Overseas Trade and Traders

In this third volume of collected papers, Jacob Price explores the structural and political relations of the Atlantic trade in the 18th century. A first selection on mercantile activity, blends research on the records of individual firms with aggregate customs data to show that definitive advantages of scale encouraged the concentration of trade into fewer and larger hands in sectors like tobacco, sugar and slaves. These studies also show the importance of credit to the development of trade, a theme taken up in the section on monetary issues, reprinting the author's well-known paper on multilateralism with a specifically written supplement 'Multilateralism Revisited'. A final section on the politics of customs reform gives the contemporary political background to the records which Price has explored so thoroughly.