[Triangle Trade]. [Barclay, Salkeld and Company]

[Printed Circular from a Liverpool Commission Merchant Reporting on the Current Market and Prices for Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar, and Other Products Reaped by Slave Labor in the Americas]

Liverpool: July 3, 1805. [1]p. on a single folded folio sheet, addressed and docketed in manuscript on verso of integral blank. Old folds with minor wear at crossfolds, mild toning. Very good. Item #3622

A rare printed report presented as a circular letter issued by Barclay, Salkeld and Company, commission merchants in Liverpool who were active in the triangular trade during the early-19th century. The company also owned large cotton plantations in the American South, most notably Pensacola, Florida. The present document contains a report from the company on the rather flat state of cotton exports from various regional producers, such as "Upland Georgia," New Orleans, Sea Island, and Brazil, as well as brief mentions of the current disposition of the market for other products such as flour, coffee, and sugar, plus passages on the effect of certain worldwide naval activities on the relevant markets ("The late capture of four vessels, in succession, from this port to New Orleans, has occasioned a considerable sensation among our Underwriters"). The report even mentions the recent incorporation of the Ligurian Republic "with the new Kingdom of Italy, of which Bonaparte has declared himself head." The text report is followed by a two-column table printing the current prices for an array of products including cotton, tobacco, sugar, indigo, cochineal, coffee, cocoa, mahogany, logwood, staves, and more from a bevy of American states and territories as well as other trading partners such as Spain, Cuba, Jamaica, Honduras, and Argentina. The circular was likely intended to be sent to company investors or potential investors to report on the current state of the markets in the major exports of the day, which were almost all the result of slave labor in the Americas; this particular example was sent to "Mr. Mark Pregers, Jr." of Philadelphia. The document is indeed a distillation of the English portion of the triangular trade in its concern for the raw materials coming from the Americas and the resultant "orders received for...our Manufactured Goods [created from those raw materials], particularly from the Continent." OCLC records just a few holdings of any kind relating to Barclay, Salkeld and Company, but not explicitly this circular letter.

Price: $750.00