Episode 8: The Trade

At the dawn of a new era after the Seven Years’ War, British officials envision commerce and colonies as the key to British independence and its rising glory, but trade in commodities and manufactured goods comes at an awful price.

Featuring: Emma Hart, Scott Miller, Ann Smart Martin, Hannah Knox Tucker, Hannah Farber, and Zara Anishanslin

Voice Actors: Anne Fertig and Adam Smith

Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske

Find the official transcript here.

Music by Artlist.io

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Worlds Turned Upside Down is a production of R2 Studios at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Episode Transcript

Jim Ambuske (00:07):
One day in February 1774 a woman named Sukey walked
into John Hook's store in theVirginia back country. She was
in the small village of NewLondon in Campbell County, about
30 miles west of Appomattox.Hook's store was barely two

(00:27):
years old, but he had beentrading in the colonies for over
15 years. The Scottish merchanthad his new store built on a two
acre lot in New London to bringa world of goods from across the
Atlantic and far beyond, tosettlers who were moving west
toward the AppalachianMountains, and the proclamation

(00:48):
line Sukey would have enteredHook's shop on the ground floor
before her was a long counter,one that marked the divide
between customers like her inthe goods she admired behind it
she might have seen hook aclerk, or maybe even one of the
merchants and slave servantspulling items off shelves and

(01:11):
out of boxes for waitingcustomers, things like colorful
ribbons, buttons, razors or teasets, things not made in the
colonies, objects both practicaland refined, casks full of nails
and others filled with brandyand pepper sat on the floor. The

(01:33):
storage room was just off themain stage, as was Hooke's
counting room, where he brokereddeals with his partners and
settled debts with delinquents.As Sukey scanned the shelves
behind the counter, she foundwhat she wanted, a bit of ribbon
and a small Looking Glass.Today, we would call it a

(01:55):
mirror. The Looking Glass waspriced at two and a half
shillings, but Sukey wouldn't bepaying and coin. This was not a
world of cash. It was a world ofcredit and trade. She had
brought four pounds of cotton,still with its seed, to purchase
her goods. Hook marked her nameand her purchase in his ledger

(02:24):
the details of sookie's life arein fragments like a broken
mirror. If she had a familyname, it's been lost. Many
enslaved people like her onlyappear in records with a first
name. She was the legal propertyof Richard Stiff, who, in time

(02:48):
would become the surveyor ofCampbell County, Virginia, and a
plantation master with over13,000 acres of land and
numerous enslaved people.Stiff's will hints that Sukey
was probably a house servantwhen he died in 1802 she was
listed on his estate inventoryas old Sukey with a value of 18

(03:13):
pounds, the value of 144 smallmirrors nearly 30 years earlier,
Sukey probably grew the cottonthat she brought to John hook's
store in February 1774, likesome enslaved people, she may
have tended a garden on a smallplot of land. In what free time

(03:36):
she was allowed, the gardenwould have provided more food
for her and her family, and in agood year a small surplus to
barter. Perhaps she sold somevegetables to Stiff. Certainly,
she had four pounds of cotton inthe seed to bring to Hooke's

(03:57):
counter when she bought theribbon and the small Looking
Glass, what did she see when shepeered into that mirror?
Herself, an enslaved woman, herfamily, the ancestors. We don't

(04:21):
know what Sukey looked like, butshe did. The Looking Glass was
both a portal into her innerself, a small measure of
refinement and comfort in aworld like hers without freedom,
and a reflection of her place ina much larger story of trade and
Empire in the late 18th century,for as many white British

(04:45):
Americans championed their placein an empire they celebrated as
Protestant, commercial, maritimeand free. Suki walked into John
Hook's store that February dayas both a consumer. And a
commodity.

(05:10):
I'm Jim Ambuske, and this isWorlds Turned Upside Down, a
podcast about the history of theAmerican Revolution. Episode

Eight (05:19):
The Trade. In the 1760s as King George the third's,
cartographers drew new maps andcharts of British America. They
paid careful attention to thecoastlines and rivers of the
colonies, old and new oceans andrivers connected distant ports
like Glasgow, Liverpool inLondon and Great Britain to

(05:42):
Kingston, Charleston, New York,Halifax and Quebec in the
colonies, Mariners and merchantsneeded precise knowledge of
every coastal nook and cranny,the location and depths of
harbors and the distances shipscould travel upriver To build a
prosperous commercial Empiresuccessfully navigating such
waterways would make it possiblefor ships to carry manufactured

(06:05):
goods from Manchester toMaryland, tobacco from Baltimore
to Bristol, and enslaved peoplefrom West Africa to West
Florida. There was much at stakein the years just after the
Seven Years' War, many of theking's subjects and government
officials self trade as centralto British power in Europe and

(06:26):
throughout the Atlantic world.In their view, commerce and
colonies maintained Britishindependence and fed its rising
glory. Some subjects describedthis empire of commerce with
London at its heart in thegrandest of terms, in 1764
Thomas Pownall, the formergovernor of Massachusetts Bay,

(06:50):
envisioned it as:

Thomas Pownall (06:51):
"A grand Marine dominion consisting of our
possessions in the Atlantic andin America united into one
empire, in one center, where theseat of government is."

Jim Ambuske (07:06):
10 years later, in 1774, another author claimed
that the British had woventogether an empire that was "a
fabric at once the dread andwonder of the world." That
fabric was more than just ametaphor trade in items as
luxurious as silk and as simpleas buttons bound British

(07:26):
Americans and Britons togetherin a shared language of
commerce. But this grandeur cameat an awful price. To purchase,
the spoons, portraits, textilesand books they desired, British
Americans had to offer somethingin return, and often that came
in the form of rice, indigo,sugar and tobacco, all grown

(07:49):
overwhelmingly by enslavedpeople. So how did the
transatlantic economy bind theempire together in the years
before the American Revolution,and what did it take to move
goods and commodities made infactories and fields from one
British port to another? Tobegin answering these questions,

(08:10):
we'll first head into the mindsof British officials like Thomas
Pownall to explore their visionfor a perfect system that
benefited the common good. We'llthen set sail for various ports
around the British Atlanticworld to follow the hidden
histories of the people, shipsand goods that made this vision
possible. In 1764 when ThomasPownall imagined this grand

(08:35):
marine dominion, he did so inthe pages of one of the most
important works published inBritish American history. In the
first edition of his book, Theadministration of the colonies,
Powell cautioned that all thegains the British had made
during the Seven Years' Warcould be lost unless the
government and the Crownestablished wise regulations

(08:56):
that kept the colonies dependenton the mother country. Pownall
understood British Americans andthe colonies better than most
British officials during thedisastrous early years of the
Seven Years' War. He servedfirst as lieutenant governor of
New Jersey and then as governorof Massachusetts. While at
office, he witnessed firsthandthe tension between British

(09:19):
commanders in chief andprovincial assemblies over
allocations of money, men andsupplies. But he also developed
a respect for how seriouslycolonists guarded their rights
as British subjects, and theimportance they placed on
consent by the governed. He waspart of a new generation of
British politicians who believedthat the colonies were central

(09:41):
to British power and prosperity,like the Earl of Halifax,
whoever saw British America asthe Secretary of State for the
southern department, or CharlesTownsend, a member of the Board
of Trade who took a bird's eyeview of the Empire huddled fear
that self interested colonistscould wreck the Imperial whole.
He shared this belief with hisbrother John, who was secretary

(10:04):
to the Board of Trade and one ofthe key architects of Britain's
reform efforts. After the SevenYears' War in 1763, the British
had begun taking important stepsto reorganize the Empire. George
the Third's Royal Proclamationissued that October established
governments in the conqueredprovinces of Quebec, Grenada and

(10:25):
the two Floridas. It alsorestricted Western settlement
beyond a border that British andindigenous diplomats were in the
process of negotiating andsurveying. But in Thomas panel's
view, of Commerce, the lifebloodof the Empire could be its
undoing. Profit and wealth inthe marketplace were seductive

(10:46):
creatures that could lead theking's subjects astray from the
common Imperial good.

Emma Hart (10:52):
If you're working for the common good, it's the idea
that you as an individual, aresacrificing your self interest
for the greater good of society.So you're not thinking of
yourself in individualisticterms. You're thinking of
yourself as working for agreater good. And obviously that
functions on a number of levels.It has a religious element to

(11:12):
it, because there's this idea ofin the 18th century, of self
sacrifice for a godlyCommonwealth. I'm Emma Hart. I'm
a Professor of History at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, and
also the Richard S Dunn,director of the McNeil Center
for Early American Studies. Sothe common good is applicable

(11:33):
beyond the marketplace. Peopleused it outside of an economic
arena, but when it comes to themarketplace, it means that you
sacrifice your quest for profitand for individual advantage in
the name of giving everybody inthe marketplace a fair price, a
fair deal quality goods and anequal opportunity to buy those

(11:57):
quality goods, even if you're apoorer member of society who is
outside of the sort of elites.It's all these ideas of putting
your own profits below thegreater good of people who are
buying in the marketplace,people from all classes and
groups of society.

Jim Ambuske (12:18):
Smuggling, as some British colonists and merchants
were known to do and eventrading with the enemy during
the Seven Years' War weredecidedly the opposite of the
Imperial common good. In panel'smind, commerce was a natural
force, a kind of gravitationalpower that operated in all human
societies, pulling individualstowards self interest at the

(12:41):
expense of the greatercommunity. Counterbalancing that
force required an even greaterone. For Pownall, who studied at
Trinity College at theUniversity of Cambridge, where
Sir Isaac Newton taughtmathematics. A century earlier,
a Newtonian like imperial systemwas in order,

Thomas Pownall (12:59):
“Great Britain, as the center of this system,
must be the center ofattraction, to which these
colonies, in the administrationof every power of their
government, in the exercise oftheir judicial powers, and the
execution of their laws, and inevery operation of their trade,
must tend.”

Jim Ambuske (13:19):
In this ideal universe, the provinces revolved
around Great Britain as planetsdid stars. Benevolent light
emanated from London in the formof wise regulations and
protection, allowing thecolonies to prosper for the
common good. Yet panelrecognized that in this empire
of trade, self interest and thecolonists' own sense of their

(13:41):
rights in their place within theBritish Cosmos would continue to
tug on the center to ensureprosperity for all British
peoples. He argued:

Thomas Pownall (13:50):
“It becomes the duty of the mother country to
nourish and cultivate, toprotect and govern the colonies,
which nurture and governmentshould precisely direct its care
and influence to two essentialpoints. 1st, That all the
profits of the produce andmanufactures of these colonies

center in the mother country: and 2dly, That the colonies (14:12):
undefined
continue to be the sole andspecial proper customers of the
mother country."

Jim Ambuske (14:25):
The British had been striving for this kind of
interdependent system since themid 17th century. In the 1650s
the English Parliament beganpassing a series of Navigation
Acts designed to regulateImperial trade. These acts
required goods shipped fromAsia, Africa or the colonies to
be carried in English shipscaptained by English men with

(14:48):
the majority of an English crew,certain colonial grown
commodities like sugar, tobaccoand indigo had to be shipped
directly to England before theycould be sold on global markets.
And. These laws requiredEuropean goods bound for the
colonies to be transshippedthrough England first, where
they would be inspected by portofficials and assessed a customs

(15:09):
duty before they were allowed tocross the Atlantic. In 1707 when
Scotland joined with England tocreate Great Britain, the
Navigation Acts applied toScotland as well giving Scots
unfettered access to EnglishAmerica by passing such laws the
English, and later, the British,wanted to create and perfect the

(15:30):
kind of empire that ThomasPownall imagined.

Scott Miller (15:34):
The entire economy revolved around extracting
mostly raw materials from theground and sending them to ports
a very long way away. I am ScottC Miller. I am an assistant
professor at the Darden Schoolof Business in the University of
Virginia, and an assistantprofessor at the Miller center
of Public Affairs at theUniversity of Virginia. Some of

(15:57):
these commodities included wheatand lumber and indigo, but also
rice, tobacco and othercommodities that were mostly in
their raw form or in a very lowgrade of process. This often
meant wheat to not flour, andalmost certainly not bread. The
important element here is theseare largely raw commodities that

(16:19):
are being pulled out of theground and set far away. The two
major exceptions were pig andbar iron, which were slightly
processed but still relativelylow on the scale there.

Jim Ambuske (16:30):
As Anne Smart Martin, the Chipstone Professor
Emerita of Art History at theUniversity of Wisconsin,
Madison, explains, thisextractive Imperial economy
operated under the principle ofmercantilism.

Scott Miller (16:42):
The British Empire was set up under the idea of a
mercantilist system. You'removing people and goods to
differing, often far flungplaces, and you discover and
establish British power, andmake the powerful rich. Natural
materials will be going to thecheapest possible cost and we
shipped back to the center and areturn British people there

(17:04):
could make it supply folks onthe other end with manufactured
or finished goods. In the purestscenario, then the people at the
core would make the goods supplytheir colonists with their
everyday needs. People employedfactories would eventually boom
wealth, the economic model waslargely zero sum from the

(17:25):
British perspectives, and thegoal was to concentrate as much
of the wealth in the home islandas possible. And they saw the
different economic systems ofthe colonial periphery, whether
that be in North America,whether that be in the West,
indies, even elsewhere in theworld was largely meant to pull
all those together into oneplace, and that was the home

(17:46):
island. It's have other people along way away, pull things out
of the ground, send it to you toprocess into finished goods, and
we will sell it back to you forhigher prices. That is kind of
the definition of thisrelationship, the idea of
dependence is critical tounderstanding this relationship.
The British certainly did notwant to impoverish the American

(18:08):
colonies because largely theysaw the American colonies as a
market for their finishedproducts.

Jim Ambuske (18:15):
What panel described in the abstract was
based on real world observationsof the British Atlantic economy.
Behind the trade statistics thatmen like Charles Townsend poured
over during his tenure on theBoard of Trade were the
intellectual arguments thatofficials like Pownall made in
their pamphlets and books. Werepeople like Sukey who made this
commercial Empire work. Tracingthe flow of goods and

(18:40):
commodities across the Atlanticcan help us understand the
people and places who made itpossible for an enslaved woman
like Sukey to buy a lookingglass in John Hook's back
country Virginia store. TheTobacco trade between Maryland,
Virginia and Great Britainoffers us a window into a
complicated world with manymoving parts. Here's Ann Smart

(19:02):
Martin.

Ann Smart Martin (19:03):
The system of growing and moving tobacco from
the growing point, whether it'sMaryland or Virginia, was part
of this perfect plan of movingthroughout the economic system
and building the Empire.

Jim Ambuske (19:18):
John Hook became a part of this economic system
when he was still a child in theLowlands of Scotland.

Ann Smart Martin (19:24):
But you won't find John Hook in the history
books, but in the account books,he traveled to Virginia as a 13
year old apprentice clerk andshopkeeper. His father, Henry
was likely a small scalemanufacturer. He would later
open up a silk manufacturing hehad seven children, five sons,

(19:44):
all scattered to make theirfortune. Three went to Jamaica,
one to the East India Company,and John. His fourth went to
Virginia. And in the phrase ofhistorian Alan Karras, they were
all classic sojourners. Theywere educated 18th century young
Scotsman who saw littleopportunity for financial

(20:06):
success, and their hope was tomake a comfortable, respectful
existent and head back toScotland.

Jim Ambuske (20:13):
When John hook left Scotland in 1758, to work in
James and Robert Donald's storenear Petersburg, Virginia, the
Chesapeake tobacco trade waschanging dramatically for most
of its history. The tobaccotrade was concentrated in London
and Bristol, large, wealthyplanters like Charles Carroll of
Maryland typically sold theirtobacco crop on consignment. He

(20:37):
owned 1000s of acres and over300 enslaved people who produced
the majority of his crop. Afterenslaved laborers packed
Carroll's dried tobacco andbarrels, they put them aboard
ships in a Maryland Port forpassage to England. In London,
an agent took custody ofCarroll's shipment and sold the
tobacco on his behalf. Theagent, in turn, used the

(20:59):
proceeds to buy goods. Carrollordered and had these purchases
shipped to Maryland in the mid18th century, however, Scottish
merchant firms based in Glasgowbegan cornering the trade with
smaller planters who grew lesserquality tobacco. This led to
surprising results.

Ann Smart Martin (21:17):
By 1769 more tobacco went to Scottish ports
than all of England. And why wasthat? It was because the ships
took a few weeks less than timeto get there, and it was cheaper
for Scottish people to make thetextiles or pottery or whatever
else.

Jim Ambuske (21:35):
Scottish merchant firms began building local
stores along Virginia andMaryland rivers to serve the
needs of these smaller planters.Merchants who operated these
stores, also known as factors,purchased tobacco directly from
the small planters. This storesystem moved west, as settlers
did, toward the fall line, thepoint at which ocean going

(21:56):
vessels could no longer safelynavigate upriver from there,
smaller boats or wagons carriedgoods or tobacco to and from
stores that were built deeper inthe backcountry.

Ann Smart Martin (22:08):
Now we've got a system in place for going more
to Scotland, and that a boomingpopulation of Virginia meant
that small towns have beenestablished, snaked up the
rivers and up towards the BlueRidge.

Jim Ambuske (22:22):
But a local store manager like John Hook wouldn't
have purchased tobacco or othercommodities from small planters
with cash or hard money,sometimes called specie. Like
most things in the BritishAtlantic economy, merchants and
their customers did businessusing credit. Here's Scott
Miller

Scott Miller (22:41):
The vast majority of the time they're using
credit, and credit is the thingthat makes the world go round.
And I don't want to say it's theonly thing that matters for all
practical purposes, but when itcomes to everyday transactions,
it really kind of does. Thereare two reasons why credit is so

(23:02):
ubiquitous. The first is a verypractical sense. Is specie is
really heavy, and it's justfundamentally impractical to be
able to use for everydaytransactions. It's not
convenient if you can just havea merchant or a shopkeeper x1

(23:22):
thing out with one stroke of apen and put a debit in another
account. That is much easierthan carrying around gold or
copper or silver. It's alsomakes you much safer, because
people can't take that from you.So there's the practical reason
for that. The second reasonpeople are not using species
much is because it's incrediblyrare in the North American

(23:45):
colonies, you see this again andagain and again and again,
lamentation after lamentationabout the lack of cash or a
scarcity of money. So theyresorted to credit in many
different forms to actually makethis kind of commerce work.
Very, very few transactions weredone outside of the credit

Jim Ambuske (24:09):
Credit made everyday transactions possible
system.
in a tobacco economy built onthe backs of enslaved people.
The same was true of the riceand indigo trades in South
Carolina and the sugarplantations in Jamaica, Barbados
and the Gulf South by 1770 therewere 462,000 enslaved people in

(24:32):
British America, nearly 1/5 ofthe total colonial population,
while enslaved people labored inthe Homes of Quebec merchants on
New York City dockyards andelsewhere in the northern
colonies, slavery and enslavedpeople were central to the
economies and social worlds ofthe Southern colonies. In the

(24:53):
early 18th century, mostenslaved black people in
Virginia had been born in WestAfrica in the. Region known as
the Bight to Biafra. They camefrom the Igbo, Fang and other
peoples in what is now Nigeria.Cameroon, Equatorial Guiana and
Gabon. European slaverstransported captive Africans

(25:13):
aboard ships across the Atlanticthrough the waters of the Middle
Passage to ports along theJames, Rappahannock, and Potomac
rivers. Between 1750 and 1775nearly 32,000 enslaved Africans
disembarked in ports throughoutthe Chesapeake Bay. Not every

(25:35):
captive survived the journey,found in chains and put aboard
crowded ships, some captivesdied at sea from disease and
malnourishment. Some weremurdered by their Enslavers, and
sometimes they died by their ownhands. The surviving captive

(25:56):
Africans were put up for saleonce they arrived in the
colonies in August 1759 theVirginia planter George
Washington responded to anadvertisement offering 350
“choice healthy Gold CoastSLAVES” for sale in Maryland, he
purchased at least two enslavedmen for 99 pounds. They were

(26:20):
given the names "Neptune" and"Cupid," Washington put them to
work in the fields of his MountVernon plantation. We know their
names in part because when theyfled Mount Vernon, two years
later, Washington placed anadvertisement in the Maryland
Gazette offering a reward fortheir capture by 1770 however,

(26:44):
natural, reproduction and lawsthat determined whether a child
would be enslaved or free basedon the status of their mother,
had reshaped the landscape ofVirginia slavery. By then, 91%
of the enslaved people inVirginia had been born in the
colonies. Odds are that Pedro,Ben, Beck and Betty were among

(27:06):
them. The four enslaved peoplewere the property of Virginia
lawyer Patrick Henry. Theylabored in the tobacco fields of
his Scotchtown Plantation, about30 miles north of Richmond. In
1772 Henry recorded the totalamount of tobacco produced by
each of them. Pedro grew 1185pounds. Ben added 1059 Beck

(27:35):
produced slightly less at 1005pounds, while Betty, who was
probably between 12 and 15 yearsold, produced 991 pounds. All
told, they were responsible for4240 pounds of tobacco. Tobacco
is a labor intensive crop duringthe growing season. It requires

(27:56):
almost constant management,which meant that Pedro, Ben Beck
and Betty worked long, hotVirginia days. Since Henry was a
small planter, he likely soldhis tobacco crop to a factor
through the Scottish storetrade, even if he sold it on
consignment to a Londonmerchant. Selling his crop was

(28:18):
only the first step in gettingthe tobacco across the Atlantic,
planters and merchants alikeneeded to find a captain with a
ship to transport their crop toLondon or Glasgow, ideally, a
captain with local businesssavvy and a bit of swagger, a
captain they could trust, acaptain Like William Goosley.

Hannah Knox Tucker (28:39):
My favorite captain is William Goosley. He
is a captain who trades out ofVirginia, between Virginia and
London, but also other parts ofthe Atlantic world in the late
1760s and 1770s I love Williamgoosley Because he's really a
master of manipulating localcircumstances. He's very, very

(29:03):
good at using this personalrelationship and his claim to
direct knowledge to hisadvantage. I'm Hannah Knox
Tucker, Assistant Professor ofHistory at the Copenhagen
Business School. Becoming acaptain requires two types of
knowledge. There's morepractical knowledge that

(29:23):
captains acquire throughexperience as sailors and mates
and even captains in the earlystage of their careers, and also
more formalized training thatthey receive, sometimes in Port,
sometimes in a master Mariner'sfree time. Masters certainly
take apprentices. It is highlytechnical work. Navigating has

(29:44):
always had a mathematical basis,but it's certainly becoming more
technical over the 18th century,especially with the calculations
around longitude that areemerging in the 18th century in
a really significant andsustained way. And so the.
Captains need training ingeometry and trigonometry, and a

(30:04):
lot of these more technicalmathematical skills, also
astronomy.

Jim Ambuske (30:08):
In the 1760s and 1770s William Goosley applied
his practical and formalknowledge in the service of John
Norton and Sons, one of thelargest tobacco firms in London.
Goosley practiced his craft inthe waters of the James and York
rivers of Virginia, where hetook on shipments of tobacco in
return from Britain loaded withgoods. Knowing how to read the

(30:31):
stars and maintaining gooddiscipline aboard ship was only
part of a captain's job.

Hannah Knox Tucker (30:36):
Training in business matters and rudimentary
legal training is also anessential piece of any captain's
education. So because captainsare often engaged in trade
directly on behalf of themerchants who employ them or the
ship owners who employ them,they need to know how to keep
accounts. They're quiteliterate, so they write letters

(30:56):
to merchants and other peoplethroughout the Atlantic world,
keeping them apprised of localconditions, and they also need
to have a baseline understandingof the law around ships, because
things go wrong all the time inthe Atlantic world, privateering
and shipwrecks due to storms.These are things that happen all
the time, and captains need toknow how to register with the

(31:20):
Notary Public a report of whathappened. For insurance
purposes, they need to be ableto sue governments to reclaim
their vessels if they wereimproperly seized during times
of war. And all of this requiresa certain amount of legal
knowledge, or at least practicallegal knowledge.

Jim Ambuske (31:40):
Much depended on a captain's reputation for his
navigational skill and hisbusiness acumen. Planters and
merchants alike wanted reliable,trustworthy captains who could
transport cargo efficiently andnegotiate fair prices on their
behalf. And in William goosley'scase, he had a not so secret
weapon his mother, MarthaGoosley,

Hannah Knox Tucker (32:03):
His mother actually writes about him all
the time. She actually writesdirectly to British merchants.

Jim Ambuske (32:12):
In August, 1770 Martha wrote to John Norton,
William's employer, to highlighther son's local connections in
Virginia.

Martha Goosley (32:19):
“he has got a pretty general acquaintance and
Doubt not with your kindassistance he will be able to
load a larger ship if you chuseto send one and Sooner in [the
York] River than the James.”

Hannah Knox Tucker (32:34):
She talks about how great her son is and
what a diligent ship captain heis, and she's always working in
the back for his benefits. Soshe's always writing these
letters saying it would bereally great if you would take
William under your wing and givehim guidance. He's such a great
ship captain, but I know hewould really flourish under your
tutelage. And so William goosleyis great, because not only is he

(32:58):
a skilled manipulator of localcircumstance and his own claim
to direct knowledge, but he alsohas a support system in his
mother and his local communitythat allows him to cultivate a
reputation that endures evenwhen rumor questions him and his
motivations.

Jim Ambuske (33:18):
Martha Goosley's promotion of her son's career
highlights the critical rolethat women played in the British
Atlantic economy.

Hannah Knox Tucker (33:25):
Captains are very reliant on women, and
female labor in the Atlantic.One of the things that is true
about mariners, and is stilltrue about captains, is that
they're absent a lot of thetime. As a result, women have to
take and get to take a moreactive role in their family's
commercial life, and whetherthat person be the captain's

(33:49):
mother or the captain's sisteror the captain's wife, women
play a really powerful role inshaping captain's careers for a
few reasons. Firstly, captainsreally deputize their wives to
use the language of LaurelThatcher Ulrich, who actually
referenced a lot of shipcaptains when she was talking
about this notion of Deputyhusbands, captains are really

(34:10):
active in deputizing their wivesto perform commercial functions
for them. Women also are reallyinstrumental in selling goods
that captains trade on their ownaccounts, in some cases, and in
some cases, they'll even openstores. There's an example of a
ship captain whose wife opens ashop on the wharf in Dublin. And

(34:32):
in part, she's able to do thisbecause she sells the goods that
her husband imports. And so itcreates some really elegant
synergies. In some cases, a lotof times, women who are wives of
captains will open taverns.They're really instrumental in
this way, in being at the centerof a local economy. So while

(34:53):
captains may not know everythingthat's going on in a town, if
their wives are tavern keepers.Their wives know everything
that's going on in this townwhile the captain is abroad. So
women tavern keepers keep trackof their accounts, and they know
who's in debt to the tavern, andthey know who's paying their
debts frequently. So they havesome insight into local

(35:15):
creditworthiness. They also heara lot of the local news that
floats through the taverns, andthey are able then to share that
information. And one final waythat I would mention is the
women in captain's lives arereally important in establishing
their local reputations. So acaptain is gone for a long
period of time, but hisreputation is essential if he

(35:37):
wants to be hired again whencaptains are out of contact, and
the merchants that are employingthem haven't received a letter
for a while. What women sayabout their husbands and their
husbands reputations can reallyinfluence things in positive and
negative ways. Sometimes thewomen who feel abandoned by
their husbands will come totheir merchant employers and say

(36:01):
really negative things aboutthem. And this kind of
undermines the local trust inthe captain himself, and paints
him as a derelict, no longer thesober and diligent ideal that
merchants would desire theircaptain employees to be.

Jim Ambuske (36:17):
Captains also had to overcome a reputation for
being a bit salty.

Hannah Knox Tucker (36:22):
Saltiness is a term that I used to describe
how people thought aboutcaptains, just as we do today.
Captains. Contemporaries hadstereotypes about mariners that
definitely extended to thecaptains themselves. Land
dollars tended to think aboutmariners as the simultaneously
genial and generous people, butalso as unsophisticated or

(36:45):
insensitive or sometimes foolishpeople. That's what I mean by
saltiness. It follows them inPort, whether they like it or
not.

Jim Ambuske (36:55):
And yet saltiness could be a tool, an asset, that
a captain turned to hisadvantage.

Hannah Knox Tucker (37:01):
Saltiness implies brutishness in some
cases, but it also impliesskill. Captains are salty
because they've spent time atsea in open ocean navigation,
doing something that's verydifficult and very technical,
and that cultural saltiness alsodemonstrates that they have
direct knowledge of foreignspaces that they've seen and

(37:23):
experienced a lot of the worldthat many people have not
experienced or seen.

Jim Ambuske (37:29):
Philip Vickers Fithian witnessed firsthand the
savvy saltiness of Captain Dobbyof the ship Susanna. In the
summer of 1774 the New Jersey,born fifth and was living at
nominee Hall, the plantationhome of Robert Carter the third
it was located in WestmorelandCounty on Virginia's Northern
Neck between the Rappahannockand the Potomac rivers. Carter

(37:54):
was one of Virginia's largestlandowners and the owner of
hundreds of enslaved people whoproduced 1000s of pounds of
tobacco for Carter each year.The Virginia planter hired
Fithian to tutor his children.It was there that he encountered
Captain Dobby.

Hannah Knox Tucker (38:10):
Captain Dobby visits this family, and he
dines with them over severaldays. He makes several visits,
and Fithian describes him as anagreeable, sensible and polite
gentleman. So we get some ofthat sobriety and diligence,
that reputation that people onland really want captains to
have. But he also describes thecaptain as turning conversations

(38:35):
promiscuous, and he describeshim as a great mimic, and he
says he's a man of much spiritand humor, and I think that
speaks to the kind of saltinessand the duality of captaincy.
Captains are men of great humor.They're men who are great at
telling stories, who have had alot of experiences, and that has

(38:56):
a certain cultural value. Butthat saltiness doesn't prevent
them from also being men withcultivated reputations, men
worthy of trust in businessspaces. So I think this kind of
cultural saltiness describes thedual nature of captaincy.
Captains are both trusted, andthere are also people who

(39:17):
quickly turn the conversationpromiscuous.

Jim Ambuske (39:22):
Once a planter or a merchant managed to find a salty
sea captain with a goodreputation like goosley or
Dobby, there was still noguarantee that tobacco or trade
goods would arrive safely inPort. They wanted to protect
their investment to have someonelike a good neighbor to be there
in case something went wrong,and that meant buying an

(39:44):
insurance policy.

Hannah Farber (39:45):
Starting in the 18th century, the British
insurance business really booms,and it booms at the same time
that the British fiscal militarystate really gets itself
together. New forms of statefinance are taking shape.
Merchant money is beingharnessed by the state in a new
way. That money is being used tofight wars that expand the

(40:07):
Empire and make new businessopportunities and make the state
more powerful. It's a processthat goes through a lot of
chaotic fits and starts, butover the 18th century, it's a
pattern of growth and insurancegrows right along with that
British imperial growth. I'mHannah Farber, Professor of
History at Columbia University.There is small scale insurance

(40:29):
in the British Americancolonies, certainly by the mid
1700s insurance on an evensmaller and more informal scale
probably took place earlier, butit's harder to track. The first
real boom in insurancebrokerages takes place around
the Seven Years War, especiallyin Philadelphia, at moments when

(40:51):
the British Empire is at war.Commerce is particularly risky.
There are also new kinds offinancial rewards that could
come to merchants who arewilling to take risks. As the
British Empire is growing andfits and starts, there are
moments when commerce isparticularly high risk and high
reward. It's nice during wartimeto have compatriots at hand who

(41:15):
you're sharing risk with. It'sjust easier than connecting
yourself to London. That said,Americans generally prefer to
get their insurance made inBritain when they can insurance
is cheaper, as you can imagine.It's a hotter, faster and more
efficient financial market inBritain, and most Americans have
some business connection inBritain anyway,

Jim Ambuske (41:38):
Whether a merchant worked with an underwriter in
Philadelphia, Boston, London orGlasgow, insurance policies were
largely the same.

Hannah Farber (41:47):
The standard insurance policy is a printed
blank form in which you fill inparticular details. It seems
comprehensive, but it is not so.One of the really interesting
things to me about the marineinsurance business is that the
standard policy barely changesfor about 400 years, and the
core text of the policy is thislist of things that can go wrong

(42:09):
on your voyage, the dangerstouching the adventures and
perils which the insurers arecontented to bear. They are the
dangers of the seas, Men of War,fires, enemies, pirates, rovers
assailing thieves, jettisonsletters of marque and
countermarque surprises, takingsat sea, arrests, restraints and
detainments of all kings,princes or people of what

(42:32):
nation, condition or equality soever and all other perils,
losses and misfortunes.

Jim Ambuske (42:38):
On the surface, these policies seem to cover
absolutely everything, but:

Hannah Farber (42:43):
You would be incorrect. But if you were an
experienced merchant in theearly modern world, you would
know that was incorrect. Therewere a lot of ways in which your
policy might be voided orwouldn't exactly be as
comprehensive as you wouldexpect. For example, if you did
not follow the route that youlaid out when you got your
insurance policy. It's abusiness of pretty rough

(43:05):
estimation. In other words, theydon't have fancy actuarial
tables that say, Well, if it'sthis kind of sloop, premium
should be a little higher, andif it's this kind of scooter,
the insurance policy premiumshould be a little lower. It's
not that precise. Insurancepremiums are determined by gut
knowledge and the latestpolitical news as much as

(43:25):
anything else, and the insurer'sown experience informing the
insurance rate that they suggest

Jim Ambuske (43:32):
What steps would a tobacco merchant like John hook
or the merchant firms whoemployed captains goosley and
Dobby take to insure theircargo?

Hannah Farber (43:40):
If you are a Virginia tobacco merchant and
you want to insure your cargo,the first thing that you might
do to decide about yourinsurance is to consult your
network, to ask your neighborswhere they get their insurance
and what their rates have been.If you are in Virginia, you are

(44:01):
not necessarily very closelyconnected to the more developed
mercantile port towns likeBoston or New York or
Philadelphia, so you probablywouldn't go too far out of your
way to get insurance from thecolonies to the north. Most
likely what you would do is geta name from a friend or a
neighbor or an in law, and youwould write to that contact, and

(44:24):
you would tell them how muchtobacco that you had and what
you were planning to do with it,where you were planning to ship
it, and you would say, at whatpremium would you insure this
cargo? And they would likelywrite back and they would give
you a certain number, and if youfound that number
unsatisfactory, you might askyour correspondent to ask

(44:46):
someone else. But time ispassing and letters are slow.
You don't have a ton of time forcomparison shopping, so I don't
actually see a lot of hagglingabout rates in the
correspondence. They have a gutsense of what seems reasonable
based on their neighbors, or ifthey're unhappy with. Insurance
rate that they're quoted.Sometimes they might say, Well,
okay, I'm only going to insurehalf my cargo, or I'm going to

(45:07):
insure the cargo, but not thevessel, or I'm not going to
insure my tobacco, but I amgoing to insure the incoming
manufactured goods that I'mgoing to buy from London with
the proceeds. Once you have thegoods that are more valuable to
you, you may want to insure themmore, and then you agree to the
deal, and your correspondentsigns the insurance policy in
London on your behalf. But a lotof this proceeds according to

(45:32):
custom, according toexpectation, according to
reputation. I'm not sure I wantto use the word Trust, but it is
sort of an expectation thatpeople will behave in good
faith, and that's one of thefundamental characteristics of
why insurance is such a subtle,supple and powerful business.
Once you received word that yourstuff had arrived safely, a

(45:56):
certain amount of time wouldpass. Often, your insurance
policy would say you had sixweeks to pay up in cash or 12
weeks to pay up in cash. Butpeople can also keep accounts
with their insurers. They mighthave all kinds of financial
business in London, and whatthey really need is just for
their accounts not to become tooon balance, Americans have a lot
of debt to their Britishlenders, and nobody necessarily

(46:19):
has a big problem with that. Theinsurer can just be another
person who you owe debt to, aslong as the music keeps playing,
there's no problem.

Jim Ambuske (46:29):
As a merchant worked out the details of an
insurance policy, the ship'scaptain was busy making final
arrangements to get underway. Acaptain like Goosley or Dobby
would have filed paperwork withport officials, bought spare
parts for the ship, got enoughfood to support the crew on the
journey across the Atlantic, andhired sailors. Here's Hannah
Knox Tucker.

Hannah Knox Tucker (46:50):
Captains employ a broad spectrum of
people in those jobs, people whoare very experienced, people who
are very early stages and have alot to learn, but the one thing
that they often have in commonin the British Atlantic is that
in many cases, they are Britishbecause the Navigation Acts
require that a majority ofsailors be of British descent,

(47:11):
essentially, either from theplantations or from Britain
itself. A lot of the crews aremade up of men who are young, by
virtue of the fact that manysailors either leave the harsh
conditions and retire to landor, frankly, die at sea. They're
entering a lot of different kindof disease environments, and

(47:31):
it's a very high riskoccupation, so many of them do
die at sea. And this is kind ofthe tragic reality of shipping.
It's a high risk world, andsailors bear the brunt of that
risk in a really significantway,

Jim Ambuske (47:45):
But increasingly, captains would also buy or rent
part of the crew.

Hannah Knox Tucker (47:51):
The number of enslaved sailors is
significantly increasing overthe 18th century. In part, this
reflects broader trends in theAtlantic world slavery as a
result of the transatlanticslave trade, and also births in
the colonial Americas isincreasing in this period. But
also captains desire control.Captains and merchants want to

(48:16):
be able to control their laborforce and guarantee their labor
force. White free Sailors canseek higher wages elsewhere,
could abandon the ship withcompelling reasons. They could
just say, I am a free mariner.Captains will often buy enslaved
people and either employ thosepeople on their own vessels and

(48:40):
garnish their wages for theirown accounts, and this is a way
that captains are exploitingslavery in the Atlantic world
for their own benefit. Or theywill hire enslaved sailors from
other owners, or merchants willown enslaved sailors that they
enslave on these vessels

Jim Ambuske (49:00):
Once the captain had hired his crew men free and
enslaved, he would direct themto load the tobacco aboard the
ship.

Hannah Knox Tucker (49:08):
It is really hard work. We're talking about
sailors who are rollinghogsheads filled with 1000
pounds of tobacco from aplanter's house, kind of rolling
them down the road, putting themon this long boat, and rowing
them out to the vessel itself,before hefting them onto the

(49:28):
ship and stowing them belowdeck. Then, once the vessel is
stowed, they will again do thelogistical work of empire by
reporting what they're exitingwith, what their cargo is and
where their intended next portof call is. They'll sail either
to their home port or to theirnext port of call, and they'll
unload the vessel. Again.Sailors are instrumental in this

(49:51):
work, but also there are somelongshoremen who do this type of
labor, people that can be hiredfor a day at a time, and then
eventually. And if that is thefinal port of call, they will
pay the sailors for theirjourney and send them on their
way, and the journey will beover

Jim Ambuske (50:12):
When the ship reached London, Glasgow, or some
other British port, and the crewunloaded the vessel. The captain
often took on a cargo ofmanufactured goods for delivery
to customers in the colonies.Merchants like John Hook who
purchased tobacco locally fromsmaller planters and shipped it
abroad, didn't always know whomade the goods they had ordered

(50:33):
or where they were made. Nor didthe larger planters who shipped
their tobacco directly to themother country. Instead, they
placed orders for certain typesof goods and left ship captains
or their British partners tofind these items at the best
prices. Here's Ann Smart Martin:

Ann Smart Martin (50:52):
It's hard to say where specifically they came
from, like a particular store ormaker, because the merchants
like John hook are middlemen,while John Hook would have an
invoice of everything that camehe didn't know, necessarily
where it came from. I did findone shop note in hook's papers,
which was basically a bill,where you'd have a nice drawing

(51:14):
at the top, and then you'd havea list of what was for sale,
what was bought. And this from aglasswork in southeastern
England.

Jim Ambuske (51:21):
Fortunately, other records offers insight into the
world of goods that John Hookand other merchants imported.

Ann Smart Martin (51:28):
One way I could find sort of where exactly
these goods came from wasthrough a contemporary merchant
in Maryland, and he does listall those details of where they
came from textile warehouses inManchester. They shop at the
Delft Field House in Glasgow,which is where they made tin
glazed earthenwares. Theyshopped at the Kilmarnock woolen

(51:52):
manufacturing and he went todozens of craftspeople to buy
shoes. And he went to London. Sothis partner in Scotland is
traveling all around England toget these world of goods to send
the people in Virginia. And fromLondon came China, silver
spices, furred hats, silks andguns. So in one invoice of the

(52:17):
Glasgow party, there are 40different manufacturers,
craftsmen and merchants. Butthere's kind of the rub. I mean,
the rub is in the London houses.The rub is that that is the
other half of the global trade.The other half of the global
trade is stuff that comes fromthe rest of the globe. From

(52:39):
Asia. You get silk and tea, fineporcelains and lacquerware. And
here you can see that horrificside tucked into these merchant
houses so the sugar from thehorrific trade islands like
Jamaica, where European demandfueled the need for more men,
women and children stolen fromAfrica and enslaved.

Jim Ambuske (53:02):
British Americans who took passage aboard merchant
vessels made purchases inLondon, Glasgow and other
British cities as well. Theyoften did so on behalf of
friends and family back home.And when we combine different
pieces of evidence, we sometimesfind the people who were really
behind those purchases

Zara Anishanslin (53:21):
Often, women, for example, are actually in the
documentary archive too, but wedon't notice them because they
might be listed under, forexample, their husband's name.
I'm Zara Anishanslin, and I'm aProfessor of History at the
University of Delaware.Sometimes, if you look at
records in a merchant's accountbook, for example, underneath a

(53:41):
lot of those men's names areactually women making the
decision, driving the decision.One member of the Willing family
in Philadelphia who went toLondon was going to buy a
garment for his sister on herrequest, but he said he would
not dare do it until she senthim the proper measurements and

(54:02):
some details about what shewanted. Now, I guarantee you,
when he rolls into the Londonshop and makes the order, the
account book would say, Mr.Thomas Willing purchased
material to make a gown, or 20lengths of silk, or this corset
or whatever. However, if youmatch it with the letter, we
know it actually was the womandriving that purchase. It was

(54:24):
her request, just as it would beshe who would wear it

Jim Ambuske (54:29):
With the cargo loaded in the ship's hold,
customs duties, paid crew, hiredand passengers boarded a captain
like Dobby or goosley sailedfrom London down the River
Thames or away from Glasgow, outthe river Clyde and headed west
across the Atlantic, dependingon what cargo the ship was
carrying, it might have headedfirst to Jamaica or Barbados to

(54:52):
deliver trade goods and take ona load of sugar after leaving
the West Indies and venturingnorth along the mainland coast,
perhaps. The ship stopped in thePort of Charleston, South
Carolina, where some of itscargo would find its way into
stores in the city's mainmarketplace. If a British
subject was visiting thecolonies for the first time,

(55:12):
they would have encountered amarketplace in Charleston that
was somewhat familiar. EmmaHart's research in Britain and
North America helps to explainwhy:

Emma Hart (55:22):
One of my sort of eureka moments was when I went
to the marketplace I visited inHexham in Northumberland, the
market shed, which is just sortof like a roof on pillars, was
built in the 1750s about thesame time, actually, as
marketplaces in Charleston,South Carolina. And when I

(55:43):
looked at maps that showed themarket buildings in Charleston,
it was clear that they were thesame style. Of course, the
Charleston market buildings fromthat precise period don't
survive anymore. The one thatsurvives in Charleston now is
from the early 19th century, butit was clear to me that people

(56:04):
on both sides of the Atlanticwere putting up similar market
buildings in similar spaces atthe same time. By the 1770s
Charleston has a designated fishmarket, a beef market and a
fruit and vegetable market, andthere are also a number of
luxury and everyday shops inCharleston. If you wanted to buy

(56:28):
luxury goods like fine clothingand silver, you would most
likely go to Trad Street, wherethere was a cluster of luxury
goods sellers on that street, soit would be familiar to them.

Jim Ambuske (56:41):
And yet, even as Charleston felt familiar first
time, visitors quickly realizedthat this was a world far
different than Edinburgh, Yorkor Dublin.

Emma Hart (56:51):
The main thing that you would notice, particularly
if you're a European coming toSouth Carolina for the first
time, would be the presence ofenslaved people in these
marketplaces, the centrality ofslavery would become immediately
obvious to you as a visitor whenyou went into these

(57:11):
marketplaces, more so than inPhiladelphia, where there would
be African American people, butnot in such a large number. The
Fish Market was almostcompletely run by enslaved and
free African American men whopiloted the boats and caught the
fish and then sold them on thewalls of Charleston. And of

(57:33):
course, the other thing that youwould notice was that people
were being sold in large numbersin many of these marketplaces.
So 10s of 1000s of people werebeing sold at auctions, which
often took place at these ruralstores, but also on the walls of
Charleston, at inns and tavernsthat were on the edge of
Charleston. One of the mostfascinating people that I came

(57:56):
across in my research on thatregion was a guy called Thomas
Nightingale, who founded theCharleston racecourse, and he
was a Saddler and was involvedin trading with indigenous
people early on in his career,but later in his career, in the
1760s he opened an inn on theoutskirts of Charleston, and it
became a central point forselling enslaved Africans, both

(58:18):
who'd been imported across theAtlantic, but also who were
being sold as part of deceasedestates as well. So if you went
to Thomas Nghtingale's inn as aEuropean, you would be
astonished to find that therewas a side business in selling
enslaved people, that auctionswere taking place. And it would
be in a very unfamiliar site toEuropeans.

Jim Ambuske (58:41):
Charleston's marketplace reflected South
Carolina's plantation economyand a society intimately
intertwined with slavery. InPhiladelphia, merchants and
visitors might find somethingdecidedly more English, at least
at first.

Emma Hart (58:58):
When they got to Philadelphia itself and to
various other towns likeLancaster or Carlisle or reading
they would find familiarmarketplaces to focus on
Philadelphia, you would arriveat the wharves on the Delaware
River, you would immediately seeMarket Street with the market
stretching down it Before you,and you'd find a very organized

(59:21):
marketplace that was segmentedaccording to what kind of things
people were selling. There was aspecific area for people who
come over from New Jersey acrossthe Delaware River. There was a
fish market. There was an areawhere butchers congregated to
sell meat, and then there was aGreen Market, where fruit and
vegetable sellers wouldcongregate.

Jim Ambuske (59:43):
In June, 1765 customers visiting Francis
Harris' store on Second Streetcould buy goods just imported
from London, Bristol andLiverpool, including:

Anne Fertig (59:55):
“Scots carpets..Irish linens…window
glass..whips…saffron…quills, inkpots.. Playing cards…fish-hooks
.. table knives…guns…fryingpans…curtain
rings..scythes…Bristol shoes andbeer.”

Emma Hart (01:00:10):
Also got so big by this point that there was also a
south market. So there was twoofficial marketplaces. Most of
the shops in Philadelphia werelining Market Street that was
the sort of real commercialdistrict.

Jim Ambuske (01:00:24):
Beyond the city, aBritish visitor would have seen
a different kind of marketplacewhere goods from Europe, Asia
and beyond might be on offer.

Emma Hart (01:00:33):
Pennsylvania had a lot of mills that were along the
Brandywine River and outWestwoods from Philadelphia and
northwest from Philadelphia aswell. These Mills had become
like marketplaces in their ownright. So mill owners or mill
builders would buy land, they'dput a mill on the river in their
land, which would be millingeither wheat and grain. When you

(01:00:57):
go into the account books ofthese mill owners, you would
discover that there was often astore at the mill that local
employees would buy things from,and that farmers would come to
deposit their wheat, and thenthey'd purchase goods in return
at the mill. This is also veryhandy for people who live in

(01:01:17):
this quite large landscape.

Jim Ambuske (01:01:20):
Even in Philadelphia, in a colony far
less reliant on enslaved labor,where grains like wheat were one
of its cheap exports, free andenslaved people were ever
present in the marketplace.

Emma Hart (01:01:32):
You wouldn't be able to go to a marketplace either in
Pennsylvania or South Carolina,in a city and not encounter
large numbers of AfricanAmerican men and women, most
notably women traders sellingprepared goods, prepared foods,
but also selling fruit andvegetables. There's a very

(01:01:52):
famous depiction of an AfricanAmerican seller in the
Philadelphia marketplace in thelater 18th century. She's
selling a dish called Pepperpot, which is a sort of hot stew
that African American womenwould sell in the Philadelphia
marketplace. The pepper potseller is an example of how
important African American menand women had become to local

(01:02:16):
trade by the mid to late 18thcentury.

Jim Ambuske (01:02:22):
Perhaps, though Captains Goosley or Dobby headed
directly for Virginia, carryinggoods destined for John Hook's
backcountry store in CampbellCounty, textiles, spoons,
spices, ribbons and mirrors andother goods made their way up
rivers and over land to a placebetween worlds. Here's Ann Smart
Martin:

Ann Smart Martin (01:02:42):
The backcountry is just a great sort
of catchphrase, if we thinkabout this nebulous land in
between, kind of thisestablished east coast, but also
the Blue Ridge Mountains. We'vegot English settlers, many of
them, but not all, are bringingenslaved peoples. Some of them
recently came from Africa. Butdown the Shenandoah Valley comes

(01:03:03):
another group, and these areGermans from Pennsylvania.
There's also Scots, Irish nativepeoples are also mixed in. So we
have this really interestingzone of different kinds of
people. And there was a sense,really, the back country was
something different. I mean, itwas poor. There are not as many

(01:03:25):
enslaved people. They were notas market based, and they also
seem to be rougher.

Jim Ambuske (01:03:32):
But John Hook's account books reveal that the
back country wasn't entirely arough and tumble world.

Ann Smart Martin (01:03:38):
What they have is this extraordinary quality,
variety and fashionability ofthe items he stocked kind of
belie that notion we have aboutrugged, self sufficient
backcountry life, and you couldwalk in it, and his customers
could handle backgammon boardsor China teacups and feather
plumes, but most of the thingsthat he sold were the

(01:04:01):
necessities of everyday life. Hesold assorted nails, crosscut
saws, gimlets, chisels, gouges,mortis, tendons, adzes, hinges,
locks, paints white, SpanishBrown, Prussian blue and yellow.
He offered guns for protection.He had stuff for horses. He had

(01:04:24):
stuff for riding. He had currycombs, but he also had two super
fine ladies' hunting saddleswith polished arched mouth bits
and green sabacclaws embroideredwith gold springing costing two
pounds each for those who wantedto further display their wealth,
he had fine painted teapots,Chinese porcelain cup and

(01:04:45):
saucers, English made cut glassof decanters, enameled wine
glass, cut glass, screw it'sboxes of books on and on. The
world of goods in John Hookstore was unexpected to many in.
Seemed like these are the thingsI thought we would find in
established towns, and it didn'treally fit my expectations. But

(01:05:06):
nonetheless, there they were.

Jim Ambuske (01:05:09):
Hook's Surviving papers tell us that his New
London store was 42 by 20 feet,with the long side facing the
street inside, customers likethe enslaved woman Suckey would
have seen the storage room, thecounting room, and most
importantly, in the main room,the long counter with book on
one side and Sukey on the other.

Ann Smart Martin (01:05:29):
These two zones between the merchant on
one side the customer on theother really sets up, I think,
for us, this dramatic stage forshopping as experience this big,
long counter kind of closed offthis world of goods between you,
because behind the counter stoodthe merchant, and behind the
merchant stood the shelves.There's cubby holes that are

(01:05:51):
built in those little boxes. Andin these boxes were ribbons and
buttons and razors, all kinds ofthese smallish consumer goods.
Some are wrapped in packages.Some are open. My favorite part
is the sensuous world ofbeautiful textiles, and some of
them were probably in brownpaper, and that's to protect

(01:06:12):
them from rats and dam but ifyou think about unwrapping and
untying these protective coverswas pretty dramatic, dramatic
for customers to see this worldof color and drama unfolding in
front of you in a world that'snot as bright and colorful as it
is today.

Jim Ambuske (01:06:31):
Textiles were the most important item that
customers purchased, some silk,some cotton, but nothing as
frequent as a coarse fabric madein Scottish Mills called
osnaburg.

Ann Smart Martin (01:06:44):
Osnaburg is a kind of inexpensive linen. It
was twice as common as any otherkind of textile. Osnaburg was
the everyday wear of everydaypeople. We could find it from
servants. We can find it fromworking people, most importantly
for us and the tobacco story isthey were often used to clothe

(01:07:07):
enslaved people. The lion'sshare of this textile was
probably purchased by plantersto provide clothing to be sewn
by someone on their plantationand provide clothing for the
year.

Jim Ambuske (01:07:25):
When Sukey visited John Hook's store in February
1774 she was probably wearingclothing made of osnaburg when
she bought some ribbon and alooking glass for four pounds of
cotton in the seed.

Ann Smart Martin (01:07:38):
Sukey, to me, gave me a chance to think about
the ways in which enslavedpeople could bring alternative
understandings and wants to theworld of goods. We don't know
what Suki did after she made herpurchase and left the store. Did
she tie her ribbon in a bow infront of her shift she winded

(01:07:58):
around her neck, or in the brimof her hat? Did she lace it
through her hair? We don't know.That particular set of goods
made me want to think aboutmeaning. Why would she want a
mirror and a ribbon? And it tookme into the row of the looking
glass. And the Looking Glassbegins with this idea of magical

(01:08:20):
and mythical mirrors before the19th century, they are often
called Looking Glasses, and theywere to look you looked into it.
You looked beyond. You couldlook at your face, but you could
also look at other worlds. Theytold the truth and they
predicted the future. So I tookthat idea of mirror and I traced
it culturally and worked closelywith the idea of mirrors and

(01:08:43):
their role in Africa, becausemirrors were a key item of trade

Jim Ambuske (01:08:50):
In some West African cultures like the
Bakongo and Igbo peoples mirrorsplayed a powerful role in
warding off evil spirits. Theywere also windows into the past
and foretold the future. Thesebeliefs often survive the waters
of the Middle Passage, even ifthe freedom of the enslaved did
not and became woven into thefabric of black culture in

(01:09:13):
British North America. It'spossible, then that when Sukey
looked into her mirror, perhapsas she threaded the ribbon
through her hair. She saw morethan just herself.

Ann Smart Martin (01:09:25):
They had duality that only could you look
into, but it also flickered andreflected. Suki stood with one
foot in this Anglo, Virginianworld and the other in this
other African one. And what canwe wonder about about that world
of goods?

Jim Ambuske (01:09:57):
John Hose was the kind of merchant that Thomas
Pownall had in mind what heimagined the British Empire as a
perfect system, with thecolonies in orbit around an
imperial sun. Hose made luxuryshoes for women at his shop at
the rose on Cheapside Street,just near Milk Street in London.

(01:10:19):
With 300 laborers and his employhose could make a lot of
footwear, especially shoes madeof fine silk and shipped trunk
loads of them across theAtlantic to eager colonial
customers who could afford them.British American shops in
Boston, New York and Charlestonadvertised silk shoes of John
Ho's mate, Such was hisreputation, they needn't say

(01:10:41):
more, many pairs of hose shoesstill survive. Sometime between
1760 and 1770 someone, possiblya Virginian, purchased a pair of
Bose cream color silk pumps.Markings on the tongue suggest
that the shoes were made to fita woman who wore a size four

(01:11:03):
wide. The artistry andcraftsmanship is nothing short
of amazing. They are brocadedwith floral patterns, green
stems and shoots wend their wayaround each shoe, sprouting
leaves here and there beforeblooming flowers colored blue
and rose in a province likeVirginia, the tobacco grown by

(01:11:27):
enslaved laborers and then soldto a local merchant or a
consignment in London, generatedthe wealth that made it possible
for planters to buy a pair ofsilk shoes made by John Hoes in
England, in Thomas Pownall'suniverse, a cosmology shared by
other Britons, that was howcommerce with the colonies ought
to work. Colonists sentcommodities like tobacco, rice,

(01:11:50):
wheat, timber and indigo home toBritain, and in return, British
manufacturers sent finishedgoods like shoes to the
provinces. But experience hadtaught the former Massachusetts
governor that empires werefragile things, especially when
its members did not all sharethe same idea of the common
Imperial good. So when rumorsbegan swirling in British

(01:12:13):
America in the early 1760s thatParliament would soon levy new
taxes on the provinces, taxesmeant to fund the administration
of the colonies and alleviateBritain of the enormous debt it
had borrowed to win the SevenYears' War. Powell may not have
been surprised by anadvertisement placed by
Philadelphia Shoemaker AlexanderRutherford in the pages of the

(01:12:35):
Pennsylvania journal. Rutherfordcould not match John hoses
manufacturing output at his shopon Front Street in Philadelphia,
but he could appeal to colonistswho felt angry about the
possibility of taxation withoutrepresentation on January, 20,
1765, Rutherford advisedcustomers who were:

Alexander Rutherford (01:12:58):
“resolved to distinguish themselves by
their patriotism andencouragement of American
manufactures, that he makes andsells all sorts of worsted or
wool shoes, of all sizes, asneat and cheap as any imported
from England.”

Jim Ambuske (01:13:15):
In a world of goods, where commerce was the
lifeblood of the British Empire,shoes could become more than
just something to wear,something more than just items
both practical and refined. Theycould become weapons.

(01:13:38):
Thanks for listening to Worldsturned upside down. Worlds is a
production of art two studios,part of the Roy Rosenzweig
center for history and new mediaat George Mason University. I'm
your host. Jim Ambuske, head toart two studios.org. For a
complete transcript of today'sepisode and suggestions for

(01:14:00):
further reading. Worlds isresearch and written by me with
additional research writing andscript editing by Jeanette
Patrick. Special thanks to CodyYoungblood of Patrick Henry's
Red Hill for contributingadditional research to this
episode. Jeanette Patrick and Iare the executive producers.

(01:14:21):
Grace Mallon is our Britishcorrespondent. Our lead audio
editor is Curt Dahl of CDsquared, Rachel Birch, Amber
Pelham and Alexandra Miller areour graduate assistants. Our
thanks to Emma Hart, ScottMiller, Ann Smart Martin, Hannah
Knox Tucker, Hannah Farber, andZara Anishanslen for sharing

(01:14:42):
their expertise with us in thisepisode. Thanks also to our
voice actors, Anne Fertig andAdam Smith. Subscribe to Worlds
on your favorite podcast app,Thanks, and we'll see you next
time you.