Letterbook of Greg and Cunningham, 1756-57: Merchants of New York and Belfast

Vol. 28 of the British Academy’s Records of Social and Economic History. Oxford University Press, 2001.

The correspondence from the most successful Irish-American trading firm of the colonial period forms a remarkable archive for economic historians of the eighteenth century. This is an edition of a letterbook that contains the first nine months of correspondence from this New York trading house. The letters to commercial contacts throughout the North Atlantic region offer a vivid picture of the transatlantic economy. And the private communications of Waddell Cunningham to his partner, Thomas Greg in Belfast, allow a rare behind-the-scenes look at the management and operation of an overseas merchant house. Guided by Professor Truxes’s authoritative introduction, we can see in these letters the difficulties of decision-making over long distances, the problems of over-stretched resources, and the impact of the Seven Years War on the evolution of a vigorous enterprise.

Reviews

Guillaume Daudin in The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 62, No. 4 (December 2002), 1170-71.

Mary B. Rose in Business History, Vol. 45, No. 4 (October 2003), 120-21.

W. H. Crawford in Irish Economic and Social History, Vol. 30 (2003), 144-45.