Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

12
Pirates, Death, and Disaster: Maintaining an Atlantic
Trade Network in Late Eighteenth-Century England
CAROLYN DOWNS
Introduction
The twenty-first century may come to be considered as epitomizing
a networked and networking society. Communication across the
globe is almost instantaneous, driven by powerful telecommunications
networks. Wireless networks find enabled computers and
mobile devices, allowing machines to talk to each other, while the
users of the mobile devices have anytime, anywhere access that they
may use to check their membership of a range of different online
communities. These and many other networks are considered the
epitome of modernity, essential to the way business is done and society
is organized in our fast-paced, contemporary world. What may
be overlooked is that the huge range of social, cultural, and virtual
networks that people participate in today, alongside the advanced
infrastructure provided by physical networks and the more abstract
networks that allow conceptualization of ideas in mathematics and
science, are simply contemporary manifestations of an organizational
structure that was well established in the later eighteenth century.
Mark Casson has outlined why historians are increasingly turning
to the organizational concept of networks and has proposed a model
with which network-like structures can be understood. 1 This essay
considers the business activities of Daniel Eccleston of Lancaster
(1745–1821) and the ways in which he developed and utilized networks,
within a framework of existing cultural and social norms, to
further his mercantile interests. It also considers the factors that prevented
him from gaining entrée to potentially beneficial networks
and the impact of such closed networks on the commercial opportu-
1 See Mark Casson’s essay in this volume.
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