ABSTRACT
I N overseas commerce, as in domestic trade, there was a blendingof old and new forms of organisation. From the Restoration,men of capital and enterprise had been knocking, with grownig insistence, at the doors of the chartered companies. In 1673 the rtade with Sweden, Norway, and Denmark was thrown open. In 1689 the Merchant Adventurers were shorn of most of their powers, and ordinary Englishmen became free to export cloth to all but certain reserved areas. In 1698 it was enacted that anyone might trade with Africa, subject to his contributing to the upkeep of the forts of the Royal Africa Company. And in the following year commerce with Russia and Newfoundland was declared open to all. On the other hand, some monopolies persisted. The Hudson's Bay and the Levant Companies had their privileges confirmed. The differences between the two groups that had contended for trade with the East were composed, and in 1709 the United East India Company came into being. This suffered, indeed, from the competition of interlopers, especially in its commerce with China; but it was not until as late as 1793 that outsiders were legally entitled to trade with the vast territories over which it exercised economic and political control.! The attempt made in 1710 to establish a similar monopoly in the trade of South America, however, came to nothing: the South Sea Company was, commercially, a failure from the start; and after the disasters of 1720, it became little more than a finance corporation with a special connection with the Treasury. Most commerce, except that with the East, was conducted by one-man concerns or family partnerships, and, though there were some strongholds of monopoly, most of the field lay open to competition.s
The qualifications needed for success as a merchant were set down in detail by Postlethwayt: some acquaintance with the commodities
of trade, command of foreign languages, and knowledge of bookkeeping, shipping, foreign weights and measures, tariffs, foreign exchange, and the stock and produce markets. No single man could be an expert in all these matters, but he needed to know enough of each to be secure from deception or gross error. He might specialise in a particular commodity or a particular market, but it was of the essence of his calling that it transcended boundaries.
