ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the wives who were engaged in mercantile activity in early modern Scottish towns, particularly between the years 1560 and 1640. It argues that cooperation between merchant husbands and wives was integral to the smooth running of businesses that traversed multiple countries and involved significant capital outlay. The chapter shows a number of high-status Scottish women were active, usually in concert with their husbands or singly as widows, as merchants in the import-export trades of early modern urban Scotland. It also shows that a significant number of wives and widows were active with, or independently of, their merchant husbands in the import and export trade in Scottish towns during the early modern period. In early modern Scottish towns, only merchant burgesses were allowed to engage in overseas trade, and all burgesses were required to be married. Once cloth had been imported into Scotland, women in mercantile families continued to be involved with its sale.
