Social capital, institutional innovation and Atlantic trade before 1800

Robin Pearson and David Richardson

Business History, 2008, vol. 50, issue 6, 765-780

Abstract: The growth of the Atlantic economy during the eighteenth century has been associated with developments in business networking to mitigate the hazards of communication in long-distance trade. Such social capital-based mechanisms reduced transaction costs, but also proved to have their limitations in the changing conditions of eighteenth-century international trade. This paper argues, using the example of the British slave trade, that efforts to innovate less personalised forms of commercial exchange gave those prepared to do so a considerable competitive advantage, and promoted the unprecedented expansion of that trade between 1750 and 1807. We suggest that this shift may be viewed as a precursor of modernising tendencies in business practice in Britain during the industrial revolution.

Keywords: slave trave; social capital; institutional innovation; business networks; credit; eighteenth-century merchants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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DOI: 10.1080/00076790802420336

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