Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

MARGRIT SCHULTE BEERBÜHL and KLAUS WEBER
officers). 85 The enormous turnover of capital and its customers’ unreliability
meant that the shipping company ran into crisis. By 1788, the
total sum owed by the planters was 4.72 million livres. In the following
year, a consortium of twelve Bordeaux trading houses—seven of
them led by Germans, prominent among them Johann Jacob
Bethmann—raised 4.15 million livres to prevent the collapse of
Romberg’s firm. But its downfall was accelerated by the slave revolt
on Saint-Domingue, which started in 1791 and ultimately led to the
Haitian Revolution. Further efforts were made, but they only
increased total financial losses. When the final settlement of accounts
was made in 1807, losses amounted to the impressive sum of 34.24
million livres. The company’s bankruptcy had repercussions on im -
portant European financiers, and almost ruined Bethmann, the most
reputable member of the German community in Bordeaux. 86
Johann Jakob Bethmann (1717–92) was established in France as
early as 1740 and, through his marriage to the daughter of the
wealthy Bordeaux shipowner Pierre Desclaux, soon became one of
the city’s major shipping magnates. His marriage into this elite family
also gained him a licence for direct trade with Canada and the
French Caribbean. During the Seven Years War he served the French
navy by supplying the overseas colonies. This proof of loyalty cost
him some of his vessels, but he was rewarded after the war by lucrative
shipping contracts. In the course of his business life, he sent ships
to the colonies on least 53 occasions (mostly with the participation of
other shareholders), and he commissioned the building of at least
five new vessels. Bethmann also owned shares in an unknown number
of ships registered in Lorient, Dunkerque, and Bayonne. His cosmopolitanism
is reflected in his Frankfurt citizenship, which he never
gave up, and his citizenship of the town of Grandson, near Neu -
châtel. When travelling in Europe, he always used his Swiss passport.
Although he enjoyed privileges that were usually granted only
to Frenchmen, he never became a French subject. In 1766, he successfully
applied for the post of Imperial consul in Bordeaux, and in 1776
was granted an Imperial knighthood. During the 1780s, when the
Droit de l’Exclusif, the legislation excluding foreigners from direct
85 Jean Tarrade, Le commerce colonial de la France à la fin de l’ancien régime: l’évolution
du régime de l‘Exclusif de 1763 à 1789 (Paris, 1972), 46; Thésée, Négociants
bordelais, 51–72, 38–9.
86 Ibid. 195–7, 200.
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