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Networking with a Network: The Liverpool African Committee 1750–1810

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2017

JOHN HAGGERTY  and
SHERYLLYNNE HAGGERTY
JOHN HAGGERTY
Affiliation:
John Haggerty is Senior Lecturer in Computing at Nottingham Trent University. He is currently developing new interdisciplinary methodologies for the study of actor networks. School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, Erasmus Darwin Building, Clifton Campus, Nottingham, NG11 8NS. E-mail: john.haggerty@ntu.ac.uk
SHERYLLYNNE HAGGERTY
Affiliation:
Sheryllynne Haggerty is Reader in Economic and Business History at the University of Nottingham and has published widely on eighteenth-century trade networks. Department of History, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD. E-mail: sheryllynne.haggerty@nottingham.ac.uk
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Abstract

Historians are increasingly using networks as an analytical framework. However, recent research has stressed the inherent problems with networks, including networking institutions. Historians therefore have to consider why and in what ways actors do, or did, engage with networks. This article posits a novel interdisciplinary methodology by bringing together regression analysis, visual analytics, and history to analyze actors’ relationships with an institution rather than with one another. This methodology, illustrated by the case study of the Liverpool African Committee, from 1750 to 1810, demonstrates that actors’ relationships with an institution may be affective or instrumental, reflecting different relationships with and uses of the network. Moreover, actors’ relationships with an institution are not static and change over time. The methodology and case study presented in this article suggest a reassessment of the understanding of metropolitan business networking institutions to reflect the complexity of their use.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 566 - 590
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2017. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. 

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References

Bibliography of Works Cited

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Davies, K. G. The Royal African Company. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1957.Google Scholar
Haggerty, Sheryllynne. Merely for Money? Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750-1815. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
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Beerbühl, Margrit Schulte. “The Commercial Culture of Spiritual Kinship amongst German Immigrant Merchants in London, c. 1750–1830.” In Commerce and Culture: Nineteenth-Century Business Elites, edited by Lee, Robert, 225–254. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011.Google Scholar
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Clemens, Paul G. E. “The Rise of Liverpool, 1665–1750.” Economic History Review 29, no. 2 (May 1976): 211–225.Google Scholar
Crumplin, Tim E. “Opaque Networks: Business and Community in the Isle of Man, 1840–1900.” Business History 49, no. 6 (Nov 2007): 780–801.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drescher, Seymour. “Whose Abolition? Popular Pressure and the Ending of the British Slave Trade.” Past and Present 143 (1994): 133–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eltis, David. “The Traffic in Slaves Between the British West-Indian Colonies, 1807–1833.” Economic History Review 25, no. 1 (February 1972): 55–64.Google Scholar
Forrestier, Albane. “Risk, Kinship and Personal Relationships in Late Eighteenth-Century West Indian Trade: The Commercial Network of Tobin & Pinney.” Business History 52, no. 6 (2010): 912–931.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Haggerty, John, and Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “Visual Analytics of an Eighteenth-Century Business Network.” Enterprise and Society 11, no. 1 (2010): 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, David. “The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scots’ Early-Modern Madeira Trade.” Special issue, “Networks in the Trade in Alcohol.” Business History Review 79 (Autumn 2005): 467–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyde, F. E., Parkinson, B. B., and Marriner, S.. “The Port of Liverpool and the Crisis of 1793.” Economica, n.s., 18, no. 72 (1951): 363–378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Kim, Young-Choon, and Rhee, Moowen. “The Contingency Effect of Social Networks on Organizational Commitment: A Comparison of Instruments and Expressive Ties in a Multinational High-Technology Company.” Sociological Perspectives 53, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 479–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latapy, M., Magnien, C., and Del Vecchio, N.. “Basic Notions for the Analysis of Large Two Mode Networks.” Social Networks 30, no. 1 (2008): 31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawler, Edward J., Yoon, Jeongkoo, and Thye, Shane R.. “Social Exchange and Micro Social Order.” American Sociological Review 73 (August 2008): 519–542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leunig, Tim, Minns, Chris, and Wallis, Patrick. “Networks in the Premodern Economy: The Market for London Apprenticeships, 1600–1749.” Journal of Economic History 71, no. 2 (2011): 413–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longmore, Jane. “Civic Liverpool: 1660–1800.” In Liverpool 1800: Culture, Character and History, edited by Belchem, John, 113–168. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Mathias, Peter, “Risk, Credit and Kinship in early Modern Enterprise.” In The Early-Modern Atlantic Economy, edited by McCusker, John J. and Morgan, Kenneth, 15–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Nenadic, Stana. “The Small Family Firm in Victorian Britain.” Business History 35, no. 4 (1993): 86–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, M.E.J. “Scientific Collaboration Networks. II. Shortest Paths, Weighted Networks, and Centrality.” Physical Review E 64, no. 016132 (2001): 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogilvie, Sheilagh. “Guilds, Efficiency, and Social Capital: Evidence from German Proto-Industry.” Economic History Review 57, no. 2 (2004): 286–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popp, Andrew. “Building the Market: John Shaw of Wolverhampton and Commercial Travelling in Early Nineteenth-Century England.” Business History 49, no. 3 (May 2007): 321–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Jacob M. “Economic Function and the Growth of American Port Towns in the Eighteenth Century.” Perspectives in American History 8 (1974): 123–186.Google Scholar
Prior, Ann, and Kirby, Maurice. “The Society of Friends and the Family Firm, 1700–1830.” Business History 35, no. 4 (1993): 66–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, David. “Profits in the Liverpool Slave Trade: The Accounts of William Davenport, 1757–1784.” In Liverpool: The African Slave Trade, and Abolition, edited by Anstey, R. and Hair, P. E., 60–90. Liverpool: Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1976.Google Scholar
Richardson, David. “West African Consumption Patterns and Their Influence on the Eighteenth-Century English Slave Trade.” In The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, edited by Gemery, Henry A. and Hogendorn, Jan S., 303–330. New York: Academic Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Rose, Mary B. “The Family Firm in British Business, 1780–1914.” In Business Enterprise in Modern Britain from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century, edited by Kirby, Maurice W. and Rose, Mary B., 61–87. London: Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Rosenband, L. N. “Social Capital in the Early Industrial Revolution.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 3 (1999): 435–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanderson, F. E. “The Liverpool Delegates and Sir William Dolben’s Bill.” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 124 (1972): 57–84.Google Scholar
Tibbles, Anthony. “‘Oil Not Slaves’: Liverpool and West Africa after 1807.” In Transatlantic Slavery: Against Human Dignity, edited by Tibbles, Anthony, 73–77. Liverpool: National Museums Liverpool, 1994.Google Scholar
Williams, Eric. “The British West Indian Slave Trade after Its Abolition in 1807.” Journal of Negro History 27, no. 2 (1942): 175–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Arline. “The Cultural Identity of Liverpool, 1790–1850: The Early Learned Societies.” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 147 (1998): 55–80.Google Scholar
Committee Book of the African Company of Merchants Trading from Liverpool, 1750–1820, Liverpool Record Office, Liverpool, UK.Google Scholar
Eltis, David, and Halbert, Martin, eds. The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. www.slavevoyages.org.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montefiore, Joshua. The Trader’s and Manufacturer’s Compendium; Containing the Laws, Customs and Regulations, Relative to Trade, Intended for the Use of Wholesale and Retail Dealers, 2 vols. London: Printed for the Author, 1804.Google Scholar
Morgan, Kenneth, ed. The Bright–Meyler Papers: A Bristol West India Connection, 1732–1837. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2007.Google Scholar
Ascott, Diana E., Lewis, Fiona, and Power, Michael. Liverpool 1660–1750: People, Prosperity and Power. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Bennett, Robert J. The Voice of Liverpool Business: The First Chamber of Commerce and Atlantic Economy, 1774–c.1796. Liverpool: Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, 2010.Google Scholar
Borsay, Peter. The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town 1660–1770. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Checkland, Sydney G. The Gladstones: A Family Biography, 1764–1851. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Davies, K. G. The Royal African Company. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1957.Google Scholar
Haggerty, Sheryllynne. Merely for Money? Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750-1815. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Lin, Nan. Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action. Port Chester, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Major, Andrea. Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772–1843. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sako, Mari. Prices, Quality and Trust: Inter-Firm Relations in Britain and Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldassarri, Delia, and Diani, Marion. “The Integrative Power of Civic Networks.” American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 3 (Nov 2007): 735–780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beerbühl, Margrit Schulte. “The Commercial Culture of Spiritual Kinship amongst German Immigrant Merchants in London, c. 1750–1830.” In Commerce and Culture: Nineteenth-Century Business Elites, edited by Lee, Robert, 225–254. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011.Google Scholar
Buchnea, Emily. “Transatlantic Transformation: Visualising Change Over Time in the Liverpool–New York Trade Network, 1762–1833.” Enterprise and Society 15, no. 4 (2014): 687–721.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Karen E., and Barratt, A. Lee. “Name Generators in Surveys of Personal Networks.” Social Networks 13 (1991): 203–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casson, Mark C. “An Economic Approach to Regional Business Networks.” In Industrial Clusters and Regional Business Networks in England 1750–1970, edited by Wilson, John F. and Popp, Andrew, 19–43. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003.Google Scholar
Clemens, Paul G. E. “The Rise of Liverpool, 1665–1750.” Economic History Review 29, no. 2 (May 1976): 211–225.Google Scholar
Crumplin, Tim E. “Opaque Networks: Business and Community in the Isle of Man, 1840–1900.” Business History 49, no. 6 (Nov 2007): 780–801.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drescher, Seymour. “Whose Abolition? Popular Pressure and the Ending of the British Slave Trade.” Past and Present 143 (1994): 133–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eltis, David. “The Traffic in Slaves Between the British West-Indian Colonies, 1807–1833.” Economic History Review 25, no. 1 (February 1972): 55–64.Google Scholar
Forrestier, Albane. “Risk, Kinship and Personal Relationships in Late Eighteenth-Century West Indian Trade: The Commercial Network of Tobin & Pinney.” Business History 52, no. 6 (2010): 912–931.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goddard, Richard. “Medieval Business Networks: St. Mary’s Guild and the Borough Court in Later Medieval Nottingham.” Urban History 40, no. 1 (Feb 2013): 3–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “Liverpool, the Slave Trade and the British Atlantic Empire.” In The Empire in One City? Liverpool’s Inconvenient Imperial Past, edited by Haggerty, Sheryllynne, Webster, Anthony, and White, Nicholas J.. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Haggerty, John, and Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “The Life Cycle of a Metropolitan Business Network: Liverpool 1750–1810.” Explorations in Economic History 48, no. 2 (2011): 189–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haggerty, John, and Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “Temporal Social Network Analysis for Historians: A Case Study.” In Proceedings of the International Conference on Imaging Theory and Applications and International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications, vol. 1: IVAPP, (VISIGRAPP 2011), 207–217.Google Scholar
Haggerty, John, and Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “Visual Analytics of an Eighteenth-Century Business Network.” Enterprise and Society 11, no. 1 (2010): 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, David. “The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scots’ Early-Modern Madeira Trade.” Special issue, “Networks in the Trade in Alcohol.” Business History Review 79 (Autumn 2005): 467–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyde, F. E., Parkinson, B. B., and Marriner, S.. “The Port of Liverpool and the Crisis of 1793.” Economica, n.s., 18, no. 72 (1951): 363–378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, S. R. H, and Ville, Simon P.. “Efficient Transactors or Rent-Seeking Monopolists? The Rationale for Early Chartered Trading Companies.” Journal of Economic History 56, no. 4 (December 1996): 898–915.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Young-Choon, and Rhee, Moowen. “The Contingency Effect of Social Networks on Organizational Commitment: A Comparison of Instruments and Expressive Ties in a Multinational High-Technology Company.” Sociological Perspectives 53, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 479–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latapy, M., Magnien, C., and Del Vecchio, N.. “Basic Notions for the Analysis of Large Two Mode Networks.” Social Networks 30, no. 1 (2008): 31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawler, Edward J., Yoon, Jeongkoo, and Thye, Shane R.. “Social Exchange and Micro Social Order.” American Sociological Review 73 (August 2008): 519–542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leunig, Tim, Minns, Chris, and Wallis, Patrick. “Networks in the Premodern Economy: The Market for London Apprenticeships, 1600–1749.” Journal of Economic History 71, no. 2 (2011): 413–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longmore, Jane. “Civic Liverpool: 1660–1800.” In Liverpool 1800: Culture, Character and History, edited by Belchem, John, 113–168. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Mathias, Peter, “Risk, Credit and Kinship in early Modern Enterprise.” In The Early-Modern Atlantic Economy, edited by McCusker, John J. and Morgan, Kenneth, 15–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Nenadic, Stana. “The Small Family Firm in Victorian Britain.” Business History 35, no. 4 (1993): 86–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, M.E.J. “Scientific Collaboration Networks. II. Shortest Paths, Weighted Networks, and Centrality.” Physical Review E 64, no. 016132 (2001): 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogilvie, Sheilagh. “Guilds, Efficiency, and Social Capital: Evidence from German Proto-Industry.” Economic History Review 57, no. 2 (2004): 286–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popp, Andrew. “Building the Market: John Shaw of Wolverhampton and Commercial Travelling in Early Nineteenth-Century England.” Business History 49, no. 3 (May 2007): 321–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Jacob M. “Economic Function and the Growth of American Port Towns in the Eighteenth Century.” Perspectives in American History 8 (1974): 123–186.Google Scholar
Prior, Ann, and Kirby, Maurice. “The Society of Friends and the Family Firm, 1700–1830.” Business History 35, no. 4 (1993): 66–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, David. “Profits in the Liverpool Slave Trade: The Accounts of William Davenport, 1757–1784.” In Liverpool: The African Slave Trade, and Abolition, edited by Anstey, R. and Hair, P. E., 60–90. Liverpool: Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1976.Google Scholar
Richardson, David. “West African Consumption Patterns and Their Influence on the Eighteenth-Century English Slave Trade.” In The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, edited by Gemery, Henry A. and Hogendorn, Jan S., 303–330. New York: Academic Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Rose, Mary B. “The Family Firm in British Business, 1780–1914.” In Business Enterprise in Modern Britain from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century, edited by Kirby, Maurice W. and Rose, Mary B., 61–87. London: Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Rosenband, L. N. “Social Capital in the Early Industrial Revolution.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 3 (1999): 435–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanderson, F. E. “The Liverpool Delegates and Sir William Dolben’s Bill.” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 124 (1972): 57–84.Google Scholar
Tibbles, Anthony. “‘Oil Not Slaves’: Liverpool and West Africa after 1807.” In Transatlantic Slavery: Against Human Dignity, edited by Tibbles, Anthony, 73–77. Liverpool: National Museums Liverpool, 1994.Google Scholar
Williams, Eric. “The British West Indian Slave Trade after Its Abolition in 1807.” Journal of Negro History 27, no. 2 (1942): 175–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Arline. “The Cultural Identity of Liverpool, 1790–1850: The Early Learned Societies.” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 147 (1998): 55–80.Google Scholar
Committee Book of the African Company of Merchants Trading from Liverpool, 1750–1820, Liverpool Record Office, Liverpool, UK.Google Scholar
Eltis, David, and Halbert, Martin, eds. The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. www.slavevoyages.org.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montefiore, Joshua. The Trader’s and Manufacturer’s Compendium; Containing the Laws, Customs and Regulations, Relative to Trade, Intended for the Use of Wholesale and Retail Dealers, 2 vols. London: Printed for the Author, 1804.Google Scholar
Morgan, Kenneth, ed. The Bright–Meyler Papers: A Bristol West India Connection, 1732–1837. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2007.Google Scholar