Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

From Westphalia to the Caribbean
and Transylvania. 40 He did not yet trade with Russia, which was
monopolized by the Russia Company. Until the reform of the
Charter, the Russia trade was in the hands of a small coterie of merchants,
probably numbering no more than about twelve to fourteen.
The reform of 1698 opened membership to all English-born and naturalized
merchants. Immediately after the opening of the Russia
Company, the number of admittances jumped. It soon dropped,
however, and annual entries remained low until the end of the
Nordic Wars in 1719. Only when negotiations for a commercial treaty
with Russia were pending did the number of admittances began to
rise again. Neither John William Teschemacher nor his surviving
brother John Engelbert seem to have become members of the Russia
Company. It was left to their successor in business, John Abraham
Korten, to join. He was a relative of the Teschemachers and had started
his business career in the house of the two brothers. Korten joined
the Russia Company only after he had clashed with it concerning
imports from Russia. Since the conclusion of the commercial treaty in
1734, Russia had become Britain’s most important eighteenth-century
trading partner and Korten’s trade with Russia formed the backbone
of his company’s business. In 1740 he was among the very first
naturalized immigrants to become a member of the Russia Com -
pany’s Court of Assistants. 41
An account book covering the last few years of Korten’s life has
survived and provides some information on the structure of his
trade. In around 1740 his London house was an emporium poised
between east and west. His trade relations stretched from the
Caribbean and North American colonies in the west to St Petersburg
and overland as far as Reschd in Persia in the east. 42 His home town
of Elberfeld continued to be an important prop of his trade and it is
interesting to note that, via his London house, the economy of the
small German town of Elberfeld participated in an almost worldwide
trade. Moreover, Korten’s relatives in Elberfeld became shareholders
in his ventures in the New World and Russia (see Figure 3.2).
40 His nephew was an East India mariner and merchant and died in Calcutta
in 1721 (TNA, Prob 11/ 582); for his trade with Vienna and Transylvania see
TNA, Prob 11/ 534.
41 Guildhall Library London, Russia Company, Minute Books, MS 11741/6,
p. 173.
42 Korten Account Book J56/VI/3, p. 16.
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