lifestyle during the age of Enlightenment.107 Secondly, we find entries regarding visits not only to the cultural sights of the cities but also to other cultural offerings and events. As such could be considered for instance masquerades that Nicolaus Gottlieb had visited. This becomes apparent from his expenditures on these occasions as well as from his preparations for these events. He for instance borrowed a costume and bought a mask. We can also consider as parts of such habitual training the dancing lessons that he took at a local dancing school and with a master, which presumably was intended to prepare him to fit in on occasions such as the masquerade.108 Dancing was furthermore not limited to public occasions but was also quite usual in more private settings and contexts, such as the typical tête-à-têtes, which bourgeois families often shared with each other, and of which we can also read in the Luetkens letters.109 Developing and showing skills and knowledge of such cultural activities formed an important asset that a young man had to incorporate during his education and his establishment phase. Thirdly, we find lots of entries about gift and presents. During the entire Early Modern Period, gift-giving was one of the most crucial practices of social life representing an important tool of mutual recognition and esteem within the hierarchical social structure of the era.110 It not only represented good form and manners but literally belonged to the standard repertoire of sociability, which especially young people had to comply with, who would have been dependent on the goodwill of others, such as supporters and patrons. Finding a lot of gifts and presents among the entries in the pocketbook shows that Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens also knew what befitted him in this regard and also what would suit his needs. He would often bestow gifts and presents, such as financial donations, jam ["confecturen"], chestnuts ["castanien"] or valuable "drinking glasses", upon his uncles and aunts, his first trading partners, as well as his landlords, their family, servants and maids, to ensure their benevolence and affection for him. But he also sent his two brothers several gifts such as silver buckles for their shoes or silver buttons.111

107 See North, *Joy of Living*. See the HERA project Intoxicating Spaces: https://www.intoxicatingspaces. org, accessed October 19, 2020. See Withington, Phil. "Intoxicants and the Invention of 'Consumption'." *The Economic History Review* 73 (2020): 384-408.

108 Regarding *Masquerades*, particularly in France, see Wahrman, *Making of the Modern Self*, "The Eighteenth-Century Masquerade," 157-311. See in general Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara. *Europa im Jahrhundert der Aufklärung*. Stuttgart: Reclam 2000, 114-144.

109 See letter from De Meyere, Albertus to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, August 20, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/234. "Am Don[n]erstag morgen war ich bey Kähler u. des nachmittags muste ich mit ihm [...] [und seiner] Tochter nach den Garten fahren, allwo H. von Schwechelsen u. [die] Muhme Heusch u. die Krauses nebst ihren Töchtern [waren]." Letter from Luetkens, Joachim to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, May 25, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/235.

110 See as an introduction Kettering, Sharon. "Gift-Giving and Patronage in Early Modern France." *French History* 2, no. 2 (1988): 131-151. See also Krausman Ben-Amos, Ilana. *The Culture of Giving: Informal Support and Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England.* Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, "The Economy of Giving," 143-306. See in general Mauss, Marcel. *The Gift. Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies*. London: Routledge Classics, 2002 (first edition, in French, *Essay sur le don*, 1950).

111 Pocketbook of expenses in TNA, HCA 30/232.

A fourth category of expenses is books. We find amongst his expenditures for instance a history book ["Historienbuch"], an English bible, an English letter manual ["Engl. Br:Buch"], and three French books, among them the famous Robinson Crusoe ["R. Crusoe"]. Reading and erudition were among the prime cultural assets and cultural capital during the Enlightenment, especially for the middle class.112 Luetkens' choice of books, however, obviously also served more practical reasons. Arriving in England, he needed to get more familiar with English letters and get used to writing and reading them, so he bought an English letter manual. The same reason applied to his purchase of an English bible. Arriving in France, he needed further literacy skills in French, so he bought Robinson Crusoe and the two other books, presumably also a letter-writing manual, which would, however, also serve his recreational pleasure.

#### Dressing like a Merchant

The last area of expenses with regard to his habitual advancement and skills, which is also the one group of items that accounts for the major share of expenses in the book, regards his expenditure on clothing. With the help of all these entries regarding clothing, we are able to reconstruct and gain a very detailed and vivid picture of Luetkens' well-groomed outward appearance.113 The pocketbook even provides us with the opportunity to undertake the experiment of fitting out a mannequin today as if we were facing Luetkens himself in the clothing that he was wearing during his travels.

Starting at the top, the mannequin would need a typical 18th-century wig ["Parucke"], of which Luetkens purchased six between the years 1738 and 1742, of which one is more specified as a "round" wig. The book furthermore shows that each year one or two wigs would be purchased to replace the older ones. For the cold nights in England and France, Luetkens also bought nightcaps, but our mannequin still keeps its wig on as that was the typical headdress worn in public. Under the wig, Luetkens would wear a "hear-bonet" ["Haarbeutel"] in order to tame his hair. Sometimes he would also wear a hat ["Hutt"]. The next items that can be found in the book are scarves and neckerchiefs, of which he bought several. As underwear, Luetkens would wear "white skivvies" and "silk stockings" or alternatively "cotton stockings" ["weiß unterzeug, Seiden Strümpfe, Baumwollstrümpfe"]. Over this, he would then wear white shirts or shirt blouses, of which he bought "six new" ones. We also find a reference in the book to "red sheets", which could have been used for revamping his shirts. As the next item on the list, and this time one of the more flamboyant pieces of his outer appearance, we find a "golden waistcoat" ["goldene Weste"] which he combined with a camelot ["chamelot", Kamelott, Schamlott in German] skirt, a dark red satin "camisol" jacket garnished with damast ["Camelot zum Rock, Seiden Camisol [...], Damask

112 See Cavallo, Guglielmo, and Roger Chartier, eds. *A History of Reading in the West*. Cambridge: Polity, 1999. See Chartier, Roger. *Lesewelten. Buch und Lektüre in derfrühenNeuzeit*. Frankfurt a.M./New York, Campus, 1990.

113 See Welch, Evelyn. *Fashioning the Early Modern. Dress, Textiles, and Innovation in Europe, 1500-1800*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

*Figure 7: Dressing like a merchant. Reconstruction of Luetkens' outward appearance based on the items listed in his pocketbook of expenses.*

Source: Illustration by Anne van Stormbroek.

zum Camisol"] and a red frock coat ["ein rothen Mantellrock"].114 In winter, he would equip his frock coat and jacket with further lining.  He stored all his clothing during his travels in a

114 Tailor's bill, Gottfried Walter, 1743, HCA 30/232.

115 All items mentioned in his pocketbook of expenses in TNA, HCA 30/232.

"chest", his travel chest. In fact, as the court records in the case of the Hope reveal, some of these cloths, some "wearing apparrol" were still stored in his travel chest at the time the English officers found the hidden archive in the after-hold of the ship.116 Unfortunately, Luetkens' clothes, have not survived in the National Archives in London. Most probably, they were thrown away or sold by the English authorities in 1745.

All in all, looking at our mannequin, we realise that Luetkens must have cut quite a stately figure in terms of his appearance during his travels. His dress and appearance matched other portraits of merchants of the time as well as actual miniature mannequins of merchants.117 Not least these similarities show that by wearing such clothes Luetkens clearly underpinned and demonstrated his claim to become or even already to be a respectable member of the merchant community. This appears to have been another important asset for a young merchant on travel. On the other hand, we can also find entries in his pocketbook with regard to his clothing habits that point us once again to the special hybrid status of a merchant during his establishment phase. These entries show that, even though he surely needed to present himself as a well-dressed man, he was required not to exceed reasonable limits with regard to his outward appearance. It is thus very telling that apart from the listings for a golden waist coast or clocks we find numerous entries in his pocketbook that underpin that Luetkens was very committed to ensuring that his dress style would not seem excessive or lavish. Multiple times he noted for instance that a tailor named "Feldman" had patched his old clothes or he simply noted that his "shirts had been patched". In France, he had his clock beaten out. As a merchant on travel, he had to show that he was also able to reasonably budget for himself. In the end, he was therefore also complying adequately with a more general contemporary demand of young men, which was that they had to be thrifty and frugal in their lifestyle.118

Again, as we look at both sides together, we see the difficult starting situation that the young men had to face during their travels, even with regard to how they dressed. Again, we find the fine line between exaggeration and understatement that the young men had to master for the purpose of their career advancement. Thus, the search for an appropriate middle way obviously was the order of the day and will also reappear repeatedly with regard to the business requirements and needs of an establishment phase

116 "[...] the deponent found a [---] large Trunk almost full of papers in the after Hold of the said ship and saith that the same trunk was so blockt in with Barrolles that they were forced to work near half a day to get at the same and there were some wearing apparroll as well as papers in the said trunk." Examination of James Doran, September 10, 1745. *Instance and Prize Courts: Examinations and Answers*, Examinations 1744-1747, TNA, HCA 13/90.

117 Miniature mannequins, clay statuettes, produced of merchants from the same period, like the famous portrait figure, a miniature of Joseph Collet, which was once a present to his daughter, today displayed in the National Portrait Gallery of London.*Joseph Collet*, by Amoy Chinqua, painted unfired clay statuette, 1716, 33 in. (838 mm) high. Given by the sitter's descendant, W.P.G. Collet, 1956, National Portrait Gallery, London, Primary Collection, NPG 4005. On display in Room 14 at the National Portrait Gallery. As an example of a portrait see portrait of "Johann Hinrich Gossler (1738-1790)." *Heritage* 2 (2004): 32.

118 See Münch, Paul. *Lebensformen in der frühen Neuzeit: 1500 bis 1800*. Berlin: Ullstein, 1998, 233-272. See in general Münch, Paul. *Ordnung, Fleiß und Sparsamkeit. Texte und Dokumente zur Entstehung der bürgerlichen Tugenden*. Munich: DTV, 1984. See Levi/Schmitt, *A History of Young People.*

in the next part of this chapter. Even the requirement for a proper outward appearance will once again reappear in the following explanations, this time in connection with an appropriate contact to partners and customers. Before coming to that, however, I will also take a look at the third field of knowledge for which we can gain insights through the pocketbook because this will provide a direct and smooth transition to the next part. The third field of knowledge regards the typical daily or monthly running costs of a merchant on travel, which shows the link between the personal and the business demands of an establishment phase by demonstrating that these two spheres in the end always have to be seen as permanently interlinked with each other.

#### Running Costs

In the pocketbook of expenses, we find regular expenditure for the tailor and for shoes, of which Luetkens bought 19 pairs in total during the years of his first stay abroad. Reasons for the former have already been given. The reasons for the latter were, maybe contrary to the first impression, not only that Luetkens had a particular liking or weakness for shoes, but also that shoes during the Early Modern Period generally had a short lifespan if worn and used intensively. The increased demand for shoes by Luetkens literally tells us that Luetkens had been carrying out a lot of his mercantile errands on foot. Yet, the high number of shoes and in particular the high cost per pair surely also tells us without question that he put considerable emphasis on the importance of a good and cultivated appearance. This fact is furthermore confirmed by entries that list costs for shoe cleaning. The third and fourth regular expenses also fit in with this picture: he regularly spent money on having his clothes washed and on visiting the barber.119 The fifth common regular expenses are on medicine. Even though we only find one concrete entry regarding medicine in the pocketbook, actually mentioning medicine ["medicin"], it can nevertheless be assumed that he had actually purchased more, or that he simply made use of medicine he found for instance in his uncle's house. As we know from other contemporary sources such as merchant manuals or travel instructions, it was vital for merchants to stay healthy, especially during their travels, because anything else would have meant losses in business.120 The last and at the same time most striking item that we can find in the pocketbook showing regular expenses is postage for letters. At first sight, the costs for postage ["Briefporto"] appear hardly noticeable or worth mentioning, especially because they are often mentioned together with other "smaller expenditures" ["kleine Ausgaben"]. As soon as one notices, however, the frequency of the occurrence and the total cost of postage per year [1739: 13,67 £ in total], it becomes highly apparent how important conducting a regular correspondence was for young merchants. Postage was paid during the entire Early Modern Period by the receiver when collecting letters

119 Regarding the demand for keeping an orderly appearance while travelling see also Marperger, Paul Jakob. *Mentor oder des Reisenden Telemachi kluger Hofmeister* [...]. Dresden: Autoris, 1725, 34.

120 See Defoe, *Complete English Tradesman*, 282. See Marperger,*Hofmeister*, 4. Regarding the 18th century discourse on the importance of "health" and on bodily practices see Piller, Gudrun. *Private Körper: Spuren des Leibes in Selbstzeugnissen des 18.Jahrhunderts.* Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2007, 47- 69, 174-185. See Raapke, Annika. *Dieses verfluchte Land. Europäische Körper in Brieferzählungen aus der Karibik, 1744-1826*. Bielefeld: transcript, 2019.

in the local post office, at the harbour or when they were brought directly to the merchant house. Luetkens must have had expenses for postage every single week of his stay abroad and the overall costs in the end amounted to a sum comparable to the cost of 6 weeks rent in a lodging house ["3 Wochen Logie at Saml. Highmore in Mortlake": 7,18 £].121 The sheer number of letters that we find in the actual mercantile business and letter archive of Luetkens 1743-1745 provides us with further hard evidence in this regard.

The cost of postage furthermore ultimately represents the one special item in the pocketbook that exceeds most clearly the scope of personal or private expenditures, as it needs to be regarded as a crucial part of his expenditure for business purposes, which leads over perfectly to the next part of this chapter. It becomes apparent how interwoven the costs for personal and business expenditure ultimately were. Of course, also all his other expenses surely will have had their repercussions with his business activities, but with regard to postage this interconnectedness becomes tangible. "Tending to correspondence was a pressing demand and an ordinary fact of life for every merchant", and therefore also most certainly one of the most pressing demands of an Early Modern mercantile establishment phase.122 Therefore Luetkens will surely more or less willingly have paid the cost of postage from his private expenses during his travels because it signified and fostered his personal advancement in the world of trade. This tells us therefore that all the listed expenditure on postage actually refers to the cost of paying for his incoming letters, which would certainly have increased his willingness to pay because the more letters he received the more he could rest assured that his efforts were bearing fruit.123 Each trip he took to the local post offices or trading houses to pick up his letters ultimately stood for nothing other than another step forward towards his establishment as a merchant, which surely made it reasonable for him to risk wearing out another pair of shoes. In the next part of this chapter, I will continue my explanations on the requirements and demands of an 18th-century mercantile establishment phase with regard to business enterprises, but just as with regard to postage costs these explanations will often also refer back to private expenses listed in the preceding chapter.

#### **2.7 The Demands and Requirements of a Mercantile Establishment Phase**

What were the main contemporary demands and requirements for a merchant during his establishment phase? In order to answer this question, there exists an extensive

121 Regarding these costs see *Detailed bill for a post chaise*, May 1744, in TNA, HCA 30/232. Regarding the typical costs for postage see furthermore Marperger, *Der allzeitfertige Handels-Correspondent*, 498. See also Whyman, *Pen and the People*, 46-71. See Behringer, Wolfgang. *Im Zeichen des Merkur. Reichspost und Kommunikationsrevolutionen in der Frühen Neuzeit*. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003. See O'Neill, *The Opened Letter,* 19-46.

122 Trivellato, *Familiarity of Strangers*, 170.

123 See Whyman, Susan. "'Paper Visits': The Post-Restoration Letter as seen Through the Verney Archive." In *Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter Writers 1600-1945*, edited by Rebecca Earle, 15-36. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, here 22. See also Whyman, *Pen and the People*, 61-64.

body of contemporary literature from the 17th and 18th century dealing with this matter. Unfortunately, we cannot find any concrete document dealing with this matter in the Luetkens archive itself that helps us to directly answer this question. Even though it had been quite common during the entire Early Modern Period to equip young men with mercantile advice literature, merchant manuals on mercantile business and concrete written instructions during their travels and coming of age or, we search in vain for such a record in the Luetkens archive.124 We find no merchant handbooks or instructions, no travel literature or similar documents among the surviving records in London. Therefore, in this book, I will derive and reconstruct the concrete activities and steps necessary for an Early Modern establishment phase directly from the analyses of the letters and business records, the letter conversations and the business enterprises found in the Luetkens archive. As a basis for these analyses, however, I will prepend these chapters and analyses with a chapter on the most crucial demands and requirements for an 18th century mercantile establishment phase as they are presented to us in contemporary mercantile advice literature, in merchant manuals or guidebooks. This chapter serves as the basic foundation for the analytical chapters providing us with the fundamental knowledge about the necessary skills, competences and character traits paving the way into establishment as seen from the perspective of contemporary advice writers and merchants. The combination of the present chapter with the analytical chapters focussing on Luetkens' business and letter practices provides a comprehensive picture of the making of a merchant in the 18th century.

#### On Advice Literature

The Early Modern Period, particularly the 18th century, experienced a true boom in publications of advice literature. Such books included a variety of guidebooks: letterwriting manuals for learning how to write letters appropriately; gallant conversation manuals for how to converse gallantly; and merchant manuals for how to conduct trade. In this present book, all three kinds of advice literature will be used as intertextual resources. I have read over 40 books of advice literature in order to be able to analyse the letters and business enterprises in the book. In this current chapter, I have based my explanation, on the most prominent literature on mercantile education of the age. These works allow us to reconstruct a catalogue of challenges that Luetkens had to pass during establishment, and they help to compile a catalogue of virtues of a merchant that the merchant had to show and incorporate during this crucial time of his life.

It can be assumed that Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens was familiar with these books or at least with comparable literature. An indication for this is that he had purchased an English letter-writing manual during his travels, as we have learned above. Secondly, these books were generally widely read, known, popular and in wide circulation among

124 See for instance Hörmann, Georg. *Memorial und Recorda für mein Eniklen Antoni Christof Hörmann*, 1588, edited by Luitpold, "Aus dem Bildungsgange eines Augsburger Kaufmannssohne vom Schlusse des 16. Jahrhunderts." *Zeitschrift desHistorischen Vereinsfür Schwaben undNeuburg* 1(1874): 137-182. See Meder, Lorenz. *Ein Büchlein von der Kauffmannsschaft*, 1511, HAB 18.4 Aug. 4°, fol 2r.

merchants.125 The third, most telling and valuable hint for the fact that Luetkens must have known these books is, however, that the wordings and expressions he used in his letters are often similar or often follow the wording in advice literature. This will be a major finding of my analyses in the chapters.126 All these reasons certainly justify listing the major statements and pieces of advice that these books offered for young merchants, who tried their luck in the field of trade, in the following explanations.

The first book that I am citing in this regard is Jacques Savary's *Le Parfait Négociant* [The Perfect Merchant] from 1675, which went through three reprints until 1752, with more to follow, and which was translated into Dutch, English, Italian and German, increasing the number of editions to over thirty between the years 1676 and 1800.127 This book can surely be called the most important and famous merchant manual of the Early Modern Period. It was the "quintessential merchant manual against which all others were measured".128 The second merchant manual that I am referring to and the contents of which match most closely the mode and ways of expressions in the Luetkens letters, is Paul Jacob Marperger's *Der getreue und geschickte Handelsdiener* [The faithful and skilled merchant clerk] which ranks as one of the most prominent German merchant manuals of the 18th century. This is often referred to as the German counterpart to Savary, not least because of the fact that Marperger explicitly refers to, cites and puts himself into the line of tradition of Savary.129 In order to complete the picture with an English merchant manual, thus covering the three main places of residence of Luetkens' establishment phase, I will also cite from Daniel Defoe's *The Complete Tradesman*, which enjoyed a similar reputation during the 18th century as the other two manuals.130 The three manuals under investigation in fact represent merely the tip of the iceberg of over 3,200 merchant manuals that were written and printed in total during the 18th century.131 The 18th century can therefore not only be called the age of the letter, it was surely also an age of merchant manuals.

129 See Marperger, *Getreuer und geschickter Handelsdiener*. See Deges, "Zusammenfassende Übersicht."

125 See in general and very detailed the three volumes of Hoock/Jeannin/Kaiser*, Ars Mercatoria.*

126 See also Van der Wal/Rutten,"The Practice of Letter Writing," 18-32. See Van der Wal(Rutten. *Letters as Loot.* See Van der Wal, Marijke, and Gijsbert Rutten. "Ego-documents in a historical-sociolinguistic perspective." In *Touching the Past. Studies in the Historical Sociolinguistics of Ego-Documents*, edited by Marijke van der Wal, and Gijsbert Rutten, 1-18. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2013.

127 Savary, *Der vollkommene Kauff- und Handelsmann,* in the French original: Savary, Jacques. *Le Parfait Négociant*. Paris: Billaine, 1675.

128 Harreld, Donald J. "An Education in Commerce: Transmitting Business Information in Early Modern Europe." Paper given at the *XIV International Economic History Congress*, Helsinki 2006, Session 1, 8.

130 Defoe, *Complete English Tradesman.* See as a good introduction Di Renzo, Anthony. "The Complete English Tradesman: Daniel Defoe and the Emergence of Business Writing." *Journal of Technical Writing and Communication* (JTWC) 28 (1998): 325-334.

131 See all the merchant manuals listed in the impressive volumes edited by Hoock, Jochen, Pierre Jeannin, andWolfgang Kaiser, eds. *Ars Mercatoria:Handbücher und Traktatefür den Gebrauch des Kaufmanns: 1470-1820: Eine analytische Bibliographie*(= Manuels et traités à l'usage des marchands), 6 volumes. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1991-2001. See as an introduction Kaiser, Wolfgang. "Ars Mercatoria – Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer analytischen Bibliographie und Datenbank." In *Ars Mercatoria: Handbücher und Traktate für den Gebrauch des Kaufmanns*, 1470-1820, edited by Jochen Hoock, Pierre Jeannin, and Wolfgang Kaiser, vol. 3, 1-26. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2001, here 2-3.

The main target group and the purchasers of these books were young merchants, as is often even explicitly mentioned on the title page, in the introductory words or depicted in the frontispiece as in the case of Savary. They were targeted by these books to be provided with useful information, tips and tricks for their career advancement in trade. The books therefore served as helpful guidebooks that the young men could draw on and learn from for their business activities. The books provided information on "everything that a merchant needed to know for his profession", as historian Jochen Hook phrased it, or in the words of the contemporaries, they compiled "all things necessary to be known by all those who would thrive in the world; and in the whole art and mystery of Trade and Traffick."132 Consequently, these books also entail and explicitly list the concrete demands and tasks for young merchants and the qualities that these men had to acquire and exhibit in order to establish themselves and comport themselves in the world of trade.

#### Business Skills and Qualifications

As the general competences, skills and necessary qualifications, but first and foremost the virtues that a young man had to bring with him after having completed his apprenticeship, Savary lists, firstly, "piousness", the "love and fear of God, for if he is without those, God will not bless his work, and he will never succeed in his endeavours".133 Secondly, he lists loyalty to his patrons, later also including his trading partners and the servants, and "obedience" and "respect" towards higher-ranking persons, such as later on his creditors.134 As the "primary quality that a merchant should have with regard to the sale of his goods is to [be] an honest man. This will ensure his salvation and his reputation, and without a good reputation, a merchant will never make his fortune. Being an honest man means being of good faith and cheating no one."135 As crucial for a merchant's advancement after his apprenticeship Savary then advises the young man to gain deep knowledge and deep expertise ["vollkommene Wissenschaft [...] große Erfahrung [...] und alle darzu benötighte Vollkommenheit"] in the wares and goods that he is going to trade with, for if he plans to trade in foreign goods while staying in foreign lands." For this, Savary urges the young men to further enhance their skills in the house of a long-distance wholesale merchant, who deals with these wares and goods, which would also have entailed visiting the foreign lands.136 Only this prerequisite would then

132 "Was ein Kaufmann von Berufswegen eigentlich wissen musste." Hoock, Jochen, and Pierre Jeannin. "Einleitung." In *Ars Mercatoria: Handbücher und Traktate für den Gebrauch des Kaufmanns*, 1470- 1820, edited by Jochen Hoock and Pierre Jeannin, vol. 1, I-XIII. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1991. Second quote: H.N. (anon.) Merchant in the City of London. *The compleat tradesman: or, the exact dealer's daily companion.* London: T. Norris, 1721, title page. See also Hoock, Jochen, and Wilfried Reininghaus, eds. *Kaufleute in Europa. Handelshäuser und ihre Überlieferung in vor- und frühindustrieller Zeit*, Dortmund: Ardey-Verlag GmbH, 1997.

133 Savary, *Der vollkommene Kauff- und Handelsmann [Le Parfait Négociant]*, 64. See also ibid., 56.

134 Ibid.

135 "Zum ersten muß er ein ehrlicher Mann seyn dann dieses ist das Mittel durch welches er seinen Wolstand schmieden und Reputation [...] erlangen kann." Ibid., 70.

136 Ibid., 22.

allow a young man to gain the necessary skills and knowledge to start his career as a wholesale merchant. As the most crucial competence in this regard Savary lists "prudence".137

All the aforementioned qualities will then also remain valid and inevitable with regard to the merchant who seeks to establish himself on his own footing, which becomes apparent when we compare these qualities with the qualities that Savary lists for the "complete merchant". As crucial for the "happiness and welfare" ["Glück und Wohlfahrt"] of established merchants Savary notes that they would need to possess this kind of perfect knowledge in all areas crucial for a merchant's occupational advancement and dayto-day business.138 *Le Parfait Négociant* had to show perfect knowledge of his businesses, for which he needed "extensive experiences, which he had gained through working for other merchants".139 He needed to demonstrate "good order in his books", had to show and exercise caution and prudence with regard to his trading activities, his purchases and loans. He had to show "diligence" with regard to collecting debts.140 As the last qualities Savary lists industriousness, willingness to work and thrift ["fleißig, hurtig, arbeitsam, emsig"].141 When we compare these qualities with other merchant manuals as they circulated already in the centuries before, of which one of the most famous instructions is the *Handel-Buch* by Lorenz Meder, we see that these demands and catalogue of virtues for merchants had stayed relatively stable during the whole Early Modern Period.142 Through Savary's guidebook, however, these qualities now became the official standard for every merchant seeking establishment in the 18th century, and as such Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens' career path, too, was measured against it. As we know from the previous explanations, at least with regard to the suggested educational path, Luetkens completely met and complied with the criteria. As we will learn in the analytical chapters, he furthermore also complied with the more behavioural provisions that Savary proposed, or least Luetkens would refer to them with regard to his self-image and for the purpose of delineating his career aspirations.

The last two pieces of information that we can extract from Savary's merchant manual regard the concrete challenges for and tasks of life in the foreign lands and the career steps that would, according to Savary, appropriately conclude an establishment phase. In this regard, too, Luetkens appropriately fulfilled his obligations. First, Luetkens displayed a high level of commitment during his travels to learn at the several place that he visited about "1. the wares that were traded in these foreign lands, [...] but also about the commodities that would grow there and were manufactered there", "2. [...] about the tradings usances and the trading routes [...] in the foreign lands", 3. [...] about licenses and custom duties", "4. [...] about the weights and measurements [...] and cur-

140 Ibid.

137 Ibid., 57.

138 Ibid., 43.

139 Ibid.

141 Ibid., 56. "Sparsamkeit", ibid., 43. See also "Sorgfalt und Emsigkeit" as well as "Vorsichtigkeit", ibid., 352.

142 See Meder, Lorenz. *Handel-Buch* [...] Nuremberg: Johann vom Berg, 1558.

rencies" in foreign lands.143 Secondly, as we know from Luetkens' biography, he also complied with the proposed finishing steps of his establishment phase as Savary specified it. In 1745, Luetkens returned to Hamburg "in order to enter into a partnership and company with an already established merchant", as was Savary's suggestion. Luetkens' future business partner was Ehrenfried Engelhardt, who in contrast to Savary's suggestion was not much older than him.144 Luetkens would also return to Hamburg to marry the daughter of the Engelhardt family, which was the second proposed step that Savary listed. The only thing that Luetkens did not comply with completely concerning Savary's recommendations was the "appropriate age" for establishing himself. In this regard, Luetkens was running a little bit late. He married Ilsabe Engelhard in 1745 in the age of 29, whereas Savary had suggested the age of 25 as the most suitable age for a man to marry and settle down.145

Paul Jacob Marperger's merchant manual is mainly intended for young merchants going travelling while still in the service of a merchant patron as a commission agent or factor, which is also the reason why its title is *Der getreue und geschickte Handelsdiener* [The faithful and skilled merchant clerk].146 However, as the author emphasises on the title page and preface of his book, his book is also intended as a practical instruction for young merchants "3) off duty and 4) [for young merchants] who plan to start their own business soon."147 Therefore, it represents a perfect source of information regarding the requirements that Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens had to face during his years of establishment.

The book by Marperger obviously shows many parallels to the work by Savary, which is no coincidence since the author himself points to Savary as his intellectual mentor.148 His own work therefore serves as confirmation for the aforementioned catalogue of virtues and requirements but furthermore also provides us with additional information. This enables us to get the complete picture especially with regard to concrete actions as prerequisites for an establishment phase. His explanations regarding the basic main knowledge of young men after their apprenticeship still largely coincides with Savary's statements. With regard to the travel activities of young men, however, he adds the elements of physical strength ["volle Leibeskräfte"], as a crucial quality that young men had to have to "bear the exertions of travelling", which, however, would only be a sufficient basis for a successful career when combined with the "development of a sharp mind and good comprehension" ["so kan es nicht fehlen der Verstand und das Justicium müssen sich bei ihm auch äussern"].149 He also emphasised that the young men had to be in-

143 Savary, *Der vollkommene Kauff- und Handelsmann [Le Parfait Négociant],* "anderer Theil" [second part of the same book], 57.

144 "die bequemene Gelegenheit [nutzen] [...] indem sie entweder sich mit erfahrnen alten Kaufleuten sich vergemeindern oder mit derer Töchter verheurathen können." Savary, *Der vollkommene Kauffund Handelsmann [Le Parfait Négociant]*, 276.

145 Ibid., 276.

146 Marperger, *Getreuer und geschickter Handelsdiener*.

147 "(3) ausser Dienst lebenden und (4) ihre eigne Handlung bald anzufangenden Handelsdiener." Marperger, *Getreuer und geschickter Handelsdiener*, 2.

148 Ibid., 448.

149 Ibid., 244.

dustrious and act skilfully. His explanations furthermore show great parallels with, and can be supplemented by, his explanations in another book of his, which dealt more generally with the challenges of travelling, the *Hofmeister*. 150 In this latter book, Marperger elaborates in greater detail especially on the necessary robustness travellers had to have and he also adds an age he considers appropriate for taking to the road. The perfect age to travel is therefore "between the age of 20 and 30" because during that time young man would be "robust enough in their physical strength to brave the elements of heat and cold, hunger and thirst, snow and rain".151 In this book, he also provides a detailed list of all the travel requisites that a young man had to take with him, which again corresponds in great parts with those we find listed in Luetkens' pocketbook of expenses.152 "A sturdy and clean travel coat [...] along with clean linen undergarments, a good rapier and some pistols, a pocket watch, a compass, a writing tablet, a circle, a lighter, and also some useful books, could make out the whole equipage".153 Another item that Luetkens carried with him during this travels was his toothbrush and toothpaste, which we however cannot find in his pocketbook of expenses, but about which we can learn because of the fact that Luetkens once forgot it at Johann Jakob Bethmann's house.154

Returning to the book *Der getreue und geschickte Handelsdiener*, the next two important paragraphs again concern the question of the qualities that a young man had to demonstrate if he "seeks to start his own business", in chapter VII. This adds to the previous picture in particular with regard to the important aspect of the demand to maintain human relationships. This aspect also includes the catalogue of virtues because having and showing such virtues ultimately constitutes the necessary condition for upholding relationships. As important assets of a young man's establishment phase Marperger here lists, apart from piousness and industriousness, which Savary also emphasised, as well as physical strength, especially the "cultivation and maintenance of the relationships with your blood relatives".155 He furthermore advises the young men to "pay attention to and take good care of the relationships to [...] Patrons, which they had developed during their years of apprenticeship and youth. [...] One also has to pay special attention to the help, the abetment and credit that one already enjoys from good friends and benefactors, but that one also hopes to keep or gain anew in the future, the place one has chosen as the place to establish oneself and settle down [...] and if one

150 Marperger, *Hofmeister*.

151 "Da hingegen ein Alter von den 20sten bis ins 30ste Jahre die bequemste Reiß-Zeit, eines der die Welt besehen will, seyn kan. An solchen seynd die Jugend-Kräffte Hitz und Kälte, Hunger und Durst, Schnee und Regen auszustehen [...] am besten." Ibid., 4.

152 Pocketbook of expenses in TNA, HCA 30/232.

153 "Ein starckes und sauberes Reiß-Kleid, [...] samt sauberen Leinen Zeug, einen guten Degen und paar Pistolen, eine Sack-Uhr, Compaß, Schreib-Tafel, Circul und Feuerzeug, samt ein paar nützlichen Büchern, können bei manchen die ganz Equipage ausmachen." Ibid., 5.

154 "anlagende dero Zahnsalbe, so ist solche in der Comode, wozu E.E. die Schlüßel haben, verschloßen, demnach sich E.E. solcher entbähren müßen, ich könte wohl bey dem hießigen zahnartzt andere kauffen wüste ich nur zum vorauß dero gedancken damit zu treffen." Letter from Meinicken to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, October 24, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/234.

155 Marperger, Getreuer und geschickter Handelsdiener, 427.

is ready and prepared to start one's own business independently or together in a joint partner company with another associate".156

The latter propositions once again correspond with the suggestions by Savary. At the same time, Marperger's suggestions far more take the shape of concrete milestones a young man had to reach in contrast to Savary's instructions, which mainly refer to and generally take the form of instructions with regard to the moral way of life of a merchant. This becomes clearer still with respect to the probably most accurate and concise paragraph regarding the requirements of a merchant establishment phase that we can find in contemporary literature. In chapter XIV titled and dealing with "The merchant clerks who started their own business with small capital but then profited that much that they would become rich and noble persons afterwards", he writes:

"Let us now examine and turn to the appropriate ways and means and reasons that lead a qualified merchant clerk into his Establishment ["Etablissement"]. These are (1.) that he is candid, loyal and zealous and that he had earned a good reputation through his obeisances, his affability, his civility and politeness, (2.) that he had righteously learned his business und as a part of this the art of how to support yourself and your family through your business and how one accumulates a capital that will once inure to the benefit of your heirs, (3.) that he would also have conducted his business honestly, even when his own fortune was still small, (4.) that he would look out in a timely manner for suitable patrons, who will assist him with his undertakings, and furthermore look out for good customers, good commissions and these kinds of good wares that will promptly attract new customers and promise good profits, whereupon one needs to look out for a business partner, which brings in his own fortune to the company, or marry a decent wife, through which one comes into more ready money or more credit, the latter being most often better than ready money."157

156 "Acht geben auf [...] Patronos, bey denen er seine Lehr- und Jungen-Jahre erstanden [...]  Ibid., 427-428.

157 "Cap. XIV Von denen Kauffmanns-Diener / die ihren eigenen Handel / mit geringem Capital angefangen / durch Gottes Seegen aber / mit der Zeit so viel haben profitiret / daß sie reiche und vornehme Leut hernach geworden [...]: Laßt uns aber auch jetzt die ordentliche Wege untersuchen / welche einen qualifizierten Kaufmanns-Diener / zu seinem künffftigen Etablissement führen können / solche seynd (1.) daß er sich redlich / getreu und dienstfertig halte / und sich durch Ehrerbietigkeit / Leutseelig= und Höflichkeit einen guten Ruhm zu wege bringe. (2.) Daß er was Rechtschaffenes lerne / und unter solchen / die Kunst / wie man durch Handlung / sich und die Seinigen ehrlich ernehren / und ein Capital künfftig seinen Erben zu hinterlassen / sammeln soll. (3.) Daß er auch die Gelegenheiten, sein Stück ehrlicher Weiß zu machen / verabsäume/ voraus / wann sein eigenen Vermögen nur schlecht ist. (4.) Daß er sich bey Zeiten nach Patronis, welche ihm unter die Arme greiffen können / nach gutter Kundschafft / einträglichen Commissionibus und solche Waaren umsehe / welche ihn auf einmal in gute Kundtschafft setzen / und einen guten Profit abwerfen können / worzu man hernach auch / entweder einen guten Handels-Consorten / der sein Vermögen in der Handlung wollte rouliren lassen / oder gar eine anständige Heyrath /

This paragraph can be seen as the blueprint for Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens' establishment phase, which will also be reflected in the analytical chapters, as this quote condenses all that was previously said into a clear agenda and directive for Luetkens' personal advancement in business as a wholesale merchant during his "Etablissement".

The third author within the triumvirate, Daniel Defoe, too, states the "general maxims of trade as are fit for [...] instruction" of young men.158 His instructions in *The Complete Tradesman* aggregate into just three crucial pieces of advice. Of these, especially the last one has not yet been discussed in this chapter because it was not listed in such a degree of clarity and precision in the aforementioned quotations as Defoe presents it. As a matter of fact, however, this crucial skill and competence nevertheless represented a key element and important core issue in the books of Savary and Marperger. I will therefore take Defoe's quotation as the starting point to which I will then also add the respective statements by Savary and Marperger.

#### Correspondence

As the crucial "degrees by which the complete tradesman is brought up, and by which he is instructed in the principles and methods of his commerce, by which he is made acquainted with business, and is capable of carrying it on with success [...]" Defoe lists as the "qualifications [...] that renders him [the young tradesman] a finish'd or complete man in his business. 1. That he has a general knowledge of not his own particular trade and business only, [...] but [...] ought to understand all the inland trade, growth and product of his own country. [...] 2. That he not only has a knowledge of the species or kinds of goods but of the places and peculiar countries where those goods, whether product or manufacture, are to be found [...]."159 These requirements apparently resemble the statements by Savary and Marperger. Defoe then adds as an important asset for a young man of trade, however, "3. That [he] understands perfectly well all the methods of correspondence, returning money or goods for goods, to and from every country; in what manner to be done, and in what manner most to advantage; [...] what for present money, and what for time; what are sold by commission from the makers, what bought by factors, [...]."160 In this regard, he adds in the further course of his book that "a merchant's letters [should] never come in and are unanswer'd" and he stresses the importance of language skills: "a merchant should understand all languages, at least, the languages of those countries which he trades to, or corresponds with".161 As we already know, Luetkens did his best to meet the latter demand by learning to speak, read and write not only German, but also French, Dutch and English. As the last point of advice regarding correspondence practice, Defoe recommends the benefits of mingling and socialising with like-minded people. He states that young men "should take all occasions

durch welche man entweder ein Stück Geld in die Hand oder doch Credit bekäme / der offtmal besser als baares Geld ist / sich ausersehen könte." Ibid., 481-482.

158 Defoe, *Complete English Tradesman*, 6. See also ibid., Preface, iii. "The Title of this Work is an Index of the Performance. It is a collection of useful instructions for a young Tradesman."

159 Defoe, *Complete English Tradesman*, 5-7.

160 Ibid., 6.

161 Ibid., 152, 41.

to converse within the circuit of his own sphere [...] and converse among tradesmen as much as he can; as writing teaches to write, scribendo discis scribere, so conversing among tradesmen will make him a tradesman."162

What therefore ultimately makes a merchant a merchant is, as Defoe puts is, the skill and ability of conversing with other merchants, in person or, as he explicitly highlights, by means of correspondence. A merchant's capital consisted not only of his money or credit, not only of his virtues or bodily dispositions, but very concretely also of his network of correspondents, which Defoe defines accordingly, in one of this other works, as persons "with whom one had regular business relations, which were marked by extensive letter-writing and long-distance exchange."163

Keeping a good and extensive correspondence is emphasised as a crucial element and prerequisite of mercantile advancement not only in the book by Defoe, but also in those by Savary and Marperger. From Savary we learn that it was also indispensable for a merchant to keep Letter Books ["Brief=Kopier=Buch"] and to keep and store all your correspondence, incoming and outgoing, in order to keep track and to keep order in your businesses.164 We learn of the importance of the practice of bundling letters for the same reason, and we learn as a further example that letters were used to collect or recover your debt because letters had been attributed powers of attorney.165 Also Marperger dedicated many pages of his book to letters and the necessity of accuracy in letter practice for young merchants. From him, we learn how apprentices learned to write letters, namely by copying the letters of their masters or by being dictated letters by the master, and by the same practice he also learned how to write bills of exchange or other "scripturen".166

As an accurate style for merchant letters Marperger advises that business letters need to be "short, which is made necessary because of the manifold businesses and the great correspondence that merchants conduct in general, which would not allow for sweeping letters, which is also the reason why mercantile letters must not be ambiguous or unclear, but short and showing a delicate distinctness."167 Such a style is also suggested by Daniel Defoe, who writes that "a tradesman's letters should be plain, concise, and to the purpose; no quaint expressions, no book-phrases, no flourishes, and yet they must be full and sufficient to express what he means, so as not to be doubtful,

162 Ibid., 47.

163 Defoe, Daniel. *Colonel Jack*. London: Roberts, 1722, 13. See Hancock, David. "The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scots' Early-Modern Madeira Trade." *Business History Review* 79, no. 3 (2005): 467-491, here 472. See also Trivellato, *The Familiarity of Strangers*, 168.

164 Savary, Savary, *Der vollkommene Kauff- und Handelsmann [Le Parfait Négociant],* "anderer Theil" [second part of the same book], 8, 13.

165 Ibid. 14, 52.

166 Marperger, *Getreuer und geschickter Handelsdiener*, 228. See in general Bruchhäuser, Hanns-Peter. *Kaufmannsbildung im Mittelalter: Determinanten des Curriculums deutscher Kaufleute im Spiegel der Formalisierung von Qualifizierungsprozessen*, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 1989.

167 "als wann Kauffleute vor allen im Brief=Schreiben kurtz seyn müssen / solches wird zwar erfordert / wie es dann auch ihre vielfältige Geschäfften und grosse Correspondenz nicht anderst leiden wollen / darum aber müssen sie nicht unvernehmlich [undurchdrinlich, undeutlich] und dunckel seyn / [...] sondern man behalte bey der beliebten Kürtze auch eine zierliche Deutlichkeit / und vermeide so viel als möglich zweydeutige Redens=Arten [...]" Ibid., 194.

much less unintelligible."168 On the other, hand, as Marperger again notes in his central letter manual, it still seemed legitimate to take inspiration for your letter style from other literature "through reading good books, spiritual or secular in nature as well as through historical or moral books, [...] because these provide a good source of inspiration and teach how to use and concatenate for instance typical expressions or proverbs or how one skilfully finds appropriate answers regarding certain matters".169 What this meant in practice and consequence and how this idea was actually implemented concretely in the letters will be presented and analysed in detail in the analyses of the letter episodes presented in the five analytical chapters.

All three writers, Savary, Marperger and Defoe, in their manuals finally also supply numerous example letters, which further illustrated the appropriate letter style to the aspiring merchants. These letters served the concrete purpose of providing the merchants with examples and thus the opportunity to learn the letter style by imitation or to use and employ the respective sentences and phrases, the typical letter formulae, in their correspondence, if wished. Merchant manuals, therefore, as the authors emphasise, were meant to serve as reference works, guides and encyclopaedias for both mercantile business practices and mercantile letter practices, including the appropriate form and style of accurate business letters. Yet until today it represents a research desideratum to show to what extent Early Modern letter writers actually used these manuals in practice. In this respect, in this book I am offering at least some first indications with regard to the letter practice of the merchant Luetkens and his merchant correspondents.170 The practice of offering example letters, as seen in the three authors mentioned here, was not an exception. It is fair to say that almost every merchant manual of the period entailed such example letters. Furthermore, the young merchant could draw on an extensive pool of literature which was solely dedicated to dealing with appropriate letter styles and the practice of letter writing. These letter-writing manuals also provided a multitude of further examples for an appropriate letter style, including example letters for almost every occasion and addressee imaginable.171 These letterwriting manuals were, as Georg Steinhausen, a pioneer in the research on letter writing, already noted, "almost encyclopedias of everything knowledgeable. For every imaginable life situation, they provided example letters" and a veritable "arsenal of formulaic expressions".172 Paul Jacob Marperger himself had also published such a letter manual in addition to his merchant manuals, which had an equally large readership than his other books. This letter-writing manual called *Der allzeitfertige Handels=Correspondent* [The ever-ready merchant correspondent] will be reviewed and consulted further in the

168 Defoe, *Complete English Tradesman*, 25. See also example "Letter III of the trading style" in which Defoe writes that "in my last I gave you my thoughts for the instruction of young tradesmen in writing letters with orders, and answering orders, and especially about the proper stile of a tradesman's letters, which I hinted should be plain and easy, free in language, and direct to the purpose intended." Ibid., 32.

169 Marperger, *Der allzeitfertige Handels-Correspondent*, 7.

170 See as the pioneer works in this this regard Van der Wal/Rutten, *Letters as Loot*, Furger, *Briefsteller.* Gurkin Altman, *Epistolarity*, Nickisch, *Stilprinzipien*, See Furger, *Briefsteller*, 209-212.

171 See Furger, *Briefsteller*, 145-146; Nickisch, *Stilprinzipien*, 204-223, Gurkin Altman, *Epistolarity*, 3-12.

172 Steinhausen, *Geschichte des deutschen Briefes*, 302. See Vellusig, *Schriftliche Gespräche*, 43, 53.

analytical chapters, since it will become obvious that Luetkens was strongly influenced and shaped in his writing and his letter style by such kinds of manuals – whether this happened consciously or unconsciously.173

#### Postal Conditions

A last important aspect and condition crucial for a mercantile establishment phase covered by the merchant manuals, but one which was also crucial for mercantile activity beyond the early career, was knowledge of postal conditions and the working of postal services, both national and international, and of regularities such as post times. In fact, the surviving letters of the Luetkens archive constitute an example of a very effective postal system. As was typical during the times, business letters usually started with a reference to preceding letters, sent and received, in order to both continue the conversation at a particular point but also to make sure that the respective letter interaction was in fact unbroken and without gaps. Reading these letters alternatingly, one is captivated by the impression that the actual time gaps between sending and receiving the letters, which resulted from the postal dispatch, almost disappear as regards the letter content and also that the contemporaries were very used to this particular time delay in letter exchanges. They even deliberately planned in these time gaps when making predictions or referring to ongoing enquiries. It is another strong hint at the fact that letters were regarded as their own sphere of communication, of conversation and interaction.

A typical phrase at the beginning of business letters was for instance that Luetkens "received your pleasant letter on the 25 passato with a lot of pleasure".174 The dates were then usually added as notes on the top page of the unfolded stored letters after the letters had been answered, as mentioned above. Comparing these lines in the letters during the reconstruction of the letter episodes with the surviving material letters in the archive, it becomes astonishingly clear that most of the letters sent by the contemporary letter writers actually reached their destination and addressee. In fact, to express this in figures, of all the business letters that I read it seems that only approximately 5% went missing along the way. All the other letters arrived, which is a find quite contrary to the impression that the Prize Papers collection with over 160,000 intercepted letters creates. The Luetkens archive shows that the postal services used by Luetkens and his correspondents were for the most part effective.

This can be attributed to the very sophisticated postal system of mounted mail in France that was based on a fixed system of relay stations regularly served by post rid-

173 The question of whether Luetkens had or had not concretely used such kind of manuals during his letter writing process cannot be clarified beyond doubt. However, as the letter formulae he used suggests, which show parallels to the manuals, he might have read or learned from these books during his apprenticeship or later on. He also bought an English letter-writing manual during his first business trip as his pocketbook of expenses reveals. Another explanation for finding these parallels could be that both the manuals and the letters in the end represented common vocabulary used by merchants in practice.

174 "dein angenehmes schreiben von 25 passato habe mit viellen vergnügen empf[angen]", Letter from Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb to Luetkens, Joachim, June 6, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/232, Letter Book I, No. 179.

ers; a system which provided a largely reliable service.175 "The mounted or equestrian mail, 'la Poste au chevaux,' consisted of a group of relay stations managed by postmasters who kept a certain number of horses groomed for use by the postal system. Letter mail ("la Poste aux lettres") referred to the group of post offices where customers sent or received their mail which had been routed there from the nearest relay station."176 But also in transnational, sea-borne mail sent over short sea distances and particularly during peace times, the postal dispatch was relatively reliable.

Whether sent via land or sea, mail was sent and received during the Early Modern Period on fixed days, so called post days, "Posttage" in German, on which mail could be picked up or sent off from the local post offices spread around the city, from other dedicated stores in the different city quarters or at the harbour. Postage was paid by the receiver of a letter on arrival or pickup.177 The week of a merchant was structured around the post days. These days literally served as fixed days in the lives of the merchants. As Marperger noted in his manual, "merchants wrote 20-30 letters per post day".178 They picked up letters or had them picked up for them by merchant clerks, usually three times a week. The respective weekdays on which post days took place depended on the location and were announced by the respective national postal service and the stations. Today, we still find original postal plates, some of them showing the respective post days, in museums or even on house fronts.179 These post days could also be found in printed advertisements or in merchant manuals. In these sources, we also find international routes and costs for international postage. To give an example of international post days, in the case of London, where Nicolaus Gottlieb's uncle Anthony lived, in 1731 mail from London to France was dispatched on Mondays and Thursdays while mail to the German cities in the North left on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. The postage costs for letters that crossed several borders can also be found in merchant manuals.180 As an international merchant, Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens was always wellinformed about the postal services and how to use them for his business purposes and for private matters. He knew the local post days in all the cities he visited and the quickest or the safest routes for his letters in national and international mail. He knew when it was better to trust in hand-to-hand delivery of letters, particularly as regards longdistance communications, for instance with ships' captain, which was a common practice about which we will hear more in the chapters. Luetkens even knew, and concocted

175 See Nicolas Verdier, and Anne Bretagnolle. "Expanding the Network of Postal Routes in France 1708-1833." In *Histoire des réseaux postaux en Europe du XVIIIe au XXIe siècle*, 159- 175. Paris: HAL, 2007. See Arbellot, Guy. "Le réseau des routes de poste, objet des premières cartesthématiques de la France moderne." *104e Congrès national des Sociétés savantes, Bordeaux 1979, Section Histoire Moderne*, 97-115, Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1982.

176 Verdier/Bretagnolle, "Postal Routes in France," 159.

177 See Whyman, "'Paper Visits", 22. See Whyman, *Pen and the People*, 61-64.

178 Marperger, *Getreuer und geschickter Handelsdiener*, 185.

179 See Haasis, "Materialität." See Haasis, Lucas. "'Noch bleibt mir ein Augenblick Zeit um mich mit Euch zu unterhalten'. Praxeologische Einsichten zu kaufmännischen Briefschaften des 18. Jahrhunderts." In *Diskurse – Körper – Artefakte. Historische Praxeologie in der Frühneuzeitforschung*, edited by Dagmar Freist, 87-113. Bielefeld: transcript, 2015.

180 See Marperger, *Getreuer und geschickter Handelsdiener*, 489.

plans with his correspondents, as to which were the best routes to choose when sending secret letters or letters with precious hidden contents. In short, post days structured his daily routine, and postal routes provided his existential nourishment. The most interesting postal route to be found in the Luetkens archive is that taken by a letter packet that enclosed Luetkens' marriage jewellery hidden in cotton and wrapped in corduroy. In order to make sure that this letter reached its destination safely, the letter was first sent from London to Amsterdam, from where it was sent to Hamburg, because as his brother Joachim advised Nicolaus Gottlieb, sending the letter via "Holland […] was the best way to send such precious items".181 The letter with its precious content did in fact reach Hamburg safely.

All the different elements and characteristic features of 18th century correspondence, taken together, show that letter writing was attributed an immensely high significance and an important role for the daily activities but also the career development of a merchant, especially for a merchant during his establishment phase, when he had to prove and demonstrate his skills. The information extracted from the merchant manuals and the letters in the Luetkens archive in this regard completely coincide with the most current historical research on business letters. As Francesca Trivellato put it aptly and highly accurately, during the 18th century at the latest letters had become "the primary tool for weaving webs of commercial relations across space and social groups." Correspondence was the "cement that enabled distant agents to create solid webs across distant localities and wide cultural gulfs, [...] the backbone of European long-distance trade long past that time. [...] Business correspondence was a crucial instrument [...] in forging and maintaining [...] informal cross-cultural networks".182 Or, as already Max Weber had stated, in "the eighteenth century, business depended on the organised exchange of letters". It again becomes clear that business practices and letter practices of merchants of the 18th century cannot be considered separately from each other when analysing mercantile culture in the 18th century. Instead, letter practices and business practices always need to be considered as intertwined processes. There is simply no way to think of mercantile wholesale business in the 18th century as separate from letter practice as Defoe, too, demonstrated when he wrote about "extensive letter-writing and long-distance exchange" in the exact same breath.183

Accordingly, we cannot find a single letter in the Luetkens archive that does not also refer to a particular business practice or that was at least interlinked with one. Almost all the letters that we can find in the Luetkens archive, as Trivellato stressed, "fulfilled [...] purposes for which merchants could not rely on other printed [or oral] sources: they [the letters] responded to specific questions and concerns that a merchant might have about market conditions; they informed about the aptitude and reliability of

181 "der beste Weg sie über zu machen und die Weise hier solche Kostbarkeiten weg zu senden ist daß man sie auf Holland schickt. Dahero will ich sie an die Herrn de Meyer zuerst senden und sie ersuchen von da an Hertzer u. von Bobart zu schicken." Letter from Luetkens, Joachim to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, March 12, 1745, TNA, HCA, 30/235.

182 Trivellato, "Merchants' letters," 81-82 and 84, as well as Trivellato, *Discourse and Practice*, 19.

183 Defoe, *Colonel Jack*, 13.

associates, commissioners and suppliers; when necessary, they also assured secrecy."184 As Toby L. Ditz highlights, almost all letters had "immediate pragmatic goals" tied to, and representing, commercial practices, for instance "appeals to others for practical assistance – for example, to transport and sell cargoes, to obtain loans or to extend the time for their repayment". This fact even applies and holds true with regard to Luetkens' more personal letters written for the purpose of his marriage initiation.185 When Defoe therefore concluded in his merchant manual regarding letter writing that ultimately it was conversing "among tradesmen [that] will make him a tradesman" Defoe in essence put into contemporary words the major statement of this book.186

Analysing the Luetkens letters we will gain an impressive and comprehensive insight into how letters and correspondence worked and how they shaped and forged a life in trade, the life as a wholesale merchant during the 18th century. The book also shows us explicitly a merchant's efforts to be convincing in his words and actions to promote his career by means of business and letters. Of course, although we can read his letters, we will still not be able to meet Luetkens in person or observe him during his travels and neither will we get an insight into all his daily activities and the daily business he conducted at the local sites. However, we are still able to illustrate, demonstrate, investigate, explain and cover large parts of his mercantile and personal activities and enterprises during that time because many of these activities actually happened on the basis of letters.

Completely in line with Daniel Defoe, the firm conviction of this book is that Luetkens was made a merchant by correspondence, which provided him with the ways and means, the tool and medium, to tackle important mercantile and private undertakings and enterprises. Correspondence provided him with the opportunity to convince the people surrounding him of his quality and his entitlement as a merchant, and it provided him with the opportunity to win over his fellow men for his business enterprises and plans. How he succeeded in this regard, what concrete ways and means he found to master his challenges in life and business, how he performed his business by means of letter writing, and how he concretely used letters to win people over for his plans and aspirations – in short, how he used the powers of persuasion provided by letters to turn himself into a successful wholesale merchant – is the subject of the five analytical chapters.

#### **2.8 On the Powers of Persuasion and Practical Eloquence**

As a last important piece of information regarding an Early Modern mercantile establishment, the merchant manuals even provide us with clear assessments and propositions regarding the most crucial and quintessential of all requirements and demands that aspiring merchants had to meet during this decisive phase of their life. The authors of the merchant manuals make concrete recommendations and suggestions as to how

184 Trivellato, *Familiary of Strangers*, 172.

185 Ditz, "Formative Ventures," 62.

186 Defoe, *Complete English Tradesman*, 47.

they envisage the most advisable and most effective way for young merchants to learn how to become convincing as merchants. All three authors share a definite view on how they thought wholesale merchants should behave and learn their profession and what factors decide whether or not a young man would stand the test of becoming a reputable merchant, how the powers of persuasions would work best for a merchant during the 18th century. These recommendations encapsulate a particular contemporary idea and understanding of rhetoric during the 18th century that was also essential, inspirational and in fact helpful for the idea and concept developed in and underlying the present book.

The science of persuasion most probably belongs to the oldest sciences of mankind. Under the name of rhetoric, the analysis of how people influence each other on the basis of the spoken or written word has fascinated and moved people, philosophers and scientists alike, since antiquity. In this book, however, I do not focus on rhetorical traditions, linguistic forms or theories of rhetoric, although the letter-writing manuals often include theoretical thinking and concepts, for which Janet Gurkin Altman has coined the apt term of *epistolarity*. Instead, this present book is primarily focused on a very specific form of historical rhetoric. It deals with *practical* powers of persuasion as they were used and are recognizable in letter practices and business practices of the 18th century. The book is therefore less about sophisticated learned ways and means and theorized forms of rhetoric, but about a rhetoric practically performed, learned and materialized in practice. In the book, we will therefore learn about incorporated forms of the powers of persuasion. This form of persuasion is indeed by no means an artificial concept, but it was already known and even conceptualized among thinkers and philosophers of the 18th century. It was also popularized among practical professions such as the mercantile profession, which fact helped to develop the particular focus of the book. That means, the rhetorical concept behind the book in the truest sense of the word corresponds with a historical idea and concept. This idea is the concept of *practical eloquence*, "Beredsamkeit" in German, "l'eloquence" in France, as a typical variant of the power of persuasion in the daily lives of the people of the 18th century.187

Having said that, authors and philosophers particularly of the first half of the 18th century distinguished between rhetorics as theory and rhetorics as practice, or rhetorics as seen in a theoretical sense and rhetorics as learned and performed in practice. For the latter they used and coined the term of practical eloquence, or volubility. With this they delineated a form of rhetoric in which the powers of persuasion were seen as a practical skill rather than a theory to adhere to. The former, on the other hand, the pure theory, was usually referred to as "oratory", "Oratorie" in German, in the 18th century. Famous philosophers of this idea were the German Enlightenment authors Christian Friedrich Hunold (Menantes), who in 1709 published his Teutsche *Oratorie* [German Oratory] and Johann Christoph Gottsched, who in 1736 published his *Ausführliche Redekunst* [Complete Rhetoric] and only two years later in 1738 his *Proben der Beredtsamkeit* [Samples of Eloquence], and who was also the publisher of the famous German moral weekly

187 Rapin, René. *Réflexion sur l'Usage de l'Eloquence de ce temps*. Paris: Barbin & Muguet, 1671.

*Die vernünftigen Tadlerinnen*. 188 Both authors also published letter-writing manuals cited in this book.

Practical Eloquence, "Beredsamkeit", represented a form of practical knowledge and understanding of how to be convincing in one's words and actions that was learned by experience and not primarily from books.189 Oratory, on the other hand, was learned from books and based on theory. As Gottsched wrote "there is a difference between oratory ["Redekunst"] and practical eloquence ["Beredsamkeit"]. The former is theoretical in nature, the latter is practical in nature. The former provides the fundamental doctrine and rules of rhetorics; by means of the latter, however, one actually carries out ["übt aus", performs] the power of persuasion. It is possible to understand the former without ever having worked on a speech or without having given a speech; it is however, not possible to perform the latter [Beredsamkeit] without a great deal of practice and plenty of exercise in writing and speaking."190 The mentioned theory of rhetorics which Gottsched refers to was taught in the schools and universities of the time, and particularly the Hamburg schools were renowned for their rhetorical classes with prominent teachers such as Johann Albert Fabricius.191 As Dirk Rose concludes in his book *Conduite und Text*, "rhetoric was a basic subject of Early Modern academic education".192 Thus, already since the Middle Ages, rhetorics in the classical sense was taught as one of basic subjects taught in the elementary and the grammar schools of the period during the trivium, and later in life it was also taught as a subject in the universities of the period.193 It was especially also a subject taught by private tutors – a way of education that was sometimes chosen for children of bourgeois and elite families. I am mentioning this because we have learned that Luetkens was first homeschooled by his father and later by a private tutor.

188 Hunold, *Teutsche Oratorie und Brief-Verfassung.* Gottsched, Johann Christoph. *Proben der Beredsamkeit* [...]. Leipzig: Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf, 1738. Gottsched, Johann Christoph.*Die Vernünftigen Tadlerinnen*. Halle 1725, Leipzig 1727, Leipzig und Hamburg 1738 und Hamburg 1748, reprint, 2 volumes, edited by Helga Brandes. Hildesheim/Zurich/New York: Olms-Weidmann, 1993.

189 Regarding 18th-century eloquence, "Beredsamkeit" see in particular Ueding/Steinbrink, *Grundriß der Rhetorik*, 102-135. See in particular also Rose, Dirk. *Conduite und Text. Paradigmen eines galanten Literaturmodells im Werk von Christian Friedrich Hunold (Menantes).* Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2012, 221-238. See Barner, Wilfried. *Barockrhetorik.Untersuchungen zu ihren geschichtlichen Grundlagen*. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2002, 167-175, 190-192. As contemporary sources see furthermore Hunold, *Teutsche Oratorie und Brief-Verfassung;* Gottsched, *Proben der Beredsamkeit* and *Ausführliche Redekunst.*

190 "Aus diesem allen wird man sattsam erkennen, daß die Redekunst mit der Beredsamkeit nicht für einerley zu halten, und wie eines von dem andern unterschieden sey. Jene ist theoretisch, diese ist praktisch.  Gottsched, *Ausführliche Redekunst*, 75.

191 Häfner, Ralph. "Die Vorlesungsskripte des Hamburger Philologen Johann Albert Fabricius." In *Die Pluralisierung des Paratextes in der Frühen Neuzeit: Theorie, Formen, Funktionen*, edited by Frieder von Ammon and Herfried Vögel, 283-299. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2008, here 283.

192 Rose, *Conduite und Text*, 221.

193 See ibid., 221-238. See the detailed study by Barner, *Barockrhetorik.*

The fact that Dirk Rose refers to 18th-century rhetorics in his book dealing with gallant literature of the 18th century furthermore points us to the decisive fact that rhetorics was also an important and intrinsic part of the contemporary behaviour model of *Gallantry* and the discourse on gallantry still prevailing during the 18th century.194 This behaviour model, which promoted a gallant way of life as the regulative ideal of social conduct, was decisively influenced by rhetorics and particularly by the practice of eloquence, "Beredsamkeit". The practical side of rhetorics, the eloquence ["Beredsamkeit"], however, to which Gottsched refers, was primarily regarded by contemporary philosophers as a matter of practice, a matter of exercise and practical experience. Thus, "Beredsamkeit" was nothing that could be learned solely on the basis of book knowledge, although books were written about it. Rather, it was a habitual skill learned in practice and by means of a learning-by-doing process. As Gottsched highlights, eloquence was a practical "skill, to persuade your audience to act and to think as you want them to act and to think. This should be your ultimate goal; this is what you need to be capable of." And it was precisely this form of practical learning and experience that the authors of the merchant manuals, too, had in mind and regarded as advisable for young merchants when speaking of the best form of mercantile education and the appropriate form of powers of persuasion for a merchant, which they first and foremost regarded as a practical profession rather than a theoretical profession.195

Savary expresses his view in the most drastic manner. In his work *Le Parfait Négociant*, he strictly advises parents who wish their sons to become merchants to explicitly not send them to schools or universities because school subjects such as philosophy or rhetoric would be detrimental and would only have negative effects on the young men's capabilities of becoming good merchants. He instead praised practical training as the most beneficial form of education for aspiring merchants. A school or university environment would not be beneficial for young merchants because the only "science" in which they should gain proficiency in is the mercantile science, and this science can only be learned in practical training and actual practice.196 Marperger and Defoe concurred with this opinion. The merchant's art of being convincing in their words and actions, in person and in business, was learned by doing and practical training and by adopting the mercantile rules of conduct and interaction by practice and by imitation. This would then turn them into complete, competent and capable representatives of their profession: into eloquent merchants. This approach in particular applied to the process of learning how to write and correspond by letters. The authors had good reason to advise the young men to stick to a learning-by-doing approach by means of either imitating letter examples or by copying the letters of their masters because these good examples would show them the most accurate style of mercantile letter writing.This style featured

194 As for the consequences see in particular Rose, *Conduite und Text*, 221-238.

195 See in particular Defoe, *Complete English Tradesman*, 41-48. See in this regard Shinagel, *Daniel Defoe and Middle-Class Gentility*.

196 See Savary, *Der vollkommene Kauff- und Handelsmann* [*Le Parfait Négociant*], chapter 4, "Daß Die Kinder einigen Beruff zu erlernen | nicht sollen genöthiget werden | und welches die Eigenschaften | so wohl des Leibes als des Verstandes sind | die zur Kauffmannschafft erfordert werden," 44-49, here particularly 47-48.

"no quaint expressions, no book-phrases, no flourishes", but instead teaches them the "knowing how to write their letters of correspondence in a free, plain, and trades-man like stile".197 Such a tradesman like style therefore stood for a practical, pragmatic style of letter writing different to rhetorically sophisticated or philosophical letters, as the latter would only be detrimental to the purpose and goal of business letters, namely to do business. With a suggestion of sarcasm and also a hint of condescension, Defoe notes in this regard that "[he] that affects a rumbling and bombastic stile, and fills his letters with long harangues, compliments and flourishes should turn poet and not tradesman, and set up for a wit, and not a shopkeeper."198 In their opinion, not visiting a university or enjoying academic schooling would therefore not be to the detriment of a merchant like Luetkens. In fact, it was not seen as disadvantageous in any way by the authors. Quite on the contrary, practical training, learning by practice, was regarded as the most appropriate and advisable educational path for a young man who wanted to become a merchant. It is therefore certainly also no surprise to find in the Luetkens letters somewhat disparaging statements made by the merchants regarding university education. The merchants Hertzer & von Bobartt for instance wrote in March 1745 that during their youth they "haven't been able to learn and get any legal knowledge ["die Jura"] or Latin into our heads, which is, however, what the advocates need to learn."199

Practical training and experience was what turned these young men into eloquent men of trade. A young merchant was advised to learn his business from scratch. He learned by experience and in practice what it meant to be convincing in his words and deeds as a merchant and as a merchant letter writer. He learned by means of practical experiences and thus learnt by himself the skills and strategies for being convincing in his words and actions by means of practical incorporation. This is exactly what we find represented in Luetkens' educational path and later in his letter and business practice.

Of course, the recommendations regarding writing appropriate letters as a merchant do not automatically mean that we will not find any flourishes, compliments, or rambling speeches in Luetkens' letters – we will find those. After all, Luetkens was also a child of the early Enlightenment and of the polite and often still gallant bourgeois culture prevailing in Hamburg as well as in the cities he visited in France.200 This fact also impacted on his typical ways of conversing and dealing with other people while at the same time, however, he still in many ways adhered to a typical tradesman like letter-writing style. Of course we will also find in his letters the "rhetoric of candour" and the virtues of "fidelity and honesty", polite compliments, tittle-tattle, gallant babbling,

197 Defoe, *Complete English Tradesman*, 25 and 12.

198 Ibid., 23.

199 "Wir haben die Jura und das lateinische nicht in der Jugend im Kopf bekommen können, welches denen advocaten zu wißen nötig sein soll." Letter from Hertzer & von Bobartt to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, March 5, 1745, TNA, HCA 30/234.

200 See Rose, *Conduite und Text;* see Viala, *La France galante*; see Fulda, *Galanterie und Frühaufklärung.* See also Duchêne, Roger. *Madame de Sévigné et la lettre d'amour. Réalité vécue et art épistolaire*. Paris: Bordas, 1970. See particularly Rollin, Charles. *De la Manière d'Enseigneur et d'Etudier le Belles Lettres*. Paris: Estienne, 1726. For England see also Bryson, Anna. *From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England.* Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. See Langford, Paul. *A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727-1783*. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

all serving the purpose and premises of winning people over for his plans.201 However, there are also classical rhetorical elements in his letters, such as the Aristotelian elements of ethos, logos and pathos, as the fundamental cornerstones of persuasive speech in classical rhetoric. According to Aristotle's *Rhetoric*, the art of persuasion is based on three fundamental principles, the three modes of persuasion of ethos, pathos and logos (delighting/delectare, moving/movere, teaching/docere). Aristotle wrote that of "the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker [ethos]; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind [pathos]; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself [logos]."202 The first mode,*ethos,*relates to the personal character and credibility of the speaker, who should be able to convince other people on the basis of his competence, his good intention and his empathy. The second mode, *pathos,* aims at exerting an emotional influence on the audience. Often, the speaker would use the rhetorical devices of metaphors, analogies, similes and passionate delivery to persuade the audience by means of sparking emotions. The merchant Luetkens also made use of such analogies, similes and metaphors particularly in the letters to his youngest brother, from whom he demanded loyalty in order to put a plan into practice, calling on his brother's emotions and his sense of honour. The third and last mode of persuasion, *logos,* is based on and draws on the appeal to logical reason. To quote Aristotle, this mode represents the situation "when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question."203

Despite the focus on practical powers of persuasion, these classical elements can nonetheless also be found and reappear in the Luetkens letters. This is because the reason for their usage was not necessarily due to rhetorical or theoretical training or intention and these elements were not necessarily deliberately applied as rhetoric devices by the letter writers. Rather, these elements appear as natural parts of the practical principles of persuasion performed in letter exchanges, which are governed by multiple elements and contexts. The elements furthermore also naturally appear in the letterwriting manuals of the time. Gottsched himself, for instance, admitted after citing Aristotle's definition of rhetorics as "the capability to do everything that is necessary for the purpose of persuasion" that "this description is not contrary to our definition [of rhetorics]" ["diese Beschreibung ist der unsrigen nicht zuwider"].204 However, he understood this idea of rhetorics and Aristotle's work more as a "general doctrine" ["als eine Lehre

201 See Ditz, "Secret Selves, Credible Personas," 223. See Klein, Lawrence E. "Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century." *The Historical Journal* 45, no. 4 (2002): 869-898. See Beetz, Manfred. *Frühmoderne Höflichkeit. Komplimentierkunst und Gesellschaftsrituale im altdeutschen Sprachraum*. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990.

202 Aristotle, *Rhetoric*, 1356a. I am quoting the English translation and edition of Edward P.J. Corbett.

203 Aristotle, *Rhetoric*, 1356a. Regarding Aristotle see Ueding/Steinbrink, *Grundriß der Rhetorik,* 23-27. See furthermore Oksenberg Rorty, Amélie, ed. *Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric*. Berkeley/Los Angeles/ London: University of California Press, 1996. See also Knape, Joachim. *Was ist Rhetorik?* Stuttgart: Reclam, 2000.

204 "ein Vermögen in jeder vollkommenden Sache wahrzunehmen, was zur Überredung dienlich seyn kann" cited in Gottsched, *Ausführliche Redekunst*, 73.

angesehen"] than a practical instruction.205 Therefore in his books, representing the general tenor and discourse on rhetorics during the 18th century, he introduced and presented a second level, a second form of rhetorics. This second form focuses more on the practical side and elements of the art of persuasion, the practical eloquence. In short, the classical rhetorical elements will play a part in the analyses, but will reveal themselves primarily as evolving in practice and from necessity. Thus, they appear as tied to and reacting to practical purposes in the Luetkens letters and in the contemporary fashion of the said practice of eloquence, "Beredsamkeit".

Many of the letter-writing manuals themselves drew on long-established rhetorical traditions dating back to antiquity, for instance by referring to the classical scheme of antique rhetoric called the ars dictaminis, the art of prose composition, and more specifically also to the classical art of writing letters, "ars dictamen".206 The crucial question in this regard is, however, how much of the actual theory behind these elements had a concrete bearing on Luetkens' letters and how much knowledge about the antique origins of persuasive speech can be assumed on the part of Luetkens, or put more bluntly, had interested him. This connection is only poorly verifiable. Rather it must be assumed that Luetkens must have to a large extent either simply accepted or copied the respective offerings from the 18th-century letter-writing manuals, or as is more likely and probable, he had learned and formed his letter-writing styles in practice and by experience and used his elements of letter practice as a natural skill. In support of this assumption, even the ars dictaminis can be regarded in a more general perspective as a kind of standard already – a common standard and scheme of the epoch at least until the second half of the 18th century – that was sometimes more or less routinely applied and performed in the practice of letter writing, without the need to know about its origins. Luetkens would therefore encounter this scheme in many or even most of the letters that he received during his education and travels. What matters most for Luetkens with regard to rhetorics was ultimately the efficacy of the rhetorical elements and at least in this regard we are also decidedly able to investigate them, because we have access to the product of his efforts: his letters.

Coming back to the typical form of learning how to be convincing in life and letters as a merchant and the clear message of the three authors of the merchant manuals in this regard, as a researcher I will have to not only consult advice literature, books and other contemporary forms of literature to understand and explain Luetkens' powers of persuasion, but I have to investigate and put a special focus on Luetkens' practical skills and knowledge. My focus has to be to try to understand and recreate from his letters directly – from their material and text – how Luetkens' power of persuasion worked. I further must be aware of the fact that this practical knowledge was practically learned and incorporated and as such was also first and foremost also practically effective and not scrutinized by the writers themselves, just as the authors of the advice literature had

205 Ibid., 73.

206 See Camargo, Martin. "Art. Ars dictandi, dictaminis." *Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik* 1, edited by Gert Ueding, 1040-1046. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1992. See Furger, *Briefsteller*, 149. Regarding the origins of the ars dictaminis see Patt, William D. "The Early Ars dictaminis as Response to a Changing Society." *Viator* 9 (1978): 133-55.

intended and stipulated it. What I will primarily focus on in this regard in this book is Luetkens' practical eloquence in his letter practice. This eloquence was borne from practice and shaped by experiences and as such it promises, as is my firm conviction, direct and revealing insights into the typical ways of letter writing and correspondence and typical practical principles of exerting influence on each other through letters as they prevailed during the 18th century. This is how I will not only tell the story of Luetkens and his letters in this book, as "ethnographic miniatures" but also as a microhistorical cut-out of the "wall-sized culturescapes", as Clifford Geertz put it, of the 18th century during which this young man grew up and made himself into a successful merchant.207

With this assumption and goal in mind, I can conclude this chapter. We are well equipped to start the analyses of the business and letter episodes during Luetkens' establishment phase because we are provided with all the necessary background information about Luetkens' life, his education, his life situation on his travels and the demands and requirements he faced during his establishment phase. Thus, we can now delve deeply into the analysis of the concrete steps of his establishment phase and into the letter conversations shaping and promoting it.

As the final remark of this chapter, I will quote another merchant manual that helps to aptly announce and summarize the content of the following chapters. We will see that "young men prosper best, when they have either served as journey-men [...] [or] have the happiness to be taken in as partners unto such, whereby, as bears by their grown cubs they are taught to catch their prey with the greatest cleverness and certainty."208 Luetkens enjoyed the privilege of experiencing and benefitting from both being a journeyman and being a business partner. The former will mark the beginning of the following analytical part, the latter will mark its end and in between we will read the story how the young merchant Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens became a reputable man of trade.

207 Geertz, "Thick Description," 21.

208 H.N. (anon.) Merchant in the City of London, *The exact dealer's daily companion,* 9.

# **An Early Modern Mercantile Establishment Phase in Five Case Studies**

### **3 Shipping Business**

#### **3.1. Hamburg**

#### Reasons for Settling down for Business in Hamburg

In the 18th century Hamburg was one of the most vibrant and thriving trading cities and commercial centres of Europe and ranked as one of the leading trade entrepots and transshipment ports of the era. As Mary Lindemann aptly put it, "Hamburg served as a commercial nerve centre for half the continent".1 Speaking of the German territory alone, as Klaus Weber emphasized, the city on the river Elbe can surely be regarded as "the most important German seaport" of the 18th century, which even "outstripped the previously leading port of Amsterdam in its relevance [...] as a major hub in the trade and further distribution of colonial goods".2 A contemporary traveller, whose name unfortunately remains unknown to us, but who visited Hamburg in the mid-18th century for the purpose of assessing the city's economic situation for a foreign bank, noted that the "importance of business in Hamburg and the variety of things connected with it are so great that one could profitably spend an entire year here and learn something new each day. There are few European seaports which Hamburg's ships do not enter, and there is no seafaring people in this part of the world which does not traffic with Hamburg. Its superb location makes the city the emporium of all Germany. [...] The Elbe and the canals [...] are almost blanketed over with ships. The assembly on the Stock Exchange is one of the largest [in Europe] and the place teems with negociants. In a word, one finds here a perpetual motion of all nations and peoples caught up in the business of money-making."3

1 Lindemann, *Patriots and Paupers*, 3. See Lindemann, Mary. *The Merchant Republics: Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg, 1648-1790*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 27-30.

2 Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 15. See ibid., 16. See also Jeannin, Pierre. "Die Hansestädte im europäischen Handel des 18. Jahrhunderts." *Hansische Geschichtsblätter* 89 (1971): 41-73. See Lindberg, Erik. "The Rise of Hamburg as a Global Marketplace in the Seventeenth Century: A Comparative Political Economy Perspective." *Comparative Studies in Society and History* 50, no. 3 (2008): 641-662.

3 "Bericht über eine im Auftrag der Mährischen Lehensbank durchgeführten Kommerzialreise – Eine zeitgenös-sische Bestandsaufnahme zur Wirtschaftslage mitteleuropäischer Städte um die Mit-

The reasons for this great commercial significance and the important role that Hamburg played on the world market were manifold. Surely also some fortunate strokes of luck during the long and eventful history of this city had had their share in this development, such as for instance that Hamburg had been largely spared during the Thirty Years War. Mary Lindemanns' work, but also and especially the standard work regarding Hamburg and its *Social History* by Franklin Kopitzsch, give an eloquent testimony of this.4 Five reasons, however, can be highlighted as ultimately the main promoting and favouring factors that turned Hamburg into a commercial centre of the 18th century, all of which were hinted at in the words of the abovementioned contemporary traveller.

The first reason is the superb location. Situated in the centre of Europe, Hamburg served as a perfect hub and nodal point to connect the markets in the north, including the Scandinavian and Baltic areas, the south, including the Mediterranean region, the east, including Russia and Poland, and the west, with England, France, the Netherlands and Spain as the main trading countries. In contrast to the commercial cities in the south of Germany such as Augsburg or Nuremberg, which had been the most important cities during the 15th and 16th century, regarding the 18th century and its markets, Hamburg enjoyed the crucial advantage of having a direct connection to the sea, which was highly important for its interconnection with the Atlantic trading markets. At the same time, Hamburg was protected against naval attacks through its inland location. This inland location in turn provided the basis for intensive trading exchanges between Hamburg and the European domestic markets and close cooperation between the merchants and the manufacturing industry. Hamburg's own manufacturing sector in fact can be regarded as the second most important pillar of the commercial significance of the Elbe city. For instance, the agricultural sugar processing industry with over 350 sugar refineries in the Hamburg region enabled the merchants of the city to conduct the typical Hamburg trade of buying raw, unrefined sugar and then selling the more expensive processed product, which is important to know since the merchant Luetkens, too, traded in sugar.5 All of this turned Hamburg into a very attractive place for merchants, which was a fact that would furthermore be fostered through the political situation prevailing in Hamburg during that time, which is the second main reason why Hamburg experienced a commercial peak in the 18th century.6

Apart from the favourable location, Hamburg also provided favourable political conditions for merchants to settle down and to start their business. The second reason for Hamburg's blossoming in the 18th century was thus that as a free imperial city placed

te des 18. Jahrhunderts (Teil III) (edited by Gustav Otruba)." *Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte* 16 (JFW), no. 4 (1976): 231-252, here 258.

4 See Kopitzsch, *Grundzüge einer Sozialgeschichte*, vol.1, 135-246. See also Pantel, *Hamburgische Neutralität*, 1.

5 See Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 232. See also Weber, *German Merchants*. See also Prange, Carsten. "Handel und Schiffahrt im 18. Jahrhundert." In *Hamburg im Zeitalter der Aufklärung*, edited by Inge Stephan and Hans Gerd Winter, 42-56. Berlin/Hamburg: Reimer 1998, i.a. 48. See Newman, "Hamburg in the European Economy," 57-93. Regarding the Hamburg sugar refineries see Petersson, *Zuckersiedergewerbe und Zuckerhandel,* 41-59.

6 See also already Schramm, "Hamburger Kaufleute." See Schramm, Percy Ernst. "Die deutschen Überseekaufleute im Rahmen der Sozialgeschichte." *Bremisches Jahrbuch* 49 (1964): 31-54.

within the Holy Roman Empire it was acting almost autonomously and independently from external political powers. That means that during the entire Early Modern Period Hamburg was self-governed, although it was nominally under the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor. The city's own local elite exercised political control and governed the political destiny of Hamburg. Since this elite recruited itself from its own leading parties and the most influential members of its society, and since these most influential members were for the most part merchants, the political agenda and political orientation of the city was mainly commercially shaped. The merchant class dominated Hamburg and as such they put great efforts into the commercial prosperity of their hometown, and only secondly, if at all, would they act also for the good of the Holy Roman Empire. The direct impact of this political power of the merchant elite and its consequences for the daily and especially the commercial life of Hamburg can be illustrated by means of the third and fourth reason for Hamburg's rise to economic power.7

The third main reason for Hamburg's commercial wealth and prosperity was the institutionalisation of the mercantile agenda of the city, which already started in the 16th and 17th century. In 1558, the Hamburg Exchange opened its doors. The Hamburg bank was established in 1619, the Hamburg Admiralty in 1623, and in 1663 the Commerz-Deputation (todays Chamber of Commerce) followed, of which, as we know, Luetkens later in his life became an important member.8 In the 18th century, these institutions went on to enjoy worldwide fame, as even our unknown traveller reverently acknowledged.9 In almost the same breath our traveller noticed and stressed the many nationalities and people from all over the world that he met in Hamburg, who lined the streets and teemed at the meeting places, merchant houses and coffeehouses of the city. This observation, too, ultimately refers back to the autonomy and power of the merchant elite of the free imperial city and represents at the same time the fourth reason for Hamburg's prosperity in the 18th century.

During almost all of the 18th century, Hamburg advocated a religious tolerance policy. This means that Hamburg generally was open to people from many other countries, or nations as the traveller called it, regardless of their religious backgrounds.10 This tolerance policy subsequently attracted not only merchants from other countries in general, but particularly it provided a place of shelter and a place of refuge for all of those who were experiencing and fleeing from expulsion, persecution and displacement in other countries. In Hamburg for instance Huguenots, meaning French Protestants, as well as Calvinist refugees from the Spanish Netherlands and Jews from Portugal found a new home. The latter fact, however, did not mean that these groups did not also

7 See Lindemann, *Patriots and Paupers*, 36. See Pantel, *Hamburgische Neutralität*, 30. See Reißmann, *Die hamburgische Kaufmannschaft*, 22. See also Kellenbenz, Hermann. *Unternehmerkräfte im Hamburger Portugal- und Spanienhandel. 1590-1625*. Hamburg: Verlag der Hamburgischen Bücherei, 1954.

8 See Handelskammer, *Handelskammer*, 21-24, and 42-65. See Baasch, *Handelskammer*.

9 See Lindemann, "Doing Business in 18th century Hamburg," 162.

10 See Lindberg, "The Rise of Hamburg," 641-662. See Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 239-240. See Whaley, Joachim. *Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg 1529-1819*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

face and suffer from prejudices and social exclusion in Hamburg.11 The immigration further boosted Hamburg's economy since the new arrivals were, although they may have lost their homes, often still in possession of their capital, their networks and their knowledge, which they brought with them to Hamburg and from which Hamburg in turn benefitted. The tolerance policy regarding foreign merchants therefore was thus no purely altruistic gesture by the Hamburg authorities and it did not serve entirely selfless motivations, but quite on the contrary, even this measure served the purpose of expanding the role and economic power of the city on the international trading floor. At the same time, however, it was also the main reason for the cosmopolitan nature of Hamburg's inhabitants that the cited traveller encountered, and it provided highly favourable conditions for internationally trading merchants, for which the last main reason for Hamburg's rise ultimately provided the perfect complement to the said foreign policy, further stimulating economic growth.12

This fifth reason can be regarded as in essence forming the background for all other reasons for Hamburg's unique commercial status in 18th-century Germany, providing the key and general legal framework which Hamburg drew from for the purpose of developing and asserting its commercial authority and independence on the world market. The fifth reason was that during the entire Early Modern Period, the free and imperial city of Hamburg claimed and maintained a policy and status of neutrality with regard to the power struggles and wars led by the colonial superpowers of the period.13 As a free imperial city, Hamburg was granted this right by the Holy Roman Emperor, since as a self-governed city it was also given the right to enter independently, but nonetheless lawfully, into peace treaties and bilateral trade treaties with other countries, detached from the political alliances of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1744 and 1745, the period covered by the Luetkens archive, Hamburg held such treaties with France, Spain and England, that is, with the main belligerent parties of the period. Furthermore, it had also set up trade alliances with the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, and therefore could successfully establish and maintain itself as a free port in the midst of a wartorn Europe.14 To a certain extent, Hamburg, as well as the other Hanseatic cities and

11 Ibid. See Kopitzsch, *Grundzüge einer Sozialgeschichte* and"Zwischen Hauptrezeß und Franzosenzeit."

12 Prange, *Hamburgische Neutralität*, 28-29; Newman, "Hamburg in the European Economy," 77. See Liebel, Helen. "Laissez-faire vs. Mercantilism: The Rise of Hamburg & the Hamburg Bourgeoisie vs. Frederick the Great in the Crisis of 1763." *Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte* 52, no. 2 (1965): 207-238.

13 See Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 162-166, 229. See Weber, "German Merchant." See in general Pantel, *Hamburgische Neutralität*, particularly 1-2, 29, 39. See Lindberg, Erik. "The Rise of Hamburg"; Newman, Karen. "Hamburg in the European Economy."

14 See Huhn, *Handelsverträge*, 6,7,13, 21-28. The peace and trade treaties between Hamburg and France can be found ibid. 87-88, stating that "Hambourg est le magazin du Nord et de presque tout l'Empire." Ibid. See Weber, *Deutsche Kaufleute*, 166, 229. See Alimento, Antonella, and Koen Stapelbroek, eds. *The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century: Balance of Power, Balance of Trade*. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Regarding the trade with England see Newman, Karen. *Anglo-Hamburg Trade in the Late Seventeenth and Early 18th Century.* Unpublished PhDthesis. London: London School of Economics and Political Science, 1979. See also Schulte Beerbühl, *German Merchants.* Regarding the navigational acts see Morgan, "British Empire." Regarding Spain see Kellenbenz, *Unternehmerkräfte*. See also Poettering, *Handel, Nation und Religion.*

also some of the free ports in France, represented the exact opposite to the generally protectionist and mercantilist trade policies and trading systems of the superpowers and therefore provided a clear impetus for merchants even from these superpowers to trade with Hamburg, who hoped for profits and trading opportunities across national boundaries or even for actively undermining the national borders. The opportunity of free trade was consequently also the reason why our anonymous traveller encountered so many ships from different nations blanketing the Elbe and the Hamburg port and why he concluded that there seemed to be "no seafaring people in this part of the world which does not traffic with Hamburg".15 The Hamburg port was basically a port of call for every trading nation of the 18th century and therefore was also called upon by all the superpowers of the era, thus elevating Hamburg to the rank of a commercial heavyweight. The maritime neutrality, on the other hand, also led and contributed to the fact that Hamburg ships travelled relatively freely in the international waters of the time, manoeuvring their way through and in-between the different territories and seas controlled by the naval powers, in peace as well as during wartime. Their main role and remit in this regard was to become intermediaries, re-exporters, and therefore international distributors of all the goods of the superpowers that had swamped these countries' own domestic markets. And with this latter condition, in turn, we have arrived at the main topic of this chapter.16

This chapter deals with the shipping business as an important mainstay for Hamburg merchants in the 18th century and as an important business field and proving ground for an aspiring wholesale merchant who tried to establish himself in 18th century trade. Ralph Davis even concluded that "on the whole [...] it was trade that gave its assistance to shipowning rather than vice versa; the merchant entered the potentially profitable business of shipowning because he had connections which were likely to enhance these potentialities, not because he needed a ship to carry his goods." 17 The business field of the shipping business includes the buying of ships, the procurement of passports and flags and insurances and the necessary tackle, apparel and furniture for these ships, the hiring of ships' captains, the maintenance of the ship, the procurement and subsequently the transshipments of goods and the setting of the routes for these ships.18 In this chapter we will primarily learn about the first part of the tasks of an 18th century ship-owner. I will show how Luetkens bought ships and how he took care of the necessary formalities. In the chapter on high-risk trade and on the ships' captains' letters in the Luetkens archive, we will also learn in detail about the second part of the mentioned tasks. In the present chapter, Hamburg's neutrality, and the economic advantages accompanying it, will be presented as the general prerequisite for all trading activity in

15 Otruba, "Kommerzialreise," 258.

16 See furthermore Baasch, "Hamburgs Handel und Schiffahrt." Regarding French-Hamburg trade see also Pourchasse, *Le commerce du Nord;* "French Trade" and *"*Dynamism and Integration". See Pourchasse, "L'immigration négociante." On maritime neutrality and its benefits see also Müller, "Maritime Neutrality." See Anderson, "Privateering."

17 Davis, Ralph.*The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.* London: Macmillan, 1962, 99.

18 See Hancock, *Citizens of the World*, 115-142; see Davis, *English Shipping Industry*, 81.

this business field and as a crucial characteristic and asset for Hamburg's wholesale merchants.19 For us, in turn, it represents the key topic about which we need extensive background knowledge, apart from knowing about the shipping business, in order to explain and understand Luetkens' business practices and, subsequently, to understand the events within the letter conversations regarding this business field in the Luetkens archive. That is the reason why I have prepended this chapter with an introduction on the reasons for Hamburg's special role in international business relations because it provides us with the first part of the necessary intelligible framework and the historical backdrop against which the subtleties and specific characteristics of Luetkens' activities in this business field will become understandable for us. To a certain extent, as a matter of fact, all the mentioned reasons for Hamburg's commercial success had their concrete bearing on Luetkens' establishment phase since they all shaped and fostered his career and career advancement in the first place, and therefore they will resonate continually during all the analytical chapters of this book. As we know, furthermore, Luetkens did not spend only one year in Hamburg, as the traveller suggested it as advisable and favourable for merchants, but he spent his childhood, youth and apprenticeship in this city. He therefore learned from his own personal experience what it meant to live and trade in Hamburg. He knew about the commercial advantages and features that Hamburg offered its citizens and merchants, the reasons why Hamburg represented such a favourable place to establish oneself. That is, he knew of the significance of Hamburg's favourable geographic location, the benefits of the opportunities for contact with many different trading nations, and he got to know the authority and strong reputation of the mercantile institutions of Hamburg as well as the good reputation that Hamburg merchants enjoyed in the world. After his return, establishment and settlement in Hamburg, he consequently also became an active part of these institutions.20 For the time of his establishment phase, however, the most important characteristic and feature of Hamburg trade from which he directly profited was Hamburg's maritime neutrality. This phenomenon enabled him to enter into and to act successfully within the field of shipping, which, in turn, made a perfect foothold for his establishment phase.

In the next part of this chapter, I will elaborate on the subtleties of both the shipping business and maritime neutrality in 18th century trade and seafaring, which further fleshes out our picture around Luetkens' first important mercantile field of activity. On the basis of this thick contextualisation we are well prepared to analyse in detail the episode of the letter conversation that stands at the centre of the chapter, which

19 On the shipping business see Davis, *English Shipping Industry.* See also the comprehensive bibliography by Morgan, Kenneth. *Ships and Shipping. Oxford Bibliographies online research guides*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. See Veluwenkamp, Jan Willem, and Werner Scheltjens, eds. *Early Modern Shipping and Trade: Novel Approaches Using Sound Toll Registers Online*. Boston/Leiden: Brill, 2018. For the French-Hamburg shipping business see Treutlein, Gerhardt. *Schiffahrt;* Prange, "Handel und Schiffahrt"; Baasch, "Hamburgs Handel und Schiffahrt." See Baasch, Ernst. *Quellen zur Geschichte von Hamburgs Handel und Schiffahrt im 17., 18. und 19.Jahrhundert*. 5 vol. Hamburg: Gräfe & Sillem, 1908-1910. See Baasch, Ernst. "Hamburgs Handel und Schiffahrt am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts." In *Hamburg um die Jahrhundertwende 1800*, edited by Neue Börsen-Halle, 155-173. Hamburg: Neue Börsen-Halle, 1900.

20 See the chapter on the "Making of a Merchant."

will give us crucial insights into the concrete mercantile operations within the 18thcentury shipping business as well as insights into how letters were effectively used to implement and keep this business running. As regards insights into the powers of persuasion applied in business and letter practices during the 18th century, we will learn in this chapter about the first and one of the most fundamental practical principles of persuasion governing letter practice. This was the principle of demanding loyalty from correspondents in order to be able to put plans into practice. Luetkens demanded loyalty from his two natural brothers, whom he successfully recruited for his plans in his shipping business. On the basis of the persuasive principle of demanding loyalty and by drawing on fraternal bonds, Luetkens was able in the year 1744 to restructure and reorganize his entire shipping business, adapting it optimally to the conditions prevailing in this business field and in French-Hamburg trade during the 18th century. By means of his letters, as the letter episode will show, he was able to transfer the ownership of all his ships pro forma to his youngest brother Anton. For this purpose, Anton became a Hamburg citizen, a Large Burgher of the city of Hamburg. This means he applied for and paid for a so-called large citizenship in Hamburg, in German "großes Bürgerrecht", which allowed Luetkens to declare his ships neutral ships and provide them with a neutral Hamburg flag and passport, which were necessary for free passage, while at the same time staying highly active in French trade.21 Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens, in turn, became the official hirer of these ships from his brother, which allowed the merchant still to dispose of these ships freely, even though his brother was the official ship-owner. In order to convince his brother, and in order to pull off that trick in his shipping business, Luetkens made used of three very formative letter practices of the period, which will be demonstrated in the chapter as part of the principle of persuasion. First, he bundled several letters to different people in one letter packet that he sent to Hamburg. The enclosed letters were inserted into one another, meaning that he folded letters into letters. This practice represented a very typical pattern and material arrangement of letters during the Early Modern Period.22

The second letter practice he used was to deliberately not seal the inserted letters, but to leave them open, or – as the contemporaries called this practice – to produce unfinished letters, in German "ohnbeschwerte Briefe".23 This practice allowed the respective addressees of the outer letter to decide for themselves whether or not they would forward these letters and how they should proceed further in this undertaking. By means of this practice, Luetkens was in essence able to materially convene a family

21 Regarding the different forms of citizenship, the "große und kleine Bürgerrecht" in Hamburg (how to become a Small or Large Burgher) see the following explanations as well as Lindemann, *Patriots and Paupers*, 60-63 as well as Pantel, *Hamburgische Neutralität*, 26. See also Kopitzsch, "Zwischen Hauptrezeß und Franzosenzeit," 367.

22 We can find thousands upon thousands of such letter packets enclosing letters in letters in the Prize Papers. See Dagmar Freist, "Uncurated Histories." There exists, however, no article or book dealing with this material practice in detail so far. See in general Daybell, *The Material Letter,* 85- 108. Regarding the tuck-and-seal method of letterlocking see ibid., 53-54. See Wiggins, *Bess of Hardwick's Letters*, 173-193. With a special focus on letter materiality see Daybell, James. *Women Letter-Writers*, here 10-11 and 32-60. See Haasis, "Materialität."

23 Letter from Schulte, Jeronimus to Luetkens, Nicolaus Gottlieb, April 6, 1744, TNA, HCA 30/236.

council using only this letter packet. The outer letter was sent to his middle brother, Joachim; the first inserted letter was addressed to his youngest brother, Anton; and the last inserted letter was addressed to his youngest brother's master Luer Luers. Using the practice of not sealing enclosed letters, Luetkens provided his brothers with certain decision-making powers. They were able to decide how they wanted to proceed in the respective undertaking and using this material gesture he ultimately managed to convince his brother and Luer Luers to help and support him in this matter. The last letter practice I will present in this chapter is the practice of rhetorically skilful argumentation in letters which was used to react to criticism and to steal an addressee's thunder.24 All of these letter practices were part and results of the practical principle of persuasion of demanding loyalty.

The crucial question to answer before dedicating our attention to the letter practices is, however, why they were necessary at all. Why did Luetkens have to reorganize his shipping business in the first place? In order to answer this question, I will first continue my thick contextualisation and further specify the conditions that prevailed for merchants during that time in the shipping business and the conditions that particularly prevailed for young wholesale merchants travelling and trading in foreign lands, in France in particular, during their establishment phase. This second part of my contextualisation will provide us with the necessary plausible framework that helps us to understand the particular material events in the letter episode that will be presented. As a matter of fact, Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens did not decide right away after his apprenticeship to settle down in Hamburg, but he stayed unbound and free (and did not apply for citizenship in Hamburg) for the time that he spent in France. For this decision he had very good reasons, which will be presented in the next part of this chapter.

#### **3.2 A Hamburg Merchant in France**

#### Reasons for not Settling down for Business in Hamburg

The shipping business of a Hamburg merchant is an insightful topic relating to international trade relations and maritime neutrality because it demonstrates, on a general level, the opportunities, practices and typical ways of the Hanseatic trade participation on the international trading floor in the 18th century and it shows the challenges that accompanied this process.25 Luetkens' case furthermore represents a significant example in this regard because his efforts and activities clearly demonstrate the challenges and demands, the constraints and problems, not just the incentives that the merchants faced in this situation. A most telling fact in this regard is that the merchant Luetkens

24 See Redford, *The Converse of the Pen,* 1-15. See Fitzmaurice, *The Familiar Letter,* 35-54, 87-128. See Fitzmaurice, "Like talking on paper?"

25 See Davis, *English Shipping Industry*. Regarding Hamburg shipping, see Treutlein, *Schiffahrt*; Prange, "Handel und Schiffahrt"; Baasch, "Hamburgs Handel und Schiffahrt." Regarding the importance of the Hamburg shipping business and Hamburg merchants for France, see Pourchasse, *Le commerce du Nord*, 267-290.

did not decide right away to settle down in Hamburg despite the presumably unequivocally beneficial situation prevailing there. Instead, when he hit the road after his service in the house of David Speelmeyer, the merchant instead deliberately left open all options as to when or where to establish himself. We will learn more about this in the chapter on how he found a business partner, but it seems that he was not averse to or even desirous to settle down and open a merchant house in France. In the end, however, he decided to settle down in Hamburg, but it took him a whole six years to make this decision, which raises the legitimate question: What took him so long to decide this matter? Why did he not come to this decision earlier? Why would he even have considered not establishing himself in Hamburg even though he would find such favourable conditions there? This fact reveals to us that there must have also been clear and severe reservations and reasons against the decision to settle down in Hamburg because otherwise Luetkens presumably would have decided more automatically and naturally to establish himself in the Elbe city. He must therefore have found some clear incentives to delay his decisions, and these incentives must have even rendered it possible or advisable to decide against a neutral status as a merchant in 18th-century Europe.

These incentives, and the said reasons that generally spoke against the decision to settle in Hamburg, are the topic in this part of the chapter. However, we must avoid creating a false impression. The explanations are not going to render the first part of the chapter obsolete. Quite on the contrary, the additional information that will be given represents a necessary complement to the first part. It represents the necessary opposite side to the benefits. If you like, it represents the cons to becoming a part of Hamburg's trade, or rather the pros of not staying neutral in the maritime field of the 18th century. But these factors nevertheless also notably shaped Hamburg's trade. As it will become obvious, it must be assumed that the trading operations of Hamburg merchants most often must have run precisely at the conjuncture between the two sides, because this was the place where trade was ultimately the most profitable.