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The Revolutionary Transformation of American Merchant Networks: Carter and Wadsworth and Their World, 1775–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2016

TOM CUTTERHAM
TOM CUTTERHAM*
Affiliation:
Tom Cutterham is the Sir Christopher Cox Junior Fellow at New College, Oxford, until September 2016. The author is grateful for the support of the Rothermere American Institute and to the librarians and archivists of the Connecticut Historical Society. E-mail: tom.cutterham@new.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

American merchant networks facilitated, and were in turn transformed by, the War for Independence. They also played a crucial role in the establishment of financial and political institutions in the new republic. John Carter (a.k.a. John Barker Church) and Jeremiah Wadsworth were among the foremost merchants and financiers of the Revolutionary era. This article follows their careers from the beginning of their wartime activities through to the end of the Federalist Era in 1800. It explains how they created and manipulated networks of supply and credit, and how they invested the proceeds of their success in the years after the war. Through this case study, the article demonstrates how wartime requirements reshaped merchant networks, not simply by increasing risk and encouraging retrenchment, but by creating influxes of credit and pressures for expansion. It argues that war led to increased inequality among merchants in terms of wealth and credit. Furthermore, this increased inequality impacted the nature of postwar finance and commerce. It shaped the economic and political structures of the new republic, in part through the agency of successful merchants like Carter and Wadsworth.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 1 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2016. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. 

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References

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Clark, Gregory, “The Political Foundations of Modern Economic Growth: England, 1540–1800.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 26, no. 4 (Spring 1996): 563–588.Google Scholar
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Hancock, David. “The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scots’ Early Modern Madeira Trade.” Business History Review 79, no. 3 (October 2005): 467–491.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi. “Banks, Kinship, and Economic Development: The New England Case.” Journal of Economic History 46, no. 3 (Sept. 1986): 647–667.Google Scholar
Marzagalli, Silvia. “Establishing Transatlantic Networks in Time of War: Bordeaux and the United States, 1783–1815.” Business History Review 79, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 811–844.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mathias, Peter. “Risk, Credit and Kinship in Early Modern Enterprise.” In Early Modern Atlantic Economy, edited by McCusker, John and Morgan, Kenneth, pp. 15–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Matson, Cathy. “Public Vices, Private Benefit: William Duer and His Circle, 1776–1792.” In New York and the Rise of American Capitalism, edited by Wright, Conrad and Pencak, William, pp. 72–133. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1988.Google Scholar
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Neal, Larry. “How It All Began: The Monetary and Financial Architecture of Europe during the First Global Capital Markets, 1648–1815.” Financial History Review 7, no. 2 (October 2000: 117–140.Google Scholar
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