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The Social Basis of English Commercial Expansion, 1550–1650

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Robert Brenner
Robert Brenner
Affiliation:
University of California at Los Angeles
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Extract

… for each period into which our economic history may be divided, there is a distinct and separate class of capitalists. In other words, the group of capitalists of a given epoch does not spring from the capitalist group of the preceding epoch. At every change in economic organization we find a breach of continuity. It is as if the capitalists who have up to that time been active, recognize that they are incapable of adapting …. They withdraw from the struggle and become an aristocracy, which if it again plays a part in the course of affairs does so in a passive manner only, assuming the role of silent partners. In their place arise new men.…

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-first Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 361 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1972

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References

1 “The Stages in the Social History of Capitalism,” American Historical Review, XIX (1914), 494–495.Google Scholar

2 See, especially, Fisher, F. J., “Commercial Trends and Policy in Sixteenth Century England,” Economic History Review, X (1940), 106–107Google Scholar, as well as Ramsay, G. D., English Overseas Trade During the Centuries of Emergence (London: Macmillan, 1957), pp. 20–30Google Scholar; Ramsey, Peter, Tudor Economic Problems (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963), pp. 68ff.Google Scholar See also Davis, Ralph, “England and the Mediterranean” in Essays in the Economic and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England, ed. Fisher, F. J. (Cambridge: The University Press, 1961), pp. 117ff.Google Scholar

3 Willan, T. S., The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553–1603 (Manchester: The University Press, 1956), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

4 Willan, T. S., The Muscovy Merchants of 1555 (Manchester: The University Press, 1953), p. 24.Google Scholar

5 Supple, B. E., Commercial Crisis and Change 1600–1642 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1959), p. 258.Google Scholar

6 Davis, “England and the Mediterranean,” p. 120; Supple, Commercial Crisis, p. 258; Friis, Astrid, Alderman Cockayne's Project and the Cloth Trade (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), pp.70–1, n.2.Google Scholar

7 Willan, T. S., “Some Aspects of the English Trade with the Levant in the Sixteenth Century,” English Historical Review, LXX (1955), 407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Fischer, David, “The Development and Organization of English Trade to Asia, 1553–1605,” (University of London Ph.D. Thesis, 1970), pp. 200–10, 355–9.Google Scholar For a similar finding, see Willan, Trade with the Levant,” pp. 407–10. Willan concludes “that the Levant was not a very good market for English goods.” Ibid., p. 410.

9 Millard, A. M., “The Import Trade of London, 1600–1640” (University of London Ph.D. Thesis, 1956),Google Scholar Appendix 2, Table C. Mrs. Millard's figures were compiled from the London Port Books for imports.

10 Commons Debates 1621, ed. Notestein, Wallace, Relf, Francis, AND Simpson, Hartley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935), VI, 300.Google Scholar Prof. Davis' contention that the Levant trade was balanced throughout this period is hard to reconcile with: (1) Mrs. Millard's figures on imports; (2) the admitted stagnation of Levant cloth exports over the early decades of the seventeenth century and the apparent impressive growth of Levant imports at the same time (especially in light of the conclusions of Fischer and Willan that the trade was extremely unbalanced before 1600). See Davis, “England and the Mediterranean,” pp. 124–25.

11 Chaudhuri, K., The English East India Company (New York: Reprints of Economic Classics, 1965), p. 13.Google Scholar

12 Supple, Commercial Crisis, pp. 23–4; Fisher, “Commercial Trends,” p. 96. The Merchant Adventurers normally exported around 65,000 cloths per annum over the last 30 years of the 16th century. In comparison, all the trade to the East combined did not export more than 10,000 cloths per annum.

13 See Lang, R. G., “The Greater Merchants of London, 1600–1625” (Oxford University D. Phil. Thesis, 1963), pp. 149–51Google Scholar; Ramsey, Tudor Economic Problems, pp. 63–65.

14 Fischer, ‘Trade to Asia,” p. 169, also appendix. This result must be tentative, because relevant sources are so scarce. Very few London Port Books survive for this period. One can say with certainty, however, that Edward Osborne and Richard Stapers, the two leading organizers of the project (as well as John Spencer, another patentee), were definitely not Merchant Adventurers, since they can be found on a list of merchants described as “not free of the Merchant Adventurers” who shipped cloths or kerseys out of London in 1577–1578. B. M. Harleian Mss. 167, fos. 75ff. and 91ff.

15 Compare list of Merchant Adventurers in Friis, Cockayne's Project, pp. 95–7, with Levant Company charter members in Epstein, M., The Early History of the Levant Company (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1968), pp. 158–60.Google Scholar Note also that of 219 men active in the Merchant Adventurers’ trade in 1606, only 7 also exported cloth to the Levant in that year. Friis, Cockayne's Project, p. 100. R. G. Lang has also adduced a good deal of evidence for the Merchant Adventurers' heavy concentration on their own markets in the early 17th century. See “Greater Merchants of London,” pp. 149–68.

16 This result was obtained by comparing complete lists of Levant Company members compiled from the Company Court Books, P.R.O. S.P.105/147–149, with lists of traders to the Merchant Adventurers' privileges in 1632 and 1640 compiled from the London Port Books for cloth exports for those years, P.R.O. E.190/36/5, E.190/43/4. I wish to thank Professor F. J. Fisher for generously allowing me to consult his notes on the London Port Book for cloth exports for 1640.

17 See Chaudhuri, East India Company, pp. 6–7.

18 Willan, Russia Company, pp. 2, 57–61, 90–91, 145–55.

19 Ibid., 153–54.

20 Fischer, “Trade to Asia,” pp. 121, 161–62, 166–68.

21 Chaudhuri, East India Company, p. 11.

22 Ibid., p. 12.

23 Wood, A. C., A History of the Levant Company (London: Frank Cass, 1964), p. 31.Google Scholar

24 Compare list of original East India Company assistants in Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, East Indies, 1513–1616, ed. Sainsbury, W. N. (Vaduz, Kraus Reprint, 1964). p. 117Google Scholar, with lists of Levant assistants in 1601 charter, printed in Select Charters of the Trading Companies, 1530–1707, ed. Carr, C. T. (London: Selden Society, 1913), p. 32.Google Scholar

25 These results were obtained by comparing full lists of Levant Company members with lists of East India Company investors and the amount of their investments, which survive for the first, third, and fourth joint stocks. These East. India investor lists have been printed in The Register of Letters Etc. of the Governor and Company of the Merchants of London Trading Into the East Indies 1600–1619, ed. SirBirdwood, George (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1965 repr.) pp. 275–81, 294–95Google Scholar; The Dawn of the British Trade to the East Indies, printed by Stevens, Henry (London: Henry Stevens and Son, 1886), pp. 1–5.Google Scholar

26 See below, p. 372.

27 Fischer, “Trade to Asia,” pp. 166–68.

28 See, e.g., Davis, “England and the Mediterranean,” p. 117; Chaudhuri, East India Company, pp. 6–7.

29 Willan, “English Trade with the Levant,” p, 407.

30 Quoted in Epstein, Levant Company, 33, n.14

31 Fischer, “Trade, to Asia,” 166–168, 195–200; “The Subsidy Roll for 1589,” printed in Visitation of London 1568, ed. London, H. Stanford and Rawhns, Sophia W. (London: John Whitehead, 1963), 148–164.Google Scholar

32 Epstein, Levant Company, pp. 25–36.

33 S. P. 12/239/44, printed in Epstein, Levant Company, pp. 260–61.

34 Ibid., pp. 36–9.

35 Epstein, Levant Trade, chs. viii, ix. For a discussion of these regulations and their changes in the early seventeenth century see Brenner, Robert, “Commercial Change and Political Conflict: The Merchant Community in Civil War London” (Princeton University Ph.D. Thesis, 1970), pp. 18–9.Google Scholar

36 For a good discussion of apprenticeship and the reasons for its crucial importance to the prospective Levant merchant, see Davis, Ralph, Aleppo and Devonshire Square (London: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 64–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 The evidence on which this conclusion is based was derived from scattered miscellaneous sources, especially wills of merchants leaving bequests to have their children apprenticed. For details, see Brenner, “Commercial Change,” pp. 22–3, n.44.

38 The evidence for this paragraph is based on a full analysis of the Levant Company merchants, their trade and family connections in the pre-civil war period. For a full presentation of data and documentation, see Brenner, “Commercial Change,” pp. 29–34.

39 Supple, Commercial Crisis, p. 258 and passim.

40 Millard, “The Imports of London,” appendix.

41 Davis, “England and the Mediterranean,” p. 136.

42 Chaudhuri, East India Company, p. 209.

43 This result was obtained by comparing full lists of East India Company officers extracted from East India Company court minutes with full lists of Levant Company membership. See Calendar of State Papers, East Indies, 1630–1634; Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India Company, 1635–1639, ed. Sainsbury, E. B. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1907); Court Books of the Levant Company.Google Scholar

44 Merchants Mappe of Commerce (London, 1638), p. 319.Google Scholar

45 Lang, “Greater Merchants of London,” pp. 149–51.

46 These results were obtained by. comparing full lists of aldermen in Beaven, A. B., The Aldermen of the City of London, 2 vols. (London: Eden Fisher, 1908–1913)Google Scholar, with full lists of Levant members and East India Company officers and with reasonably full lists of Merchant Adventurers from the London Port Books for cloth exports. The figure for Merchant Adventurers can't be exact.

47 Ashton, Robert, The Crown and the Money Market (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1960), ch. iv, esp. pp. 87–105.Google Scholar

48 Rabb, Theodore K., Enterprise and Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 56–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 66, and appendix.

49 Craven, W. F., The Dissolution of the Virginia Company (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932), pp. 32–3.Google Scholar

50 Andrews, Charles M., The Colonial Period of American History, 4 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934–1938), I, pp. 106–07Google Scholar; Johnson, R. C., “The Lotteries of the Virginia Company,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LXXIV (1966), 259ff.Google Scholar

51 Scott, W. R., The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish, and Irish Joint Stock Companies to 1720, 3 vols. (Cambridge: The University Press, 1912), II, pp. 254, 258, 288Google Scholar; Chaudhuri, East India Company, p. 209.

52 For an account of the different forms of independent enterprise in this period, see Craven, Virginia Company, pp. 35, 56; Andrews, Colonial Period, I, pp. 124–25.

53 Seven such establishment merchants who entered the colonial trades have been identified so far. This result was obtained by comparing lists of Levant Company members, East India Company officers, and City aldermen with fairly full listings of American traders. The latter are based on lists of tobacco traders extracted from the London Port Books for imports for 1626, 1630, 1633, 1634, 1640, and a wide variety of government documents, petitions, judicial records, etc. For more detailed information, including names of merchants, see Brenner, “Commercial Change,” pp. 71–2.

54 Foster, W., “An English Settlement in Madagascar, 1645–6,” English Historical Review, XVII (1912), 239–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India Company, 1635–9, pp. 248–49, 328, 330, 338, 339, 341.

55 Ibid., 274ff, 302. For an account of the Courteen project, see Sir William Foster's “Introduction,” Ibid.

56 Pares, R., “Merchants and Planters,” Economic History Review, Supplement IV (1960), 5Google Scholar, 52ff. See also, Brenner, “Commercial Change,” pp. 73–75.

57 Andrews, Colonial Period, I, pp. 126–27; Craven, Virginia Company, pp: 33–34; Scott, Joint Stock Companies, I, pp. 256–77.

58 The Records of the Virginia Company of London, ed. Kingsbury, Susan M., 4 vols. (Washington: Library of Congress, 1906–1935), III, p. 598.Google Scholar

59 Cockayne, G. E., Some Account of the Lord Mayors and Sheriffs of the City of London … 1601–1625 (London, 1897), pp. 4–5, 80Google Scholar; Beaven, Aldermen, II, p. 54; Tawney, R. H., Business and Politics Under James I (Cambridge: The University Press, 1958), p. 87Google Scholar; Port Book for cloth exports, 1640 (P.R.O. E.190/43/4); The Visitation of London 1633, 1634, and 1635, ed. Howard, J. J.and Chester, J. L., 2 vols. (London: Harleian Society, 1880–1883), I, p. 259; Friis, Cockayne's Project, p. 96Google Scholar; Brown, Alexander, The Genesis of the United States, 2 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890), II, p. 842.Google Scholar

60 Craven, Virginia Company, p. 35.

61 Scott, joint Stock Companies, II, p. 256. In an agreement with the Company of 1618, the Magazine's rate of profit was limited to 25%. Craven, Virginia Company, p. 51.

62 Craven, Virginia Company, ch. vii; Andrews, Colonial Period, ch. vii.

63 The preceding paragraph is based on a detailed biographical and statistical account of the colonial merchant trading group, presented in Brenner, “Commercial Change,” ch. iii.

64 Ibid.

65 “The Humble Remonstrance of John Bland of London, Merchant …” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, I (1894), 144.Google Scholar

66 For cases in which the Levant Company took action to make sure that a prospective member had actually relinquished his former trade and become a “mere merchant,” see Levant Company Court Books, P.R.O. S.P.105/149/250, 253; S.P.105/150/265; S.P.105/151/120.

67 Beer, G. L., The Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578–1660 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1908), p. 110, n.3Google Scholar; Williamson, J. A., The Caribbee Islands Under the Proprietary Patents (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), pp. 137–39.Google Scholar

68 See Brenner, “Commercial Change,” pp. 142–43.

69 These figures were compiled from the Port Books for imports for 1634, P.R.O. E.190/38/5, and 1640, P.R.O. E.190/43/5.

70 For a full account of this offensive, see Brenner, “Commercial Change,” ch. iv.

71 Williamson, Caribbee Islands, pp. 137–39, 157–58.

72 The personnel of the West Indies commercial development can be put together from the numerous colonial merchant petitions of the 1640's and 1650's, which include hundreds of signatures; also from the standard governmental and judicial documents—State Papers, High Court of Admiralty Papers, Chancery Proceedings, etc. See especially Journal of the House of Lords, IX, 50, for a list of many of the key merchant leaders. See also P.R.O. C.O.1/11/23, 24; C.O.1/12/5, 8, 16. For details on the West Indies merchants see Brenner, “Commercial Change,” pp. 150–59.

73 Ibid., 151–52.

74 For the Cuinea trade in this period, see Blake, J. W., “The Farm of the Guinea Trade in 1631,” in Essays in British History, ed. Cronne, H. A., Moody, T. W., AND Quinn, D. B. (London: Frederick Muller, 1949), pp. 86–106.Google Scholar For the loss of its patent, see Ibid., p. 97; Journal of the House of Commons, II, pp. 33, 278, 970; The Journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, ed. Notestein, W. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923), p. 540.Google Scholar For further details, see Brenner, “Commercial Change, pp. 152–54.

75 For the development of the “triangle trades,” see Bailyn, B., The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), pp. 84–91Google Scholar; Harlow, V. T., Barbados 1625–1685 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1926), ch. vi.Google Scholar

76 Journal of the House of Lords, IX, p. 50; Historical Manuscripts Commiision, Sixth Report, Appendix, pp. 202–03. See also, Brenner, “Commercial Crisis,” pp. 151–52, n.13.

77 This is based on a comparison of full lists of Levant members and East India Company directors with lists of West Indies traders compiled from sources indicated in fn. 72.

78 The personnel of the group which took over from Courteen can be compiled from Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India Company 1644–9, pp. 116, 305, n.l, p. 382; Journal of the House of Lords, X, pp. 617, 624; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Seventh Report, Appendix, p. 66; P.R.O. H.C.A.24/108/51, 265. For a full discussion of the personnel of this group, see Brenner, “Commercial Change,” pp. 173–75.

79 For the new merchants' program and its implementation, see Foster, “Introduction,” Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India Company, 1644–9; Foster, “Madagascar;” Famell, J. E., “The Navigation Act of 1651, the First Dutch War, and the London Merchant Community,” Economic History Review, XVI (1964), 444.Google Scholar

80 Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India Company, 1644–9, xv, xvi, xix, 218, 227, 342, 377–378; Brenner, “Commercial Change,” pp. 178–83.

81 P.R.O. C.O.77/7/6, 7, 8; Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India Company 1650–4, p. 49.

82 A full account of merchant politics in Civil War London, on which these general statements are based, can be found in Brenner, “Commercial Change,” chs. vi–ix.

83 See James Famell's important article on “The Navigation Act, the First Dutch War, and the London Merchant Community.” In my view, a precise evaluation of the new merchants' role and influence on commercial policy requires a more exact specification than Prof. Famell has given of the new merchants' position within the overall structure of power. As Prof. Farnell is aware, the colonial merchants were an important, but far from dominant element in the politics of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate.