18th century
18th century trade
A01=Huw David
american history
american revolution
Author_Huw David
british colonies
british empire
Carolina traders
Category=KJK
colonial America
colonial commerce
colonial politics
colonial south
colonial trade
economic history
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
intolerable acts
slave trade
south Carolina history
transatlantic trade
Product details
- ISBN 9781611178944
- Weight: 538g
- Dimensions: 165 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 15 Oct 2018
- Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A study of early transatlantic trade in South Carolina that exposes the divisive complexity that led to war.
London’s “Carolina traders,” a little-known group of transatlantic merchants, played a pivotal but historically neglected role in the rise of tensions in the South Carolina lowcountry. In Trade, Politics, and Revolution, Huw David delves into the lives of these men and explores their influence on commerce and politics in the years before and after the American Revolution.
Beginning in the 1730s, a few select merchants in Charleston fueled South Carolina’s economic rise, used their political connections to prosper in British-Carolinian trade, and then relocated to London, becoming absentee owners of property, plantations, and slaves. Using correspondence, business and slave trade records, newspapers, and a wealth of other sources, David reconstructs the lives of these Carolina traders and demonstrates their shifting but instrumental influence over the course of the eighteenth century. Until the 1760s these transatlantic traders served as a stabilizing force, using their wealth and political connections to lobby for colonial interests. As the British Empire flexed its power and incited rebellion with laws such as the so-called Intolerable Acts, South Carolinians became suspicious of the traders, believing them to be instruments of imperial oppression.
Trade, Politics, and Revolution offers a fresh understanding of trade in South Carolina’s early history and the shifting climate that led to the American Revolution, as well as reaching beyond the war to explore the reconstruction of trade routes between the newly founded United States and Great Britain. By focusing on one segment of transatlantic trade, David provides a new interpretive approach to imperialism and exposes the complex, deeply personal rift that divided the Carolina traders from their homeland and broke the colonies from the mother country.
London’s “Carolina traders,” a little-known group of transatlantic merchants, played a pivotal but historically neglected role in the rise of tensions in the South Carolina lowcountry. In Trade, Politics, and Revolution, Huw David delves into the lives of these men and explores their influence on commerce and politics in the years before and after the American Revolution.
Beginning in the 1730s, a few select merchants in Charleston fueled South Carolina’s economic rise, used their political connections to prosper in British-Carolinian trade, and then relocated to London, becoming absentee owners of property, plantations, and slaves. Using correspondence, business and slave trade records, newspapers, and a wealth of other sources, David reconstructs the lives of these Carolina traders and demonstrates their shifting but instrumental influence over the course of the eighteenth century. Until the 1760s these transatlantic traders served as a stabilizing force, using their wealth and political connections to lobby for colonial interests. As the British Empire flexed its power and incited rebellion with laws such as the so-called Intolerable Acts, South Carolinians became suspicious of the traders, believing them to be instruments of imperial oppression.
Trade, Politics, and Revolution offers a fresh understanding of trade in South Carolina’s early history and the shifting climate that led to the American Revolution, as well as reaching beyond the war to explore the reconstruction of trade routes between the newly founded United States and Great Britain. By focusing on one segment of transatlantic trade, David provides a new interpretive approach to imperialism and exposes the complex, deeply personal rift that divided the Carolina traders from their homeland and broke the colonies from the mother country.
Huw David holds a Ph.D. in history from Lincoln College, Oxford. His doctoral thesis was awarded the 2015 Hines Prize by the College of Charleston for the best first manuscript relating to the Carolina lowcountry and the Atlantic world. David is director of development for the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.
