First published in 1967, this superb collection of essays on trade in the Middle Ages has been a major contribution to modern medieval studies. Professor Carus-Wilson examines: * fifteenth-century Bristol * trade with Iceland * the Merchant Adventurers of London * the thirteenth-century cloth industry (with its highly developed capitalist system) * the export of English woollen cloth * the wine trade. Each paper is firmly rooted in original research and contemporary sources such as customs returns and company minutes, and, in addition, her expose of the dubious accuracy of Aulnage accounts is widely recognised as a classic.

The dramatic story of a mutiny aboard an eighteenth-century British ship and how its owners effectively rallied the power of the British Crown to protect their investment and expand their wealth and political power across multiple generations. In 1768, the British slave ship Black Prince, departed the port of Bristol, bound for West Africa. It never arrived. Before reaching Old Calabar, the crew mutinied, murdering the captain and his officers. The mutineers renamed the ship Liberty, elected new officers, and set out for Brazil. By the time the ship arrived there, the crew had disintegrated into a violent mob and fired into the port city. After the Black Prince wrecked off the coast of Hispaniola, the rebels fled to outposts around the Atlantic world. An eight-year manhunt ensued. This book follows the crew's turn to piracy and the merchant-owners' response to the uprising. At the very moment that the American Revolution unfolded in North America, the Black Prince's owners conducted a "shadow" revolution, mobilizing the power of the British Crown to seek justice and restitution on their behalf. These private merchants used state surveillance, policing, extradition, capital punishment, international diplomacy, and even warfare in order to protect their wealth. During an era of professed liberty and freedom, the privatization of state power was already emerging, replacing monarchies with corporate oligarchies, presaging a new kind of political power in the Atlantic world. The eighteenth-century Bristol slave merchants and subsequent generations of their families accrued great fortunes from the trade and invested it in early British banks, railroads, insurance companies, industrial manufacturing, and even the Anglican Church. Mutiny on the Black Prince narrates the dramatic story of the events onboard and the merchant owners' efforts to capture the rebels from around the Atlantic world, as well as the way that British slavery shaped the industrializing Atlantic economy and the evolution of the modern corporate state.

A complete edition of primary sources concerning dramatic and musical performance in Bristol from the Middle Ages until the time of Oliver Cromwell.

Local Business Voice provides the first scholarly and systematic history of the Chambers of Commerce from early historical origins in the eighteenth century up to the present date. Based on new archival information, it provides exhaustive coverage of all UK and Irish chambers, as well as detailed examination of early Chambers in the U.S., including New York, Charleston, and Boston, and early Chambers in Quebec and Jamaica. The book traces the importance of early tax protests and anger as motivating forces through interrelation with the American Revolution. It traces the emergence of service bundles, such commercial arbitration, coffee and reading rooms, and information and consultancy services as critical to the Chambers' unique market position. Some of the services had a unique status as trust goods, exploiting the chambers' USP as high status mutual non-profit organisations. It demonstrates the challenges for the Chambers as independent voluntary bodies in increasing partnerships with governments and competition with rival institutions, and also gives critical overview of key lobbies, such as over the Jay Treaty, tax expansion, the Corn Laws, tariff reform and free trade, municipal socialism, and modern regulatory burdens. There is also extensive analysis of chamber membership and motivation, tracking changes in structure by firm size, sector and corporate and management structures. The growth of small firm membership, and the value of business networks and (in the early chambers) religious adherence, are shown as key mediums for recruitment, and maintaining commitment. A definitive account of all local chambers including data appendices and detailed assessment of their significance, the book will be an enduring resource and foundation for research into the Chambers of Commerce's origins, historical development, and modern position.

Slavery Obscured aims to assess how the slave trade affected the social life and cultural outlook of the citizens of a major English city, and contends that its impact was more profound than has previously been acknowledged. Based on original research in archives in Britain and America, this title builds on scholarship in the economic history of the slave trade to ask questions about the way slave-derived wealth underpinned the city of Bristol's urban development and its growing gentility. How much did Bristol's Georgian renaissance owe to such wealth? Who were the major players and beneficiaries of the African and West Indian trades? How, in an ever-changing historical environment, were enslaved Africans represented in the city's press, theatre and political discourse? What do previously unexplored religious, legal and private records tell us about the black presence in Bristol or about the attitudes of white seamen, colonists and merchants towards slavery and race? What role did white women and artisans play in Bristol's anti-slavery movement? Combining a historical and anthropological approach, Slavery Obscured, seeks to shed new light on the contradictory and complex history of an English slaving port and to prompt new ways of looking at British national identity, race and history.