Trade and Traders in Mid-Victorian Liverpool: Mercantile Business and the Making of a World Port (review)

The shift from sail to steam technology is one of the most important transformations in maritime history. This was the moment when the industrial revolution spilled out from the factories onto the oceans, linking global markets ever more closely together, with tighter webs of travel, raw materials, and finished goods. In fact, as Graeme J. Milne demonstrates in this workmanlike book, the transformation was more gradual than the word "revolution" would suggest. For a full generation, between the 1840s and the 1870s, steam and sail coexisted. Though every individual firm faced its moment of truth, when the imperative of conversion had to be confronted, that moment varied greatly from case to case. Passengers and perishable cargoes, especially on short routes, were among the first to make the switch. Bulk goods, such as cotton or timber, especially when traveling long distances, could long be conveyed more efficiently by sailing vessels, which did not consume expensive fuel.

Focusing on the port of Liverpool during the mid-Victorian period, Milne demonstrates that this technological change was only one of a series of disruptions with which local traders had to contend. In particular, the 1860s were a challenging decade, when the interruption of the American cotton trade forced many Liverpool traders to seek new markets, new customers, and new sources of supply. In general, Milne shows, the port was remarkably successful in weathering this storm. Through economic diversification, government contracts, and a heavy reliance on passenger traffic, it was possible to replace the old business which had been lost. Moreover, by reorienting its economy towards imperial markets and the high value trade in Far Eastern goods, Liverpool's port continued to thrive and to grow. If the repeal of the Navigation Acts brought sharp new competition from American sailors, the Civil War, at least temporarily, removed them from the scene. If credit crunches periodically overstrained the fragile chains of cash payment, fiscal soundness was quickly restored when prosperity returned. If Birkenhead threatened to divert business to the other side of the Mersey, the constant improvement and expansion of Liverpool's docks, warehouses, and transportation facilities guaranteed her continued centrality in the North Atlantic trade.

Because most previous studies of Liverpool shipping have focused on large firms such as Cunard, Milne concentrates his research on the multitude of small traders who, considered collectively, kept the Liverpool economy afloat. All too often, these firms were undercapitalized and overextended. In the most interesting and original part of his book, Milne shows how they survived by relying on informal mechanisms of credit and information that involved sharing and collaboration among family and friends. Tied together with other small firms—both by familial connection, and by economic specialization—Liverpool's small and middling traders worked to protect one another. As a result, outright bankruptcies were surprisingly rare.

In his conclusion, Milne acknowledges the limitations of his study. Focusing entirely on the economic activities of Liverpool's merchants and shippers, he neglects their religion, their culture, their ethnic diversity, and their political aspirations. But, as he himself suggests, these dimensions were important aspects of Liverpool's entrepreneurial world. How closely did economic alliances dovetail with denominational differences? Did any of Liverpool's Irish make it into the trading community? What was the relationship between the politics of the town, and the politics of the port? How could Liverpool's economic cosmopolitanism go hand in hand with the intense sectarianism that ran rampant within the town? What was the nature of class relations within the shipping industry? Given the labor explosions in London and Glasgow, why were the reverberations in Liverpool's docklands comparatively weak? It is one of the merits of this study that the author recognizes that entrepreneurship should not be studied in a social vacuum. It...