Pierre Gervais

Mercantile Credit and Trading Rings in the Eighteenth Century

Merchant credit was the main source of profit for economic agents in the eighteenth-century. Managing cash, commercial instruments, and account books, Atlantic traders such as Gradis of Bordeaux—who dealt in colonial products (including indigo, sugar, and coffee) and exported staples (flour and wine) to Quebec—or Hollingsworth of Philadelphia (an important dealer in flour and colonial produce) achieved market domination through specialized credit networks integrating market exchange and both moral and social interactions. Since a Weberian or a Homo Oeconomicus view of these complex credit activities leads to anachronisms, this article eschews standard economic approaches in favor of more historicized views of early modern economic activity, credit networks, and profit-making techniques.

Costing in the early Industrial Revolution: gradual change to cost calculations at US cloth mills in the 1820s

ABSTRACT This study details cost accounting practices at a number of US cotton mills in the 1820s. While some extant literature suggests that these practices were akin to management accounting, we take a different view. Drawing on an institutional lens and reverse engineering of cost calculations, we argue that these practices were indeed institutionalised, but that a merchant mindset on costs and profits was engrained within them. Cost calculations were based on the comparative quality of cloth, and costs were not traced to a particular product. However, gradual change took place from about 1830 on, when cost calculations became more specific to particular products, possibly as a consequence of external economic forces.