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The Napoleonic Wars and the risk of Failure: German merchant houses in Britain (1793-1815)
| Although bankruptcies were a common feature in eighteenth-century Britain, the number of failures reached previously unknown peaks during the long protracted wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.
Stanley D. Chapman estimated that about 77% of the eighteenth-century elite of British overseas merchants were of foreign birth or descent. The largest group of immigrant merchants was by far the German one in the eighteenth century. The backbone of their overseas trade was the European Continent. This paper will focus on the level of bankruptcies among the German merchant community in Britain. Among the questions raised will be: To what extent were the German businesses affected by the wars and the blockades? Did the risk of failure among German merchants in Britain increase more than that of the native ones? What firms went bankrupt and why? Did they have a chance of starting again?
Short CV
PD Dr. Margrit Schulte Beerbühl (lecturer in modern history at the University of Düsseldorf). She has published widely in the fields of British history, Anglo-German relations, merchant networks and British naturalization policy. Her latest publications are: ed. with Joerg Voegele, Spinning the Commercial Web. International Trade, Merchants, and Commercial Cities, c.1640-1939, Frankfurt 2004; Die frühen Hamburger merchant empires in London und deren internationale Handelsnetze, in: Hamburger Wirtschaftschronik NF 5 (2005), pp.7-34; Deutsche Kaufleute in London: Welthandel und Einbürgerung 1660-1818 [German merchants in London: Global Trade and Naturalization (1660-1818)], München 2007.
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