The Luetkens archive supports Marzagalli's standpoint as regards the actual purpose behind the Protestant networks. Although almost all merchants in the Luetkens network were Protestants, religious practice, religious topics or worship play only a marginal role in their letters and also within the reports of their daily businesses in the letters. This does not mean that they had no religious persuasion at all; it only means that it did not play a major role in their letters and it was not a topic that had a place in business conversations.65 In fact, the only times religion plays role relates to as-

62 In her works, Silvia Marzagalli emphasizes the importance of a focus that allows it to include crossreligious cooperation of merchants of the time. Protestant Merchants did in fact also trade with Catholic trading partners. However, for the most part, Luetkens' activities and the activities of his network constituted virtually a textbook example of the functioning and the effects of the Protestant International.

63 Marzagalli, "Trade across religious boundaries," 172-173.

64 Ibid., 174.

65 "Religion did matter, but not equally in all circumstances of life or in different kinds of business." Ibid., 180.

sessing other merchants' reliability and trustability, which however again referred less to religion per se but to the religious networks the merchants were a part of. At the same time however the effects and consequences of the networking among the Protestant merchants in the Luetkens archive are undeniable and are clearly reflected in both letter and business practices. All previously mentioned merchant houses featuring in the Luetkens archive were without exception partnerships between Protestants. To be more precise, they represent merchant houses of Lutheran merchants, Swiss or Dutch Calvinist merchants, associating with French Huguenot merchants, who were members of the Reformed Church of France, Église Réformée de France.66 Looking at many of Luetkens' correspondents and trading partners, as they are represented in his letter bundles and listed in his pocketbook of correspondents, we can confirm that Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens' business primarily rested on the collaboration with Protestant merchants not only in France but also in the rest of Europe. We find, apart from the French Huguenots, also exiled French Huguenots living in Switzerland, Swiss Calvinists and Dutch Calvinists, Lutherans in Hamburg, Bremen and Frankfurt, his uncle in London, and in one case even a Quaker, namely the house of John Furly in Amsterdam.67 Since Luetkens' correspondents participated in similar networks, which they extended through their own trading partners and correspondents, it can be generally stated that this pattern had a huge influence and was a shaping element of the trading activities of the foreign merchants in France.

This particular pattern is today commonly known as a concept called the *Protestant International*, describing the supranational diaspora community of European Protestants during the Early Modern Period. The Protestant International refers to the networks, association and the solidarity community of Protestants across national borders, residing in and coming from different Protestant countries, Protestant cities or living as minorities in Catholic-ruled countries such as France.68

These merchants interacted in a kind of "imagined community", a "cosmopolite diaspora" of Protestants.69 As Marianne Wokeck put it "the Huguenot diaspora needs to

66 See Lachenicht, *Hugenotten in Europa und Nordamerika*, 14*.* Regarding the etymology of this term see ibid.

67 On Furly, see Bailyn, Bernard. "The Challenge of Modern Historiography." *American Historical Review* 87 (1982): 1-24, here 16-17. For Quakers, see Sahle, Esther.*Quakers in the British AtlanticWorld, c.1660- 1800*. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2021.

68 The term and concept were first introduced by Bosher and Lüthy. See Lüthy, *La Banque protestante*, vii-ix, 32*.* See Bosher, "Huguenot Merchants," 77-102, 77. See Lambert, David E. *The Protestant International and the Huguenot Migration to Virginia*. Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2010, 9-10. For a good introduction regarding the Protestant International concerning France and its merchants, see Marzagalli, "Trade across religious boundaries." See also Marzagalli, "Commercer au-delà des frontières confessionnelles." For a good introduction to the Huguenot diaspora in a comparative perspective, see Lachenicht,*Hugenotten in Europa und Nordamerika*, "Einleitung," 11-44. For Huguenots in Britain, see Gwynn, Robin. "The Huguenots in Britain, the ›Protestant International‹ and the defeat of Louis XIV." In *From Strangers to Citizens. The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland and Colonial America 1550-1750*, edited by Randolph Vigne, Charles Littleton, 412-424. Portland, Ore.: Sussex Academic Press and The Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 2001.

69 Onnekink, David. "Models of an imagined community. Huguenot Discourse on Identity and Foreign Policy." In *The Huguenots: History and Memory in Transnational Context: Essays in Honour and Me-*

be conceptualized – not as a mere dispersion – but as layers of superimposed networks that cut across local and national boundaries."70 For the Protestants living in France during the 18th century and the Huguenots in exile, that is, the "France protestante à l'Étranger", the Protestant International was vital not only for their trading activities, but in fact often even for survival and, speaking of the Protestants in France, it was vital with regard to their residency status.71 The Huguenots, or "Français réformés" as the French Calvinists called themselves, represented a small minority in France during the 18th century. Catholicism was prevailing as the state religion.72 The latter was the reason why Huguenots had been suffering from mass expulsion, persecution and exclusion since the 17th century. As the reason and legal justification for this persecution served the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which formerly had allowed Protestants in France freedom of worship, but whose revocation forced hundreds of thousands of French Calvinists, approximately more than 400,000 in total, to flee and emigrate from France to avoid having to convert to Catholicism.73 Protestants staying in

*mory of Walter C. Utt*, edited by David J.B. Trim, 193-216. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011, here 198. The concept of "Imagined Communities" was first introduced by Anderson, Benedict. *Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism*. London/New York: Verso, 2006 [first published by Verso 1983]. See as regards most current research approaches on diasporas also Freist, Dagmar, and Susanne Lachenicht, eds., *Connecting Worlds and People: Early Modern Diasporas*. London/New York: Taylor & Francis, 2016. See also Lachenicht, *Hugenotten in Europa und Nordamerika.*

70 Wokeck, Marianne S. *Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America*. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, xxii.

71 François, Étienne. "La mémoire huguenote dans le pays du Refuge." In *Die Hugenotten und das Refuge. Deutschland und Europa*, edited by Frédéric Hartweg and Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, 233-239. Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1990, here 235. See Lachenicht, Susanne. "Huguenot Immigrants and the Formation of National Identities." *The HistoricalJournal 50*, no. 2 (2007): 309-331. See Marzagalli, "Trade across religious boundaries"; see Weber, "La migration huguenote."

72 The term Huguenots was originally introduced and used until the 19th century with a pejorative connotation by the Catholics. See Lachenicht, *Hugenotten in Europa und Nordamerika*, 14. See Grey, Janet G. "The origin of the word Huguenot." *The Sixteenth Century Journal* 14, no. 3 (1983): 249-359. Today the term has a positive connotation and is commonly used in research.

73 See for a good general overview Lotz-Heumann, Ute. "Confessional Migration of the Reformed: The Huguenots." *Europäische Geschichte Online (EGO)*, edited by the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG), Mayence 2012. http://www.ieg-ego.eu/lotzheumannu-2012-en, accessed June 04, 2019. See also Lachenicht, Susanne. "The Huguenots' maritime networks, sixteenth-eighteenth centuries." In *Connecting Worlds and People: Early Modern Diasporas*, edited by Dagmar Freist and Susanne Lachenicht, 31-44. London/New York: Taylor & Francis, 2016, here particularly 32-34. See already Scoville, Warren C. *The Persecution of Huguenots and French Economic development 1680-1720*. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960. See also Van Ruymbeke, Bertrand. "Minority Survival. The Huguenot Paradigm in France and the Diaspora." in *Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora*, edited by Bertrand van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks, 1-25. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003. See Nash, R. C. "Huguenot Merchants and the Development of South Carolina's Slave-Plantation and Atlantic Trading Economy, 1680–1775." In *Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora*, edited by Bertrand van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks, 208-241. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003, here 217-218. See Mentzer, Raymond A., and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, "Introduction." In *A Companion to the Huguenots*, edited by Raymond A. Mentzer and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, 1-16. Leiden/Boston: Brill 2016.

France became "nouveaux catholiques", which, however, did not prevent many French Protestants from continuing to practise their Protestant belief in secret.74 The most common practice among French merchants from Protestant families emigrating from France was that "in most instances, at least one family member converted to Catholicism (if only nominally) and remained in France, thus protecting his family estate and business' interests."75 The Protestant International in the rest of Europe on the other hand "lent cohesion to the Refuge".76 Yet, the highly remarkable fact remains that a hard core of Huguenots still decided to stay in France despite the circumstances. Many others returned to France after the conditions started to improve again slightly at the beginning of the 18th century, inter alia due to the effects of the Enlightenment.77

In the Luetkens archive, the group of remaining Huguenots in France is omnipresent. In general, however, it is more difficult to give precise figures for the total number of Huguenots living in France during the first half of the 18th century. Marzagalli noted that "there are no good sources to estimate their numbers in the century following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but by the 1780s there were as many Protestants in Nantes as a century earlier, and they were predominantly involved in trade."78

A third group of Protestants that we find living, trading or travelling France in the 18th century, who immigrated even after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, are the foreign merchants with Protestant backgrounds, whose influx to France continued unabated during the beginning of the 18th century and despite the adverse circumstances.79 All three groups ensured the survival of Protestantism in Catholic France during the 17th and 18th century.80 Until the year 1787, when Huguenots were officially given back the right of religious worship in France by an edict of toleration by Louis XVI and therefore also regained official status and civil rights as residents of France, the Protestants in France experienced, as Wolfgang Henniger aptly put it, a "time of simple survival without an organisational juridical framework".81 They were strictly forbidden

74 As "crypto-Huguenots, who, until the Toleration Act of 1787, had to hide their religious persuasion". Marzagalli, "Trade across religious boundaries," 188.

75 Marzagalli, "Trade across religious boundaries," 186.

76 Wokeck, *Trade in Strangers*, xxii.

77 See Horn, Jeff. *Economic Development in Early Modern France: The Privilege of Liberty, 1650–1820*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 185-186. See Henninger, *Bethmann*, 158-160. See already Leroux, Alfred. *Les Religionnaires de Bordeaux de 1685 à 1802*. Bordeaux: Feret & Fils, 1920, 21, 116, 121-125, 234.

78 See Krumenacker, Yves. "Les minorités protestantes dans le grandes villes francaises de l'epoque moderne." *Analele Universitatii Bucuresti* (2008): 101-114. See Marzagalli, "Trade across religious boundaries,"186.

79 See Weber, "German Merchants"; "Atlantic Coast of German Trade."; Butel, "Le négoce international"; "Les négociants allemands de Bordeaux."; Marzagalli, "Négoce et politique des étrangers." See in general Augeron/Even, *Les Étrangers.*

80 See also Krumenacker, Yves. "Des Négociants Protestants dans la France Catholique." In *Commerce, Voyage et Experiénce Religieuse XVIe-XVIIIe Siècle*, edited by Albrecht Burkardt, Gilles Bertrand, Yves Krumenacker, 303-312. Rennes: Presses universaires de Rennes, 2007.

81 Henninger, *Bethmann*, 158-160. Johann Jakob Bethmann and his Protestant identity furthermore serve as a good comparative example to the case of Luetkens. See ibid.

to practice their religion, to have their own church services, to hold baptisms, funerals or weddings. In fact, all Protestant marriages conducted in France were deemed irregular and therefore not recognized as legitimate by French officials, which will become relevant in the chapter on Luetkens' marriage.82 In the end, the Huguenots and all other Protestants living in France during that time were forced to live a life of religious abstinence and, if at all, sufferance in France. This was why the Protestant International and its networks were ultimately the last stronghold and resource for cohesion for Protestants merchants in France but also the general reason why Protestantism persisted in France during the first half of the 18th century.

The justified question why the remaining Protestants were nonetheless tolerated in France during that time reveals how the Protestant International in the end worked for the merchants and why it enabled them to ensure their survival in France. The reason they were tolerated was that the Protestant merchant houses still represented a very strong economic power in France.83 They "were tolerated as sources of financial capital and foreign ships" and because of their links with "relatives and partners in Holland and England", and in the Hanseatic cities.84 Consequently, their residence was tolerated because they formed important pillars of the French economy contributing to the French fiscal system. The latter fact also explains the heavy financial loss that had resulted beforehand from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes for the French state, which led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Huguenots, many of whom had been important economic actors.85 The remaining or returning Huguenots of France of the 18th century represented only a small fraction of the overall Protestant financial power that had shaped France beforehand, but at least this small group of remaining and returning Protestants was deemed as worthy of sufferance by the French crown because of their economic power.

It is an astonishing fact that ultimately the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the massive expulsion of Huguenots from France in the long run actually increased the economic strength of the remaining or returning Protestants in France, including the foreign merchants, during the first half of the 18th century, because due to the expulsion the Protestants subsequently formed the strong diaspora network that drove the success of their international trading activities. The French Huguenot merchants who emigrated found shelter and lived their lives dispersed throughout many different countries and cities in Europe and overseas.These merchants, however, did not break off or give up their contacts in France or Europe and they also continued trading by drawing on a huge network of their fellow countrymen in many other countries, thus gaining access to many different sales markets.86 Both the merchants in France as well as the Huguenot merchants abroad formed a diaspora that allowed them rich and extensive

82 See Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 177.

83 See Horn, Jeff. *Economic Development in Early Modern France*, 185-186. See Scoville, *The Persecution of Huguenots.*

84 Bosher, *Business and Religion*, 133.

85 See Marzagalli, "Trade across religious boundaries," 185.

86 See Henninger, *Bethmann*, 158-160. See Marzagalli, "Trade across religious boundaries," 170. See Bosher, "Huguenot Merchants," 93-94. See Lotz-Heumann, "Confessional Migration." See Lachenicht, "The Huguenots' maritime networks." See in general also Truxes, Thomas M. "Trading Dia-

trading opportunities in Europe and overseas, which served as the basis and reason for the commercial success of both groups.87 In short, since the French Protestants were left to their own devices and often got no support from the French state, instead suffering expulsion or marginalisation, the Protestants made a virtue of necessity and helped each other out, worked together and formed an imagined community across borders in order to survive and make a living in France as well as abroad. The foundation of their trading activities therefore lay in their putting religious affiliation before nationality, and this was the reason why this group not only survived in France but also regained economic strength and went on to become one of the most powerful economic powers of the 18th century.88

"For the average Huguenot merchant of that time, religion was stronger than nationality, and he was usually ready to link his fate with American, Dutch, English, or any other Protestant merchant" – this was how the Protestant International worked and how it shaped the economic activities of both domestic French merchants as well as the activities of the Protestant merchants from other countries immigrating, living, travelling or working in France during the first half of the 18th century.89 It is therefore no surprise that we find references to religious affiliations of certain merchants in mercantile letters, in court records or in letters of recommendation exchanged among Protestant merchants during that time.The Nantes merchant house of Ochs & Schweighauser, originally from Switzerland, were for instance referred to in a letter and in the same breath as "Protestants and one of the best merchant houses", merchants are introduced as "Hamburgers and Protestants" or it is reasoned that "no one will take offence that the merchant is a Calvinist".90

The reference to the Protestant faith served as a marker and at the same time as the badge of membership within the Protestant International. Of course, the merchants themselves did not use the analytical term themselves, yet they stuck to the principle behind it, referring to each other and expressing their confidence in each other by recommending each other and identifying each other as "Protestants" ["Protestanten"], "Lutherans" ["Lutheran"] or "Calvinists" ["Calvines"].91 It thus becomes apparent that in-

sporas." In *Princeton Companion to Atlantic History*, edited by Joseph C. Miller, 456–62. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

87 See Cullen, Louis M. "The Huguenots from the Perspective of the Merchant Networks of Western Europe (1680–1720): The Example of the Brandy Trade." In *The Huguenots and Ireland Anatomy of an Emigration*, edited by C. Edric. J. Caldicott, Hugh Gough and Jean-Paul Pittion, 129-150. Dun Laoghaire: Glendale Press, 1987.

88 See Krumenacker, Yves. "Des Négociants Protestants."

89 Bosher, "Huguenot Merchants," 93. As regards the importance of Protestant banking firms, see also Lüthy, *La Banque protestante.*

90 "Ochs & Schweighauser à Nantes So Protestanten und eines der besten Contoren." Letter from Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb to Engelhardt, Ehrenfried, March 8 1745, TNA, HCA 30/232, Letter Book I, no. 584. "ein Hamburger und Protestant." Letter from Luetkens, Anthony to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, May 3, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/235. "das er ein Calvines solches wird E.E. wohl so wenig als uns anstößig sein." Letter from Hertzer & von Bobartt to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, September 14, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/234. "he is of the Lutheran Religion" Examinations of Rieweert Frerecks, captain of the *Hope*, taken at Deal, 24 and 26 August 1745, TNA, HCA 32/115/14.

91 Ibid.

terreligious differences between the different Protestant denominations played a rather subordinate role in comparison to the general precondition of the collaboration of sharing the same Protestant persuasion. References to Catholics or "Jesuits" on the other hand served exactly the opposite purpose in the letters, which was to set boundaries and to set oneself apart from Catholic merchants.92 The Protestant International, thus, fostered solidarity among the merchant and therefore became highly important for the merchants' livelihoods.93

A rather practical effect and manifestation of the Protestant International highly relevant for Luetkens and his travels was that any foreign Protestant merchant travelling in France was welcomed in the houses of the French Huguenot community or mixed merchant houses. These houses represented the first points of call in a city for a merchant during his travels. At these houses, the travelling merchant found shelter and was offered a place to stay or to work during his travels. The local merchant houses often even allowed their guests to use their warehouses for conducting their own businesses or they conducted certain commission businesses together.94 Last but not least, a typical custom prevailing within the Protestant International was to send each other's sons as apprentices or as merchant clerks to other Protestant merchant houses abroad.95 By all these means, the Protestant merchants in France and abroad were able to form an exclusive and effective enclave, which allowed them to conduct a lucrative business that at the same time secured their future and subsistence in France. The consequences and advantages for both groups, for the local Huguenots as well as for the foreign Protestant merchants in France, were obvious and ingeniously simple. For the French Huguenot merchants, the Protestant International ensured their survival because it was the basis providing them with economic and financial powers. For the foreign merchants travelling France, the Protestant International allowed them to set foot into the French market and to establish firm contacts with French companies and it provided them with manifold trading opportunities. Put in a nutshell, the shared religious affiliation among the merchants represented in this book was the necessary cement that helped these merchants to conduct and maintain their business activities in France and beyond. It was the backbone of their trading activities.96

92 Luetkens for instance emphasized to the merchant Ochs that he will never "become a Jesuit", Bethmann even used the word "Jesuit" in an insulting manner, referring to a "dubious Jesuitical spirit", "niemahl ein Jesuite gewesen werde auch keiner werden." Letter from Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb to Ochs & Schweighauser, December 8, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/232, Letter Book I, no. 419. "denn ich mit Jesuitischen & zweydeutigen Menschen nicht liebe zu thun haben." Letter from Bethmann, Johann Jakob to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, November 12, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/234.

93 See also Cullen, "Merchant Networks."

94 This common practice will become obvious from the case of Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens. See also Ruppert, *Bürgerlicher Wandel*, 86-94. See Butel, "La maison Schröder et Schyler."

95 This custom was typical for the entire Early Modern Period and furthermore not limited to France. See Ditz, "Shipwrecked," 63.

See Schulte Beerbühl, *German Merchants*, 88. See Häberlein/Künast/ Schwanke, *Endorfer*.

96 See Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 304.

The case of the merchant Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens confirms all elements and characteristics of the Protestant International. In fact, his example is an impressive testimony of the Protestant International. We learn from his list of correspondents and respective background searches that his network of correspondents in France as well as in many other European countries, in cities such as Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfurt, Gdansk, Basel, Strasbourg, Amsterdam, London, St. Sebastian or Bilbao, mainly consisted of Protestant merchants. He traded with French Huguenot merchants in France and within the European Huguenot diaspora, as well as with Lutheran, Calvinist or Zwinglian merchants. These merchants established strong ties with him, as Mark S. Granovetter described it, on which he could build his network and success upon.97 The shared network notwithstanding, it still needs to be stressed that the networks naturally were not immune to conflicts from the outside nor from within themselves. Yet, for such situations they found certain coping mechanisms and effective strategies within their community which will be shown and demonstrated in the analysis. Certain disputes and conflicts amongst these men in fact only occurred because the suspicion was raised that a merchant would break with the shared set of values of the Protestant community, which therefore led the others to question his entitlement to be a part of the group.

If we now take a concrete look at Luetkens' travel stations in France, the characteristics of the Protestant International will become very tangible. We will learn about Luetkens' actual travel itinerary and the purposes underpinning his travels. This part introduces us at the same time to yet another crucial feature and precondition of Hanseatic trade participation in France, which was mobility.

#### **4.5 The Travel Route**

Luetkens was highly mobile in France. He visited many cities and met more than a hundred trading partners and correspondents during the two years of his business trip. His route and itinerary notably reflect the effects of the Protestant International and they show a very clear mercantile plan and agenda behind it. In order to recreate his route, I drew on two kinds of sources and information. First, I consulted the letters, or more precisely the address lines written on the outside of the folded letters, letter packets or letter wrappers in the archive. As was common practice during the Early Modern Period, the address lines of business letters often mentioned the respective places and the merchant houses where Luetkens was staying at that particular moment in time. During that time, mail was usually collected paid for by the recipients at the local post offices at regular intervals. Merchants would at the same time use these occasions on

97 Regarding the analysis of strong and weak ties, see Granovetter, Mark S. "The Strength of Weak Ties." *American Journal of Sociology* 78, no. 4 (1973): 1360-1380, here 1378. See Granovetter, Mark S. "Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness." *American Journal of Sociology* 91, no. 3(1985): 481–510. See Freist, Dagmar."Uneasy Trust Relations and Cross-Cultural Encounters on Trial – Migrants in Early Modern Europe." In *Agents of Transculturation: Border-Crossers, Mediators, Go-Betweens*, edited by Sebastian Jobs and Gesa Mackenthun, 63-84. Münster: Waxmann, 2013, here 70-72. See Greif, *Path to the Modern Economy.*

the regular postal days for sending off correspondence. All incoming mail of a respective merchant house was stored together and picked up together at the post offices, which underlines the importance of mentioning merchant houses as part of the addresses of the letters, particularly those addressed to travelling merchants. The efficiency of the postal services in France and beyond is demonstrated in the Luetkens archive by the simple fact that large proportions of the business letters actually sent actually reached Luetkens at his destinations. By combining the address lines with the dates mentioned in the letter, the dates of dispatch and arrival of these letters – usually mentioned in the upper right-hand corner of the letter text of 18th-century letters – and Luetkens' little despatch notes on the outer side of the folded letter, it is possible to reconstruct every travel station of Luetkens business trip between 1743-1745. The other source of information subsequently helped to confirm this detailed travel route. The second source I consulted was a report of one of Luetkens' later bookkeeper, Ludolph Jochim Köster, who testified before court in the case of the ship *Hope.*98 Both sources of information for the most part are congruent, which is why the following map represents a rather accurate image of Luetkens travels in France. Taking a look at his route, at the cities and merchant houses he visited provides us with a precise picture of how Luetkens organised his travels, but in particular it also gives us clear hints as to what agenda the Hamburg merchant pursued with his travels.99

Luetkens apparently pursued a very thought-out plan with his travels. Particularly through the visual representation, the logic behind his travelling unfolds. During the two years that he stayed in France from the end of 1743 until the end of 1745, he travelled all the way along the French Atlantic coastline from South to North and along the way visited all the major ports of French Atlantic trade: Bordeaux, Bayonne, Nantes, Lorient, Brest, St. Malo, and Brest, before finally returning to Hamburg by land, with a last intermediate stop in Paris, the banking metropolis. In each of the cities, he visited one particular established merchant house, where he found a place to stay and to work for several weeks or months. As my enquiries revealed, all of these merchant houses were without exception Huguenot or Protestant merchant houses. The house of Bethmann & Imbert was a mixed company of a Huguenot and Lutheran merchant. Thimothée Lichigaray Jeune was a Huguenot, as were François Jourdain and Jean Du Buat. Pieter Luttman & Elart von Bobartt were a mixed company of a Lutheran and a Calvinist merchant. Elart's brother Christopher, in turn, lived in Hamburg and formed, together with Jobst Henning Hertzer, the Hamburg merchant house Hertzer & von Bobartt. Jean Jacques d'Egmont was a "natif d'Ostende en Flandre", which means he was also a Calvinist.100

98 Examination and attestation of Ludolph Jochim Köster, "a Bookkeeper in several Compting houses of this City", as part of *Additional Hearings and Attestations*, TNA, HCA 32/115/14.

99 For comparison, see Van der Wal, *Heusch Letters*, 23-27.

100 Regarding Bethmann & Imbert, see Henninger, *Bethmann*, 155-164. See also Klemenčič, Matjaž, and Mary N. Harris, eds. *European Migrants, Diasporas and Indigenous Ethnic Minorities*. Pisa: Plus-University Press, 2009, 24. See Zellfelder, Friedrich. *Das Kundennetz des Bankhauses Gebrüder Bethmann(1738–1816)*. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1994. Regarding d'Egmont, Jourdain and Jean Du Buat, see Department de Finistére. *Inventaire-sommaire des Archives départementales antérieures à 1790. Morbihan:*

*Figure 9: The travel route of Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens in France reconstructed on the basis of Luetkens' letters and the attestation of Ludolph Jochim Köster.*

Source: Map created with QGIS, made with Natural Earth.

Luetkens' choice of places to address himself to therefore perfectly complies with the pattern of the Protestant International. In all these merchant houses, Luetkens worked as a commission agent, meaning that he conducted trade in his own name, but he particularly also traded in the name of the respective merchant houses where he stayed during that time. That way, his stay in these merchant houses did not only serve his own good, but was also advantageous for his merchant hosts, who would win a capable coworker for their own business. It must also be stressed that during the time that he lived and worked in these houses he still kept in contact with all his other trading partners and correspondents, whom he actively involved in his commission trading activities and whom he brought into contact with his current hosts. He stayed flexible. Whenever he left the respective merchant houses after a certain period and travelled on to the next destination, he furthermore did not cut off his contact and trading activities with these merchant houses but kept them involved in all his future activities.

This way, Luetkens was able to gradually, little by little, intensify and solidify his business, expand and strengthen his network and expand his partner and customer basis. In short, he was able to expand his circle of correspondents and trading partners and expand his catchment area for his business while at the same time consolidating

*Série E*. Paris: Dupont, 1881. Regarding Hertzer & von Bobartt see Baasch, *Geschichte von Hamburgs Handel*, 76. See also Lüthy, *La Banque protestante,* and Garrioch, *The Huguenots of Paris.*

#### 230 The Power of Persuasion

his existing contacts and tightening his relationships with them, to establish close contacts and strong ties with them. This was the ultimate purpose behind his travel route and itinerary. Finally adding the respective correspondence networks to the map, covering his main correspondents out of more than 60 merchant houses represented in the Luetkens archive, we eventually arrive not only at a very comprehensive picture of Luetkens travels and communication channels, but also of his networking strategy and how it paid off in the end.101 During and by means of his travels the merchant was able to build up a dense network of trading partners and correspondents in France and Europe that was furthermore closely interlinked with his hometown of Hamburg and many other important trading towns and cities of Europe.

*Figure 10: Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens' network of main correspondents and trading partners.*

Source: Map created with QGIS, made with Natural Earth

When asked about the ultimate reason behind Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens' travels in France, the court witnesses questioned in the case of the captured ship the *Hope* later stated for the record that Luetkens travelled "on account of his trade [...] into France, from one place to another, to pay a visit to his friends & correspondents there", as was testified by Alexander Arnold Lambrecht, an inhabitant and merchant of Hamburg,

101 Find Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens' entire network of merchant correspondents and family members as represented in the letters of the Luetkens archive in the detailed catalogue entry in TNA Discovery, which I have compiled together with Amanda Bevan in 2017: https://discovery.nationalarchiv es.gov.uk/details/r/C4249188-C4249192.

who was questioned for the reason that he "was likewise at this time in France".102 Another witness, Daniel Richter Junior, who was questioned because he was "engaged in a compting house in Nantes" during the same time, which qualified him as a witness, stated in rather similar wording that Luetkens was "on his travells in France to see his ffriends & correspondents there on account of his trading affairs in one or other towns of trade".103 These testimonies served the purpose of giving the High Court of Admiralty the impression that Luetkens' business trip in France in some ways had only been a flying visit. In any case, they play down Luetkens' strong interconnectedness and integration into the French market as best possible. As the illustration reveals, the testimonies only represented half the truth. Looking at the map, we understand that Luetkens' trip through France was surely not a mere flying visit but rather served the concrete purpose of establishing strong connections with France and its merchants and to establish a firm footing in the French market. By means of his travels and through his mobility as a travelling merchant and a commission merchant, he was able to integrate himself fully into the French market and its networks. He was able to gain a reputation in France and to establish a strong basis of contacts and trading opportunities there. This way, his travels created the most crucial foundation and foothold for promoting and finally for concluding his establishment phase after his stay in France.

As a matter of fact, he did know many of the persons he met, traded and corresponded with in France in the years 1743-1745 already beforehand. He had met some of them during his previous travels or had known them for months or years by corresponding with them, even dating back to his service as a clerk in the house of David Speelmeyer. Yet some others he met for the first time during his travels, like Ochs & Schweighauser, a Protestant, Swiss-German merchant house, with whom Luetkens established a long and lucrative trading partnership.104 The merchant Ochs, originally from Basel, who is known in Switzerland till today, in fact became one of Luetkens' frequent travel companions in France and the two of them kept in intensive contact even after Luetkens' return to Hamburg, which once more shows the way of working and the importance of the Protestant International. Surely quite characteristic in this regard is Ochs' response letter to Luetkens after the latter had informed him about the upcoming opening of his own merchant house in Hamburg. Ochs wrote that he was "glad to hear about your ultimate decision to settle down in Hamburg ["de vous finer à Hambourg"]. We wish you good luck with your house. We will be delighted to conduct a continuing correspondence with you ["cultive avec vous une correspondance suivie"]."105

No matter whether it was a new connection that he established or a long lasting relationship that was revived, the approach that Luetkens chose to cement the trading partnership and friendship with his partners in France in the end was the same. He

102 Examination and attestation of Alexander Arnold Lambrecht, "an Inhabitant & merchant", as part of the *Additional Hearings and Attestations,* TNA, HCA 32/115/14.

103 Examination and attestation of Daniel Richter Junior, "in inhabitant & subject of this city", as part of the *Additional Hearings and Attestations,* TNA, HCA 32/115/14.

104 See Burghartz, Susanna, and Madeleine Herren. *Building Paradise. A Basel Manor House and its Residents in a Global Perspective*. Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 2021, i.a. 51, 134.

105 Letter from Ochs & Schweighauser to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, January 28, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/235.

used his travels in France to at least once pay his partners a personal visit in order to apply to them personally and to put a face to the name. Either, as was common practice, he went there for an evening dinner, including conversation and drinking with each other, or he spent several weeks in their houses to work with them. Both activities served the same purpose. He went there to consolidate the contact, to pledge allegiance to each other, and to create and foster lasting ties of business cooperation or even friendship. After the personal meeting, the partners returned to corresponding, in order to, as the contemporaries framed it, "compensate for the lack of the possibility of oral conversations by means of the written conversation".106 It becomes apparent how Luetkens' travel activities and his letter exchanges formed a well-functioning system that brought him and ensured him the favour and benevolence of his trading partners and correspondents, which was crucial for all his trading activities during his establishment phase and still for the time later.

The fact that Luetkens apparently limited his contacts and his main trading partners per city to only one or two trading houses was last but not least also no coincidence but served exactly the same purpose. First, of course, as seen from a pragmatic point of view, this approach improved the clarity of his business transactions. Secondly and more importantly, however, it also followed a clear agenda. By limiting his business contacts and relationships in France to one or two merchant houses per city, he at the same granted these merchant houses a monopoly position within his own commercial network for his trade in this city, which was a strong display of trust. That is, for almost all trade that he for instance conducted in Bordeaux or for all enterprises involving Bordeaux goods, he worked together with the merchant house of Bethmann & Imbert, and the same applies for all the other merchant houses mentioned above in their respective places of residence. In this manner, he once more gained the favour of these merchant houses, who themselves returned the favour by serving him as loyal partners, involving him in many enterprises and regarding him as a firm and reliable trading partner. We are once more presented with a win-win situation for both parties, which fostered the relationship and further strengthened their sense of community.

The benefits for his partners resulting from Luetkens' presence in France were that they profited from additional manpower in their business during the time that he was living in their houses, while afterwards Luetkens still continued to be a reliable partner, procuring them with many further trading opportunities. As a commission agent, and particularly as a travelling commission agent, Luetkens furthermore represented, for the entire period of his travels and still after his return to Hamburg, a valuable contact person as a commercial intermediary for the further distribution, the re-export of their own goods to other French ports or, particularly importantly, to the Northern German and the Baltic trading markets.

For Luetkens himself, the benefits of this approach were equally obvious. He was given the opportunity and was welcomed to live and work in the French Huguenot and Protestant merchant houses established in France. Furthermore, he became actively integrated into their business and networks by means of joint trading activities and correspondence. Through these arrangements he gained indirect or sometimes even

106 Hunold, *Die Allerneueste Art Höflich und Galant zu Schreiben*, 53.

direct access to the French market and was thus able to establish a firm foothold for his trade in France.

As Klaus Weber aptly summarised this point, himself focusing on Bordeaux merchants, Luetkens' nationality, as a representative of Hamburg merchants, was in this regard "no obstacle. Quite on the contrary, the international broadening of his personal and family relationships [led to and] was a necessity for overcoming the mercantilist trade barriers that otherwise would have completely excluded [him] [...] from the trade with the colonies [i.e. the direct trade in colonial goods]. The Huguenots in [France] [...] facilitated the social integration of the mostly Protestant German merchants."107 Also with regard to Luetkens' travels, it therefore becomes obvious how important the Protestant International was for him, for his travels and for his career. At the same time, it becomes clear how crucial the aspect of mobility was for his personal advancement in France and vice versa for fulfilling his role as an intermediary for his French partners. His mobility as a commission agent on travel turned him into a very attractive trading partner for the French and the other European partners, and this became a crucial asset for Luetkens' establishment phase.

A last clear benefit of his travel activity in France was that his travels helped him to establish a broad product portfolio for his business. This benefit is directly interlinked with the concrete practice of commission trade, which is why I can use it as a perfect anchor point to explain in more detail the peculiarities of this field of trade in the next section of this chapter.

#### **4.6 A Broad Product Range and Specialization in Sugar**

During the years 1744 and 1745, the merchant Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens traded in a great variety of different goods, domestic French goods such as wine as well as colonial goods like sugar, coffee or tobacco and even including colonial goods from the other colonial powers, for instance found on prize ships. Luetkens met with a lot of different people and called at a lot of different ports and cities during his travels, which all presented him with manifold business opportunities in various goods. The longer he travelled the longer the list of his product portfolio got.108 It stands out that he nonetheless had certain preferences with regard to the main commodity groups he traded per port and city. Consequently, when visiting or trading with Bordeaux or Nantes he mainly traded in sugar and wine, whereas in St. Malo he traded in Indigo, and in the southern ports he mainly wound up the purchases of his ships.  Hugenotten in Bordeaux erleichterten die soziale Integration der größtenteils protestantischen Deutschen." Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 304. See also Pourchasse, "L'immigration négociante."

108 Regarding the benefits of a broad product portfolio as a commission agent, see ibid., 249. See Henninger, *Bethmann*, 112-134. See Butel, "La maison Schröder et Schyler."

business house to just one commodity. On the other hand, and this went hand in hand with the aforementioned fact, his broad product portfolio was also a result and an intrinsic characteristic of the main branch of trade apart from shipping industry that he conducted in France, which was commission trade.

As a commission agent he was as per his job assignment not bound to one customer in particular and not limited to one main group of commission goods in particular. Instead, he could decide on the basis of supply and demand and according to the order situation, which enterprise he wanted to invest in.109 This freedom of choice, in turn, had the direct advantage that he could react immediately and thus take the chance whenever a trading opportunity showed up or when he was pointed to a particular trading opportunity by his trading partners. Trading as a commission agent also entailed that, whenever the workload allowed it, he could conduct and take care of several commission enterprises at the same time. The only fundamental condition and requirement that Luetkens had to fulfil was to make sure that he executed his orders properly and correctly and procured lucrative business enterprises for his customers. In short, he was bound to acting in the interest of his customers, which, if done right, furthermore strengthened his good reputation in the field. As Francesca Trivellato, who has worked extensively on the Early Modern Jewish merchant diasporas and particularly their commission trade activities, aptly summarised the tasks of a commission agent as follows: "a reputable agent was one who seized the best available market opportunities for his commissioner and served him loyally; he knew when and what to buy and sell, what ships to freight in order to minimize the risks of war and piracy, and what exchange rates were most favourable at any given moment."110

A commission agent's main goal and basically his raison d'être in business was therefore to procure good deals and enterprises for his customers and, since he was not limited to one product group in particular, he could offer his service with regard to any kind of goods or enterprise and with regard to every market opportunity that occurred and that he or his customers considered worthy of an investment. Furthermore, since he received orders from several different customers at the same time, Luetkens' product portfolio grew substantially and showed considerable variety and size. The range of different goods that Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens traded in during his time in France is in this regard exemplary and at the same time still intriguing. He traded in all different kinds of sugar, white, brown, Martinique, Saint-Domingue, or Prize sugars, as well as in coffee, tobacco, tea, rice, indigo, cochenille, cotton, furs, and even in ivory, all of which represent the commodity group of colonial goods.111 As regards French domestic products, he traded in and thus took commission orders for all kinds of wine, brandy, and cognac, but he also traded in honey, wax and doeskin. The goods that he imported to France were those for which there was a high demand there, such as staple goods like wheat or building materials. This included wood for ships as well as "flustersteine",

109 See Hancock, *Citizens of the World*, 81. See Trivellato, *The Familiarity of Strangers*, 153-176. See from a contemporary perspective Savary, *Der vollkommene Kauff- und Handelsmann [Le Parfait Négociant],* "anderer Theil" [second part of the same book], 184-190.

110 Trivellato, *The Familiarity of Strangers*, 153.

111 Regarding these goods, see also Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 21.

paving stones. Importing heavy goods and re-exporting colonial goods, we can imagine the high margin of profit that resulted from these enterprises. For the sake of completeness, we should also add the Mediterranean goods in his product portfolio, about which we will hear in greater detail in the next chapter. The Mediterranean goods for which he took commission included for instance spices and valuable fabrics.

In view of this broad product range which Luetkens traded in during his stay in France, the relevance of the business branch of commission trade for making a living in France as a foreign merchant becomes apparent. By means of commission trade Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens was able to pick up and grasp any business opportunity, which he regarded as potentially lucrative and that came his way or was offered to him during his travels. The latter did not only ensure his subsistence in France but also served as another cornerstone for his career advancement. At the same time, he got to know and became familiar with the peculiarities of trade in a lot of different goods and could therefore literally test and find out which category of goods best suited him and his needs, which competence the contemporaries, too, regarded as highly important. As for instance Defoe emphasized, it was necessary for commission agents to "gain a good judgment in [many] wares and goods." 112 In the course of his travels through France, while trading in different goods, the trade in and re-distribution of sugars eventually became Luetkens' main field of activity. Towards the end of his travels in France and his establishment phase in 1745, we can clearly notice that the commission trade in French sugars represented his prime field of activity. This professional specialisation created the basis for his rise to the position of one of the city's leading sugar merchants back in Hamburg during the time after his establishment phase.

The episode analysed in this chapter will present one of the many enterprises in Luetkens' sugar trade that paved the way into this specialisation. The example will also show, apart from the insights into the functioning of commission trade, the reason why particularly the trade in sugar represented a profitable business field for Hanseatic merchants in this business sector. As a third point, concomitant to that, it will demonstrate yet another loophole for German traders to participate in French trade. They also invested in Prize goods and Prize ships, which had been captured by French privateers. This was a business that particularly young aspiring merchants often became heavily engaged in during the early stages of their career because it provided a "substantial source of business profit".113 On the whole, the episode will give us a good, detailed impression and at the same time an overview of how merchants like Luetkens became beneficiaries of the market opportunities of wholesale trade during the 18th century.

#### Sugars and Prize Goods

Luetkens mainly traded in sugar. To explain and expand on the lucrativeness of the sugar trade, it helps if we take a closer look at the particular kinds of sugar that he traded in. Not only in the episode analysed but speaking of Luetkens' activities in general, it becomes evident that Luetkens often, though not exclusively, re-exported raw,

112 See Defoe, *Complete English Tradesman*, 9.

113 Hancock, *Citizens of the World*, 244.

unrefined or partly processed sugars coming from the French colonies in the Caribbean or from the British colonies overseas once they had arrived on French mainland. He mainly traded in French brown sugars, which were called by the contemporaries and in price currents of the time *St. Domingue* or *Martinique* sugars or British *Jamaican* or *Barbados*. 114 The transport of unrefined sugars was much easier to handle for the merchants, because the filling of unrefined sugars into wooden casks was easier, more practicable and space saving, and therefore also more lucrative. Since the refining process of these sugars then took place in the sugar refineries in Hamburg, which processed the raw sugars into the finished goods of white sugar, the merchant simultaneously supported and boosted the domestic home economy and home industry.115 So, Luetkens' trade was also highly beneficial for Hamburg and its industry. Luetkens, however, also traded in already refined French sugars, white sugars or "powdered sugar", which he re-exported to Hamburg. In the episode analysed, however, Luetkens traded in "Muscovado" sugars, called "sucre muscovado" in French and "Moscovies" in Dutch, sometimes also referred to as "English Barbados" sugars, because they came from Barbados. Muscovado sugar was unrefined or partly processed cane sugar with a strong molasses content, in French called *sucre de canne complet, non raffiné*. It had a moist texture and a rich dark brown colour, which is why it was often also simply referred to as brown sugar by the contemporaries, although it differs from our modern definition of brown sugar as this term today often refers to rock candy.116

The sugars were shipped and imported to Europe where, in the local sugar refineries, "further processing would produce pure white sugar. The muscovado sugar was first boiled with water and refined to remove the impurities. This hot sugar syrup was then poured into moulds and left to drain and crystallise. The moulds were cone-shaped, and the pure white sugar that came out was known as a loaf ".117 It was common practice, nationally subsidized and legally secured, that only French merchants imported French sugars coming from the French colonies. These sugars should then be processed in French refineries. The same procedure was used by merchants of the other colonial powers.118 In practice, however, re-exports of raw sugars to Hamburg were also a frequent occurrence. Furthermore, by means of privateering, merchants also came into possession of sugars originating from the other colonial powers, as in the present

114 See Stein, *French Sugar Business*, 107. See Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 55-56, 160.

115 See Petersson, *Zuckersiedergewerbe und Zuckerhandel*, 41-59. See Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 227. See in particular Weber, "Atlantic Coast of German Trade."

116 See Fraginals, Manuel M. *The Sugarmill. The Socioeconomic Complex of Sugar in Cuba 1760-1860*. New York/London: Monthly Review Press, 2008, 119-122. See Galloway, Jock H. *The Sugar Cane Industry: An Historical Geography from Its Origins to 1914*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 108. See Ebert, *Brazilian Sugar*, 39-60.

117 Discovering Bristol. An online history of the port and its people. "Bristol and Transatlantic Slavery-Luxuries from abroad – Plantation sugar", http://www.discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/a merica-to-bristol/luxuries-from-abroad/plantation-sugar, accessed June 16, 2019. Regarding sugar plantations, see Dunn, Richard S. *Sugar and Slaves. The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713*. New York: The Norton Library, 1973. See in general Mintz, *Sweetness and Power*.

118 See inter alia Jones, Donald. *Bristol's Sugar Trade and Refining Industry*. Bristol: Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 1996. See also Morgan, *Bright-Meyler papers*, "Introduction," 110-151.

case of the episode analysed. The Muscovado sugars Luetkens traded in as a commission agent in this episode was formerly English-owned, coming from a British colony, but they changed over into Spanish and French hands. Eventually, they ended up in Luetkens' hands after the ship on which it was loaded was captured by a Spanish privateer during its voyage and brought into the French harbour of Brest. Luetkens bought these sugars at the Spanish Prize Court in St. Sebastian, repacked and loaded them onto one of his own Hamburg ships in Brest, and then re-exported them to Hamburg, which shows how allegedly neutral merchants got access to and profited from the contemporary circumstances.119

Sending this unrefined brown sugar to Hamburg, the underlying trade strategy was to outsource the further processing of this sugar from France to Hamburg, which generated further profits for Luetkens. Not only was it cheaper to draw on Hamburg refineries but in doing so the Hamburg merchants also actively strengthened the Hamburg's own domestic proto-industry, which yearned for the imported sugars from France.120 The demand for refined sugars in the Hamburg consumer market and its surrounding areas was very high, which serves as the reason why we find a lot of sugar refineries on the banks of the river Elbe during the 18th and still in the 19th century. The refined sugar was then furthermore also exported to the German inland. As research has shown in this regard, the cooperation and mutual support between the Hamburg wholesale merchants and the sugar refineries, the "Zuckerbäckers", the sugar confectioners, as they were called in the 18th century Hamburg, was one of the important foundation stones for the success of the proto-industrialisation in Hamburg and beyond, which furthermore brought the merchants in France and Hamburg great profits.121

At the same time, this trading approach and practice ultimately also represented in certain ways a clear infiltration of the mercantilist policies of the French state, whose general politics and policies in fact aimed at the exact opposite. Originally, the French state and mercantilist system strived to limit all exports to manufactured goods. Due to the economic surplus in France and the saturation of the market, particularly with regard to colonial goods, the re-exporting activities of Hanseatic merchants were, however, explicitly approved by the French authorities because they resulted in additional revenues for the French state. The latter fact particularly held true for all those kinds of goods that represented in an actual sense a bonus as regards the total of French imports during that time. This brings us to the second point and particularity of Hanseatic trade participation in the re-distribution sector of colonial goods.122

As becomes apparent from Luetkens' trading activities in general, and also in the episode presented, one of the significant resources and opportunities for gaining access to sugars, and many other colonial goods in fact, was purchasing and trading in French Prize goods. Like Britain, France and Spain operated a fleet of privateers during the Early Modern Period, which seized enemy ships. After condemnation of these

119 See Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 227, 277, 302.

120 See ibid. See Petersson, *Zuckersiedergewerbe und Zuckerhandel*, 41-59.

121 See ibid, in particular Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 277.

122 See Pourchasse, "French Trade," 19; see Pourchasse, *Le Commerce de Nord*, 267-289, 291-327. See Butel, *L'Économie française*, 77-82; see Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 158.

ships as legitimate Prizes in France, at the French Admiralty Court in Vannes for instance or in Spain at the Spanish Admiralty Court in St. Sebastian, the ships as well as goods were put for auction.123 Foreign merchants trading in France and Spain were admitted at these auctions, which is why they often became heavily involved. In order to avoid customs duties, particularly the *ferme generale*, which could arise with regard to Prize goods, the foreign merchants still stuck to commission trade when investing and speculating in these goods. Luetkens bought Prize ships and he invested in Prize goods coming from Spanish and French privateering. When the British officials investigating the case of the allegedly neutral Hamburg ship the *Hope* later found out about this fact, they were not only not amused, but it also provided them with further proof of Luetkens' deep involvement in the French economy. Particularly revealing must have been the fact that the ship *Hope* itself had once sailed under British colours and had originally been an English ship, the *L'Upton*, which had been captured by a Spanish privateer and purchased by one of Luetkens' middlemen at an auction in Vannes. We still find the advert announcing the sale of this ship in the Luetkens archive.124 Apart from such setbacks as the capture of the *Hope*, the investment and speculation in Prize goods represented a good source of income for Luetkens. Such enterprises promised relatively easy access to colonial goods and good profits at the same time, which is why in general, as David Hancock pointed out, it was for good reason a popular field of activity especially among ambitious younger merchants, who would also not shy away from the risks involved in it.125 In essence, every auction and every speculation in such Prize goods in the end always represented a game of chance, which fact will also become obvious from the episode analysed. Put figuratively, conducting these enterprises, bidding and investing in Prize goods, the merchants always in many respects bought a pig in a poke, which meant they could not be sure that the goods they purchased actually met their expectations.

The challenges and risks prevailing with regard to investing in Prize goods were in this regard rather similar and comparable to the challenges and the overall risks generally prevailing in the commission trade. Luetkens in the end had to trust in the word of the seller or of his advisors and consultants in the respective ports, whenever he decided not to travel to the ports himself. In general it can be said that apart from the clear benefits of having a wide product portfolio as a commission agent, this portfolio at the same time presented the merchants with the challenge that they had to be experts and have good product knowledge about a lot of different goods in order to conduct a

123 Regarding French privateering, see Marzagalli, Silvia. "French Privateering," 41-65. See also Buti/ Hrodej,*Histoire des pirates et des corsaires;*see Barazzutti, "La guerre de course." See Aumont, Michel. *Destins et aventures corsaires. En mer! Sus à l'ennemi*. Nonant: Orep, 2012. See Hillmann, Henning. *The Corsairs of Saint-Malo. Network Organization of a Merchant Elite Under the Ancien Régime*. New York : Columbia University Press, 2021. See Villiers, *Marine royale.*

124 See the printed advertisements for the sale of the prize ship L'Upton of London and its cargo, at Port Louis 5 August 1744 [bought by Luetkens in Vannes] in TNA, HCA 20/232. See in general chapter 1 and the court papers in TNA, HCA 32/115/14. "Captured ship: *Die Hoffnung* of Hamburg, otherwise *L'Ésperance*, *De Hoop*, or *The Hope*(previously the English *L'Upton* or *Upton*, taken as prize and sold in France)."

125 See Hancock, *Citizens of the World*, 244.

lucrative business. With regard to many product groups within his portfolio, especially with regard to colonial goods, Luetkens developed the necessary skills and acquired the necessary product knowledge in the course of time. Yet, he often needed to draw and rely on further advisors or local merchants of his acquaintance when purchasing goods. This could be either due to physical distance, when he was not able to assess goods himself, or due to the fact that other merchants had greater knowledge about these goods. In the episode analysed, both reasons apply. In the episode, Luetkens invested in English Prize sugars offered at an auction in St. Sebastian, which was loaded on a ship lying at anchor in of Brest after it had been captured by a Spanish privateer in the waters off the coast of Brest.

Sugar represented one of Luetkens' core competence areas. However, he was neither able to travel to St. Sebastian nor to Brest during that time in order to assess these goods himself, since he was residing in Bordeaux at that time. He therefore approached and drew on his trading partners in St. Sebastian, the merchants and brothers Darragory, who assisted him with the purchase of the sugars at the auction. He also drew on Elart von Bobartt, his Nantes trading partner from the merchant house of Luttman & von Bobartt, whom he asked to travel to Brest to act as his consultant and to examine and assess the goods for him. Elart was well trained in the evaluation of English and French sugars since his own merchant house often invested in such goods. So, Elart was presumably a good choice as an advisor and Luetkens trusted in his word and assessments. As the episode will show, even Elart was, however, not immune to the risks of evaluating Prize goods. In his assessment of the goods, Elart was not entirely correct, which led to certain problems. But in the end the whole enterprise still brought the involved parties good profit.

Apart from the promising market opportunities in the sugar trade and in Prize goods and apart from the benefits of a wide product range covered with commission activities in general, commission trade held ready two more advantages especially for merchants during their establishment phase, which I will once more explain in detail in the next part, because they are fundamentally important for the understanding of the letter episode under investigation. These benefits of commission trade can be pointed out and summarized by help of two contemporary quotes from popular merchant encyclopaedias and manuals. The first quote relates to the benefits of the cashless payment system forming the backbone of commission trade and enabling young merchants to do extensive business. The second quote relates to the fact that commission trade allowed merchants to conduct their trade without the need to be physically present at the respective trading place. Instead, they could delegate the necessary operations to their respective partners on site. In practice, in turn, both benefits went hand in hand because both were based on, underpinned by and facilitated through the same fundamental communication tool: letters, which is why the next part represents at the same time the preliminary canter to the third and last part of this chapter's contextualisation. In the last section of my contextualisation I will present the details of the practice of writing business letters as a means of ensuring and promoting mutual appreciation among the Protestant merchants of France.

#### **4.7 Financing in Commission Enterprises**

The first quote is taken from the Krünitz encyclopaedia. In the article on commission trade in this encyclopaedia, commission trade was highlighted as an attractive business field for young merchants with the following words: "Commission business is of great advantage for young and aspiring merchants, particularly for those who only have sparse capital. Apart from the advantage that such business creates a good reputation, it also provides a solid basis for credit, which a merchant needs to have: So, a young merchant fills his newly opened business house, his store rooms and depots with commission goods as if they were his own. He must not [is not allowed to] invest his own capital in these goods, but earns his money through a provision fee of 2 or more per cent, and he pays his principal the sales proceeds from these goods bit by bit."126

The second quote stems from the most popular merchant manual of the Early Modern Period, Jacques Savary's *Le parfait negociant*, which stated that through the help and "by means of commission trade, merchants and bankers are enabled to trade with the whole world, with regard to purchasing as well as selling goods, with regard to drafting, accepting or remitting bills of exchange, and they could trade with one place or the other without ever leaving their compting houses."127

Both quotes give us a clear account of the important role that commission agents played during the Early Modern Period in general. They also reveal to us the concrete form in which the agent conducted his trade. A commission agent was commissioned by his customers to act and trade in goods in their name, for which the latter at the same time provided the necessary funds in the form of a credit, making use of the finance instruments of the cashless payment system. For the customer this held the benefit that he was not forced to travel to the respective ports to do the purchase and procurement himself, but he acted and traded from his desk at home in his trading house. For the commission agent, in turn, to a certain extent the same benefit applied. Most of the time he visited the ports and merchant houses where he inspected and bought the goods. However, not even he was forced to travel to all trading places himself, instead drawing on his middlemen and contact persons on site.

The benefits for the commission agent with regard to the financing and funding of his enterprises were furthermore that he was not reliant only on his own funds to conduct his trade, but he could rely on the provision of funds and financing resources from external sources. For the procurement of the necessary funds, he was not even limited to relying and drawing on his customer as the lender of capital, but he also approached and involved other merchant houses or private banking houses, private banks, from his business network in his financing activities to back up his enterprises. This means that in order to take care of the necessary liquidity for conducting the respective commission

126 "Commissions=Handlung." *Oekonomische Encyklopädie*, edited by Johann Georg Krünitz. 242 volumes. Berlin, 1773-1858, vol. 8, 253.  Savary, *Der vollkommene Kauff- und Handelsmann* [*Le Parfait Négociant*], 162, see also 175.

enterprises he could draw on various contacts. In fact, the latter was common practice and an essential component of the system of cashless payments by means of bills of exchange.128 In most financing operations of the period, several participants were involved, who interacted with each other by means of mutually allocating sufficient resources to each other in order to provide and ensure each other's financial security and ensure the continuation of their businesses.129

Both factors – the benefits of acting independently of your current location and the benefit of being provided with the necessary funds by means of the contemporary credit system and the cashless payment system – represented indispensable preconditions and major building blocks of a successful career as a commission agent and were particularly helpful for aspiring young commission agents building their career as wholesale merchants. Taken together with the important aspect of mobility during one's years of establishment, it becomes obvious how very flexible, versatile and adaptable the room for manoeuvre and the entrepreneurial scope of a commission agent was during that time. This flexibility was indeed necessary in order to accurately react to the special circumstances prevailing in trade, in France and during a merchant's establishment phase. For Luetkens, it was precisely these elements that characterised his commercial actions in France and that made him capable of acting during his establishment phase.

In order to understand his financial transactions with regard to his commission enterprise later in the episode, I will explain in greater detail the fundamental characteristics and functionality of the cashless payment system during the 18th century, not least because the mechanisms involved in the course of these transactions are reflected in the business letters exchanged between the involved parties, in the form of certain fixed sets of vocabulary, common terms and other structural elements. In fact, the cashless payment system, as will become obvious, served as a kind of trigger and basic framework that significantly contributed to and shaped the particular nature, the certain formality of 18th century business letters as well as surely also representing their typical content, which means that we will once more realise how deeply intertwined business practice and letter-writing and correspondence practices were during that time.

The question we have to answer first, however, is how the cashless payment system worked in practice and how it facilitated Luetkens' commission trade. In order to answer this question, I will illustrate the way Luetkens performed his financing operations in the most concise way possible, focussing on the basic principles that shaped his

128 See Denzel, *Handbook of World Exchange Rates,* xxii-xlvii. See Trivellato, Francesca. "Credit, Honor, and the Early Modern French Legend of the Jewish Invention of Bills of Exchange." *TheJournal of Modern History* 84, no. 2 (2012): 289-334. See as a comparative example to Luetkens also Gelderbloom, "Hans Thijs." See in general Gervais/Lemarchand/Margairaz, *Merchants and Profit.* Regarding French bills of exchange see also already De Roover, Raymond. *L'evolution de la lettre de change, XIVe–XVIIIe siècles*. Paris: A. Colin, 1953.

129 See Trivellato, "Bills of Exchance." See Denzel, *Handbook of World Exchange Rates,* xxviii-xxxii. See Neu, Tim. "Geld gebrauchen. Frühneuzeitliche Finanz-, Kredit- und Geldgeschichte in praxeologischer Perspektive." *Historische Anthropologie* 27, no. 1 (2019): 75-103.

transactions, serving at the same time as an illustration of the typical ways of conducting financing operations in 18th century business and trade. Often the different finance transactions conducted during a commission enterprise took on a highly complex form, involving many different actors and consisting of many different parallel actions and negotiations conducted by these different actors. This sometimes admittedly makes it hard to reproduce the transactions in detail. For instance, bills of exchange as negotiable instruments during the 18th century could pass through up to nine pairs of hands until they were finally paid and devalued.130 Most generally though, all of these transactions were shaped, characterised and held together by a certain limited set of basic financing principles and methods, which I will try to illustrate. In the episode analysed, we will then get an impression of the concrete forms that these financing actions took during a commission enterprise.

In order to finance his commission enterprises, Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens made use of basically two financing options. In order to obtain the necessary funds, he either drew on the support of one or two merchants or merchant houses in his merchant network, who acted as capital lenders and financiers of the undertakings, or he drew on private banking houses, which provided him with the necessary credit for his enterprises.131 For both options, the merchants and bankers drew on the cashless payment system. This system of cashless payment had been a significant driving force and indispensable component of trade since at least the end of the Middle Ages. During the 18th century, the system of cashless payment experienced a significant rise, due to demand and new innovations in the field. By then, the banking and finance business had already become a distinct branch of industry of its own, including inter alia stock exchange trading, currency trading and financial speculations.132 With regard to commodity trade, although the parties involved also engaged individually in the activities, the principal purpose of making use of the cashless payment system was primarily to obtain financing and to ensure the necessary liquidity for one's undertakings. Particularly in the wholesale business, for the import and export of one's goods, and in commission trade, it became not only a driving force but in fact the catalyst for all trading activity.133

The fundamental principle of the cashless payment system was "transferring funds by dealing in bills of exchange".134 A bill of exchange, called "Wechsel" in German and "lettre de change" in French, is a "document, used especially in international trade, that orders a person or organization to pay a particular amount of money at a particular time for goods or services."135 In a more precise definition, it was a "short-term negotiable financial instrument consisting of an order in writing addressed by one person (the

130 See Denzel, *Handbook of World Exchange Rates,* xxxviii.

131 For more details these private banking houses in Paris, see Lüthy, *La Banque protestante.* See also Körner, Martin. "Protestant Banking." In *The World of Private Banking*, edited by Youssef Cassis and Cottrell Philip L., 231-246. Farnham/Burlingtion: Ashgate, 2013, here 239-240.

132 See Denzel, *Handbook of World Exchange Rates*, xlii. See also Trivellato, "Bills of Exchance," 293-300.

133 See also Davies, "Commission System."

134 Hancock, *Citizens of the World*, 281.

135 "Bill of exchange." *Cambridge Business English Dictionary*, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 625.

drawer) to another (the drawee) requiring the latter to pay on demand (a sight draft) or at a fixed or determinable future time (a time draft) a certain sum of money to a specified person or to the bearer of the bill."136 On the basis of bills of exchange, a commission agent like Luetkens obtained the necessary liquidity and credit range and last but not least he was provided with the time needed to conduct his commission enterprises.137 Bills of exchange represented the nerve centre of commission trade, the most important means of payment, and they also formed the supply source for cash, enabling the merchant to conduct business.

The precise way of how the exchange in bills of exchange and generally the cashless payment system worked is presented in a very understandable way in the *Handbook of World Exchange Rates 1590-1914* by Markus Denzel. Denzel also illustrates the system in his book on the basis of several schemes, which I will borrow for my explanations and adapt them to the case of Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens' financial transactions as a commission agent. I will present my scheme of Luetkens' financial transaction on the basis of two of Denzel's schemes.138 The scheme subsequently show how Luetkens' entire business as a commission agent ultimately rested on the transferring of funds through the help of bills of exchange and how the different people involved in these transactions not only mutually supported each other, but by doing so also mutually reinforced each other and depended on each other. Last but not least, the scheme will point once again to the significance of letter-writing because letters were the medium by which all the transactions were carried out. Not only were letters the actual material carrier medium which was used to send bills of exchange from one merchant to another, for instance by inserting the bills of exchange between the letter pages as it was typical, but also the letter content and certain letter phrases and formulae themselves played a part in the execution of the respective financial transactions. Particularly in the finance sector, a lot of the actual actions performed happened on paper, by means of "quill pen fencing", "fehder fechten", as the contemporaries called it (see fig. 11).139

The first and most fundamental action within the cashless payment system was the *drawing* of a bill of exchange. This meant that Luetkens as the first very step in the process of securing the financing for his enterprise drew a bill of exchange on his customer or client, in our example, the merchants Hertzer & von Bobartt in Hamburg. By means of drawing the bill Luetkens at the same time obliged his customers to settle the bill for the purchase of the respective goods with Luetkens at a later stage. The payment was meant to take place after they received the goods that Luetkens had purchased on their account and after they had sold them in Hamburg. In Denzel's example the issuer of

136 "Bill of exchange, also called draft or draught." *Encyclopaedia Britannica*, https://www.britannica.co m/topic/ bill-of-exchange, accessed July 18, 2019. I preferred these definitions to the definitions in Denzel and Trivellato because they are more concise. See also Denzel, *Handbook of World Exchange Rates*, xxii- xxxii.

137 See Hancock, *Citizens of the World*, 281.

138 See Denzel, *Handbook of World Exchange Rates,* xxviii and xxix. See also the schemes in Trivellato, "Bills of Exchance," 293-300. The following explanations are primarily based on the information given by Denzel and Trivellato.

139 Letter from Hertzer & von Bobartt to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, February 17, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/234.

Source: Based on a model by Markus Denzel from his *Handbook of World Exchange Rates*. By courtesy of Markus Denzel.

the bill of exchange, who is the *drawer* of a bill, is a seller of goods, an exporter, who sells goods to a *purchaser*, an importer, whom the drawer obliges, by means of the bill, to pay for these goods, but only after a certain amount of time. Instead of an immediately due and direct cash transaction, the drawing of a bill of exchange as a payment obligation, as a "credit contract" as Francesca Trivellato called it, offered the decisive advantage that it allowed the customer himself to sell the received goods first in order to have enough liquidity to pay the bill.140 The same logic applies to Luetkens' case, with the difference that in his case, drawing the bill of exchange served the initial purpose to enable him to conduct purchases on the account of his customers in the first place. It was an advance credit. This means that through drawing a bill of exchange he obtained the necessary credit line from his customers, which was necessary to put him into the position to buy goods as a commission agent on their account.

Another typical method applied in such transactions by Luetkens and his trading partners was that for the purpose of such financial transactions in bills of exchanges the partners would often not directly raise actual funds for every transaction, but for coordinating their transactions and the flows of funds they simply drew on a shared account, a conto current. This means that both partners kept an account of their mutual enterprises and cash flows, a current account or open account in which they entered credits and debits of their respective partners, which sums were balanced and amortized at regular intervals, that is, for instance when a business enterprise had come to

140 Trivellato, "Bills of Exchange," 294.

an end.141 A conto current, however, was continuously kept among the partners, which meant that it included funds, credits and debits with regard to several enterprises at the same time, and some credits or debits remained unredeemed even beyond the duration of a certain enterprise. This practice of credit-debit accounting was very typical for the financial businesses and financial management of merchants of the 17th century.142 It was also a sign for a good and successful partnership among merchants if they kept current accounts together. Only merchants who knew each other well and who trusted each other shared a current account.

Nicolaus Gottlieb kept such a conto current and even joint conto currents, that is, where the partners shared their debts, with many of his main trading partners. We find current accounts for his cooperation with Hertzer & von Bobartt, Bethmann & Imbert, his French partner Lichigaray Jeune, his uncle in London, Luttman & von Bobartt, and several of his other close allies, all carefully sorted and kept among his bundles of merchant memorials. These memorials served as his general accounting archive during his travels as an alternative to keeping an account book.143 As regards Luetkens' concrete exchange business, sharing a conto current with Hertzer & von Bobartt meant that whenever he drew a bill of exchange on them, they simply debited his conto current on their side, which sum would later be balanced as soon as they sold the goods. In principle, this idea and approach seems remarkably simple. However, as it is often the case, in practice the final procedure of how the bill was eventually settled at the end of the enterprise often turned out to be a bit more complicated. That means both Luetkens and Hertzer & von Bobartt would in fact, in this case and in many of their enterprises, balance their accounts through a third intermediary, a third party, an actual intermediate *financier* of the whole enterprise who was involved in the finance transactions. This had to do with another intermediate step during the transaction that was often chosen by the merchants for their transactions in bills of exchange and often in fact necessary during the respective businesses. This regards the right-hand area in the graph above, which I have not yet explained, but which will play a role in my further explanations and in the episode.

Important to note in this regard is already at this point that although this third party, in our example the merchant house of Bethmann & Imbert, would get involved, the respective sums still appeared and were listed in the respective conto currents of the drawer and the drawee, only that now another payee of the proceeds was added. The latter becomes clearly obvious from the account memorials and business letters, in which we find typical formulae referring at the same time to both the *creditor* and the *beneficiary* or *presenter* of the bill of exchange, as the third party was called in contemporary terms. The most typical entry in this regard reads "Tratta of 2000 guilders à 2 uso

141 Once "an account was opened, the account holder routinely both granted and was granted free credit in the form of unsettled transactions." Gervais, "Merchant Strategies," 9.

142 See also Gervais, Pierre. "Mercantile Credit and Trading Rings in the Eighteenth Century." *Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales* 67, no. 4 (2012): 731-763.

143 Bundles of all of Luetkens' merchant memorials in TNA, HCA 30/232. Regarding merchant memorials, which primarily "acted as a memory aid" but on travels also as a substitute for a book of accounts, see Walker, Stephen P., and John Richard Edwards. *The Routledge Companion to Accounting History*. London/New York: Routledge, 2009, 105.

on my account à ordre Bethmann & Imbert", which meant, that the bill eventually was to be paid to Bethmann & Imbert.144 Before coming to the role of that intermediate financier in detail, however, I will first wrap up my explanations about the left-hand side of the graph, the basic procedure of exchanging a bill of exchange, also because this procedure will explain to us why the involvement of a third part was at all necessary.

Returning to the basic transactions in bills of exchanges, after the respective bill of exchange had been drawn by the drawer to the drawee of the bill, the necessary precondition for the conclusion of the pay agreement was of course first of all that Luetkens' customers would at all be agreeable with receiving the bill of exchange for the respective sums and under the terms of payment. Thus, his customers needed to approve of the payment request and therefore needed to *accept* the bill of exchange drawn on them in writing, by which they would then become the *acceptor* of the bill. If this was the case, in the next steps, Luetkens would then purchase the relevant goods, send them to his customers, who would themselves sell these goods, which put them in the position to settle the bill. For this whole procedure, the merchants of the time usually scheduled and allowed for a certain time frame, an agreed-upon period of time known as a "usance", most often amounting to two or three months until the payment of the bill of exchange was finally due. Expressed in the actual contemporary words, as they were also entered into the respective bills of exchange as set terms and furthermore confirmed in writing in the accompanying letters, a bill of exchange was usually issued "a 2 uso" or "a 3 uso", which meant that the payment was due after two or three months.145 Using and drawing on Latin terms in this regard served a very specific, practical purpose. It allowed the merchants to use this terminology in a uniform manner and to the same effect in many different languages. If we take all the letters in the Luetkens archive as a basis of comparison, we can find this expression in French, Dutch, English and German letters and bills of exchanges. It can also be found in the merchant manuals, handbooks and letter-writing manuals of the time.146 A similar pattern can be observed for many other basic terms and formulations used in financial operations, about which we will hear more in the next part of this chapter, but which already at this stage point us to the transnational character of mercantile business practices and the commercial language register of business and trade prevailing during that time.

Although it was helpful to grant his customers a two- or three-months period before the bill needed to be paid, in order to allow for the logistical handling and processing of the whole undertaking on credit, this practice was actually less helpful on the part of Luetkens with regard to conducting actual purchases of goods. The crux of the matter was that although Luetkens was allowed a certain credit line for his commission enterprises by his customers through drawing a bill of exchange on them, he nonetheless did not receive any actual financial means at this point of time. He therefore did not obtain

144 "dero Tratta von V 2000 a 2/uso [...] à ordre Bethmann & Imbert geacceptirt haben und E.E. dafür Conto Nostro in £ 6000:- debitiren." Letter from Hertzer & von Bobartt to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, May 15, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/234.

145 See also Savary, *Der vollkommene Kauff- und Handelsmann* [*Le Parfait Négociant*], 436. See Marperger, *Der allzeitfertige Handels-Correspondent*, 25.

146 Ibid.

direct liquid funds such as ready money or other assets from these previous transactions, which was, however, necessary to purchase certain goods on commission. This means he was still not liquid enough to actually pay for any goods when drawing a bill of exchange. Yet even with regard to this perceived problem, the sophisticated cashless paying system offered the necessary solution. This solution, in turn, represents not just another innovation, but surely one of the pivotal elements and driving forces behind the whole cashless payment system in general because it created the actual basis for the mutual financial safeguarding mechanism for financial transactions between several merchants that accounted for the system's effectiveness.

In order to obtain the liquid funds for his commission purchases instantly after he had drawn a bill of exchange on his customers, Luetkens sold the very same bill of exchange to a third party, the *remitter* of a bill of exchange [in French "remittent",], which in our example is the merchant house Bethmann & Imbert. By selling the bill to them, the merchant obtained at the very same moment the funds needed to conduct his commission enterprise.147 Consequently, Bethmann & Imbert would pay him, *remit* him liquid funds ["remittieren" in German and "remise"/"remittance" in French] in the form of ready money or again in the form of receiving bills of exchange. The commission agent himself, in turn could resell ["verneegotieren" in German] these bills of exchange. In Denzel's example, the exporter is being paid the bill for his exported goods by the remitter, which helped the exporter to instantly settle his accounts and carry out new businesses. In Luetkens' example this step was the precondition for conducting his businesses in the first place. In Denzel's example, the remitter then sold the bill to a fourth party, another merchant, often residing in the same city as the drawee of the bill, with whom he kept a current account and trading relationship, and who in the end became the beneficiary or presenter of the bill of exchange. That is, after the said 2- or 3-months waiting period, the drawee was, in turn, bound to pay the bill to the beneficiary of the bill of exchange. In Luetkens' case, in many of his enterprises, the remitter and the beneficiary ore presenter of the bill of exchange were often the very same person or merchant house, which makes the graph layout above and the understanding of the operations a bit easier. In concrete terms and with regard to his businesses, this meant that Luetkens received money or liquid funds from Bethmann & Imbert, which allowed him to conduct his commission trade, in return for selling the bill of exchange to them, the material payment obligation of Hertzer & von Bobartt. Bethmann & Imbert, in turn, later presented the bill to Hertzer & von Bobartt, who then settled the bill with them, at the same time clearing the respective entry in Luetkens' conto current. All of these arrangements were furthermore made transparent also in writing to all participating parties by means of a very simple but effective material practice. As soon as the remitter had purchased the bill of exchange from Luetkens, he would draft several copies of the respective bill, which were sent to all the involved parties in this financial transaction. The remitter kept the original bill of exchange, a copy of the bill, the *prima* (the first copy) was sent to the drawer of the bill (Hertzer & von Bobartt), whereas

147 Apart from Denzel and Trivellato, see also Neu, "Geld gebrauchen." See Morgan, Kenneth. "Remittance Procedures in the Eighteenth-Century British Slave Trade." *The Business History Review* 79, no. 4 (2005): 715-749.

Luetkens and all further parties who had become involved received a *secunda* or *tertia* (a second or third copy) of the bill of exchange. The latter therefore also explains why we find bundles of bills of exchanges in Luetkens archive marked as "secunda". These documents were the material evidence of his transactions with his remitters.148

The benefits for Bethmann & Imbert in the role of the remitter were fourfold, which also explains why merchants would become involved in this kind of transactions. First, merchants profited from differences and changes in exchange rates prevailing in the respective cities they traded with when purchasing or selling, presenting or paying a bill of exchange. It was often the case that a remitter bought a bill of exchange in another currency from the drawer (in city A) of the bill than the currency in which he would later be paid for the bill by the drawee (in city B).149 Through making use of a favourable exchange rate in the respective currencies he made a profit merely by means of observing the changing rates in the respective cities and acting on them at the right time.150 The latter is also one of the reasons why merchants added in almost all of their letters several exchange rates of the main financial trading places such as London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, at the bottom of the letters as additional information, and why they were keen to keep up to date and be well informed with regard to the respective rate movements. It was also the reason why they regularly purchased and sent each other newspapers or price currents, in French called "cours des marchandises" and in German "Preis-Courant".The price currents were printed lists of the exchange rates and the price movements and developments with regard to a great variety of goods.151 Since Luetkens during his time in France not only drew bills of exchange but himself also acted as a remitter in many enterprises, it will not surprise us that we find many printed price currents and newspapers, in German, French and Dutch, including price currents of the VOC, but particularly the *Hamburg Preis-Courrant*, in his business archive.152

His Hamburg correspondents regularly sent him these price currents and newspapers in order to keep him informed about the market in Hamburg. The changing exchange rates and the changes in price movements for certain goods were of course also highly relevant for the merchant, who sold commission goods in another city. Even in the goods exchange and particularly with regard to selling opportunities, the merchants often deliberately waited for the most favourable conditions and selling opportunity, a day on which the market prices were favourable, before they sold the goods. We find detailed reports about this in the letters. Secondly, an incentive for acting as remitter was that often the remitter was also offered a share in the respective goods he financed. Thirdly, as already addressed above, a remitter could expect from his partners

148 See bundles of secunda bills of exchange in TNA, HCA 30/232. See again Denzel, *Handbook of World Exchange Rates*, xxxv.

149 See Pourchasse, "French Trade," 17. See Verley, Patrick. *L'Échelle du Monde. Essai sur l'Industrialisation de l'Occident*. Paris: Gallimard, 1997, 235.

150 See Denzel, *Handbook of World Exchange Rates*, xxviii- xxxi.

151 Regarding *Price Currents* see McCusker, John J., and Cora Gravesteijn. *The Beginnings of Commercial and Financial Journalism. The Commodity Price Currents, Exchange Rate Currents, and Money Currents of Early Modern Europe*. Amsterdam: Nederlandsch Economisch-Historisch Archief, 1991.

152 See the printed French and Dutch price currents and in particular the *Hamburg Preis-Courants* in TNA, HCA 30/232.

that whenever he himself needed a remitter for his finance transaction he could count on their support. It was therefore not only Bethmann & Imbert, who remitted funds to Luetkens, but in other enterprises exactly the same practice was performed vice versa. In this way, a dense network and system of mutual obligation was created that sustained itself from within itself.153 Last but not least, fourthly, a remitter would charge a small amount of interest for his active loan to the drawee, most often 2%.

The list of benefits of this financial practice for Luetkens is shorter but still very meaningful. By means of drawing on a remitter for his bills of exchange he found an actual funder or financier for his commission enterprises. The remitters Bethmann & Imbert took on the crucial role of being the actual financiers of the respective commission enterprise, as was the case with every remitter within a cashless payment transaction. Together with the drawee of a bill of exchange, the remitter was the main pillar and mainstay of the cashless payment system.

With regard to Luetkens' second way of obtaining the necessary funds and financing for his enterprises and business, the respective procedures basically remain the same. The only difference is that in these other cases, the merchant did not draw on other merchant houses in his network but on private banks. The procedure of the respective transaction operations, however, was similar. In contrast to merchant houses, banking houses offered to their clients that they would assume the full responsibilities and provide their service for all above-mentioned financial operations at the same time. This means that banking houses served as the drawee and the remitter of a bill of exchange all at once, if wished, which was an opportunity that already the contemporaries highlighted as highly valuable in some respects, for instance when a certain promptness in reacting to financial matters was required in some transactions. Private banks could of course also act as the remitter and presenter of a bill of exchange.154 A further advantage and characteristic of private banks was that as part of their specialisation in the financing business and their available funds they also granted their customers on request proportionately high credits, big credit lines and short-term credits. The fact that banking houses nonetheless did not grant their loans light-heartedly will become obvious in the episode analysed. Merchants needed to prove their liability and trustworthiness in order to be granted a loan by a bank. This was not least one of the reasons why Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens travelled home to Hamburg by land in 1745, because he had planned in a last stop-over in Paris where he met with the Paris merchant bankers that financed many of his enterprises. In the episode analysed, we will see how Luetkens pulled the necessary strings to be granted a credit by the Paris private bank of Antoine Guldiman, on the basis of a recommendation by his friend Johann Jakob Bethmann.155 Yet, even a recommendation from such a respected, reputable merchant as Bethmann

153 See in general Muldrew, *Economy of Obligation.*

154 See Denzel, *Handbook of World Exchange Rates*, xlii- xliv. See Lüthy, *La Banque protestante.*

155 Antoine Léonard Guldiman was a reputable merchant banker in Paris, who was descended from a Huguenot family that had once fled to Solothurn in Switzerland, but his father had returned to France to establish one of the most reputable private banks in Paris. See Lüthy, *La Banque protestante,* 358-360. See also Du Pasquier, Jean Thierry. *Généalogies huguenotes*. Paris: Edition Christian: 1985, 245.

was still no guarantee that everything went smoothly and frictionlessly with regard to the subsequent transaction, as the episode will also show.

Comparing the enterprises that Luetkens conducted with the help of regular merchant houses as drawees, remitters and presenters of his bills of exchange with the enterprises that the merchant conducted primarily with the help of private banks, it becomes noticeable that Luetkens surely had certain preferences as to what kind of businesses he conducted with which partner or institution. He drew on banking houses for purely financial matters, money transactions and operations, particularly whenever he needed short-term credit or whenever he suffered a shortage in his financial resources due to large capital outlay, when buying a ship for instance or when conducting several large enterprises at the same time; or if he needed to balance his account due to other merchants drawing bills of exchange on him, especially if that happened without asking. The latter will play a big part in the episode analysed.156 On the other hand, he drew on his regular merchant trading partners primarily for all trading activities in connection with his actual commodity trade. For both purposes, bills of exchange provided the necessary means.157 For the sake of completeness, it must be added, however, that certain merchant houses, such as Bethmann & Imbert, also offered banking services as part of their business portfolio. This decision, the deliberate choice of different transaction routes and funding opportunities for different activities and enterprises depending on the nature of the respective activity or enterprise, was surely typical for the trading approach of international wholesale merchants during that time.158

Due to the necessity of close cooperation and a certain necessary flexibility and a high level of trust during the implementation of commission trade activity and commodity trade in general, in this sector the merchants preferably drew on long-standing, close and trusted trading partners as the supporters of the activities.159 On the other hand, in purely financial matters, that is, in all those kinds of transactions that mainly related to personal and current liabilities with regard to money lending, they drew on private banks.

In contrast to the interaction and communication between long-standing trading partners, the interaction and communication of merchants with private banks was accordingly often more formal in nature because the actual purpose behind these interactions, the purpose of the relationship, was less about cooperation than about the smooth allocation of funds, which rendered it unnecessary to say much about the respective transactions; in the end, what counted most for the contact with a private bank were

156 Bills of exchanges were in this regard "mere source[s] of credit". Denzel,*Handbook ofWorld Exchange Rates*, xlvi.

157 That is, bills of exchange in the end fulfilled several "functions: first, it was a safe way to send money; second it was a means of payment in trade; third, it functioned as a source of credit in lending money by issuing a bill of exchange [...] and when selling a bill of exchange in foreign currencies on credit [...]; fourth, one could benefit from the differences in exchange rates in different places [...]." Ibid., xxxii.

158 See Gervais, "Merchant Strategies"; see Gervais, "Mercantile Credit."

159 See furthermore Muldrew,*Economy of Obligation.*

punctual payments.160 The latter fact, however, does not mean that merchants did not also establish close bonds with bankers. Finding reliable partners was pivotal in all areas of trading activities. The latter fact, furthermore, should not lead us to the assumption that merchants therefore chose the private banks they traded with randomly, meaning that they would draw on just any banking house that offered good conditions. Quite on the contrary, even with regard to private banks as partners and financiers of Luetkens' businesses, we find exactly the same pattern that we have already encountered above. Luetkens once more exclusively chose to work with Protestant private banks established in France. This provided him and the banks with the necessary leap of faith that created the necessary bond on which the business relationship was based.161 Even in this regard, Luetkens' approach therefore represented a typical way of doing business as a merchant, particularly as a foreign Protestant merchant in France of the 18th century.

As important parts and pillars of the *Protestant International* within France, the main private banks that we encounter in the Luetkens archive were very renowned banking houses established in the financial metropolis of Paris. In total, one could find fiftysix Reformed Protestant bankers residing in Paris during that time, which once more underlines and provides a good account and impression of the obvious economic power emanating from the group of Protestants in the French financing and trading sector. Most of these merchants and merchant bankers were descendents of French Huguenots that fled to Switzerland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and later returned to France as financially sound bankers. Luetkens held contact with and was a client of several of the most reputable merchant bankers and private banks. The names that we find in his archive are the banking firm Tourton, Baur & Comp., the banking merchant Guldiman and Pellet, and the banking merchants Cottin and Rilliet. Tourton was a descendent of Huguenot refugees who had fled to Geneva. Guldiman's family originally returned from Solothurn, and the bankers Cottin and Rilliet both hailed from Geneva.162 Having established contact with these bankers and belonging to their clientele was another important steppingstone for Luetkens' career.

Last but not least, not only typical but indicative for the functioning of the whole cashless payment system was that Luetkens and his partners used letters as the crucial communication medium and trading tool. For each and every one of his financial operations letters were needed. On the one hand, letters were necessary due to the spatial separation of the different parties involved in the undertakings and due to the simple fact that the goods were purchased at a different location than where they were later sold. This made it inevitable for merchants in long-distance trade to communicate via letters in order to communicate over great distances. On the other hand, however, this fact was also due to the special nature and the necessities of the particular business practices prevailing in the finance sector. Not one of the finance transactions presented, not one of the above-mentioned steps during the procurement of the necessary funds

160 See the letter style of the letters exchanged between merchants and merchant bankers analysed and discussed in the episode.

161 See also Körner, "Protestant Banking."

162 See Garrioch, David. *The Huguenots of Paris and the Coming of Religious Freedom, 1685–1789*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 75-93.

for the enterprises, was imaginable or practically implementable without letters, that is, without laying down and mutually confirming the financial operations in writing. Letter writing and correspondence were the essential prerequisite serving as the formal and material verification of the respective actions. It was ultimately the performative carrier medium and the nerve centre of the cashless payment system and therefore also of commission trade. With this information, we are approaching the last section in this part of the chapter, in which I will explain the practical implementation of the cashless payment system and of commission trade through letter practice.163 This section will also form a smooth transition to the last part of my contextualisation, in which I will present the commercial language register of business and trade.

The cashless payment system during the 18th century was a crucial precondition for conducting trading activities as a wholesale merchant during that time, particularly if you were a commission agent, and even more particularly if you were a commission agent who was on the eve of establishment as a wholesale merchant. The cashless payment system allowed merchants to act as intermediaries for other merchants, it allowed for the necessary freedom of movement and trade and thus a certain mobility and flexibility in their undertakings because it enabled the merchants to manage their business from their writing tables and from wherever they were residing at the time. More could be written about several other innovations in financing business of the 18th century, for instance including instruments such as the endorsement, called *Indossament* in German. In order to understand the business presented in the episode, however, it is sufficient to understand the basic features of the cashless payment system and how these transactions allowed Luetkens to prosper in his trade. The cashless payment system provided merchants like him, who only had limited capital to obtain the necessary liquidity to conduct their trade, which was a "great advantage for young and aspiring merchants" as was noted already in the Kruenitz encyclopaedia.164 Basically the only requirement these young merchants and merchants in general had to observe was to adhere to the common customs and practices prevailing within the cashless payment system. In order to do so, they wrote letters and they learned to write them in particular ways. Writing appropriate business letters was the essential precondition for keeping the whole cashless payment system running. The said customs and practices the merchants had to adhere to while doing business are not only reflected in these letters, but in the end it was the letters themselves which in fact produced these very customs and practices.

#### Financial Transactions in Letters

Without letter-writing practice, none of the benefits of the cashless payment system would have prevailed during the 18th century. The system would in fact not even have existed. Speaking of long-distance trade and commission trade in particular, almost

163 Trivellato's argument runs the same way, see Trivellato, "Bills of Exchange," 293.

164 "Commissions=Handlung." *Oekonomische Encyklopädie*, edited by Johann Georg Krünitz. 242 volumes. Berlin, 1773-1858, vol. 8, 253, quoted above.

every financing activity was performed on the basis of letters. When bills of exchange represented "the backbone of commodity trade", as Trivellato put it, we must say that letter writing served as the backbone of the whole cashless payment system.165 In fact, as Trivellato also pointed out in her book *The Familiarity of Strangers*, letter writing basically represented and "remained the backbone of European long-distance trade" in almost all areas of trading activities during that time.166 With regard to the cashless payment system and the exchange of bills of exchange, letters played a crucial role particularly in two ways.

First of all, letters were the transportation medium for bills of exchange. In longdistance trade, bills of exchange were usually not handed over personally to the other party, but they were mainly sent to each other as inlays in letters. This applies to all kinds of bills of exchange, not just the main bill of exchange but also the *prima, secunda* and *tertia* copy. The typical way of inserting bills of exchange into letters was to place the piece of paper often folded in half either in the innermost part of the letter, the core part of the letter fold, or in-between the folded second and third page of the letter. This served the purpose of preventing outsiders from being able to see that a letter contained a bill of exchange because otherwise, if the paper was too thin, the contours of a bill would shine through the cover letter.

Secondly, apart from serving as a transportation medium, letters and letter text also fulfilled their own purpose within the cashless payment system as necessary complements of the exchanged bills of exchange. The prime function of letters in this regard was to not only comment but in fact to concretely name and designate the respective kinds of financial transaction that were to be conducted by means of sending the respective bill of exchange. In some cases, letter writers did not even have to send a bill of exchange with each letter in order to perform the financial transactions because it could also be sufficient to give notice or to take note ["nota nehmen"] of a respective financial transaction, meaning not just to inform or being informed about a transaction but in fact to recognize them and add them to the books. It was therefore ultimately also the letter content that revealed to an addressee if a sender had drafted a bill on him, wanted to use him as a remitter or urged him to pay his debts. The letter was therefore the actual executive organ within the cashless payment system. In letters and by means of letters the merchants got their orders and sent out their orders to other merchants.

In order to allow for this system to work, the cashless payment system required a very fundamental precondition crucial for the smooth handling and processing of all the respective financial operations by means of letters. The letters and their statements needed to be unequivocally clear in terms of their message and orders.This precondition shaped the entire structure of the cashless payment system and therefore also shaped and formalised the business letter exchanges in this business sector. It led to a high degree of uniformity and formalisation in the letter form and content of the business letters exchanged among merchants in financial matters. The letter content and the statements needed to be as clear, plain and explicit as possible because in mercantile

165 "[B]ills of exchange remained the backbone of commodity trading." Trivellato, "Bills of Exchange," 293.

166 Trivellato, *The Familiarity of Strangers*, 170.

business, as Daniel Defoe had already noted in 1726, all "orders ought to be plain and explicit".167 Only this fact ensured the smooth running of the whole system.

*Figure 12: Common shared international terminologies in 18th-century financing business.*

Source: Based on a model by Markus Denzel from his *Handbook of World Exchange Rates*. By courtesy of Markus Denzel.

It was indispensable in mercantile correspondence to use clearly defined terms and expressions, which unquestionably designated the respective finance operations performed by means of the letters. All letter phrases had to be understandable to all involved parties. For this it was essential that the terms and expressions used were generally valid and recognised as such within the entire mercantile community, and therefore across languages and cultural boundaries. The merchants' response to this necessity or rather the common linguistic practice that enabled them to fulfil this need was that they all jointly used and applied the same language register with the same terminologies and a fixed vocabulary of business terms when conducting business. This fact did not only apply to merchants from the same city, country or merchant community, but in fact it applied to almost all merchants, including merchants from non-European countries.168 For each of the financial operations mentioned above, the merchants used particular words or sentences or a set of regulated expressions, often letter formulae, to designate and clearly identify the respective financial operations performed by means of the letters containing them. These shared terminologies and vocabularies resembled one another in many different languages of the time, thus allowing the merchants to interact and trade across borders. Apart from that, or rather concomitant to that, the most intriguing fact and facet of this shared language register is, however, the unambiguously

167 Defoe, *Complete English Tradesman*, 27.

168 See also Marzagalli, "Trade across religious boundaries."

binding character of the shared terminologies and expressions, which were accepted by all merchants of the time, and therefore the power that emanated from these performative words. It is surely an intriguing phenomenon how the whole system of the cashless payment system ultimately rested on the usage of a handful of words and sentences used in letter-writing practice. This fact, however, just underlines once more the importance of letter practice for the business life and it underlines the importance of letter writing as the major driving force and the catalyst of the cashless payment system and trade in general.169

Demonstrating this practice on the basis of the example of Luetkens and his correspondents, I will once more draw on the graphic representation which I have already used to outline and demonstrate the cashless payment system in general. I will at this point, however, add the terms and terminologies that the letter writers used to designate their respective actions with regard to their concrete financial operations. Since Luetkens used different languages, I will list the terms in different language variations – the language resemblance will become immediately striking.

By means of these specific words in their letters, Luetkens and his trading partners, as representatives of the European merchant communities of the 18th century, concretely performed their financial actions in practice in their letters. A typical letter sentence and formula in this regard, which we can now understand in its full complexity and operating principle, therefore reads for instance:

"With this letter we inform E.E. that Bethmann & Imbert have drafted a bill on us for E.E. on the 11th of this month for V 3180:- à 3 uso à 27 3/4, which we have accepted and therefore have debited E.E.'s account respectively in Mark Banco 5515:5:-."170

#### Another typical letter sentence reads

"So today I remit him [Darragory] 15/m £ [15,000] and I will remit him another 20 à 30/m [30,000] next week. I write today to Mr. Luttman: that he can draft a bill on these friends for me on the account of Hertzer & von Bobartt: 5000V and 1/m V on my account for which he should remit me in bills of exchange on Paris 15 à 20 or 30/d [days] dato. I have to remit these in 8/d [one week] to Bayonne [to Lichigaray Jeune]."171

Both quotes and financial transactions will play a crucial role in the episode analysed in this chapter. By means of the first quote, Hertzer & von Bobartt accepted Bethmann & Imbert as the remitters and presenters of one of Luetkens' bills of exchange that he had drawn on them for the purchase of a cargo of sugar. By means of the second quote, Luetkens ordered his contact person in St. Sebastian and Bayonne, who granted him a loan, to purchase the relevant goods for him by order of the merchants Luttman &

169 See Trivellato, "Bills of Exchange"; see Trivellato, "Merchant's letters." The concrete *language register of business and trade*, however, has not yet been studied in detail or extensively by previous research, which is why I will derive my findings and explanations primarily from the letters in the Luetkens archive.

170 Letter from Hertzer & von Bobartt to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, August 24, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/234.

171 Letter from Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb to Von Bobartt, Elart, June 5, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/232, Letter Book I, no. 174.

von Bobartt, the latter of which was the consultant on site in the whole undertaking. We will be able to follow each of these transactions and its effects in the letter episode analysed. It will become apparent from the episode how the system worked with clockwork precision and how this enabled the merchants to conduct their business. This latter impression moreover did not only become clear to me and was limited to this one episode in particular, but it was a general insight. Reading hundreds of Luetkens' and his trading partners' business letters and following many enterprises over time, thus encountering the many different actors involved in such business endeavours, I became more and more intrigued by the effectiveness and functionality of the whole system. It is striking how every cog intermeshed perfectly with the next one, and how closely and skilfully the partners cooperated with each other. If all participating parties pulled in the same direction and met their obligations, that is, if their actions were true to their words, the system worked like a well-oiled machine. Sometimes the whole procedure went so quickly that the modern reader even struggles to keep pace, but since every step in these transactions followed a clearly structured principle and procedure, in the end it is possible to trace every action taken in this procedure.

#### **4.8 Showing Efficiency**

The efficiency of the whole system, performed on the basis of and buoyed by letters, in this context becomes clearly recognizable and it is impressive. Luetkens and his partners and correspondents were permanently engaged in several commission enterprises accompanied by several financial activities at the same time. They all acted as drawers, drawees, remitters or presenters of several different bills of exchange in circulation. The entire procedure furthermore worked both ways, that is, when buying or selling goods on the account of other merchants. Last but not least, the Luetkens mercantile business and letter archive presents us with a prime example of the internationality of the cashless payment system since Luetkens corresponded and transacted his business in several different languages with merchants from several different countries and with different backgrounds, while always sticking to exactly the same principles of the cashless payment system. In commission trade, he corresponded in French, Dutch and German. In sum, the Luetkens letters provide us with an accurate account of how the cashless payment system served as an engine of the Early Modern economy and how letters and bills of exchange were the crucial instrument that kept this system running.

At the very same time the requirements and challenges for the individual merchant active in this field and engaging in this system, profiting from and perpetuating the system at the same time with his actions, clearly becomes evident. As an active part, a small cog in the system, merchants had to make sure by all means that they did not bog down the smooth implementation of the cashless payment system and endanger the respective business enterprises. One of their key requirements was therefore, especially speaking of aspiring merchants, to prove that they were capable of keeping up with the challenges and master the different practices and customs prevailing in the cashless payment system. With every action, they needed to demonstrate that they were reliable partners and that they were skilled in the respective operations. In short, the basic