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- Title
Illicit business: accounting for smuggling in mid-sixteenth-century Bristol.
- Authors
Jones, Evan T.
- Abstract
The article focuses on smuggling in Bristol, England during the middle 16th century. Smuggling is recognized as one of the most serious, and certainly most baffling problems in Great Britain. While most studies of the subject have concentrated on the eighteenth century, large-scale smuggling was not a new development in that period. The illicit trade of mid-sixteen-century Bristol is studied through records relation to and generated by merchant-smugglers. By carrying out record linkage between entries in merchant account books and by cross-referencing these to customs accounts and charter parties it is shown that while smuggling was widespread, it was, at least in the 1530-1540s, extremely narrowly defined. In particular it is argued that smuggling, or what contemporaries referred to as 'frauds,' was largely limited to two specific elements of the city's export trade. Nevertheless, it is shown that the great profits achievable in this large-scale and carefully organized trade made this an important business for the city's merchants. It examines the accuracy of the Bristol customs accounts of the 1530s and 1540s by comparing entries in the customs accounts for particular shipments with entries in independently generated commercial records that deal with the shipment of the same consignments. This comparison has used charter parties for part of the exercise.
- Subjects
BRISTOL (England); ENGLAND; SMUGGLING; CRIME; MERCHANTS; TARIFF
- Publication
Economic History Review, 2001, Vol 54, Issue 1, p17
- ISSN
0013-0117
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1468-0289.00182