Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T10:08:11.727Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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*
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

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
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2016. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Bannerman, Gordon. Merchants and the Military in Eighteenth-Century Britain: British Army Contracts and Domestic Supply, 1739–1763. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2008.Google Scholar
Beerbühl, Magrit Schulte, and Vögele, Jörg, eds. Spinning the Commercial Web: International Trade, Merchants, and Commercial Cities, c. 1640–1939. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004 Google Scholar
Bodenhorn, Howard. State Banking in Early America: A New Economic History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Bouton, Terry. Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.Google Scholar
Buel, Richard. Dear Liberty: Connecticut’s Mobilization for the Revolutionary War. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Buel, Richard. In Irons: Britain’s Naval Supremacy and the American Revolutionary Economy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Burnett, Edmund C., ed. Letters of the Members of the Continental Congress. 8 vols. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1921–1936.Google Scholar
Carp, E. Wayne. To Starve the Army At Pleasure: Continental Army Administration and American Political Culture, 1775–1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Casson, Mark. Entrepreneurship: Theory, Networks, History. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cleary, Patricia. Elizabeth Murray: A Woman’s Pursuit of Independence in Eighteenth-Century America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Curto, Diogo Ramada, and Molho, Anthony, eds. Commercial Networks in the Early Modern World. Florence, Italy: European University Institute, 2002.Google Scholar
Davis, Lance, and North, Douglas. Institutional Change and American Economic Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.Google Scholar
East, Robert A. Business Enterprise in the American Revolutionary Era. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938.Google Scholar
Edling, Max. A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Ferguson, E. James. Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776–1790. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Freeman, Joanne B., ed. Alexander Hamilton: Writings. New York: Library of America, 2001.Google Scholar
Gestrich, Andreas, and Beerbühl, Margrit Schulte, eds. Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society, 1660–1914. London: German Historical Institute, 2011.Google Scholar
Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “Merely for Money?”: Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750–1815. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Harrington, Virginia. The New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1935.Google Scholar
Hartigan-O’Connor, Ellen. Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Humphreys, Mary. Catherine Schuyler. New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1910.Google Scholar
Irwin, Douglas, and Sylla, Richard, eds. Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Johnson, Victor Leroy. “The Administration of the American Commissariat During the Revolutionary War.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1941.Google Scholar
Jones, Robert F. “King of the Alley”: William Duer, Politician, Entrepreneur, and Speculator, 1768–1799. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi. Insider Lending: Banks, Personal Connections, and Economic Development in Industrial New England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, Bruce. Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Martin, Margaret Elizabeth. “Merchants and Trade of the Connecticut River Valley, 1750–1820.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1942.Google Scholar
Marshall, P. J. Remaking the British Atlantic: The United States and the British Empire after American Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Matson, Cathy. Merchants and Empire: Trading in Colonial New York. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Morris, Gouverneur. A Diary of the French Revolution. 2 vols. Edited by Davenport, Beatrix Cary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1939.Google Scholar
Muldrew, Craig. The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Brian Phillips. Building the Empire State: Political Economy in the Early Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Nevins, Allan. History of the Bank of New York and Trust Company, 1784–1934. New York: privately printed, 1934.Google Scholar
Nuxoll, Elizabeth M., and Gallagher, Mary A., eds. The Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784. Vol. 9, January 1 to October 30, 1784. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Onuf, Peter, and Matson, Cathy. A Union of Interests: Political and Economic Thought in Revolutionary America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990.Google Scholar
Paige, Alonzo C. Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of Chancery of the State of New York. Vol. 1. New York: Gould, Banks, 1830.Google Scholar
Platt, John D. R. “Jeremiah Wadsworth: Federalist Entrepreneur.” PhD diss., Columbia, 1955.Google Scholar
Popp, Andrew. Entrepreneurial Families: Business, Marriage, and Life in the Early Nineteenth Century. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012.Google Scholar
Price, Jacob. Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: The View from the Chesapeake, 1700–1776. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Rauch, James, and Casella, Alessandra. Networks and Markets. New York: Russell Sage, 2001.Google Scholar
Schocket, Andrew. Founding Corporate Power in Early National Philadelphia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Shankman, Andy. Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.Google Scholar
Sketch of the Life of the Hon . Philip Church. Pottsville, PA., 1875.Google Scholar
Smith, Paul H., ed. Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789. 24 vols. Washington, DC: Library of Congress: Washington, 1976–2000.Google Scholar
Smith, Ryan K. Robert Morris’ Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Storrs, Christopher, ed. The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Essays in Honour of P. G. M. Dickson. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.Google Scholar
Syrett, Harold C., ed. Papers of Alexander Hamilton. 27 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–1987.Google Scholar
Ver Steeg, Clarence Lester. Robert Morris: Revolutionary Financier. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952.Google Scholar
Wright, Robert E. Origins of Commercial Banking in America, 1750–1800. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.Google Scholar
Wright, Robert E. Corporation Nation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Wright, Robert E. Wealth of Nations Rediscovered: Integration and Expansion in American Financial Markets, 1780–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Casson, Mark. “Networks in Economic and Business History: A Theoretical Perspective.” In Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society, 1660–1914, edited by Gestrich, Andreas and Beerbühl, Margrit Schulte, pp. 1749. London: German Historical Institute, 2011.Google Scholar
Chew, Richard S. “Certain Victims of an International Contagion: The Panic of 1797 and the Hard Times of the Late 1790s in Baltimore.” Journal of the Early Republic 25, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 565613.Google Scholar
Clark, Gregory, “The Political Foundations of Modern Economic Growth: England, 1540–1800.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 26, no. 4 (Spring 1996): 563588.Google Scholar
Ditz, Toby. “Secret Selves, Credible Personas: The Problematics of Trust and Public Display in the Writing of Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia Merchants.” In Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, edited by St. George, Robert Blair, pp. 219242. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
DuPlessis, Robert. “Conclusion: Reorienting Early Modern Economic History: Merchant Economy, Merchant Capitalism and the Age of Commerce.” In Merchants and Profit in the Age of Commerce, 1680–1830, edited by Gervais, Pierre, Lemarchand, Yannick, and Margairaz, Dominique, pp. 171180. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014.Google Scholar
Fisher, David R. “Church, John Barker (1748–1818) of Down Place, Berks.” History of Parliament Online, www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/church-john-barker-1748-1818.Google Scholar
Forestier, Albane. “Risk, Kinship and Personal Relationships in Late Eighteenth-Century West Indian Trade: The Commercial Network of Tobin & Pinney.” Business History 52, no. 6 (Oct. 2010): 912931.Google Scholar
Gervais, Pierre. “Mercantile Credit and Trading Rings in the Eighteenth Century.” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 67, no. 4 (2012): 693730.Google Scholar
Gervais, Pierre. “Early Modern Merchant Strategies and the Historicization of Market Practices.” Economic Sociology 15, no. 3 (July 2014): 1929.Google Scholar
Gervais, Pierre. “Facing and Surviving War: Merchant Strategies, Market Management and Transnational Merchant Rings.” In Merchants in Times of Crises (16th to mid-19th Century), edited by Bonoldi, Andrea, Denzel, Markus, Leonardi, Andrea, and Lorandini, Cinzia, pp. 7995. Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2015.Google Scholar
Gervais, Pierre, Lemarchand, Yannick, and Margairaz, Dominique. “Introduction: The Many Scales of Merchant Profit: Accounting for Norms, Practices and Results in the Age of Commerce.” In Merchants and Profit in the Age of Commerce, 1680–1830, edited by Gervais, Pierre, Lemarchand, Yannick, and Margairaz, Dominique, pp. 112. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014.Google Scholar
Greene, Nathanael. “Letters of Nathanael Greene to Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 22, no. 2 (1898): 211216.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 3 (Nov. 1985): 481510.Google Scholar
Hall, Peter Dobkin. “Family Structure and Economic Organization: Massachusetts Merchants 1700–1850.” In Family and Kin in Urban Communities, 1700–1930, edited by Hareven, Tamara K., pp. 3861. New York: New Viewpoints, 1977.Google Scholar
Hancock, David. “The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scots’ Early Modern Madeira Trade.” Business History Review 79, no. 3 (October 2005): 467491.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi. “Banks, Kinship, and Economic Development: The New England Case.” Journal of Economic History 46, no. 3 (Sept. 1986): 647667.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): 811844.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. 1535. 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. 72133. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Matson, Cathy. “Revolution, Constitution, and the New Nation.” In Cambridge Economic History of the United States, edited by Engerman, Stanley and Gallman, Robert, pp. 363402. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
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: 117140.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Patrick Karl. “Global Warfare and Long-Term Economic Development, 1789–1939.” War in History 3, no. 4 (1996): 437450.Google Scholar
Pearson, Robin, and Richardson, David. “Business Networking in the Industrial Revolution.” Economic History Review 54, no. 4 (2001): 657679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rauch, James. “Business and Social Networks in International Trade.” Journal of Economic Literature 39, no. 4 (2001): 11771203.Google Scholar
Renzulli, Linda, Aldrich, Howard, and Moody, James. “Family Matters: Gender, Networks, and Entrepreneurial Outcomes.” Social Forces 79, no. 2 (December 2000): 523546.Google Scholar
Rockoff, Hugh. “Banking and Finance, 1789–1914.” In Cambridge Economic History of the United States, edited by Engerman, Stanley and Gallman, Robert, pp. 643684. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Peter L., and Sylla, Richard. “Emerging Financial Markets and Early U.S. Growth.” Explorations in Economic History 42 (2005): 126.Google Scholar
Smail, John. “Credit, Risk, and Honor in Eighteenth-Century Commerce.” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 3 (July 2005): 439456.Google Scholar
Stobart, Jon. “Personal and Commercial Networks in an English Port: Chester in the Early Eighteenth century.” Journal of Historical Geography 30 (2004): 277293.Google Scholar
Sylla, Richard. “Financial Foundations: Public Credit, the National Bank, and Securities Markets.” In Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s, edited by Irwin, Douglas and Sylla, Richard, pp. 5988. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2011.Google Scholar
Sylla, Richard, Wright, Robert E., and Cowen, David J.. “Alexander Hamilton, Central Banker: Crisis Management during the U.S. Financial Crisis of 1792.” Business History Review 83 (Spring 2009): 6186.Google Scholar
Wang, Ta-Chen. “Banks, Credit Markets, and Early American Development: A Case Study of Entry and Competition.” Journal of Economic History 68, no. 2 (June 2008): 438461.Google Scholar
Wilson, Janet. “The Bank of North America and Pennsylvania Politics, 1781–1787.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 66, no. 1 (January 1942): 328.Google Scholar
Wilson, John F., and Popp, Andrew. “Business Networking in the Industrial Revolution: Some Comments.” Economic History Review 56, no. 2 (2003): 355361.Google Scholar
Wood, Gordon. “Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of the Constitution.” In Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, edited by Beeman, Richard R., Botein, Stephen, and Carter, Edward II, pp. 70110. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Wright, Robert E. “The First Phase of the Empire State’s ‘Triple Transition’: Banks’ Influence on the Market, Democracy, and Federalism in New York, 1776–1838.” Social Science History 21, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 521558.Google Scholar
Zabin, Serena R. “Women’s Trading Networks and Dangerous Economies in Eighteenth-Century New York City.” Early American Studies 4, no. 6 (Fall 2006): 291321.Google Scholar
Aurora General Advertiser , April 14, 1799.Google Scholar
Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertiser , March 29, 1797.Google Scholar
Gazette of the United States , April 16, 1799.Google Scholar
New York Independent Journal , July 2, 1785.Google Scholar
Pennsylvania Gazette , March 30, 1785.Google Scholar
The Day , New London, Ct., July 2, 1976.Google Scholar
Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/ Google Scholar
Wadsworth Papers, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford.Google Scholar
Bannerman, Gordon. Merchants and the Military in Eighteenth-Century Britain: British Army Contracts and Domestic Supply, 1739–1763. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2008.Google Scholar
Beerbühl, Magrit Schulte, and Vögele, Jörg, eds. Spinning the Commercial Web: International Trade, Merchants, and Commercial Cities, c. 1640–1939. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004 Google Scholar
Bodenhorn, Howard. State Banking in Early America: A New Economic History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Bouton, Terry. Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.Google Scholar
Buel, Richard. Dear Liberty: Connecticut’s Mobilization for the Revolutionary War. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Buel, Richard. In Irons: Britain’s Naval Supremacy and the American Revolutionary Economy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Burnett, Edmund C., ed. Letters of the Members of the Continental Congress. 8 vols. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1921–1936.Google Scholar
Carp, E. Wayne. To Starve the Army At Pleasure: Continental Army Administration and American Political Culture, 1775–1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Casson, Mark. Entrepreneurship: Theory, Networks, History. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cleary, Patricia. Elizabeth Murray: A Woman’s Pursuit of Independence in Eighteenth-Century America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Curto, Diogo Ramada, and Molho, Anthony, eds. Commercial Networks in the Early Modern World. Florence, Italy: European University Institute, 2002.Google Scholar
Davis, Lance, and North, Douglas. Institutional Change and American Economic Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.Google Scholar
East, Robert A. Business Enterprise in the American Revolutionary Era. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938.Google Scholar
Edling, Max. A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Ferguson, E. James. Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776–1790. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Freeman, Joanne B., ed. Alexander Hamilton: Writings. New York: Library of America, 2001.Google Scholar
Gestrich, Andreas, and Beerbühl, Margrit Schulte, eds. Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society, 1660–1914. London: German Historical Institute, 2011.Google Scholar
Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “Merely for Money?”: Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750–1815. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Harrington, Virginia. The New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1935.Google Scholar
Hartigan-O’Connor, Ellen. Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Humphreys, Mary. Catherine Schuyler. New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1910.Google Scholar
Irwin, Douglas, and Sylla, Richard, eds. Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Johnson, Victor Leroy. “The Administration of the American Commissariat During the Revolutionary War.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1941.Google Scholar
Jones, Robert F. “King of the Alley”: William Duer, Politician, Entrepreneur, and Speculator, 1768–1799. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi. Insider Lending: Banks, Personal Connections, and Economic Development in Industrial New England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, Bruce. Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Martin, Margaret Elizabeth. “Merchants and Trade of the Connecticut River Valley, 1750–1820.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1942.Google Scholar
Marshall, P. J. Remaking the British Atlantic: The United States and the British Empire after American Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Matson, Cathy. Merchants and Empire: Trading in Colonial New York. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Morris, Gouverneur. A Diary of the French Revolution. 2 vols. Edited by Davenport, Beatrix Cary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1939.Google Scholar
Muldrew, Craig. The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Brian Phillips. Building the Empire State: Political Economy in the Early Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Nevins, Allan. History of the Bank of New York and Trust Company, 1784–1934. New York: privately printed, 1934.Google Scholar
Nuxoll, Elizabeth M., and Gallagher, Mary A., eds. The Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784. Vol. 9, January 1 to October 30, 1784. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Onuf, Peter, and Matson, Cathy. A Union of Interests: Political and Economic Thought in Revolutionary America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990.Google Scholar
Paige, Alonzo C. Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of Chancery of the State of New York. Vol. 1. New York: Gould, Banks, 1830.Google Scholar
Platt, John D. R. “Jeremiah Wadsworth: Federalist Entrepreneur.” PhD diss., Columbia, 1955.Google Scholar
Popp, Andrew. Entrepreneurial Families: Business, Marriage, and Life in the Early Nineteenth Century. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012.Google Scholar
Price, Jacob. Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: The View from the Chesapeake, 1700–1776. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Rauch, James, and Casella, Alessandra. Networks and Markets. New York: Russell Sage, 2001.Google Scholar
Schocket, Andrew. Founding Corporate Power in Early National Philadelphia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Shankman, Andy. Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.Google Scholar
Sketch of the Life of the Hon . Philip Church. Pottsville, PA., 1875.Google Scholar
Smith, Paul H., ed. Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789. 24 vols. Washington, DC: Library of Congress: Washington, 1976–2000.Google Scholar
Smith, Ryan K. Robert Morris’ Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Storrs, Christopher, ed. The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Essays in Honour of P. G. M. Dickson. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.Google Scholar
Syrett, Harold C., ed. Papers of Alexander Hamilton. 27 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–1987.Google Scholar
Ver Steeg, Clarence Lester. Robert Morris: Revolutionary Financier. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952.Google Scholar
Wright, Robert E. Origins of Commercial Banking in America, 1750–1800. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.Google Scholar
Wright, Robert E. Corporation Nation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Wright, Robert E. Wealth of Nations Rediscovered: Integration and Expansion in American Financial Markets, 1780–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Casson, Mark. “Networks in Economic and Business History: A Theoretical Perspective.” In Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society, 1660–1914, edited by Gestrich, Andreas and Beerbühl, Margrit Schulte, pp. 1749. London: German Historical Institute, 2011.Google Scholar
Chew, Richard S. “Certain Victims of an International Contagion: The Panic of 1797 and the Hard Times of the Late 1790s in Baltimore.” Journal of the Early Republic 25, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 565613.Google Scholar
Clark, Gregory, “The Political Foundations of Modern Economic Growth: England, 1540–1800.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 26, no. 4 (Spring 1996): 563588.Google Scholar
Ditz, Toby. “Secret Selves, Credible Personas: The Problematics of Trust and Public Display in the Writing of Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia Merchants.” In Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, edited by St. George, Robert Blair, pp. 219242. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
DuPlessis, Robert. “Conclusion: Reorienting Early Modern Economic History: Merchant Economy, Merchant Capitalism and the Age of Commerce.” In Merchants and Profit in the Age of Commerce, 1680–1830, edited by Gervais, Pierre, Lemarchand, Yannick, and Margairaz, Dominique, pp. 171180. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014.Google Scholar
Fisher, David R. “Church, John Barker (1748–1818) of Down Place, Berks.” History of Parliament Online, www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/church-john-barker-1748-1818.Google Scholar
Forestier, Albane. “Risk, Kinship and Personal Relationships in Late Eighteenth-Century West Indian Trade: The Commercial Network of Tobin & Pinney.” Business History 52, no. 6 (Oct. 2010): 912931.Google Scholar
Gervais, Pierre. “Mercantile Credit and Trading Rings in the Eighteenth Century.” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 67, no. 4 (2012): 693730.Google Scholar
Gervais, Pierre. “Early Modern Merchant Strategies and the Historicization of Market Practices.” Economic Sociology 15, no. 3 (July 2014): 1929.Google Scholar
Gervais, Pierre. “Facing and Surviving War: Merchant Strategies, Market Management and Transnational Merchant Rings.” In Merchants in Times of Crises (16th to mid-19th Century), edited by Bonoldi, Andrea, Denzel, Markus, Leonardi, Andrea, and Lorandini, Cinzia, pp. 7995. Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2015.Google Scholar
Gervais, Pierre, Lemarchand, Yannick, and Margairaz, Dominique. “Introduction: The Many Scales of Merchant Profit: Accounting for Norms, Practices and Results in the Age of Commerce.” In Merchants and Profit in the Age of Commerce, 1680–1830, edited by Gervais, Pierre, Lemarchand, Yannick, and Margairaz, Dominique, pp. 112. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014.Google Scholar
Greene, Nathanael. “Letters of Nathanael Greene to Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 22, no. 2 (1898): 211216.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 3 (Nov. 1985): 481510.Google Scholar
Hall, Peter Dobkin. “Family Structure and Economic Organization: Massachusetts Merchants 1700–1850.” In Family and Kin in Urban Communities, 1700–1930, edited by Hareven, Tamara K., pp. 3861. New York: New Viewpoints, 1977.Google Scholar
Hancock, David. “The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scots’ Early Modern Madeira Trade.” Business History Review 79, no. 3 (October 2005): 467491.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi. “Banks, Kinship, and Economic Development: The New England Case.” Journal of Economic History 46, no. 3 (Sept. 1986): 647667.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): 811844.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. 1535. 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. 72133. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Matson, Cathy. “Revolution, Constitution, and the New Nation.” In Cambridge Economic History of the United States, edited by Engerman, Stanley and Gallman, Robert, pp. 363402. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
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: 117140.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Patrick Karl. “Global Warfare and Long-Term Economic Development, 1789–1939.” War in History 3, no. 4 (1996): 437450.Google Scholar
Pearson, Robin, and Richardson, David. “Business Networking in the Industrial Revolution.” Economic History Review 54, no. 4 (2001): 657679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rauch, James. “Business and Social Networks in International Trade.” Journal of Economic Literature 39, no. 4 (2001): 11771203.Google Scholar
Renzulli, Linda, Aldrich, Howard, and Moody, James. “Family Matters: Gender, Networks, and Entrepreneurial Outcomes.” Social Forces 79, no. 2 (December 2000): 523546.Google Scholar
Rockoff, Hugh. “Banking and Finance, 1789–1914.” In Cambridge Economic History of the United States, edited by Engerman, Stanley and Gallman, Robert, pp. 643684. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Peter L., and Sylla, Richard. “Emerging Financial Markets and Early U.S. Growth.” Explorations in Economic History 42 (2005): 126.Google Scholar
Smail, John. “Credit, Risk, and Honor in Eighteenth-Century Commerce.” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 3 (July 2005): 439456.Google Scholar
Stobart, Jon. “Personal and Commercial Networks in an English Port: Chester in the Early Eighteenth century.” Journal of Historical Geography 30 (2004): 277293.Google Scholar
Sylla, Richard. “Financial Foundations: Public Credit, the National Bank, and Securities Markets.” In Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s, edited by Irwin, Douglas and Sylla, Richard, pp. 5988. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2011.Google Scholar
Sylla, Richard, Wright, Robert E., and Cowen, David J.. “Alexander Hamilton, Central Banker: Crisis Management during the U.S. Financial Crisis of 1792.” Business History Review 83 (Spring 2009): 6186.Google Scholar
Wang, Ta-Chen. “Banks, Credit Markets, and Early American Development: A Case Study of Entry and Competition.” Journal of Economic History 68, no. 2 (June 2008): 438461.Google Scholar
Wilson, Janet. “The Bank of North America and Pennsylvania Politics, 1781–1787.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 66, no. 1 (January 1942): 328.Google Scholar
Wilson, John F., and Popp, Andrew. “Business Networking in the Industrial Revolution: Some Comments.” Economic History Review 56, no. 2 (2003): 355361.Google Scholar
Wood, Gordon. “Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of the Constitution.” In Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, edited by Beeman, Richard R., Botein, Stephen, and Carter, Edward II, pp. 70110. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Wright, Robert E. “The First Phase of the Empire State’s ‘Triple Transition’: Banks’ Influence on the Market, Democracy, and Federalism in New York, 1776–1838.” Social Science History 21, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 521558.Google Scholar
Zabin, Serena R. “Women’s Trading Networks and Dangerous Economies in Eighteenth-Century New York City.” Early American Studies 4, no. 6 (Fall 2006): 291321.Google Scholar
Aurora General Advertiser , April 14, 1799.Google Scholar
Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertiser , March 29, 1797.Google Scholar
Gazette of the United States , April 16, 1799.Google Scholar
New York Independent Journal , July 2, 1785.Google Scholar
Pennsylvania Gazette , March 30, 1785.Google Scholar
The Day , New London, Ct., July 2, 1976.Google Scholar
Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/ Google Scholar
Wadsworth Papers, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford.Google Scholar