Implicitly addressing the French Revolution, most of these Tales advocated avoiding revolution in Britain by changing the culture and composition of the ruling class. Critiquing the mores and rule of the aristocracy, Eliza Parsons, Maria Hunter, Mary Ann Hanway, Mary Charlton and anonymous others advocated admitting capable, genteel, nouveau riche merchants and professionals, or sometimes humane and competent country gentlemen, into the ruling elite. They also intimated that elite culture should consist of the proto-Victorian values championed by their exemplary merchants, professionals and/or country gentlemen and independent working women and by the marriage of “manners and morals” they modeled. Placing their exemplary protagonists in the wealthy mercantile, professional and gentry classes and showing these groups socializing and intermarrying accords with recent scholarly accounts of the conduct of these classes in the provinces, as they began to consolidate into a Victorian upper middle class.

This chapter offers a close reading of Chapter 2 of Heinrich von Ofterdingen. It begins by discussing Heinrich’s state of mind on the morning of his departure before turning to the symbolism of the golden necklace he receives from his godmother as a parting gift. It examines the conversation Heinrich has with the merchants, highlighting their debate over the lifeway of action and the lifeway of contemplation. The chapter closes with an analysis of the first story the merchants tell Heinrich: this is the tale of a fabled Greek poet, Arion, whose power of song won him many boons.

Based on an in-depth analysis of a few selected cases of commercial dispute and litigation, this chapter illuminates the functioning of the complex and competing legal systems and the mechanisms of dispute resolution among merchants in Surat in western India and Zanzibar in East Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It explores the dynamics of this legal space, the endurance of legal plurality and qualitative changes in it over the period under review. It critically examines the perceived binary between the legal plurality of the pre-colonial period and the legal uniformity and centralization of the colonial period. The chapter argues that merchants usually sought to resolve their commercial disputes through informal negotiations, petitions, arbitration and legal proceedings in courts of law. The analysis of commercial disputes show that despite the emergence of the European (English) colonial legal system across the Indian Ocean arena in the nineteenth century and the colonial state’s push to make the law uniform and implement a single legal system, the normative and customary mechanisms of adjudicating commercial disputes endured in the colonial period.

Trade and finance together formed the third-largest livelihood type in colonial India. These two activities were interdependent because banks and moneylenders mainly financed commodity trade. The combined share of the two activities rose significantly in national income in the early twentieth century. Behind this growth, the expansion of transport infrastructure and an open economy with few barriers to foreign trade were responsible. It was not, however, a business without friction. A great deal of the historical scholarship around these activities asks how environmental risks, information asymmetry, law and politics shaped the decisions of merchants, lenders and firms, as this chapter shows.

Chapter 2 explores the regional context and significance of Tivinat’s capture and imprisonment in the strategic port of Dieppe in the province of Normandy. Establishes the importance of Normandy’s connections with the Huguenot diaspora in England and cross-Channel connections and conflicts. Focuses on the development of the Reformation in Dieppe and its connections with Beauvais, the Huguenot leadership and local nobility, its progress during the first religious war (1562–63) and ongoing conflict with local Catholics. In particular, relations with regional and town governors were fraught, resulting in heated confessional clashes during the second and third wars of 1567–1570. The link between these events and the role of the governors in enabling Tivinat’s interrogation is established, too, as Norman connections with the cardinal of Châtillon’s exile in England. Examines the career of Tivinat’s interrogator, Michel Vialar, president of the parlement of Rouen, and his contribution to confessional tensions in the region through prosecution and fiscal exactions as well as interpersonal clashes with fellow judges. Discussion through detailed examples of the contemporary challenges of crossing the Channel by boat provides further context for the experience of Tivinat and other couriers.

This chapter outlines the history of previous institutions that created forms of capital in Europe, including land, dowries, banks, bills of exchange, and government debt. It examines the reasons why the system of informal oral credit, as it had developed over the previous 100-odd years, began to be criticised during the Commonwealth period. Many authors started to claim that it was both inefficient and an obstacle to economic growth. Many pamphlets were published containing proposals of different sorts of banks, which would issue paper currency to speed up circulation. Some of these were based on previous European examples. The nature of these proposals is examined, together with a summary of how they related to the creation of the Bank of England. Its establishment is normally seen as the successful outcome of this debate, but in fact it was not primarily created as an institution to expand the supply of credit, but to help fund the government debt. The increasing cost of the War of Spanish Succession did, however, result in the issue of things like Exchequer or Treasury bills, as well as South Sea and Bank stock to fund the war. The last part of the chapter focuses on the significant effect these multiple forms of paper currency had on liquidity within London.

This chapter introduces the merchants who are the principal focus of this study and the sources on which the study is based. It also forecasts the argument that will be made about the class identity these merchants fashioned.

The second chapter is devoted to the lure of India felt increasingly by the English merchant community, and the Company’s first, tentative attempts to gain a foothold in the great Mughal port of Surat. Frustrated by repeated failures to gain a favourable hearing from the emperor Jahangir, and the hostility of the Portuguese who were determined to resist any challenges to their trading privileges in the region, the EIC court petitioned James I to appoint Sir Thomas Roe as an ambassador. Although he was treated with respect, at the end of the three years of his embassy, Roe returned to London having gained few trading privileges. In the meantime, mounting hostilities between the EIC and Dutch VOC prompted protracted negotiations invoking the fledgling law of nations and culminating in the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1619.

This chapter surveys Qiu’s ideas about financial administration, drawing on Section 4, “Administering State Finances” (Chapters 20–35) of the Supplement. The chapter discusses Qiu’s recommendations for regular and light taxation centred on the land tax and how to control government expenditure, before turning to his view of the state’s relationship with the market and merchants. The state must only involve itself in the market in a limited way, with the exception of moderating the supply of grain, since it is a basic necessity for life and the fundamental source of wealth. A brief overview of policies illustrates Qiu’s support for commerce. Throughout, the chapter also considers how Qiu’s ideas might have reflected or influenced actual practice. While there is some indication that his proposals may have been implemented, by the late Ming and especially from the later Wanli era onwards, the prudent financial administration that Qiu advocated did not exist.

This chapter explores the merchant houses of the port city of Rander, which were built by families involved in major colonial enterprises from cotton to shipping, to sugar and oil production, across an Indian Ocean geography from Durban to Rangoon. The continued attachment of these families to the old port, despite their residence in places across the Indian Ocean, suggests the significance of domestic space to wider colonial economic markets, ideas of family, and historic belonging in Gujarat. The chapter centers themes of travel, work, friendship, loss, celebration, and dwelling, as well as the impact of the 1857 rebellion and Muslim reformist movements on the built space of the port. The chapter also engages with contemporary merchant families and their relationships to their homes as sites of Indian Ocean pasts. In exploring the port’s homes and the itineraries that they orient, the chapter presents a nuanced interpretation of how the past is inhabited by port residents and the histories preserved through their efforts.

By the 1720s, the city born of shogunal vision and warrior needs pulsed with townspeople, the artists and merchants of commoner status who began to rival samurai in number among the residents of Edo. With a staggering one million people calling Edo home, the shogun’s capital also became the city of Edoites through a dance of shogunate authority, samurai prestige, and commoner interests. Destructive fires were occasions for such negotiations, and their frequency left a deep imprint on the physical landscape and culture of the city. Kabuki theater too was a site of political push and pull, as well as rambunctious amusement for both townspeople and samurai partaking in the flourishing urban popular culture of the world’s largest city.

Besides mercantile, shipping, legal, insurance and financial services, the capital’s maritime connections extended to large-scale manufacturing like shipbuilding, ship repairing, marine engineering, sail-making and sugar baking. Shipping investors, almost exclusively involved in some aspect of sea trade, varied from those holding a few shares to the relative few reliant on ship owning for their income. The wealthiest shipowners and merchants, as well as the Royal Navy, were among the customers of London’s shipyards, clustered along the waterfront. Subject to severed cyclical swings, shipbuilding was a highly skilled, unionised occupation. Many of those employed in port industries lived in London’s then quite socially mixed waterfront parishes of East London. Seamen ashore in colonial and foreign trades also gathered here in response to a sailor economy serving their need for credit, lodging and entertainment.

This chapter addresses the rapid increase in the consumption of white wines in the 1950s. It traces some of the changes to the efforts of the wine companies to develop the consumer market through brand building. But the breakthrough came with the perfection of the method of cool fermentation that permitted the preservation of the aromatic character of white wines. Boosted by innovations in the cellar, in the form of temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, it became possible to produce wine of a reliable quality on an industrial scale. The chapter argues that while the KWV criticised the merchants, they worked with selected farmers to improve the quality of the wine. This was true of Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery (SFW) and Distillers. The greater costs involved, however, led many farmers to resort to selling their grapes to the cooperatives rather than making their own wine. The chapter focuses on specifc farms like Rustenberg where it is possible to precisely date the turn to cool femerntation The importance of brand development is underlined through an account of the meteoric wise of SFW’s Lieberstein, which was reputedly the world’s largest brand in the early 1960s.

The first substantive chapter addresses the structural problem facing wine farmers at the Cape. Much like in France, there was a serious problem of overproduction of wines of indifferent quality leading to unstable prices. The chapter details the struggle between wine merchants and farmers, which led to the constitution of the Koöperatieve Wynbouwers Vereniging van Suid-Afrika (KWV) in 1918. It shows how the KWV successfully lobbied the Smuts government for devolved regulatory powers that enabled it to control the pricing for distilling wines from 1924. At the same time, the chapter shows that the market was constrained by low consumption amongst whites, including the Afrikaner wine farming community itself. This was compounded by the efforts of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and its allies in the South African Temperance Alliance (SATA) to pursue local option for whites and a form of temperance for the black population. The former failed, but the passage of the 1928 Liquor Act prevented the majority of the population from purchasing wine or brandy. Hence the victory of the KWV over the merchants was tempered by the legislative success of the temperance movement.