Merchants and Profit in the Age of Commerce, 1680-1830

Merchant activity across Europe, America and China during the long eighteenth century is explored in this collection of essays. Using a unique data set from accounts and correspondence, contributors are able to show the fragmented nature of merchant activity and the importance of trust-based social and cultural networks.

Pierre Gervais, Dominique Margairaz, Yannick Lemarchand

Introduction: The Many Scales of Merchant Profit: Accounting for Norms, Practices and Results in the Age of Commerce, Pierre Gervais, Yannick Lemarchand, Dominique Margairaz; Chapter 1 The Current Account As Cognitive Artefact: Stories and Accounts of La Maison Chaurand, Yannick Lemarchand, Cheryl McWatters, Laure Pineau-Defois; Chapter 2 Why Profit and Loss Didn't Matter: The Historicized Rationality of Early Modern Merchant Accounting, Pierre Gervais; Chapter 3 Terms of Payment in Retailing: A Tool for Fostering Customer Loyalty or a Form of Managerial Constraint? A Few Observations Based on Accounting from Lorraine in the Eighteenth Century, Julien Villain; Chapter 4 The Wings of a Butterfly: Private Creditor Strategies in the 'Chinese Debts' Crisis of 1779-80, Frederic GrantJr; Chapter 5 The Transatlantic Flow of Price Information in the Spanish Colonial Trade, 1680-1820, Xabier Lamikiz; Chapter 6 Product Quality and Merchant Transactions: Product Lines and Hierarchies in the Accounts and Letters of the Gradis Merchant House, Dominique Margairaz, Darla Rudy-Gervais; Chapter 7 The Pinet Family of Gap and Their Business Relations, 1785-1816: Official Activities and the Issue of Commercial Risk, Boris Deschanel, Darla Rudy-Gervais; Chapter 8 'The Way to Make a Huge Fortune, Easily and Without Risk': Economic Strategy and Tactics Among Tobaccosouth Planters in the Early National United States, Steven Sarson; concl Conclusion: Reorienting Early Modern Economic History: Merchant Economy, Merchant Capitalism and the Age of Commerce, Robert S. DuPlessis;