Trust as Rhetoric, Status as Practice: American Merchants and their Agency Relations in the Spanish Caribbean (1798-1822)

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Published: Sep 1, 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18232/20073496.850
Keywords:
Atlantic history, North American traders, Caribbean-US trade, mercantile institutions, institutional organization.

América Latina en la Historia Económica is an Open Access publication under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License, i.e. the use of the work and the creation of derived works is permissible, so long as this is not done for commercial purposes and the author is credited.

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Jesús Bohorquez
European University Institute, Fiesole, Italia

Abstract

This paper’s main goal is to analyze the fundamental problems of exchange, it is, long-distance agency relations. It discloses commercial relations involving American merchants based in Boston, Providence, Bristol, and Philadelphia and their agents based in the Spanish Caribbean, mainly Havana. It draws on a vast mercantile correspondence available in American archives, which has largely been ignored by historians working on the Spanish Empire. The paper’s main outcomes are backed on the reading of approximately 15 000 letters. It elucidates on issues related to the mercantile organization. Here a microeconomic approach has been chosen to examine the way in which the trade was organized. The paper concludes highlighting the role status and not trust played in building long-distance agency relations as well as offering information and on the role American merchants played in connecting Caribbean and Asian markets.

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