<論説>一八世紀のロンドン商人ボウズンキット家の事業展開

Abstract

従来のイギリスの貿易史は、貿易相手地域ごとの統計整備や、特定地域の独占権を付与された特許会社の社史が研究の中心となっていた。その結果、商業活動を考える際にも地域別に研究が進んできたが、現実には貿易商達の活動は多地域に渡っていることが多い。また彼らは、自分達の商業活動を支えるためにも貿易金融や保険業、銀行業といった業務を兼務しやすかった。実は、このような商業の多様性・多角性こそが、一八世紀という国際貿易の揺籃期の基本的特徴ではないか。そこで本稿では、ボウズンキット家という商人一家の事業を調査し、彼らの業務展開もまた多地域、多業種に渡るものだったことを明らかにした。国際商業がまだ手探り状態でリスクも大きく、専門分化も進んでいなかった時代を生きた彼らは、一つの業種を大規模かつ長期に展開するよりも、小規模で短期の多様な内容の事業を同時に、あるいは次々と行うことを選択したのである。

In eighteenth-century Britain, merchant activities were on a relatively small scale. Merchants ran their enterprises as partnerships, involving only their friends and family. Large-scale companies did not appear until the end of the nineteenth century. Instaed, eighteenth-century merchants engaged in many small enterprises, as diverse as ship-owning, insurance, investments in industry and transportation, and banking. They were "general merchants" rather than specialists. Through a study of the Bosanquet family, this paper demonstrates that such diversification was one of the most remarkable characteristics of eighteenth-century merchant activities. The Bosanquets was a famous Huguenot family who immigrated to Britain in 1685 and engaged first in the silk trade. By the mid-eighteenth century, they acted as the London correspondents of Dutch brokers who traded in English stocks ; had interests in insurance companies ; and lent money on mortgate to planters in the West-Indies. From the end of the eighteenth century, they entered the banking business. During the same period, they purchased several hundred acres of land in the suburbs of London and Monmouthshire. The history of the Bosanquets not only reveals the diversity of merchant activities, but also shows how merchants became rentiers. In the case of the Bosanquets, the revenue from their real estate was not sufficient to support their lifestyle, and they contiuned business for two or three generations after they bought land. In the nineteenth century, as F. M. L. Thompson points out, this lifestyle became more typical than the complete retirement from business.