Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

CAROLYN DOWNS
his parents’ ill health and had no hesitation in describing the town as
‘that Coal-hole’, 26 or ‘that smoaky hole’. 27
Creating an English Base
Liverpool in 1780 would certainly have put the deficiencies of pro -
vincial Whitehaven into sharp relief, for by the late eighteenth century
it was an impressive town whose global importance as a port
should not be underestimated. The significance of the slave trade to
the port was such that although only a relatively few merchants took
part in this trade, it generated an expansion of the markets that benefited
all Liverpool’s merchants. 28 The West Indies trade in sugar was
central to Liverpool’s commercial development, and sugar refineries
had been built near the docks in 1680, with other valuable imports
from the West Indies into the town being cocoa, coffee, dyewood,
and rum. 29 Eccleston’s first-hand experience of living and trading in
the West Indies and extensive network of contacts with cotton and
sugar plantations would certainly be useful in attempting to make a
place for himself within the business networks that existed in Liver -
pool.
As was natural for a man who had embarked on a hazardous and
lengthy voyage, Eccleston’s first letters from Liverpool in 1780 were
to friends, family, and colleagues in the West Indies, containing news
of his arrival in Britain, and the progress of other ships in the fleet
with which he sailed. It is here that we see how closely the business
and friendship networks intertwined in eighteenth-century commerce.
In an age where there was unlimited individual liability for
investors, trust was an essential element of business success. The late
eighteenth-century networks that Daniel Eccleston worked within
were built on a range of social conventions. Although the networks
with which he engaged often served a business or political purpose,
26 LLLSC, MS 3734, Eccleston to William Eccleston, 22 May 1780.
27 Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London (hereafter LSF), TEMP
MSS 145/1, Eccle ston to William Eccleston, 8 Apr. 1781.
28 F. E. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey: An Economic History of a Port 1700–1970
(Newton Abbot, 1971), 26.
29 Ibid. 27, 37.
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