Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

Quaker Missionary and Commercial Activities
Quakers to pay special attention to their occupational situation, and
certain Quaker characteristics are regarded as favourable to both
community life and commercial activity. 9
Seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Quakers, however,
were a community of converts, and do not fit easily into a neat pattern.
Many of the typical traits of Quaker business culture (for example,
the proverbial system of ‘Quaker cousins’ resulting from strict
endogamy, and the Quaker apprenticeship system) only developed
from the middle of the eighteenth century. While the differences
between early Quakers and those of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries do not challenge the assumption that the foundations for
later success were laid during the seventeenth century, they highlight
the need to investigate more closely the period before industrialization.
By extending our geographical knowledge of Quaker business
activity in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, this essay
aims to assess critically the assumptions made in explaining Quaker
business success. It calls into question the seamless success story
unfolding from the vantage point of later developments in Britain
and the transatlantic context. Attention has focused almost exclusively
on Quaker business connections within these geographical
regions, while those that linked Britain with the European Continent
have hardly been studied. This is not surprising, since Quaker meetings
were established much more successfully in Britain and North
America than in Europe, and many Quakers were engaged in the
transatlantic trade (which rapidly intensified during the period
under consideration) as merchants or shipowners. On the other
hand, there was a time-honoured tradition of trade relations between
Britain and Europe, and from the 1650s onwards, Quakers began to
participate in these. And as soon as Quaker meetings began to exist
on the Continent, there were also European Quaker business people.
The first decades of Continental Quaker business activity coincide
with the first wave of Continental missions between 1655 and around
1720. How were they related? Most obviously, geographical mobility
was crucial to both Quaker missionary and commercial activities. In
Britain, the spread of Quakerism has been found to have partly
depended on business relationships, since these constituted an
9 See below for a detailed discussion.
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