A closed elite? Bristol’s Society of Merchant Venturers and the abolition of slave trading

Why, despite clear economic incentives, did eighteenth-century slave traders fail to defend their business interests against the abolition campaign? We focus on the outport of Bristol as a case in point. Our main argument is that slave traders lacked an organizational basis to translate their economic interests into political influence. Supporting evidence from merchant networks over the 1698–1807 period shows that the Society of Merchant Venturers offered such an organizational site for collective political action. Members of this chartered company controlled much of Bristol’s seaborne commerce and held chief elective offices in the municipal government. However, the Society evolved into an organization that represented the interests of a closed elite. High barriers to entry prevented the slave traders from using the Society as a vehicle for political mobilization. Social cohesion among slave traders outside the chartered company hinged on centrally positioned brokers. Yet the broker positions were held by the few merchants who became members of the Society, and who eventually ceased their engagement in slave trading. The result was a fragmented network that undermined the slave traders’ concerted efforts to mobilize against the political pressure of the abolitionist movement

The First European Colonization of the North Atlantic

Many facets of what are commonly considered to be novel and unique characteristics of modern Capitalism have their roots, often in a mature form, in the Medieval Period (Abu-Lughod 1991; Crosby 2004; Hoffmann 2001; Marks 2007). Archaeological work focusing on the Norse North Atlantic from the Early Medieval Period through to the Early Modern Period has been especially effective at revealing certain of these phenomena, specifically those dealing with the commoditization of natural resources and the influence of global markets on colonization. The early medieval colonial expansion of the Norse and the subsequent centuries of interaction with the medieval world system anticipate the central place that international global markets had on the formation of the post-Columbian world. This essay will discuss the North Atlantic Norse colonies, specifically the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. For the purposes of this volume, this discussion is offered as a counter-point to the discussions of the post-Columbian colonial efforts of the Europeans in the Americas. The intention is to use the medieval Scandinavian colonial migration to problematize the larger discussion on the nature of colonies, colonialism, and the emergence of capitalism