Quakers, coercion, and pre‐modern growth: why Friends’ formal institutions for contract enforcement did not matter for early modern trade expansion

Abstract

During the late seventeenth century, Atlantic trade grew dramatically. The New Institutional Economists attribute this to institutional developments. During this period, Quakers emerged as the region's most prominent trading community. Some historians explain this achievement as the result of the competitive advantage that Quakers gained from their formal institutions for contract enforcement. This article studies the London Quaker community to show that, in fact, they only began to police the conduct of business regularly after 1750, as part of a wider effort to promote the Society's reputation. Formal institutional advantages cannot explain the Quakers’ early trading success.

Religion, organization and company law – a case study of a Quaker business

“…Oversight of the rules was vested in local and area Quaker meetings, often to Elders. Although the effectiveness of this kind of oversight has been recently disputed (Sahle, 2018), most Quaker scholars have remarked that local and area Quaker meetings acted to ensure compliance and retained the ultimate sanction of expelling a member from the Society for continued transgressions and bringing the Society into disrepute (King, 2014;Tibbals, 2017). As Walvin noted (1997, 78), Quakers "had to satisfy not only their partners, customers and suppliers, but also their fellow Friends [Quakers]they were expected to open their ledgers, show their receipts, reveal their bills and correspondence to satisfy their co-religionists".…”

Egoism and cooperation in economic development - a historical approach

“…Strong cooperative networks were also built among representatives of the Quakers religious association (Sahle, 2018). It was a relatively small community, with a strong cultural identity, cemented by the need to defend itself against persecution by the rest of society.…”

Religion and social network analysis: the discipline of early modern quakers

“…While Raistrick avoided the use of the term 'networks', a tripartite network model of religion, kinship, and mercantile networks was suggested by Winchester (1991). Subsequent work has emphasized additional connections within the Quaker organisation, including education, apprenticeship, social and finance, all of which enabled members to take advantage of appropriate opportunities across the Religious Society of Friends nationally and internationally (Burton and Turnbull 2019, Sahle, 2018, Fincham, 2017.…”

“…Although the ethics of Quakers businesses has attracted a few critical voices (e.g. Rowlinson 1988Rowlinson , 1995Rowlinson and Hassard 1993;Sahle 2015Sahle , 2018Smith, 1967), Quakers are nonetheless traditionally associated with attributes of honesty and integrity, drawing upon religious principles and ethics (Fincham 2017). Quakers were known for their hard work (King 2014) which was successfully leveraged through strong bonds of both kinship and religion Turnbull 2019, Fincham, 2019;Sahle 2018).…”