In 1634 a Scot, John Clerk, travelled to France as the apprentice of an Edinburgh merchant named John Smith. In 1646 Clerk returned to Scotland where eight years later he purchased the barony of Penicuik with the fortune he had made on the Continent. Living in Paris, Clerk operated within a wide network of merchants, factors, manufacturers and skippers. Some of his business associates he knew personally, others he did not, and the people he dealt with hailed from throughout Britain and Europe. This network traded in a wide variety of goods: bulk commodities including salt and wine but also diamonds, luxury cloths and furs, brushes made of agate and tortoiseshell, atlases and book-bindings. John Clerk is just one of a host of individuals who pursued Franco-Scottish commerce in this period, but his activities remain relatively unknown despite the high-profile descendants who benefited from his success. Throughout the early modern period mercantile networks and communities such as those in which Clerk operated were at the forefront of international exchanges, functioning for their own financial gain but simultaneously influencing commercial and economic development throughout Europe.

The success of these communities is more striking when the environment within which they were active is considered. The long seventeenth century was riven by conflict, creating a context ostensibly hostile to trade. The numerous wars that erupted have contributed to descriptions of the period by generations of historians as one of ‘general crisis’. In a century dominated by developments in military technology, tactics and organization under a ‘military revolution’, warfare has remained the focus of many studies of this period.