A Test of Faith: The Account Book of Richard Poor, Quaker Merchant of Barbados

Simon Smith

Centre for Historical Economics and Related Research at York (CHERRY) Discussion Papers from CHERRY, c/o Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Barbados formed one of the world's most successful economies, specialised in exporting sugar produced using enslaved labour. This paper analyses an account book maintained by the Bridgetown merchant factor, Richard Poor Jr, between 1699 and 1713. Poor Jr initially traded in provisions but switched to importing manufactures in exchange for sugar, rum, and cotton after establishing business relations with London Quaker merchants. Analysis of Sunday trading suggests that many clients were fellow Non-conformists. Quakerism, however, fused with other factors in reinforcing trust and security. The distribution of transactions was skewed towards persons trading only once or twice, while customers owning taxable property and heads of households generated the most valuable accounts and transacted over the longest period of time. The tempo of mercantile life appears slow: on a majority of days zero transactions are recorded. This finding may reflect the degree to which non-business activities complemented commerce.

Keywords: West Indies; merchant; Atlantic trade; religion and business; eighteenth century (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-his
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.york.ac.uk/media/economics/documents/c ... pers/RichardPoor.pdf Main text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:cherry:07/02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Centre for Historical Economics and Related Research at York (CHERRY) Discussion Papers from CHERRY, c/o Department of Economics, University of York c/o Andrea Papadia, Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andrea Papadia ().