Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

Pirates, Death, and Disaster
with the result that the reward for trust-generation within the network
may be the furtherance of business opportunities or the less
tangible but still valuable knowledge that people in your network are
watchful on your behalf.
One of Eccleston’s primary concerns in the first batch of letters to
the West Indies was to receive final accounts for sales made in
Barbados, and the opening paragraph of his second letter of 1780 is
blunt and to the point:
I think the last time I saw you in Barbadoes I desired you
wou’d be so kind as to draw out sales . . . as they appear in my
Books, I must now repeat the request, and will be much
obliged to you to furnish Mr. Edwd. West 33 with James Adams
a/c current. 34
In the same letter, one of the irritants that continued to exercise
Eccleston throughout the two letter books was aired for the first time:
excessive profits made by middlemen, usually those working within
networks closed to Eccleston: ‘I am certain I can send Manchester,
Birmingham, and several other goods from Liverpool (being purchased
from the Manufacturers themselves) on much more advantageous
terms than they can be sent out from London, where there is
generally two or three profits on ’em before they are shipped for the
West Indies.’ 35
Eccleston regularly complained of the excessive influence of Lon -
don-based networks and the profits made by middlemen, despite the
fact that he himself was effectively acting as a middleman, and
expected to make a good profit by his actions. In the same group of
letters for the West Indies, Eccleston outlined his plans for commencing
in business as a Liverpool-based ship owner, ‘whenever
these disagreeable times are at an end’. This venture would have
been cooperative, involving contacts from his direct network of connections
and perhaps also new people, introduced as trusted names
33 Edward West was Eccleston’s business partner in Barbados. West was an
attorney, which in the West Indies generally entailed supervising several
plantations for an absentee owner, for which the attorney was paid in sugar.
34 LLLSC, MS 3734, Eccleston to William Eccleston, Eccleston to William
Walker Jordan, Barbados, 3 Jan. 1780.
35 Ibid.
355