Empire of Cotton

by Sven Beckert

  10. Verley, “Exportations et croissance économique dans la France des Années 1860,” 80.

  11. Stanley Dumbell, “Early Liverpool Cotton Imports and the Organisation of the Cotton Market in the Eighteenth Century,” Economic Journal 33 (September 1923): 367; Stanley Dumbell, “The Cotton Market in 1799,” Economic Journal (January 1926): 141.

  12. Dumbell, “Early Liverpool Cotton Imports and the Organisation of the Cotton Market in the Eighteenth Century,” 369–70; Nigel Hall, “The Business Interests of Liverpool’s Cotton Brokers, c. 1800–1914,” Northern History 41 (September 2004): 339; Nigel Hall, “The Emergence of the Liverpool Raw Cotton Market, 1800–1850,” Northern History 38 (March 2001): 74, 75, 77; The Liverpool Trade Review 53 (October 1954), 318–19; Francis E. Hyde, Bradbury B. Parkinson, and Sheila Marriner, “The Cotton Broker and the Rise of the Liverpool Cotton Market,” Economic History Review 8 (1955): 76.

  13. Hall, “The Business Interests of Liverpool’s Cotton Brokers,” 339–43; Milne, Trade and Traders in Mid-Victorian Liverpool, 124, 150; Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, 166–67, 171, 176, 200, 236, 257; Hyde et. al, “The Cotton Broker and the Rise of the Liverpool Cotton Market,” 76; Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, 175; Hall, “The Business Interests of Liverpool’s Cotton Brokers,” 340.

  14. Daily Purchases and Sales Book, 1814–1815, George Holt & Co., in Papers of John Aiton Todd, Record group MD 230:4, Liverpool Records Office, Liverpool; Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, 206.

  15. Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, 206.

  16. Allston Hill Garside, Cotton Goes to Market: A Graphic Description of a Great Industry (New York: Stokes, 1935), 47, 51, 58; Dumbell, “The Cotton Market in 1799,” 147; Jacques Peuchet, Dictionnaire universel de la géographie commerçante, contenant tout ce qui a raport à la situation et à l’étendue de chaque état commerçant; aux productions de l’agriculture, et au commerce qui s’en fait; aux manufactures, pêches, mines, et au commerce qui se fait de leurs produits; aux lois, usages, tribunaux et administrations du commerce, vols. 1–5 (Paris: Chez Blanchon, 1799); for example see separate entries on Benin (vol. 2, p. 800), the United States (vol. 4, p. 16), and Saint Vincent (vol. 5, pp. 726–27). Even though Harold Woodman suggests that standards only came about after the 1870s, in the wake of the creation of cotton exchanges, such standards have a much longer history. Harold D. Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers: Financing and Marketing the Cotton Crop of the South, 1800–1925 (Columbus: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), xvii; Dumbell, “The Cotton Market in 1799,” 147. For the emergence of these categories in various markets see Arthur Harrison Cole, Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700–1861 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938), 110–343; The Tradesman, vol. 2, 182; The Colonial Journal 3, no. 5 (1817): 549; The London Magazine 1 (1820): 593; see also the important article by Philippe Minard, “Facing Uncertainty: Markets, Norms and Conventions in the Eighteenth Century,” in Perry Gauci, ed., Regulating the British Economy, 1660–1850 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 189–90.

  17. Carl Johannes Fuchs, “Die Organisation des Liverpoolers Baumwollhandels,” in Gustav Schmoller, ed., Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im deutschen Reich 14 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1890), 111; Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, 272; Stephen M. Stigler, Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 364; Minute Book of Weekly Meetings, Liverpool Cotton Brokers’ Association, April 3, 1842, in record 380 COT, file 1/1, Papers of the Liverpool Cotton Association, Liverpool Records Office, Liverpool; Minute Book of Weekly Meetings, Liverpool Cotton Brokers’ Association, February 18, 1842, in ibid.; Minute Book of Weekly Meetings, Liverpool Cotton Brokers’ Association, August 13, 1844, in ibid.; Minute Book of Weekly Meetings, Liverpool Cotton Brokers’ Association, October 23, 1846, in ibid. In 1857, the Bombay Cotton Dealers’ Managing Committee similarly distributed uniform, printed contracts, demanding the uniform packing of cotton bales, and settling conflicts by arbitration. The Bombay Cotton Dealers Managing Committee is cited in M. L. Dantwala, A Hundred Years of Indian Cotton (Bombay: East India Cotton Association, 1947), 63.

  18. Minutes of the meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce, Liverpool, October 14, 1848, in record 380 AME, vol. 2, American Chamber of Commerce Records, Liverpool Records Office, Liverpool; Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers, xvii.

  19. Stanley Dumbell, “The Origin of Cotton Futures,” Economic Journal, Supplement (May 1827): 259–67; Fuchs, “Die Organisation des Liverpooles Baumwollhandels,” 115; Hall, “The Liverpool Cotton Market: Britain’s First Futures Market,” 102; Daily Purchases and Sales Book, 1814–1815, George Holt & Co., in Papers of John Aiton Todd, Record group MD 230:4, Liverpool Records Office, Liverpool; Milne, Trade and Traders in Mid-Victorian Liverpool, 114, 260; “List of Liverpool cotton importers and brokers,” April 20, 1860, in Correspondence sent to Baring in London by the Baring firm in Liverpool, House Correspondence, 1 Jan.–19 Apr. 1860, ING Baring Archives, London; Kenneth J. Lipartito, “The New York Cotton Exchange and the Development of the Cotton Futures Market,” Business History Review 57 (Spring 1983): 51; Robert Lacombe, La Bourse de Commerce du Havre (Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1939), 3; Claudie Reinhart, “Les Reinhart: Une famille de négociants en coton et café au Havre, 1856–1963” (PhD dissertation, Sorbonne, 2005), 304; Smith, My Life-Work, 17.

  20. Dumbell, “The Origin of Cotton Futures,” 261.

  21. D. M. Williams, “Liverpool Merchants and the Cotton Trade, 1820–1850,” in J. R. Harris, ed., Liverpool and Merseyside: Essays in the Economic and Social History of the Port and Its Hinterland (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1969), 192.

  22. Hall, “The Business Interests of Liverpool’s Cotton Brokers,” 339; Dumbell, “Early Liverpool Cotton Imports and the Organisation of the Cotton Market,” 362–63; Hall, “The Emergence of the Liverpool Raw Cotton Market,” 69, 71; Williams, “Liverpool Merchants and the Cotton Trade,” 183; Universal British Directory of Trade, Commerce, and Manufacture, vol. 3 (London: n.p., 1790–94), 646; Francois Vigier, Change and Apathy: Liverpool and Manchester During the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970), 64; Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain, 83; Thomas Kaye, The Stranger in Liverpool: Or, an Historical and Descriptive View of the Town of Liverpool and Its Environs (Liverpool: T. Kaye, 1820), 33.

  23. Nigel Hall, “A ‘Quaker Confederation’? The Great Liverpool Cotton Speculation of 1825 Reconsidered,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 151 (2002): 2; Williams, “Liverpool Merchants and the Cotton Trade,” 187–90; “Materials Concerning the Business Interests of James Stitt, Samuel Stitt and John J. Stitt,” folder 1, record D/B/115/1–4, Stitt Brothers Papers, Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool; Killick, “The Cotton Operations of Alexander Brown,” 171; Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain, 86.

  24. Williams, “Liverpool Merchants and the Cotton Trade,” 195; Sheila Marriner, Rathbones of Liverpool, 1845–1873 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1961), xi, 14, 228–29. Sometimes brokers also seem to have mediated between sellers (factors) and buyers (merchants); see Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers, 26. For the doctor’s income, see R. V. Jackson, “The Structure of Pay in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Economic History Review, New Series, 40 (November 1987): 563; for the value of the profits in contemporary pounds, see Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, “Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.K. Pound Amount, 1270 to Present,” Measuring Worth, http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/, accessed August 9, 2012; R. G. Wilson and A. L. Mackley, “How Much Did the English Country House Cost to Build, 1660–1880?,” Economic History Review, New Series, 52 (August 1999): 446.

  25. Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres, 275, 281; Ralph W. Hidy, The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance: English Merchant Bankers at Work, 1763–1861 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1
949), 77, 89.

  26. Philip Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power: Baring, 1762–1929 (London: Collins, 1988), 130, 145; Hidy, The House of Baring, 107, 359, 361.

  27. Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power, 131; Hidy, The House of Baring, 3, 185, 298. For the quote see Baring Brothers Liverpool to Francis Baring, Liverpool, July 21, 1833, House Correspondence, record group HC3, file 35,1, in ING Baring Archive, London. For the importance of the Baring cotton operations see other letters in the same folder. For output per cotton plantation worker see David Elits, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Oxford University Press, 1987), 287.

  28. Sam A. Mustafa, Merchants and Migrations: Germans and Americans in Connection, 1776–1835 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 118; Ludwig Beutin, Von 3 Ballen zum Weltmarkt: Kleine Bremer Baumwollchronik 1788–1872 (Bremen: Verlag Franz Leuwer, 1934), 11, 16; Karl-Heinz Schildknecht, Bremer Baumwollbörse: Bremen und Baumwolle im Wandel der Zeiten (Bremen: Bremer Baumwollbörse, 1999), 8, 9; Friedrich Rauers, Bremer Handelsgeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert (Bremen: Franz Leuwer, 1913), 35–39.

  29. Beutin, Von 3 Ballen zum Weltmarkt, 20; Schiffsbuch “Albers,” in D. H. Wätjen & Co. Papers, record group 7, 2092, box 19, Staatsarchiv Bremen, Germany. See also records of the Ship Magdalena, from January 1, 1859, to Dec. 31, 1861, D. H. Wätjen & Co. Papers, record group 7,2092, box 20, Staatsarchiv Bremen.

  30. G. Weulersse, Le port du Havre (Paris: Dunod, 1921), 67; Legoy, Le peuple du Havre et son histoire, 217, 255, 257; Revue du Havre, 1850.

  31. New York Times, April 17, 1901; Legoy, Le peuple du Havre et son histoire, 217, 257; Reinhart, “Les Reinhart,” 26, 39, 41.

  32. Claude Malon, Jules Le Cesne: Député du Havre, 1818–1878 (Luneray: Editions Bertout, 1995), 11–12, 15, 24; Beutin, Von 3 Ballen zum Weltmarkt, 21.

  33. Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 29; Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain, 150; John Crosby Brown, A Hundred Years of Merchant Banking (New York: privately printed, 1909), 64, 184; Circular, Brown Brothers & Company, October 1825, as reprinted in Brown, A Hundred Years of Merchant Banking, 190; Circular by Brown Brothers, October 31, 1815, as reprinted in ibid., 191; John Killick, “Risk, Specialization, and Profit in the Mercantile Sector of the Nineteenth Century Cotton Trade: Alexander Brown and Sons, 1820–80,” Business History Review 16 (January 1974): 13.

  34. John A. Kouwenhoven, Partners in Banking: An Historical Portrait of a Great Private Bank, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., 1818–1968 (Garden City. NY: Doubleday, 1967), 39, 43, 63, 70; Killick, “The Cotton Operations of Alexander Brown,” 173, 176–77, 179–80, 185; Brown, A Hundred Years of Merchant Banking, 255; Chandler, The Visible Hand, 29; Tim Schenk, “Business Is International: The Rise of the House of Brown, 1800–1866” (BA thesis, Columbia University, 1997), 30; Killick, “Risk, Specialization, and Profit,” 15. That $400,000 figure equals about $8.3 million in 2011. The prices for yachts and carriages in the 1830s are from Scott Derks and Tony Smith, The Value of a Dollar: Colonial Era to the Civil War, 1600–1865 (Millerton, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2005).

  35. Killick, “The Cotton Operations of Alexander Brown,” 183; Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 271.

  36. Philip McMichael, “Slavery in Capitalism: The Rise and Demise of the U.S. Ante-bellum Cotton Culture,” Theory and Society 20 (June 1991): 325–28; W. Nott & Co., New Orleans, November 26, 1829, to Thomas Baring, House Correspondence, HCV 5.7.17, ING Baring Archive, London. See also W. Nott to Thomas Baring, Private, New Orleans, August 25, 1830, ibid.; W. Nott to Thomas Baring, Private, New Orleans, August 25, 1830, in ibid.

  37. Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers, 99; Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power, 76, 150. Forstall was also the principal supporter of the journal The Southerner. E. J. Forstall to Baring Brothers London, New Orleans, February 19, 1848, House Correspondence, HC 5, 7.5, ING Baring Archive, London; Hidy, The House of Baring, 95–96; President of the Consolidated Association of Planters, April 7, 1829, New Orleans to Messrs Baring Brothers and Company, House Correspondence, HCV 5.7.17, ING Baring Archive, London; Edmond Forstall to Baring Brothers London, Liverpool, July 29, 1830, House Correspondence, HC 5, 7.5, ING Baring Archive, London.

  38. Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers, 8, 12, 13, 30; Chandler, The Visible Hand, 21; Joseph Holt Ingraham, The South-west: By a Yankee, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers 1835), 91.

  39. Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers, 34, 41, 53, 160; Chandler, The Visible Hand, 23.

  40. Smith, My Life-Work, 25; Killick, “The Cotton Operations of Alexander Brown,” 176; Jerrell H. Shofner, Daniel Ladd: Merchant Prince of Frontier Florida (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1978), 2, 24, 35, 38, 44, 45, 53, 91, 88.

  41. Salomon Volkart to J. M. Grob, Winterthur, July 3, 1851, copy book, letters, vol. 1, Volkart Archive, Winterthur, Switzerland; record group 920 TAR, file 4, letters, Tarleton Papers, Liverpool Records Office, Liverpool; Milne, Trade and Traders in Mid-Victorian Liverpool, 51; for Le Havre see Legoy, Le peuple du Havre et son histoire, 228; Weulersse, Le port du Havre, 86.

  42. Killick, “The Cotton Operations of Alexander Brown,” 186; Schenk, “Business Is International,” 31.

  43. Minutes of the meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce, Liverpool, August 9, 1843, in record 380 AME, vol. 2, American Chamber of Commerce Records, Liverpool Records Office, Liverpool.

  44. Ibid.; Bonnie Martin, “Neighbor to Neighbor Capitalism: Local Credit Networks & the Mortgaging of Slaves,” in Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, eds., Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming).

  45. Milne, Trade and Traders in Mid-Victorian Liverpool, 116; Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain, 101; Hamlin and Van Vechten, to Messrs. G. V. Robinson, New York, March 8, 1820, in Hamlin and Van Vechten Papers, Manuscript Division, New York Public Library, New York.

  46. Marika Vicziany, “Bombay Merchants and Structural Changes in the Export Community, 1850–1880,” in Clive Dewey and K. N. Chaudhuri, eds., Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and Social History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 163–64; Jonathan Duncan to Earl of Worrington, Bombay, March 22, 1800, in Home Miscellaneous, vol. 471, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London; Letter to the Agricultural Horticultural Society of Bombay, as quoted in Dantwala, A Hundred Years of Indian Cotton, 33; Dantwala, A Hundred Years of Indian Cotton, 32.

  47. “Report on the Private trade between Europe, America and Bengal from 1st June 1776 to 31st May 1802, General Remarks,” in Bengal Commercial Reports, External, 1795–1802, record group P/174, vol. 13, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London; “Report of Commercial Occurrences,” March 6, 1788, in Reports to the Governor General from the Board of Trade, 1789, in Home Misc, vol. 393, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library; “Minutes of Proceedings, April 15, 1800,” in Minutes of Commercial Proceedings at Bombay Castle from April 15, 1800, to 31st December, 1800, Bombay Commercial Proceedings, record group P/414, vol. 66, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library; B. K. Karanjia, Give Me a Bombay Merchant-Anytime: The Life of Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Bt., 1783, 1859 (Mumbai: University of Mumbai, 1998); List of Members, Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Year 1861–62 (Bombay: Chesson & Woodhall, 1862), 10–12; Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Year 1846–47 (Bombay: American Mission Press, 1847), 7.

  48. Walter R. Cassel, Cotton: An Account of Its Culture in the Bombay Presidency (Bombay: Bombay Education Society’s Press, 1862), 289, 292; Christof Dejung, “Netzwerke im Welthandel am Beispiel der Schweizer Handelsfirma Gebrüder Volkart, 1851–1930” (unpublished paper, in author’s possession), 5; John Richards to Baring Brothers London, Bombay, October 24, 1832, House Correspo
ndence, HC 6.3, India and Indian Ocean, vol. 5, ING Baring Archive, London.