Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

SHERYLLYNNE HAGGERTY
works in the Atlantic and particularly the Caribbean, for example. 11
Perhaps most obviously, people in whom ascribed trust was placed
were family members. Family members were extremely useful in
providing capital and contacts, especially at the start of someone’s
career, and therefore kinship ties have often been seen as extremely
important in business start-ups. Peter Mathias, for example, highlights
the importance of the ‘kinship nexus’, especially in a low-institutional
environment. 12 There is no doubt that family networks were
useful in introducing people into spheres of business activity, in providing
capital, and especially emotional support, which ‘pure’ business
networks do not always supply. Linda A. Renzulli, Howard
Aldrich, and James Moody argue that business networks should provide
instrumental support, for example, while general networks
should provide emotional support. 13 In the eighteenth century, of
course, these two often overlapped. Networks, whether fa mil ial or
otherwise, were not only meant to provide information and credit,
but also to work to advantage in a wider sense. For example, transaction
and information costs could be reduced in such a high-trust
environment. 14 Networks are also used to avoid the costs of vertical
integration as we can see in the Atlantic in the eighteenth century,
when merchants purchased sugar through their networks of factors
in the West Indies rather than buying their own plantations. 15 In fact,
Simon Smith has recently demonstrated that English merchants were
wary of entering into such ownership patterns and avoided tying up
11 Douglas J. Hamilton, Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic World 1750–
1820 (Manchester, 2005).
12 Peter Mathias, ‘Risk, Credit and Kinship in Early Modern Enterprise’, in
John J. McCusker and Kenneth Morgan (eds.), The Early Modern Atlantic
Econ omy (Cambridge, 2000), 15–35.
13 Linda A. Renzulli, Howard Aldrich, and James Moody, ‘Family Matters:
Gender, Networks and Entrepreneurial Outcomes’, Social Forces, 79/2 (2000),
523–46.
14 For more on information and transaction costs see Mark Casson, ‘In sti tu -
tional Economics and Business History: A Way Forward?’, Business History,
Special Issue on Institutions and the Evolution of Modern Business, 39/4
(1997), 151–71.
15 Rachel E. Kranton and Deborah F. Minehart, ‘Networks Versus Vertical
Integration’, Rand Journal of Economics, 31/2 (2000), 570–601.
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