Middlemen in English Business >^51 



teeming on the seas; his craft was warKke but frail; the knowledge and 

 aids of navigation were meager. Abroad he was a suspected stranger, 

 confined to limited quarters and privileges, subject to arbitrary 

 imposition by foreign princes. It was no wonder that any trader 

 who triumphed over the hostility of opinion, seas, and princes, and 

 the risks of distant markets was hailed as an object of national pride, 

 the "loadstar and chief chosen flower" of Albion! 



Five methods of marketing abroad were devised by the merchant: 

 (a) traveUing merchant, (b) supercargo, (c) factor, (d) foreign resi- 

 dent commission house, and (e) branch house. This is roughly the 

 historical order by which they rose to relative importance. 



Supercargo. The earliest merchants either were sea-captains and 

 masters of ships or were merchants who accompanied their goods 

 the cargo of another's ships. As such they attended and did their 

 own buying and selling abroad. The differentiation of the merchant 

 function and the ship-master function, and, further, the ship-owner 

 function was in process during the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 

 turies. So long as the practice was for the merchants to accompany 

 their cargoes very strait limitations were thus put to the volume of 

 business that could be done; few voyages could be made in a year; 

 foreign connections had to be made each time; few markets could be 

 reached; business abroad was spasmodic; business at home was inter- 

 rupted by their going away; and so forth. By reason of such incon- 

 \'eniences a recourse was had to the supercargo. 



"Supercargo" is defined as an agent "confined to the sale of goods 

 under direction on some voyage, and it may be the purchase of others, 

 in conformity with the orders his employer may give him."' The 

 merchant prepared and shipped the cargo in his own or another's 

 ship and sent a supercargo to conduct the sales abroad; the return 

 cargo was bought, prepared, shipped and accompanied by the super- 

 cargo. This system of agency was necessitated in the period before 

 international bills and machinery of exchange had been instituted 

 between the countries trading. For example, in Turkey as late as 

 1728 the Imperial City had no course of exchange with the outside 

 world; if any merchant bought a cargo of goods at some Mediterranean 

 or Western port he could not remit the money for payment by bills of 

 exchange, but had to send a supercargo with it in the ship to buy, pay 

 for, and bring away the lading.'' For this reason the first ventures of 



"■ Beawes, Lex Mer. Red., 43. 



2 For this practice, see Atlas Mer. et Com., 173. 



