Merchant relationships in practice (18th-19th centuries): from the personal to the impersonal? – Fiduciae

The project FIDUCIAE aims at providing a formalized and quantified discussion of the hypothesis that relationships between merchants in France and Europe became less and less personal in the 18th and 19th centuries. This discussion will be based on a precise and systematic empirical investigation in French archives. The broad question of the personal character of commercial relationships will lead us to discuss the specialization, professionalization and (decrease in) embeddedness of commerce. While these concepts are more or less implicitly central in contemporary developments in economic history and economis sociology, they have never been systematically investigated. We will mostly use three types of sources for our quantitative, lexicometric, cartographic and prosopographic study: a series of 2,000 printed circulars received by four of the most important French merchant houses (Briansiaux, Greffulhe Montz, Veuve Guérin and Roux frères); a series of letters allowing us to trace the establishment of new relationships between a panel of important French merchant houses and their correspondents; and a sample of acts giving power of attorney driven from the notarial archives of Paris, Marseilles, Lyons and Lille.