1st Edition

Tobacco in Atlantic Trade The Chesapeake, London and Glasgow, 1675–1775

By Jacob M. Price Copyright 1995
    330 Pages
    by Routledge

    This is the first of three volumes selected from the papers of Jacob M. Price. Focusing on the Atlantic tobacco trade in the 18th century, these studies illustrate the complex business history of this commercial enterprise and demonstrate its key importance in shaping economic relationships between Britain and the emerging American economy. Detailed studies of individual firms such as Buchanan & Simson and Joshua Johnson are well-known as classics of 18th-century business history, and these studies are placed in broader context by Price's seminal characterisations of the scale and structure of the Chesapeake trade. A previously unpublished paper offers a recent perspective on the market structure of the colonial Chesapeake, the role of the slave economy, and a critique of received historiography.

    Contents: Introduction; The rise of Glasgow in the Chesapeake tobacco trade, 1707-1775; The economic growth of the Chesapeake and the European market, 1697-1775; A revolution of scale in overseas trade: British firms in the Chesapeake trade, 1675-1775; Merchants and planters: the market structure of the colonial Chesapeake reconsidered; Sheffield v. Starke: institutional experimentation in the London-Maryland trade ca. 1696-1706; Buchanan and Simson, 1759-1763: a different kind of Glasgow firm trading to the Chesapeake; The last phase of the Virginia-London consignment trade: James Buchanan and Co., 1758-1768; Joshua Johnson in London, 1771-1775: credit and commercial organization in the British Chesapeake trade; One family's empire: the Russell-Lee-Clerk connection in Maryland, Britain, and India, 1707-1857 Index.
    'Of all the writings on the subject..the works of Jacob M. Price detailing the intricacies of the commercial connections between London, Glasgow, and the colonial Chesapeake clearly stand above the pile as this compendium of his essays attests...Scholars of the colonial economy and devotees of the Chesapeake School will find this handy collection useful...Price’s stature as one of the pioneers of United States economic history has long been assured, and this anthology would grace any historian’s bookshelf.' The Historian, Vol. 60, No. 3 regarding all three volumes by Price: 'All the essays in these three volumes bear the badge of Price’s scholarship. The research behind them is meticulous- broad in scope, profound in depth, complete...In these three volumes we have selections from the beginnings of a life’s work, a report from the first half-century, a hint of what is yet to come. They constitute a landmark of scholarship produced by the model scholar..' Economic History Review, Vol. LI 'The most distinguished historian of early modern British imperial overseas trade of this or any earlier generation, Jacob. M. Price has long been known as a historical essayist par excellence. Distinguished by their solidarity, careful and imaginative analysis of data, precision of argument, attention to context, and lucid prose style, his essays have served two generations of early modern British overseas historians as a model of what an essay should be and how it can shed new light upon a field. For that reason, as well as because of the defining importance of many of the essays in several areas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century imperial history, these three volumes of Price’s collected essays are an especially welcome addition to the proliferating literature on the early modern British world...one has to applaud the press for undertaking a project of this scope and scholarly importance.' The International History Review, Vol. XXI, No. 1