Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Constructing Atlantic Peripheries: A Critical View of the Historiography
- 2 Did Prussia have an Atlantic History? The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania, the French Colonization of Guiana, and Climates in the Caribbean, c. 1760s to 1780s
- 3 A Fierce Competition! Silesian Linens and Indian Cottons on the West African Coast in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries
- 4 Prussia’s New Gate to the World: Stettin’s Overseas Imports (1720–1770) and Prussia’s Rise to Power
- 5 Luxuries from the Periphery: The Global Dimensions of the Eighteenth-Century Russian Rhubarb Trade
- 6 Atlantic Sugar and Central Europe: Sugar Importers in Hamburg and their Trade with Bordeaux and Lisbon, 1733–1798
- 7 A Gateway to the Spanish Atlantic? The Habsburg Port City of Trieste as Intermediary in Commodity Flows between the Habsburg Monarchy and Spain in the Eighteenth Century
- 8 A Cartel on the Periphery: Wupper Valley Merchants and their Strategies in Atlantic Trade (1790s–1820s)
- 9 Linen and Merchants from the Duchy of Berg, Lower Saxony and Westphalia, and their Global Trade in Eighteenth-Century London
- 10 Ambiguous Passages: Non-Europeans Brought to Europe by the Moravian Brethren during the Eighteenth Century
- 11 German Emigrants as a Commodity in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
- 12 Reorienting Atlantic World Financial Capitalism: America and the German States
- 13 Afterword
- Bibliography of Secondary Works Cited
- Index
- People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History
8 - A Cartel on the Periphery: Wupper Valley Merchants and their Strategies in Atlantic Trade (1790s–1820s)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Constructing Atlantic Peripheries: A Critical View of the Historiography
- 2 Did Prussia have an Atlantic History? The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania, the French Colonization of Guiana, and Climates in the Caribbean, c. 1760s to 1780s
- 3 A Fierce Competition! Silesian Linens and Indian Cottons on the West African Coast in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries
- 4 Prussia’s New Gate to the World: Stettin’s Overseas Imports (1720–1770) and Prussia’s Rise to Power
- 5 Luxuries from the Periphery: The Global Dimensions of the Eighteenth-Century Russian Rhubarb Trade
- 6 Atlantic Sugar and Central Europe: Sugar Importers in Hamburg and their Trade with Bordeaux and Lisbon, 1733–1798
- 7 A Gateway to the Spanish Atlantic? The Habsburg Port City of Trieste as Intermediary in Commodity Flows between the Habsburg Monarchy and Spain in the Eighteenth Century
- 8 A Cartel on the Periphery: Wupper Valley Merchants and their Strategies in Atlantic Trade (1790s–1820s)
- 9 Linen and Merchants from the Duchy of Berg, Lower Saxony and Westphalia, and their Global Trade in Eighteenth-Century London
- 10 Ambiguous Passages: Non-Europeans Brought to Europe by the Moravian Brethren during the Eighteenth Century
- 11 German Emigrants as a Commodity in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
- 12 Reorienting Atlantic World Financial Capitalism: America and the German States
- 13 Afterword
- Bibliography of Secondary Works Cited
- Index
- People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History
Summary
The title of this chapter seems to contain a contradiction in terms: one of them is associated with strength (cartel), the other with weakness (periphery); nonetheless, they are used in conjunction. The aim of this chapter is to resolve this contradiction, to explain its particularities, and by so doing to highlight certain structural features of the early modern Atlantic economy. To do so, I will first discuss the two terms – cartel and periphery – and then secondly present findings from a case study of the seemingly peripheral Atlantic World, before thirdly drawing some conclusions about the incorporation of ostensibly peripheral regions into Atlantic trade and into the Atlantic World in general.
The terms: (1) cartel
A cartel is commonly defined as a group of independent producers who strike an agreement, either in writing (a contractual cartel) or orally (a ‘gentleman’s agreement’), to increase their collective profits by means of price-fixing, limiting supply, or other restrictive measures. Cartels usually occur in oligopolies, where there is a small number of suppliers offering a homogenous product. The effects of cartels are commonly described as the following: cartels change the relations between supply and demand in the economy by providing the supply side with greater market power. Competition is curtailed as suppliers harmonize their production and investment policies, as well as their course of action against intruders or newcomers; prices are determined by the supply side, which means they are flexible upwards but are seldom or never cut; consumer choice is limited and the guiding principle of prices is suspended.
In the early modern economy, price-fixing was a well established practice, most famously (or infamously) used by privileged trading companies such as the Dutch and English East India companies. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, was one of the first to deliver a fundamental critique of such merchants’ conspiracies against the public, in his major work The Wealth of Nations. Systematic theorizing about cartels and their economic effects emerged only towards the end of the nineteenth century. Contrary to Smith’s critique and to current notions, at that point in time members of the legal and economic professions rather advocated the regulating and rationalizing possibilities of cartels, highlighting their stabilizing effects.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Globalized PeripheriesCentral Europe and the Atlantic World, 1680-1860, pp. 133 - 150Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020