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International audience ; The article shows how one easily overlooked sentence in a Pennsylvania flour broker's 1786 correspondence revealed a widespread, organized, and successful effort to manipulate and control access to early American regional markets, in this case the flour market in the Philadelphia hinterland.

International audience ; The article shows how one easily overlooked sentence in a Pennsylvania flour broker's 1786 correspondence revealed a widespread, organized, and successful effort to manipulate and control access to early American regional markets, in this case the flour market in the Philadelphia hinterland.

International audience ; For an eighteenth-century merchant, the ultimate crisis was war; armed conflicts disrupted trade both practically, by subjecting the goods transported to confiscation by the enemy, and financially, by threatening the national and international credit networks and compensation systems on which merchants relied to clear their transactions. This was especially true for French merchants active in the transatlantic trade, when confronted with a war with Great Britain at mid-century. Land-based goods or goods transported along the coast overt short distances could be rerouted, go through intermediaries, or be smuggled in a variety of ways. But by 1750, British domination of the seas was a well-established reality, and the French Navy, weakened by years of political neglect, was unable to protect the approach either to France's major ports, or to the North American continent. As a result, the French trader specialized in importing colonial products (sugar, coffee, indigo, or tobacco come to mind) in an Atlantic port was faced with daunting challenges. This paper shows how large merchants could face the risks of war with considerable efficiency, combining, inside information, international networks, and local control of market segments; The oligopolistic nature of early Modern markets is fully revealed by these processes, which also show how information was kept even from principals outside merchant circles.

International audience ; For an eighteenth-century merchant, the ultimate crisis was war; armed conflicts disrupted trade both practically, by subjecting the goods transported to confiscation by the enemy, and financially, by threatening the national and international credit networks and compensation systems on which merchants relied to clear their transactions. This was especially true for French merchants active in the transatlantic trade, when confronted with a war with Great Britain at mid-century. Land-based goods or goods transported along the coast overt short distances could be rerouted, go through intermediaries, or be smuggled in a variety of ways. But by 1750, British domination of the seas was a well-established reality, and the French Navy, weakened by years of political neglect, was unable to protect the approach either to France's major ports, or to the North American continent. As a result, the French trader specialized in importing colonial products (sugar, coffee, indigo, or tobacco come to mind) in an Atlantic port was faced with daunting challenges. This paper shows how large merchants could face the risks of war with considerable efficiency, combining, inside information, international networks, and local control of market segments; The oligopolistic nature of early Modern markets is fully revealed by these processes, which also show how information was kept even from principals outside merchant circles.

Merchant credit was the main source of profit for economic agents in the eighteenth-century. Managing cash, commercial instruments, and account books, Atlantic traders such as Gradis of Bordeaux—who dealt in colonial products (including indigo, sugar, and coffee) and exported staples (flour and wine) to Quebec—or Hollingsworth of Philadelphia (an important dealer in flour and colonial produce) achieved market domination through specialized credit networks integrating market exchange and both moral and social interactions. Since a Weberian or a Homo Oeconomicus view of these complex credit activities leads to anachronisms, this article eschews standard economic approaches in favor of more historicized views of early modern economic activity, credit networks, and profit-making techniques.

RésuméLe crédit marchand au XVIIIesiècle était la principale source de profit des agents économiques. Gérant numéraire, effets de commerce et comptes courants ouverts à leurs clients, des négociants atlantiques, tels Gradis de Bordeaux, qui importait des produits coloniaux (indigo, sucre, café) et exportait vin et farines vers Québec, ouHollingsworth de Philadelphie, un gros marchand de farines et de denrées coloniales, dominaient les marchés locaux grâce à des réseaux de crédit spécialisés intégrant l'échange marchand et des contraintes morales ou sociales. Les analyses weberienne ou en termes d'Homo oeconomicusde ces activités complexes de crédit conduisent à des anachronismes ; l'auteur propose d'adopter une vision plus historicisée de l'activité économique, des réseaux de crédit et de la recherche du profit à l'époque moderne.

International audience ; In the eighteenth century, merchant financial accounting, especially double-entry accounting, should be of interest, and not only to accounting historians. The many account books left by traders the world over show how credit structured the early modern economy and society. Trade took place on credit, not with cash; Bordeaux merchant Abraham Gradis borrowed and loaned millions of Livres, and maintained a network of partners in France and the colonies across the Atlantic (Martinique, Saint-Domingue and Canada), shipping and/or selling as commission merchant wine, flour, sugar, coffee. Cash was used for smaller transactions, but commercial paper, and above all book credit, was key to merchant success. Because traders depended crucially on extended credit networks, the social construction of credit took precedence over all other considerations, including regional ones. Through the control of book credit, the largest merchants were able to establish themselves as a truly international ruling class.