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A Historical Social Network Analysis of John Pinney’s Nevis–Bristol Network: Change over Time, the “Network Memory,” and Reading Against the Grain of Historical Sources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2022

Peter Buckles
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Abstract

Social network analysis is an increasingly common tool for historians seeking to understand the interrelations between individuals. A significant concern, however, is how we might measure changes within networks over time and between periods. Historians have favored examining the network as it stands at particular points in time. However, this approach fails to capture the instability within networks and does not incorporate the perceptions of contemporaries. One solution is to integrate network data into a time series that is built around conceptualizations of the “network memory.” In a case study on John Pinney’s late eighteenth-century Nevis–Bristol network, I use a two-year moving total to model the lingering nature of ephemeral interactions on the memories of those involved in the plantation trade. Using this historical social network analysis as the basis for an iterative approach to the primary material, I explore what being a part of this network meant for the enslaved people on Pinney’s plantation and for the women in his family. This article demonstrates the value of the approach and highlights the ways in which historians can use it to contribute to the historiography of early modern business networks.

Keywords

18th centurynetworksmerchantsslaverywomen
Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 2023 , pp. 891 - 922
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. 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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Haggerty, John, and Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “Visual Analytics of an Eighteenth-Century Business Network.” Enterprise & Society 11, no. 1 (2010): 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “‘Ports, Petticoats, and Power?’ Women and Work in Early-National Philadelphia.” In Women in Port: Gendering Communities, Economies, and Social Networks in Atlantic Post Cities, 1500–1800, edited by Catterall, Douglas and Campbell, Jodi, 103–126. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, David. “The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scots’ Early-Modern Madeira Trade.” Business History Review 79, no. 3 (2005): 467–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Sophie, and Talbott, Siobhan. “Sole Traders? The Role of the Extended Family in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Business Networks.” Enterprise & Society, May 10, 2021, 1–30, FirstView. doi:10.1017/eso.2021.15.Google Scholar
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McWatters, Cheryl S., and Lemarchand, Yannick. “Merchant Networks and Accounting Discourse: The Role of Accounting Transactions in Network Relations.” Accounting History Review 23, no. 1 (2013): 49–83.Google Scholar
Medici, Catherine. “Using Network Analysis to Understand Early Modern Women.” Early Modern Women 13, no. 1 (2018): 153–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrissey, Robert Michael. “Archives of Connection: ‘Whole Network’ Analysis and Social History.” Historical Methods 48, no. 2 (2015): 67–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, Robin, and Richardson, David. “Business Networking in the Industrial Revolution.” Economic History Review 54, no. 4 (2001): 657–679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radburn, Nicholas, and Roberts, Justin. “Gold versus Life: Jobbing Gangs and British Caribbean Slavery.” William and Mary Quarterly 76, no. 2 (2019): 223–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenthal, Naomi, Fingrutd, Meryl, Ethier, Michele, Karant, Roberta, and McDonald, David. “Social Movements and Network Analysis: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Reform in New York State.” American Journal of Sociology 90, no. 5 (1985): 1022–1054.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Edmond. “The Global Interests of London’s Commercial Community, 1599–1625: Investment in the East India Company.” Economic History Review 71, no. 4 (2018): 1118–1146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Edmond. “The Social Networks of Investment in Early Modern England.” Historical Journal 64, no. 4 (2021): 919–939.Google Scholar
Talbott, Siobhan. Review of “Merely for Money”? Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750–1815, by Sheryllynne Haggerty. Business History 56, no. 5 (2014): 853–855.Google Scholar
Walsh, Claire. “Shops, Shopping, and the Art of Decision Making in Eighteenth-Century England.” In Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700–1830, edited by Styles, John and Vickery, Amanda, 151–177. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Wetherell, Charles. “Historical Social Network Analysis.” International Review of Social History 43, (1998): 125–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zabin, Serena R. “Women’s Trading Networks and Dangerous Economies in Eighteenth-Century New York City.” Early American Studies 4, no. 2 (2006): 291–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zacek, Natalie. “Between Lady and Slave: White Working Women in Eighteenth-Century Leeward Islands.” In Women in Port: Gendering Communities, Economies, and Social Networks in Atlantic Post Cities, 1500–1800, edited by Catterall, Douglas and Campbell, Jodi, 127–150. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2012.Google Scholar
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Gephi (website). Accessed March 24, 2021. https://gephi.org/.Google Scholar
Kenny, Stephen C. “Slavery, Health, and Medicine.” Oxford Bibliographies. Atlantic History. Last modified January 15, 2015. Accessed August 25, 2021. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0256.xml.Google Scholar
University of Bristol Special Collections, Bristol, UK.Google Scholar
Broadberry, Stephen, Bruce, M. S. Campbell, Klein, Alexander, Overton, Mark, and van Leeuwen, Bas. British Economic Growth: 1270–1870. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Burnard, Trevor, and Garrigus, John. The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint-Domingue and British Jamaica. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deane, Phyllis, and Cole, W. A.. British Economic Growth: 1688–1959. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Dunn, Richard S. A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finley, Alexandra J. An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haggerty, Sheryllynne. The British-Atlantic Trading Community, 1760–1810: Men, Women, and the Distribution of Goods. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haggerty, Sheryllynne . “ Merely for Money”? Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750–1815. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Hartigan-O’Connor, Ellen. The Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Deuff, Olivier. Digital Humanities: History and Development. London: ISTE and Wiley, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCusker, John J. Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic World. London: Taylor & Francis, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mulcahy, Matthew. Hubs of Empire: The Southeastern Lowcountry and British Caribbean. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pares, Richard. A West-India Fortune. Bristol, UK: Longmans, Green & Co., 1950.Google Scholar
Ragatz, Lowell Joseph. The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1763–1833. New York: Octagon Books, 1971.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Caitlin. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryden, David Beck. West Indian Slavery and British Abolition, 1783–1807. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Scott, John. Social Network Analysis. 4th ed. London: Sage, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, S. D. Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles, 1648–1834. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walvin, James. The Quakers: Money and Morals. London: John Murray, 1997.Google Scholar
Wasserman, Stanley, and Faust, Katherine. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zahedieh, Nuala. The Capital and the Colonies: London and the Atlantic Economy, 1660–1700. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Buchnea, Emily. “Transatlantic Transformations: Visualizing Change over Time in the Liverpool–New York Trade Network, 1763–1833.” Enterprise & Society 15, no. 4 (2014): 687–721.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chick, Joe. “Urban Oligarchy and Dissolutioned Voters: The End of Monastic Rule in Reading, 1350–1600.” Cultural and Social History 16, no. 4 (2019): 387–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crafts, N. F. R. “English Economic Growth in the Eighteenth Century: A Re-examination of Deane and Cole’s Estimates.” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 29, no. 2 (1976): 226–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davison, Kate. “Early Modern Social Networks: Antecedents, Opportunities, and Challenges.” American Historical Review 124, no. 2 (2019): 456–482.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deng, Yunsheng, and Zhang, Jihui. “Memory-Based Prisoner’s Dilemma Game with History Optimal Strategy Learning Promotes Cooperation on Interdependent Networks.” Applied Mathematics and Computation 390 (February 2021): 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duguid, Paul. “Networks and Knowledge: The Beginning and End of the Port Commodity Chain, 1703–1860.” Business History Review 79, no. 3 (2005): 493–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flynn, David T. “The Duration of Book Credit in Colonial New England.” Historical Methods 38, no. 4 (2005): 168–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forestier, Albane. “Commercial Organisation in the Late Eighteenth Century Atlantic World: A Comparative Analysis of the British and French West Indian Trades.” Doctoral thesis, London School of Economics, 2009.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 (2010): 912–931.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gervais, Pierre. “Mercantile Credit and Trading Rings in the Eighteenth Century.” Annals. History, Social Sciences: English Edition 67, no. 4 (2012): 693–730.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark S. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (1973): 1360–1380.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark S. “The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited.” Sociological Theory 1 (1983): 201–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haggerty, John, and Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “Avoiding ‘Musty Mutton Chops’: The Network Narrative of an American Merchant in London, 1771–1774.” Essays in Economic & Business History 37 (2019): 1–42.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. “Networking with a Network: The Liverpool African Committee, 1750–1810.” Enterprise & Society 18, no. 3 (2017): 566–590.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haggerty, John, and Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “Visual Analytics of an Eighteenth-Century Business Network.” Enterprise & Society 11, no. 1 (2010): 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “‘Ports, Petticoats, and Power?’ Women and Work in Early-National Philadelphia.” In Women in Port: Gendering Communities, Economies, and Social Networks in Atlantic Post Cities, 1500–1800, edited by Catterall, Douglas and Campbell, Jodi, 103–126. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, David. “The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scots’ Early-Modern Madeira Trade.” Business History Review 79, no. 3 (2005): 467–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Sophie, and Talbott, Siobhan. “Sole Traders? The Role of the Extended Family in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Business Networks.” Enterprise & Society, May 10, 2021, 1–30, FirstView. doi:10.1017/eso.2021.15.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, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
McWatters, Cheryl S., and Lemarchand, Yannick. “Merchant Networks and Accounting Discourse: The Role of Accounting Transactions in Network Relations.” Accounting History Review 23, no. 1 (2013): 49–83.Google Scholar
Medici, Catherine. “Using Network Analysis to Understand Early Modern Women.” Early Modern Women 13, no. 1 (2018): 153–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrissey, Robert Michael. “Archives of Connection: ‘Whole Network’ Analysis and Social History.” Historical Methods 48, no. 2 (2015): 67–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, Robin, and Richardson, David. “Business Networking in the Industrial Revolution.” Economic History Review 54, no. 4 (2001): 657–679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radburn, Nicholas, and Roberts, Justin. “Gold versus Life: Jobbing Gangs and British Caribbean Slavery.” William and Mary Quarterly 76, no. 2 (2019): 223–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenthal, Naomi, Fingrutd, Meryl, Ethier, Michele, Karant, Roberta, and McDonald, David. “Social Movements and Network Analysis: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Reform in New York State.” American Journal of Sociology 90, no. 5 (1985): 1022–1054.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Edmond. “The Global Interests of London’s Commercial Community, 1599–1625: Investment in the East India Company.” Economic History Review 71, no. 4 (2018): 1118–1146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Edmond. “The Social Networks of Investment in Early Modern England.” Historical Journal 64, no. 4 (2021): 919–939.Google Scholar
Talbott, Siobhan. Review of “Merely for Money”? Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750–1815, by Sheryllynne Haggerty. Business History 56, no. 5 (2014): 853–855.Google Scholar
Walsh, Claire. “Shops, Shopping, and the Art of Decision Making in Eighteenth-Century England.” In Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700–1830, edited by Styles, John and Vickery, Amanda, 151–177. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Wetherell, Charles. “Historical Social Network Analysis.” International Review of Social History 43, (1998): 125–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zabin, Serena R. “Women’s Trading Networks and Dangerous Economies in Eighteenth-Century New York City.” Early American Studies 4, no. 2 (2006): 291–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zacek, Natalie. “Between Lady and Slave: White Working Women in Eighteenth-Century Leeward Islands.” In Women in Port: Gendering Communities, Economies, and Social Networks in Atlantic Post Cities, 1500–1800, edited by Catterall, Douglas and Campbell, Jodi, 127–150. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2012.Google Scholar
Eickelmann, Christine. “The Mountravers Plantation Community, 1734–1834.” Mountravers Plantation (Pinney’s Estate) Nevis, West Indies. Last modified January 4, 2020. Accessed April 1, 2021. https://seis.bristol.ac.uk/~emceee/mountraversplantationcommunity.html.Google Scholar
Gephi (website). Accessed March 24, 2021. https://gephi.org/.Google Scholar
Kenny, Stephen C. “Slavery, Health, and Medicine.” Oxford Bibliographies. Atlantic History. Last modified January 15, 2015. Accessed August 25, 2021. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0256.xml.Google Scholar
University of Bristol Special Collections, Bristol, UK.Google Scholar