Eighteenth-Century Evolutionary Thought and its Relevance in the Age of Legislation

This essay revisits the evolutionist writingsof the eighteenth century to clarify their key ideas concerninglegal and social evolution and to assess their relevance in thepresent era of pervasive legislation. The discovery of the principleof the accumulation of design is traced to these writings andthe continuity of twentieth century spontaneous-order theoryand new institutional economics with this tradition is noted.While highlighting the contributions of other institutional theoriststo the elucidation of the role of purposive action in legal evolution,the author argues that input designing does not alter the fundamentalnature of legal emergence as postulated by the eighteenth centuryscholars. The essay supports the ideal of legal generality, freespeech, property and contractual freedom as normative implicationsof the evolutionary viewpoint.     

Social capital,institutional innovation and Atlantic trade before 1800

The growth of the Atlantic economy during the eighteenth century has been associated with developments in business networking to mitigate the hazards of communication in long-distance trade. Such social capital-based mechanisms reduced transaction costs, but also proved to have their limitations in the changing conditions of eighteenth-century international trade. This paper argues, using the example of the British slave trade, that efforts to innovate less personalised forms of commercial exchange gave those prepared to do so a considerable competitive advantage, and promoted the unprecedented expansion of that trade between 1750 and 1807. We suggest that this shift may be viewed as a precursor of modernising tendencies in business practice in Britain during the industrial revolution.     

Marriages are Made in Kitchens: The European Marriage Pattern and Life-Cycle Servanthood in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam

Due to methodological difficulties of historical research on women’s labor, little is known of women’s contribution to household incomes in preindustrial economies. This article is the first to use domestic servants’ wages, as documented in account books from the period 1752–1805, to estimate the capital that women could accumulate during their years of service before marriage. As such, it offers a new perspective on women’s contribution to household resources. Results show that servants working for the most well-off households in eighteenth-century Amsterdam could save a marriage budget that was between one-third and half of the capital that an unskilled man could save in the same amount of time. Furthermore, servants’ wages would in theory have been sufficient to support a family of four at the subsistence level, illustrating that women’s wages and potential savings cannot be ignored.     

Risk,kinship and personal relationships in late eighteenth-century West Indian trade: The commercial network of Tobin & Pinney

Which strategies enabled merchants to sustain commercial expansion in the risky context of Atlantic trade? This study evaluates the role of kinship and long-term relationships as solutions to the problems posed by long-distance trade, when there is a common national and legal framework. Tobin & Pinney did not rely much on family connections to develop and support their operations. As former planters themselves, they took advantage of the contacts and ‘friendships’ they had established with planters and agents in Nevis before setting up in the commission trade in Bristol, and their success was based on repeated interaction and their former proximity to the Nevis planter class. This risk reduction strategy however limited the partners' ability to expand their business beyond Nevis.