Letterbook of Greg and Cunningham, 1756-57: Merchants of New York and Belfast
W. H. Crawford, Review of Letterbook of Greg & Cunningham, 1756-57, in Irish Economic and Social History, Vol. 30 (2003), 144-45.
THOMAS M. TRUXES (ed.), Letterbook of Greg & Cunningham, 1756-57 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for The British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History, new series, 28, 2001. Pp. xxxii + 430. £50 stg.)
In 1988 Thomas Truxes published Irish-American Trade 1660-1783 (Cambridge), a revised version of his doctoral thesis prepared under the supervision of Louis Cullen in Trinity College, Dublin. In a review in volume xvii of this journal (1990) Kenneth Morgan indicated further lines of research stimulated by Truxes’s study, including investigation into the nature and composition of expatriate Irish merchant communities in North America. Now Truxes has placed us even more fully in his debt by editing this significant letter book of Greg and Cunningham, merchants of New York and Belfast (10 May 1756 to 24 January 1757), which he cane across first in 1974 in the collection of the New York Historical Society. He has loaded this meticulous edition with very detailed information about the characters, the places, the practices and the goods mentioned in the letters.
Both the major characters came from the planter tradition in Ulster. On 1 May 1756 the thirty-eight year old Belfast businessman, Thomas Greg, and the twenty-six year old commission merchant, pooled resources to form a trading house in New York City. Four years earlier Cunningham had opened a small store there, established himself firmly in the flaxseed trade to Ireland, and engaged in smuggling, the clandestine ‘Dutch trade’. He was very able, industrious and energetic but rough, unscrupulous and intemperate in the face of opposition, drawing from a woman who knew him the comment: ‘I would shudder if Waddell Cunningham’s interest, ambition, and therefore inclination and abilities were combined against me.’ Although he borrowed heavily and used the law to protect himself against bad debts, he soon realized that to secure the best prizes in the very volatile North American markets, he would require direct [pp. 144/145] access to the financial resources of the major London merchant houses. His best contact was Thomas Greg from a well-established Belfast merchant family engaged in trade throughout Western Europe, owning sugar plantations in the West Indies, dealing in South Carolina in slaves and emigrants, but attracted to New York by the lucrative flaxseed trade to Ireland. From the signing of their partnership agreement, however, Cunningham insisted on being treated as an equal and often in his letters to Greg took the initiative and pressed his points.
Although this partnership lasted some nineteen years and developed into one of the most successful Irish-American firms, this letterbook contains only Cunningham’s business correspondence for its first nine months (1 May 1750 to 24 January 1757) when he was trying to establish it. 338 letters are addressed to some 130 individuals and merchant houses in Ireland, Great Britain, Europe, North America, and the West Indies. All of the firm’s fifty-five Irish correspondents were linked either to the linen or salted-provisions trades, the staple business of the firm: forty-seven were located in the northern counties of Antrim, Down, and Londonderry, predominantly in Belfast and Newry with four more in Derry and eight in Dublin. Of forty-one correspondents in Britain, fourteen were located in London: six of them based in Cheapside had strong ties to the Linen Hall in Dublin, as well as to those merchants in the North of Ireland who sent their cloth directly to London. Several of the London houses functioned as bankers in the American flaxseed trade with Ireland, clearing bills of exchange, providing credit, and arranging insurance. They provided the solid base which Cunningham was seeking so urgently. Beyond the British periphery were several European merchants from the Baltic, Rotterdam and Cadiz, whom Cunningham was eager to exploit beyond the reach of the British customs. He himself had developed a wide range of contacts in North America and the West Indies.
The outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in July 1756 pulled American commerce out of a deep slump and presented a great prospect. New York City proved the ideal location for Cunningham to monitor events. The military buildup for the northern drive against the French and their Indian allies up the Hudson valley drew from him the comment: ‘I am convinced no sober man in Albany or Schenectady can help making money.’ Into New York port also came the great majority of the prizes captured by the privateers, the most successful of which was the sloop Harlequin, in which the firm had a sixth share. The company had been well launched and prospects for its future seemed favourable.
W. H. CRAWFORD
