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| Author: | Pearson, R. Richardson, D. |
| Title: | Social capital, institutional innovation and Atlantic trade before 1800 |
| Journal: | Business history
2008 : NOV, VOL. 50:6, p. 765-780 |
| Index terms: | slavery trade innovation networks credit competition transaction costs UNITED KINGDOM |
| Freeterms: | industrial revolution merchants |
| Language: | eng |
| 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. In this paper it is argued - 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. It is suggested that this shift may be viewed as a precursor of modernising tendencies in business practice in Britain during the industrial revolution. |
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