Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

FRANK HATJE
dam branch of the family, established a merchant house in the
English capital slightly before 1704. 71 In any case, the van der Smis -
sens were among the shipowners who organized regular traffic
between Hamburg and London in the 1770s, 72 and a list of debtors
and creditors dating from 1806 contains twenty-three firms in Lon -
don, seven in Hull, three in Sheffield, and two each in Man chester
and Birmingham. 73 Although evidence is scarce, these business partners
were by no means exclusively or predominantly Mennonites.
On the other hand, it seems unlikely that merchants such as the van
der Smissens, who put so much emphasis on religious affiliation and
the trust it generated (which reduced the cost of their informationgathering),
should set this factor aside in a foreign market so crucial
to them.
Nor did they. They merely switched to another religious network
that was able to generate trust because its standards were close
enough to their own. In 1766–7 Hinrich III and Jacob Gysbert van der
Smissen spent a considerable amount of time meeting people and
attending sermons of evangelical piety, including visits to prominent
Methodists, Baptists, and Quakers. When the van der Smissen
cousins arrived in London, they immediately met their general agent,
Thomas Walduck, and on their second day plans were made to visit
the London merchant Richard How’s landed estate near Bedford.
Both were Quakers. 74 There had been early contacts between the
Mennonite congregation in Altona and the Quaker missionaries, and
around 1700 a group of families had sailed to Pennsylvania. 75
Although doctrinal differences and the struggle for acceptance by the
authorities gave rise to controversies, the two denominations had
enough common features. But it was not only out of a general affinity
or the result of coincidence that the van der Smissen cousins were
repeatedly invited to How’s estate. Richard How’s sister was married
to Hermann Hingsberg, a Mennonite merchant with relations in Am -
71 Mannhardt, Die Mennonitenfamilie van der Smissen, 31–2.
72 Ernst Baasch, Quellen zur Geschichte von Hamburgs Handel und Schiffahrt im
17., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Hamburg, 1910), 727.
73 Münte, Das Altonaer Handelshaus, 91 n. 206.
74 ‘Reisetagebuch Jacob Gysbert van der Smissen’, 13–14 Sept. 1766.
75 Driedger, Obedient Heretics, 27; Juterczenka, Über Gott und die Welt, 75,
187–9, 223–39.
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