the world of private banking

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THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
the War of American Independence, American merchants appear in large numbers,
in part because of the burgeoning North Atlantic cotton trade in which Barings
was a major participant. From the 1830s and following the final demise of the East
India Company’s monopoly, accounts of merchants in the Far East, especially on
the China coast, become more numerous.
These accounts are, of course, useful in locating details of particular
merchants and learning more about particular trading centres, but more generally,
their analysis can be expected to yield much about the nature of eighteenth and
nineteenth century international trade – underlying commodities, profitability,
geographical extent, other parties involved, risk limitation, costs of associated
services – and about how this changed over time. Wider issues include trade
procedures and variation in them both over time and between commodities; the
precise nature of the relationship between the London merchant and the merchants
for whom he acted as agent; the nature of the powerful trading alliances existing
between groups of merchants in different international markets; marine insurance;
shipping; and so on.
The potential of the ledgers is somewhat countered by difficulties in
interpretation. The account of a merchant tends to include all work undertaken
for him; separate accounts do not seem to exist for different categories of work
or different transactions. Moreover, the narrative against each account entry lacks
a standard terminology and is sometimes difficult to interpret. Also, to be fully
understood, each entry needs to be cross-referenced to journal entries and this, on
a large scale, is immensely time-consuming and requires considerable stamina.
That said, some pieces of information are very easily extracted for analysis, such
as the name and location of a merchant customer, which appear at the head of each
account, and the annual turnover of the account. Analysis of Barings’ own trading
speculations is, however, relatively straightforward as separate accounts appear to
exist for separate ‘adventures’.
Other groups of papers also shed light on international trade. Amongst them
is a small group of memorandum or commonplace books, probably kept by
partners as an aide-mémoire, which gives useful details about market procedures
and commodities. Character books provide information about the standing and
reputation of early and mid-nineteenth-century customers. Much more important
are the sets of letters exchanged with overseas agents or correspondents based in
places like Amsterdam, Boston, Buenos Aires, Canton, Calcutta, New Orleans,
New York, Paris and St Petersburg. These cover a vast range of subjects, but much
is about trade and merchants, Notable groups of surviving letters are those with E.J.
Forstall & Sons of New Orleans, 1830–90; Gisbourne & Co. of Calcutta, 1830–88;
and Russell & Co. of Canton, 1830–83.
In the early nineteenth century, as with other London houses, Barings
established a branch in Liverpool to participate in trans-Atlantic trade. The
archives of Barings’ Liverpool house, especially its correspondence with Barings
in London, are a major source for the study of the cotton and wheat trades. Papers
within the Statistics of Trade series include merchant circulars for the 1820s to the