Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

MARGRIT SCHULTE BEERBÜHL and KLAUS WEBER
more than 50,000 inhabitants. 89 Of course, this does not mean that
Gebrüder Bethmann was only a Continental enterprise. On the contrary,
it financially linked rural manufactures with the Atlantic markets
on which these depended.
Even though the French textile industries were far more competitive
than those in Spain, large quantities of German-made textiles
and metal products arrived in French ports, most of them destined
for re-shipping to Hispanic and African markets. In 1753, about 75
per cent of the linen registered in Hamburg duty registers for export
to France was destined for Bayonne, where an important community
of Basque merchants channelled it to Spain and its American colonies
through both legal and illegal channels. But far larger quantities of
textiles were traded to Spain directly. 90 Given the huge amounts of
colonial produce purchased by German traders in Bordeaux and
other French ports, Hamburg’s balance of trade with France (which
roughly reflected that of the Holy Empire) was negative, while that
with Spain was positive. The German manufactures sold to the
Hispanic world were largely paid for by American silver, which in
return allowed the import of consumer goods such as coffee and
sugar, and of raw materials such as cotton and indigo, from France.
In short: ‘Germany paid for its consumption of colonial goods with
linen,’ 91 and most of them came from France. Banking houses such as
those of Bethmann and Metzler were key organizers of the financial
transactions necessary to keep these exchanges running smoothly.
Given the region’s wine-growing sector, which was far better
developed than the one in the hinterland of Cadiz, quite a number of
the most successful German maritime merchants in Bordeaux also in -
vested part of their profits in vineyards. Given the orientation to -
wards markets in northern Europe, investors of British, Dutch, and
Ger man background were in a good position to compete with Frenchborn
wine growers and exporters. In the French context, the pattern of
acquiring estates and titles was far more evident than in Spain.
89 Friedrich Zellfelder, Das Kundennetz des Bankhauses Gebrüder Bethmann,
Frank furt am Main, im Spiegel der Hauptbücher (1738–1816) (Stuttgart, 1994).
90 Klaus Weber, ‘Les livres douaniers de l’Amirauté de Hambourg au XVIIIe
siècle, une source de grande valeur encore inexploitée’, Bulletin du Centre
d’Histoire des espaces atlantiques, NS 9 (1999), 93–126, at 107–9.
91 Josef Kulischer, Allgemeine Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Neu -
zeit, 2 vols. (Darmstadt, 1958), ii. 231.
92