Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

CAROLYN DOWNS
as the year ended, Eccleston wrote ‘fin’ on the final page of his letter
book without knowing the fate of his many friends in the West
Indies.
Conclusion
The network society is a concept that is often thought of as having
emerged with the widespread use of the Internet as a means of disseminating
information and email as a mode of communication.
However, Eccleston and his contemporaries were themselves part of
an extremely complex network society. The speed of modern communication
has perhaps blinded historians to the very real networks
that were the lifeblood of trade and industry in the evolving industrial
society of the late eighteenth century and, indeed, also allowed
the spread of radical ideas. While twenty-first century globalization
has effectively produced networks that are often not sustainable, the
commercial networks of Eccleston’s period were nurtured and nourished
over long periods, providing the stability and security that fostered
continued commercial growth. 98 The role of trust as a glue that
held networks together in an ‘economy of regard’ is an additional
element that is perhaps less important in the contract-bound and litigious
twenty-first century. But for merchants in the late eighteenth
century it was a vital adjunct to the information provided by the networks
to which an individual belonged. 99
There is a temptation to look at networks, such as those developed
and utilized by Eccleston, as indicating risk aversion. However, risk
aversion would not have led to the rapid developments in trade and
industry that generated industrial growth and social change in
England during the late eighteenth century on a scale unprecedented
in world history. Eccleston’s networks were designed for risk minimization,
built on long-term relationships, and intended to engender
confidence and trust in an age when governments provided little
98 e.g. the expansion of the Far Eastern electronics industry into Europe in the
last decade of the twentieth century went into rapid reverse once the sector
began to contract with the slow-down of the American economy at the end
of 1999.
99 Pearson and Richardson, ‘Business Networking in the Industrial Revo lu -
tion’, 673.
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