Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

From Westphalia to the Caribbean
birth, two groups of networks can be distinguished. While merchant
families from Hamburg and Bremen connected the European port
cities, those from the textile areas of the north west and other parts of
the German hinterland had to establish networks by step and chain
migration, which linked the hinterland with London via the north
Ger man port cities. The branches in the north German port cities
served as turnover places to facilitate maritime transport and trade
with London and other foreign port cities.
Elberfeld (now Wuppertal), Herford (Westphalia), and adjacent
regions were renowned for their linen industries. Linen and linen
yarn from Elberfeld in particular had a high reputation for its whiteness
and the bleaching techniques used to achieve this. From the sixteenth
century on, linens and yarn from Elberfeld were exported to
the Dutch Republic, France, and other foreign places.
From Elberfeld and Herford two clearly definable migration
chains can be perceived. Both started as combined step and chain
migrations at about the time of the English Restoration and continued
for more than a century. The first chain migration started from
Elberfeld and comprised fourteen merchants. The second, of ten merchants,
originated from Herford. Additional chains of migrants from
the nearby towns of Remscheid, Osnabrück, Brunswick, and Han -
over have to be added to these two chains. All were more or less
related by ties of kinship and long-established commercial ties in
their home country. These kinship networks were transported to the
British capital, where they continued to trade in close cooperation.
Only with the coming of the cotton industry did the migration of
German textile traders begin to shift from London to the new industrial
centres and port cities of the north, although the British capital
continued to attract the largest number of immigrants (see Table 3.2).
The first migrants from Elberfeld who have left traces were three
Kaus brothers, who arrived in London around 1660. They were
joined by three Teschemacher brothers from the same town a generation
later. A fourth Teschemacher brother opened a merchant house
in Bremen at about the same time. Members of the Wichelhausen
family, who were related to the Teschemachers, also settled in
granten in Holland 1600–1800: Een kwantitatieve benadering’, in Centrum
voor de Geschiedenis van Migranten, Working Paper 3 (Amsterdam, 2002), 25,
table 5.
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