Social and Economic Networks in Early Massachusetts: Atlantic Connections

4. Massachusetts Merchants: From British to Atlantic Networks

Four massachusetts merchants: from british to atlantic networks 1 At the same time that British communities developed among tenant farmers, servants, and laborers in agricultural districts of coastal Massachusetts, merchants in the major ports formed commercial communities based on economic interests. Initially, many of these merchants traded primarily with their countrymen in other ports and formed partnerships with countrymen in Massachusetts, even while they settled into life in the colony, marrying colonial women and participating in town affairs. By the end of the century, however, commercial communities incorporated colonial merchants regardless of nationality or Protestant confessional affiliations. After 1700, these families became part of an interlocking group, pulled together through trade and kinship, with connections throughout the Atlantic world. Unlike non-Puritan farmers and laborers in Essex County, merchants looked outward. They saw themselves as participants in an Atlantic commercial community and became active players in the English, then British, Atlantic world. As with other aspects of life in early Massachusetts, commerce was dominated by the English: it was governed by English laws, as far as these could be enforced, and the most prominent merchants were English, or New Englanders of English descent, who enjoyed close connections to London merchants.1 At mid-century, the most influential mercantile families, such as the Hutchinsons, Gibbons, and Stoddards, had all been involved with New England from the earliest years of settlement. Yet because the Navigation Acts (the laws regulating overseas trade) defined colonial ships and crews as those built and owned by settled residents of the colonies, after 1660 Scottish, Jersey, and French merchants began to arrive in ever-increasing numbers, trading on equal terms with merchants of English descent.2 Scots gained access to colonial trade under the ruling established in Calvin’s Case in 1608, which declared mutual naturalization for Scots and English born after 1603 in regions ruled by James VI and I.3 Jerseyans received special privileges due to their status as subjects of the monarch (see below), and many Huguenot merchants sought denization or naturalization in England before immigrating to the colonies. Non-English merchants became part of the wave of non-Puritan commercial immigrants after the Restoration, and took an active role in the North American coastal trade, gathering fish in Piscataqua, flour in Pennsylvania, and tobacco in Virginia. They also developed close trade connections with merchants in other Atlantic ports, such as Barbados, Jamaica, and Surinam in the Caribbean; Rotterdam, La Rochelle, and Cadiz in Continental Europe; Ulster, Glasgow, and Edinburgh in Ireland and Scotland; and Bristol and London in England. This movement into the Atlantic world, however, did not occur only after 1660. As discussed earlier, New England merchants entered into overseas trade in the 1640s and 1650s as part of the colony’s attempts to stabilize the economy during the wars of the three kingdoms in Britain and Ireland. The fish trade helped merchants establish connections to Spain and southern Europe and, through these ties, develop an exchange in barrel staves and other wooden products essential to the wine trade in the Canary Islands and Madeira. Early merchants also developed commercial ties to the West Indies in these decades, first exchanging food and lumber for tobacco and cotton, then adding horses as the islands switched to sugar production. New England ships also became the prime carriers of sugar out of the islands. Among the merchants who helped define these trade connections were those who disagreed with Puritan political and religious leaders in New England. Samuel Maverick, for example, had lived near Massachusetts Bay before the arrival of the Winthrop fleet in 1630 and never reconciled himself to Puritan control of the region. Thomas Breedon and Richard Wharton, who arrived in the 1650s, also immigrated for the economic opportunities that New England represented, and not out of religious affinity with Puritanism. Thus Massachusetts had trade connections in the Atlantic world, and with non-Puritan resident merchants, before the 1660s.4 As the expansion of trade brought more English, Scottish, Channel Island, and Continental European merchants and mariners to Massachusetts ports, the balance of power in the region shifted. Merchants were instrumental in bringing Massachusetts into the developing British Empire, since their economic and social self-interest frequently coincided with the political and economic goals of massachusetts merchants u 73 the English government after 1660.5 As merchants gained wealth and their trade became more important to the regional economy, they wanted to...