Knowledge, Information, and Business Education in the British Atlantic World, 1620–1760

Accurate information is essential to successful business activity. The early modern period saw an increase in printed commercial information, including newspapers, printed exchange rates, and educational texts--part of the 'print revolution' that permeated all aspects of the early modern world. Rather than relying on externally-produced printed works, commercial agents retained agency in creating and sharing their own business and educational information, which was shared in other forms and prioritised and valued over printed material. This book explores the ways that merchants and other commercial agents learned about business in the early modern British Atlantic World. It considers how they acquired, dispersed, stored, and used information, as well as considering their contribution to creating and shaping that information. Prioritising a wide range of manuscript material held in disparate collections, including merchants' correspondence, letter-books, notebooks, family papers, exercise books, and ships' logs, Talbott explores the ways that knowledge, information, and business education was created, circulated, and used in the early modern British Atlantic World. It offers a new perspective on the exchange of business information in a period dominated by discussions of print, prioritising manuscript and oral forms of exchange. In doing so, it presents a more holistic account of the ways that networks of knowledge operated in early modern business, centralising the creation, circulation, and use of business information specifically by those individuals most involved in--and most affected by--its production.

Siobhan Talbott was awarded her doctorate by the University of St Andrews in 2010. Following postdoctoral research fellowships at the Institute of Historical Research (University of London) and the University of Manchester, she was appointed to a Lectureship at Keele University in 2014. She was promoted to Professor in 2024. She has held an AHRC Leadership Fellowship (2018-22) and a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2022-23). Her work has won a number of national and international prizes, including the Senior Hume Brown Prize (2016). She is the co-editor of the Royal Historical Society's Camden series.