1792; ICS, John Taylor to Simon Taylor, 6 Nov. 1791, Simon Taylor papers, box 14.

103 John Fletcher to Peleg Clarke, 22 Dec. 1774, in Donnan, ed., Documents, vol. 3, p. 296.

104 RHL, Lascelles & Maxwell to John & Alexander Harvie, 8 Jan. 1757, Lascelles & Maxwell letterbook (1756-59), Richard Pares transcripts.

105 LRO, Thomas Leyland to Capt. Charles Wilson, 9 Dec. 1786, Thomas Leyland letter-book (1786-88).

106 Ibid., 31 Aug. 1788.

107 Aberdeen University Archives, Harry Alexander to Alexander Leith, 15 June 1752 and 8 Dec. 1753, Leith family letters and papers, MS. 2,849.

108 Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, bill of complaint from Lyonel Lyde and Edward Cooper against Henry Darnall, George Attwood & William Digges's executors, 2 Dec. 1746, Chancery Records, vol. 8 (1746-48), ff. 9-75.

109 Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Nelson Burnet & Co. to Trumbull, Fitch & Co., 27 May 1766, Jonathan Trumbull Sr. papers, box 2.

110 LRO, Thomas Leyland to Michell & Daggers, 9 Dec. 1786, Thomas Leyland letterbook (1786-88).

111 Trevor Burnard and Kenneth Morgan, “The Dynamics of the Slave Market and Slave Purchasing Patterns in Jamaica, 1655-1788,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series 58 (2001): 213; John Fletcher to Capt. Peleg Clarke, 30 July 1774 (quotation), 22 Dec.1774, in Donnan, ed., Documents, vol. 3, pp. 292, 298.

112 LRO, Bordieu, Chollet & Bourdieu to Capt. Robert Bostock, 29 Dec. 1785, Robert Bostock letterbook (1779-90); Price, “Credit in the Slave Trade,” 313n45.

113 Price, Jacob M., France and the Chesapeake: A History of the French Tobacco Monopoly, 1674-1791, and of its relationship to the British and American Tobacco Trades, 2 vols. (Ann Arbor, 1973), vol. 1, p. 687.Google Scholar

114 LRO, James Baillies to Robert Bostock, 14 Feb. 1786, Robert Bostock letterbook (1779-90); Sheridan, “The Commercial and Financial Organization of the British Slave Trade”: 254-56; and, for the reference to Dominica, see text above.

115 For the use of guarantees in London, Glasgow, and Bristol by the Bristol slave trader James Rogers, see Price, “Credit in the Slave Trade,” 313n45.

116 LRO, Robert Bostock to Capt. James Fryer, 10 Jan. 1790, Robert Bostock letterbook (1789-92); PRO, C107/7, Thomas Daniel & Son to James Rogers, 19 July 1788.

117 Morgan, Kenneth, “Bristol West India Merchants in the Eighteenth Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series 3 (1993): 185–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. H. Cave, A History of Banking in Bristol from 1750 to 1899 (n. p., 1899), 228.

118 Morgan, Kenneth, ed., “Calendar of Correspondence from William Miles, a West Indian Merchant in Bristol, to John Tharp, a Planter in Jamaica, 1770-1789,” in McGrath, Patrick, ed., A Bristol Miscellany, Bristol Record Society's Publications 37 (Bristol, 1985), 81–83, 110Google Scholar; Oliver, Vere Langford, ed., Caribbeana: Miscellaneous Papers relating to the History, Genealogy, Topography and Antiquities of the British West Indies, 6 vols. (London, 1909-1919), vol. 1, p. 211.Google Scholar

119 PRO, T 70/1549(1), Charles Bell to Richard Miles, 20 Feb. 1783 (quotation); Morgan, ed., “Calendar of Correspondence,” 82.

120 For examples of protested bills by Miles, see Morgan, ed., “Calendar of Correspondence,” 91, 105.

121 Ibid., 91, 93, 102, 105-6, 110.

122 Anderson, “The Lancashire Bill System,” 77.

123 Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 70.

124 Price, Jacob M., Perry of London: A Family and a Firm on the Seaborne Frontier, 1615-1753 (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 38.Google Scholar

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126 E.g., In 1807 Thomas Cope of Philadelphia discounted 233 of the 338 bills payable to his house at various banks, including the Bank of North America. See Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, T. P. Cope and Sons, bills payable and receivable, 1806-8. My thanks to Sheryllynne Haggerty for this reference.

127 Sheridan, “The Commercial and Financial Organization of the British Slave Trade”: 254-56.

128 See above.

129 For a general consideration of these matters, see Mathias, Peter, “Risk, Credit and Kin-ship in Early Modern Enterprise,” in McCusker, John J. and Morgan, Kenneth, eds., The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (Cambridge, U.K., 2000), 15–35.Google Scholar

130 Anderson, “The Lancashire Bill System,” 80; Price, “Credit in the Slave Trade,” 332-33; Meyer, Jean, L'Armement nantais dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1969).Google Scholar For payments in the Portuguese slave trade between Lisbon, Angola, and Brazil, see Miller, Joseph C., Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade 1730-1830 (Madison, Wis., 1988), 298–302, 475-76Google Scholar.

131 Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 51.

132 Virginia Bever Platt, “‘And Don't Forget the Guinea Voyage’: The Slave Trade of Aaron Lopez of Newport,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, no. 32 (1975): 601-18; Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle, 195.

133 Barbara Solow, “Introduction,” in Solow, ed., Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, 20.

134 Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 74-78.