1
The Gentlemen Slavers:
Status, Structure and Social Movements for the Conduct of Dirty Business
Paul Ingram and Brian Silverman
January 27, 2014
We consider the influences on which overseas traders entered the Liverpool slave
trade. This phenomenon matters for what it says about English and American
culture, and also because it represents an important class of activity we call ‘dirty
business,’ where economic activity violates cultural values. We consider
individual disposition to violate norms as a function of status, social contagion in
a network where status determines influence, and the role of a social movement to
ignite attention to the norms and their violation. We find that high status
Gentlemen were more likely to become slavers, and that they were highly
influential on the behavior of their network partners. The abolition movement
affected a marked shift in these dynamics, dampening social network influence,
but amplified the impact of individual identities. These results have implications
for theories of the interdependence of social movements, culture and networks.
Draft. Please do not cite or quote without permission of the authors.
We are grateful to Chris Brown, Huggy Rao, Chris Washburne, Lori Yue, and seminar
participants at Baruch College, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College,
George Washington University and the University of Maryland for useful comments on earlier
drafts of this paper.
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“Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous
temper and courage of our nation, that it is hardly to be conceived that an Englishman, much less
a gentleman, should plead for it (John Locke, 1680/1768: 139).”
This paper examines the influences on a choice. The choice was whether to enter the slave trade,
and the choosers are overseas traders in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Liverpool.
Understanding this choice matters in three ways. First, it is one of the choices that has made a
difference on the largest scale. Fischer (1970) lists among the functions of analyzing the past to
understand who we are as a people and to reveal the context of contemporary problems.
Historians of the United States still suggest that American racial attitudes were transplanted from
British culture (e.g., Bailyn, 2012: 175). Yet the core values of British culture were antithetical
to slavery even as the slave trade thrived (Brown, 2006). It is more accurate to say that slave
traders dodged the judgment of the dominant culture than to say they represented it. The
mistaken characterization of the British culture of the past matters because it limits the
possibilities we see for our own in the future. Gerzina (1995: 301) describes an American
academic appalled to observe an interracial couple in London in the era of the slave trade.
Although not herself appalled, Gerzina demonstrates astutely that the assumption persists that
contemporary American attitudes to race are tightly coupled to eighteenth-century British ones
when she considers the marriage between an ex-slave and a white woman in London: “We would
expect in such a tale overwhelming problems of race, but these rarely figure (304).” Make no
mistake, we do not hold up the culture of Georgian Britain as a positive example with regard to
race. Our point is only that it was quite different from our own, both now and then. That some
Brits prosecuted the slave trade against values in the broader culture, and that their choice
process eventually changed, suggests that our own cultural toolkit with regard to race is bigger
than is sometimes assumed.
The second reason this choice matters is that it is an example of a type that remains relevant
today. It is an instance of ‘dirty business’ by which we mean economic activities that are not
effectively prohibited by legal authority, but are nevertheless counter to social values.
Alternative worlds lie in the chasm between what is allowed and what is admired. Cultures and
economies may turn on whether capable and influential people take up activities such as selling
life insurance, performing abortions, or marketing complex financial products to people who
don’t understand them.
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Engagements in dirty business represent a break down in the chain between cultural
values and individual behavior, so it makes sense to structure our inquiry around the links in that
chain. At the top are the cultural values themselves, at the bottom is the individual, and in
between is the network that connects individuals and transmits culture. Most sociologists will
think of the actor’s local network when confronting the question of why some engage in dirty
business. The idea that some actors are embedded in networks with norms that diverge from
broader cultural values was our first instinct too, and it turns out to be true in the Liverpool slave
trade. Reference to divergent local networks, however, is not a fully satisfying explanation for
dirty business, nor for the slave trade. A particular challenge is how dirty business practices can
take root in networks embedded in an inhospitable value system. Our case highlights status for
both the emergence and diffusion of dirty business.
In The Human Group, Homans (1950) argued that norms have lesser grip on those with
higher status, because their positions in the hierarchy are sticky, and robust even in the face of
normative violations, an argument that has been subsequently refined by Phillips and Zuckerman
(2001). We find evidence for the idea that individual status increases the likelihood of entering
the slave trade. Beyond that individual effect, we examine and find support for a social role of
status, as a driver of the diffusion of behavior through a network. High status traders influenced
their partners to behave as they did. Our setting allows us to rule out the idea that status served
as a proxy for competence or knowledge, and we see the network effect of status as normative
influence in the context of contention over values.
We therefore see a process where high-
status individuals adopt dirty-business practices because they are less subject to the social
sanctions attached to those practices, and infect their network partners with those practices.
These are the Gentlemen slavers of our title.
If the status-contagion argument explains where and how dirty business takes root, the
question of where it stops remains. This brings us to the third reason to study the choice to enter
the slave trade, which is an opportunity to contribute to theories of social movements, culture
and networks. To summarize what we’ll show subsequently, the dynamics of entering the slave
trade changed in a striking way when the abolition movement was active. It is not merely that
the abolition movement made traders less likely to enter the slave trade, but that the effect of the
influences on the choice to enter, from economic incentives, individual status, to network effects,
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all change. Our models suggest that the abolition movement affected a radical reorganization of
the interpretive schema (aka culture) that converts environmental stimuli into individual action.
It acted almost like a culture switch. Drescher (1986:86) labeled the product of the abolition
movement a “cultural revolution”, which is true in the sense that existing elements of the culture
were re-ordered. A closer articulation of our view of the cultural impact of the abolition
movement was that it made the “unspeakable… speakable (d’Anjou and Van Male, 1998:222).”
The abolition movement took cultural values against slavery that were often tacit, and activated
them such that traders considering the slave trade were forced to confront them, even before the
legal abolition of slavery.
The evidence of the cultural impact of the abolition movement is very useful for social
movement theories, which increasingly recognize the interdependence between culture and
social movements, but almost always in terms of how social movement organizations and
entrepreneurs use culture (e.g., as the inputs for collective action frames; Benford and Snow,
2000), and not how they affect it (Earl, 2004). Our leverage on the question of how movements
affect culture comes from the fact that we study people’s choices, rather than the typical
outcomes in the social movement literature of changes in states or organizations. Our approach
is in line with Poletta’s (2008) recommendation to “focus on people’s beliefs about appropriate
means”, what she calls the institutional schema, or what others call an institutional logic
(Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury, 2012). We show that the same resources and opportunities
resulted in very different investment decisions by traders in different periods, evidence that the
logic through which they relate those resources and opportunities to their goals changed. These
changes are tightly tied to the periods of mass activity by the abolition movement. This evidence
not only suggests a new dependent variable for social movement research in terms of effects on
individual sense making and choice, but also a micro path through the individual that may
account for social movements’ impacts on states and organizations, an idea we take up in the
discussion.
Like the social movements literature, the literature on networks has had an energetic but
incomplete relationship with culture. The energy has gone into examining the influences of
networks on culture, for example using network methods to analyze the structure of narratives
and symbols, identifying the structural determinants of fields and publics, and specifying social
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influences on tastes (Pachuki and Breiger, 2010). Less research has employed Emirbayer and
Goodwin’s (1994) idea that culture has an “analytically autonomous” influence on structure, or
their resultant advice that “an adequate approach to historical explanation must encompass both
social structural and cultural perspectives on social action (1414).” Understanding the role of
networks as influences on entering the slave trade requires attention to the cultural context. As
Skocpol (1985: 91) put it, the “very definitions of groups, their interests, and their relations to
each other will be determined by cultural idioms.”
Two characteristics of the cultural context of the network among Liverpool traders are
particularly relevant for us. First, the status that makes a trader influential on his partners’ choice
to enter slaving is a function of deeply rooted legal and cultural institutions that establish the
English gentry, not the boot-strapped concept of status as centrality that is most common in
network analyses (we empirically examine network centrality to show its effect is distinct from
that of legal status). The status of Gentleman was typically acquired at birth, and the Liverpool
trading network that Gentleman held sway over emerged quickly during their lifetimes. Thus it
was analytically autonomous from the network, yet critical to understanding its operation.
Second is the simple fact that the operation of the trader network was very different when the
abolition movement was hot. Put simply, slavery diffused through the trading network when
norms against slavery were only tacit, but did not when the abolition movement made them
explicit. Davis and Greve (1997) show a kindred result, that the normatively neutral poison pill
takeover defense diffused through board interlock networks, while the illegitimate practice of the
golden paruchete did not. Here we show the connection between the legitimacy of a practice and
network diffusion with the same practice, and the same network connections. If the abolition
movement acted as a switch for the culture, the cultural change switched the potential and effect
of the trader network.
Of course, the abolition movement and the resultant cultural change are independent
variables for us. Even though we ground this with appropriate reference to the relevant history,
we know that some readers will object that we are oversimplifying the causal relationships
between these forces. We agree, but the oversimplification is justified by the fact that we are
explaining the behavior of traders in Liverpool, not the origins of the abolition movement, nor
changes in British culture. For example, while we know that abolition movement had structural
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influences, those influences were not located in the Liverpool trading community (d’Anjou,
1996; Drescher, 1986). Our aim is not to trivialize the broader relationships between culture,
structure or agency, but to use those concepts to explain an important phenomenon. Useful
explanations are necessarily simplifications. In the discussion we consider both the potential and
limits of our evidence for theory.
An Analytic Narrative Approach
We explore the determinants of participation in the slave trade among 5920 investors in overseas
ventures in Liverpool between 1730 and 1807, when the on British trade was abolished. Thirty
percent of these invested in a slave voyage at some point in their careers. In most of what
follows the specific empirical question is: What is the likelihood that the next voyage invested in
will be a slave voyage, for investors who have not yet participated in slaving? This might be
thought of as the “transition to slaving1.”
Our presentation will be in the form of an analytic narrative (Bates et al., 1998;
Alexandrova, 2009). This approach draws simultaneously on analytical tools and on the
narrative form that is commonly employed in history. We have placed the detailed description of
our quantitative data, methods and results in the appendix to this paper. Here in the body, we’ll
iterate between theory, history, and the statistical results, as we consider individual, network, and
cultural influences on the transition to the slave trade. Compared to the more typical
sociological approach that presents theory, (sometimes) a case history, and statistics serially, our
iterative approach is intended to be self-disciplining. By bringing these pieces closer together, it
is easier to ensure that the analysis serves theory, while at the same time doing justice to
seemingly peripheral details of history that do not fit the basic theory, rather than dismissing
them as outliers. Related, the use of historical narrative forces us to confront interdependencies
1
We analyze the occurrence of the first slaving investment because there is a discrete and important difference
between traders who participated at all in the slave trade and those that did not, as opposed to merely considering
how many slaving voyages an investor participated in. The first slaving investment makes a trader a “slaver”; the
distinction between investing in five voyages or six is comparatively less significant. Eighteenth Century Brits also
viewed “slaver” as a dichotomous category (e.g., Broadbent, 1908: pp. 120-121). This position is verified in our
data by the fact that investing in even one slaving voyage makes it much more likely that subsequent investments
will be in slaving (the “slaver” category is sticky, more so than the “direct trade investor” category).
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between the causal forces at work in Liverpool slaving while an approach that privileged a
statistical analysis might foster an illusion of independence of effects (Gaddis, 2002).
Liverpool and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Figure 1 shows the number of transatlantic slaving voyages throughout history from the most
common ports of departure. Of the 28,443 voyages with known ports of departure, more
originated in Liverpool than in any other place (4,974, or 17.5% of the total). In the years where
Liverpool was most active in the slave trade, from about 1750 to abolition in 1807, it clearly
dominates all other ports. Between 1791 and 1806, its “market share” measured in terms of
percentage of the world’s slaving voyages never falls below 30%, and goes as high as 63% in
1798. Liverpool was well deserving of its sobriquets ‘slave trading capital of the world’ and ‘the
metropolis of slavery.’
Figure 1, Slave Voyages from Leading Ports
London was initially the leading British slaving port owing to a monopoly granted to the Royal
Africa Company that lasted until 1712. For a number of decades after that Bristol and London
8
vied for leadership in the global industry, until Liverpool took over first place in 1744 and held
that position until abolition. Liverpool’s dominance of the trade in this period was a function of
three factors. The first was that it was a first mover in building a number of wet docks, building
the first in Great Britain in 1715, and following that with more throughout the eighteenth
century. Power (1997) attributes this initiative to a town council dominated by the interests of
overseas traders, noting that Liverpool experienced a “commercial coup d'etat (p. 311)” around
the turn of the eighteenth century. Besides facilitating overseas trade, the docks also made
Liverpool a shipbuilding center. Vessels used in the British slave trade were built in more than
one hundred places, but they were much more likely to originate from Liverpool than anywhere
else. Forty-two percent of Liverpool slaving voyages were on locally built ships, while the
comparable proportion of local supply for Bristol and London was seventeen and ten percent.
The second Liverpool advantage was its location. Liverpool ships could sail north
around Ireland, taking them away from privateers during the frequent wars of the eighteenth
century, while ships from the southern ports of Bristol and particularly London were more
vulnerable. Liverpool slave traders also benefitted from proximity to the Isle of Man, which was
a tax haven until 1765, allowing Liverpool traders to avoid duties on foreign goods used to barter
for slaves in West Africa. Related, Liverpool benefitted from the burgeoning textile industries in
nearby south Lancashire and Manchester, and from improvements in the transportation linkages
between those places and the port. Textiles were the most common commodity in the barter for
slaves, typically making up about half of traded value. Other goods exported to Africa such as
hardware and gunpowder were also made around Liverpool. The growth of the trade-industrial
complex around Liverpool also created possibilities to process and sell the imports (staples such
as sugar and cotton) that slave traders brought home from the Americas.
The third Liverpool advantage was human capital. We have already noted the dominance
of merchants over Liverpool’s politics. There was a similar commercial dominance over its local
culture, which was particularly materialist and mercantilist, and often openly hostile to the
aesthetic and humanitarian aspirations of the enlightenment (Checkland, 1952). But this
commercial focus, combined with the opportunities and risks of overseas trade, produced
improvisers and innovators, and in many ways, Liverpool simply did the slave trade better. They
implemented effective organizational governance mechanisms and trade remittance mechanisms
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for their far-flung enterprise, more so than slave traders from London and Bristol (Silverman and
Ingram, 2013; Morgan, 2007). They developed close, even social, relationships with the African
traders that supplied them with slaves, allowing them to rely on trust to smooth exchange
(Behrendt, Latham and Northrup, 2010)2. They exploited market power in both acquiring and
selling slaves, and they were first-movers into new slave markets (Morgan, 2007). Liverpool
was also ahead of Bristol and London in the supply of capable ships’ officers that allowed them
unique advantage to operate in places such as the Bight of Biafra that did not have European
resident agents, and therefore required that trade be conducted directly between ships’ officers
and African merchants (Behrendt, 2007). McDade (2011) attributes many of these advantages to
the larger more connected network of traders in Liverpool (compared to Bristol), which she sees
as an advantage for knowledge transfer and access to resources of all types.
Overseas traders in Liverpool could invest in the slave (triangle) trade or the more
common direct trade. The direct trade involved taking immigrants and manufactured goods to
the Americas and returning with agricultural staples. The ship owners typically did not own the
cargo. The slave trade from Liverpool involved taking tradables (manufactured goods, bar iron,
salt) to the West Coast of Africa, trading them with African traders or less typically European
factors for slaves (and perhaps ivory), sailing to the Americas, selling the slaves and, if time
permitted, acquiring a cargo of agricultural staples for the return trip. Liverpool traders might
acquire slaves in many places in West Africa, but the Bight of Biafra, particularly the ports of
Bonny and Old Calabar, was their favored place of embarkation. Similarly, they sold slaves all
over the Americas, but Jamaica (31% of Liverpool slaving voyages) and Barbados (14%) were
the most common destinations. As Table 1 indicates, the slave trade represented more risk, more
potential reward, and greater financial outlay than the direct trade.
Table 1
Comparison of Direct Trade and Slave Trade, 1730-1807
2
Voyages in
Ships Sunk,
Average
Estimate of
Estimate of
our Data
Seized or
Number of
Voyage
Gross Profit
At one point, the leader of an African slave trading clan in Old Calabar lived in “Liverpool Hall”, a home built in
Liverpool by his British slave-trading partners and shipped to the west coast of Africa as a gift to him (Behrendt et
al., 2010). “By the late 1780s as many as 50-70 Africans studied as schools around Liverpool, where they made
contacts and learned about the slave trade (Morgan, 2007: 27).”
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Condemned
Owners
Expenses, not
of Successful
including ship
Voyage
Direct Trade
14211
8.1%
3.19
£1,550-£2,000
£750-£1,000
Slave Trade
3034
18.8%
4.07
£3,850-£5,500
£3,000-£4,000
Estimates from our data and Silverman and Ingram, 2013
How did the Slave Trade Fit with British Values?
One might reasonably ask whether slavery was in fact “dirty business” in Britain in the period
we study, given the economic importance of the slave trade and slavery to the metropole and her
Caribbean colonies, the fact that the trade was carried out legally by British traders for more than
two centuries, and that there was no active abolition movement in Britain until late in the
eighteenth century. The answer is “yes.” The first chapter of Moral Capital, Chris Brown’s
remarkable history of the cultural antecedents of British abolitionism, is titled “Antislavery
without Abolitionism.” In it he argues that the slave trade represented a divergence between
economic practice and normative values, and that there was a social cost to be paid: “Slave
traders in Britain encountered public disapproval early in the eighteenth century, decades before
the emergence of those cultural movements [the abolition movement] often credited for
engendering antislavery sentiment (2006: 37).” A key claim is that antislavery sentiment did not
emerge simultaneously with the abolition movement, but was instead widespread throughout the
period we study. As Davis explains, “climates of opinion do not give virgin birth to social
movements (215).”
In Capitalism and Antislavery, Seymour Drescher further documents the low normative
standing of the slave trade: the “tension between economic utility and social distaste was present
early in the development of the British slave colonies. Such attitudes appeared far too soon to
attribute the phenomenon to the enlightenment. The condemnation of the slave trade as unChristian and inhuman was distilled even into mid-eighteenth century children’s literature
(1986:18).” He notes that slave vessels never landed in Britain, that metropolitans exposed to
slavery in the Caribbean expressed culture shock, and that:
“By the mid-seventeenth century, when English subjects began systematically to buy and
sell other human beings on a large scale, neither chattel slavery nor inherited bondage
existed any longer within the boundaries of their own land. The language of antislavery
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ran through their rhetoric, their rituals and their riots throughout the eighteenth century. A
‘libertarian heritage’ was the dominant political ideology in the eighteenth century, to
which all groups subscribed….The world was made safe for North-West European
colonial slavery by the tyranny of distance rather than by universal principles.”
The view from history is of two solitudes, a muffled tension between a British culture
that celebrated liberty operating adjacent to a colonial economic system that relied on slavery3.
As Emma Rothschild concludes in her cultural history of the Johnstones, an eighteenth century
Scottish family that participated in the slave economy (one of them was son-in-law to a
Liverpool slave trader) while sometimes championing the values of abolition, “[t]he forty years
…from the new settlements of 1763 to the abolition of the slave trade (in British ships) in 1806,
were a time of humanitarian sentiment as in the abolitionist associations...and at the same time,
of consolidation and expansion in the Atlantic slave economy (p. 162).” These separate moral
worlds could coexist because slavery occurred far away from Britain. While its perpetrators
were not lauded at home, neither was it necessary to constantly confront their offense to British
values. Slavery violated those values, but distance from the slave colonies made it possible to
avoid the conversation, and that was mostly what happened until the late eighteenth century4.
The Liverpool traders, however, represented an exception to this normative suspension. They
were literally the brokers between the metropole and the slave economy, the only residents of
Britain actively involved in slavery. Slave traders were the bridge between those separate
worlds, and therefore the focus of the energy produced by their normative tension: “Anti-slavery
sentiment did circulate in the early eighteenth century….[but] critics tended to judge American
slaveholders and Atlantic slave traders rather than British institutions and British policies
(Brown, 2006: 36).” This brings us to our puzzle, why did the Liverpool slave traders engage in
a dirty business despite exposure to the anti-slaving values of British culture.
Status and Entry to the Slave Trade
3
This separation between the British value of liberty and colonial economic practice reminds of the “internal tension
of empire and nation” between the value of national sovereignty and the colonial system itself that existed at about
the same time in the Empire (Strang, 1990). Both abolitionists and champions of national sovereignty employed the
analogy between slavery and colonialism (Brown, 2006).
4
In this view, what differentiates the years of the abolition movement from the decades that preceded it is not a shift
in public attitudes towards slavery, but rather the enactment of attitudes that existed, but were not talked about or
acted upon (d’Anjou, 1996). This is part of the reason for the very fast acceleration of the abolition movement once
it began: “The overwhelming majority of articulate Britons were abolitionists as soon as they gathered together to
discuss the slave trade (Drescher, 1990: 580).”
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Given that the slave trade was legal, any sanctions traders incur for violating cultural
expectations would be social. Slave trading, like other instances of dirty business, is in the realm
of normative control. And even though there was no active contention over the trade until late in
the eighteenth century, Liverpool traders did suffer occasional social sanctions: “The moral
censure of ‘Liverpool Men’ by evangelicals and Dissenters was to shape subsequent perceptions
of the town’s eighteenth century merchants as brutal and boorish (Longmore, 2007: 227).” The
hostility was visited at an interpersonal level, as in the case of the London correspondent of a
Liverpool slave trade supporter, who addressed him as ‘Liverpool man’, not to be confused with
the Londoner who claimed the label ‘humanity man’ (Wilson, 1998). In an often repeated story,
a famous visiting actor, performing a drunken Richard the III, responded to the complaints of his
Liverpool audience with a speech that is a model of norm-based scolding:
“What! You hiss me? Hiss George Frederick Cooke? You contemptible money-getters! I
banish you! There is not a brick in your damn town but what has been cemented by the
blood of a negro! (Broadbent, 1908, 120-121).”
In the face of such stigma, the necessary question to explain the initiation of the slave
trade is: “are some individuals are less affected by norms than others?” Various arguments in
social psychology and sociology point to status as a moderator of normative control. Phillips and
Zuckerman (2001) integrate those arguments and evidence to offer a theory of middle-status
conformity. The idea is that norms grip most tightly for those in the middle of a status hierarchy.
Those at the top and bottom of the status hierarchy have more freedom from the norm and are
more likely to engage in anti-normative behavior. The key mechanism is security of status.
Phillips and Zuckerman describe a status system that is quite sticky for those who are clearly
insiders, or outsiders. Since those at the top are safe in their status, they feel autonomy from
norms. Since those at the bottom don’t perceive much chance of climbing in the status
hierarchy, they too feel autonomy. Those in the middle, however, feel the potential to climb and
the risk of falling, and they therefore attend most carefully to normative expectations.
Throughout the eighteenth century, Liverpool’s elite citizens were associated with the
slave trade. For example, we traced the names of the 41 members of the Common Council of
Liverpool in 1752 (found in The Liverpool Memorandum Book, 1752) to our data, and found
that 24 were slaving investors. Only four were involved in overseas trade but not the slave trade,
so participation in slavery was much more likely among the traders on the Council than in
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Liverpool overall. However, the political (and probably economic) status represented by sitting
on the town council is not what Phillips and Zuckerman rely on to predict middle-status
conformity. They are careful to explain that the theory applies when status indicates “the amount
of honor or esteem accorded to a person (386),” not power, ability or resources.
To capture the “honor or esteem” accorded to overseas traders, we rely on legal status,
particularly those who held the titles of worship: Esquires and Gentlemen. An authoritative
contemporaneous account of English law defines Esquires to include the first sons of Knights
and their eldest sons in perpetual succession; the younger sons of peers and their eldest sons in
perpetual succession; those who receive the designated from the King, and their eldest sons;
those who bear any office of trust under the crown (Liverpool mayors gained the designation of
Esquire). Gentlemen were those who “studieth the laws of the realm, who studieth in the
universities, who professeth liberal sciences, and (to be short) who can live idly, and without
manual labour, and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a Gentleman (Blackstone,
1765, Book 1: 394). Esquires and Gentleman were not, of course, the top social rank in Britain.
The order of ranks were the nobility; titles of dignity (Knights and Baronets); titles of worship
(Esquires and Gentlemen); Yeoman or Freemen (commoners with enough capital to qualify to sit
on juries and to vote in elections for public office); and all others. However, there were no
nobles or titles of dignity among the investors in overseas trade in Liverpool. Among 200
leading Liverpool slave traders that appear in the index of wills in Pope (2007) four died with
titles of dignity, but all of these were obtained after entry to the slave trade.
By statute, individuals were required to identify by rank in legal proceedings and other
actions, so these categories were not superfluous. Further, among the 5920 traders we study,
there were only 145 Gentlemen and 57 Esquires. This paucity of high-status titles suggests that
they were not claimed idly, at least in the sources we rely on. Given their rarity, we collapse
Esquires and Gentlemen into one category for analysis which we will refer to as call simply
“Gentlemen,” following Edward Coke who confounded the two titles, and observed “every
Esquire is a Gentlemen (Blackstone (1765: 393).”
Figure 2 shows the base-rate of transition to slaving for the status types of Gentleman,
Merchants, and Others. Merchants and Others were all freemen. Others performed some
designated profession or occupation (e.g., brewers, glaziers, captains). Merchants lived off their
14
capital through importing and exporting, and we therefore categorized them as closer to the
“idle” Gentlemen. Haggerty (2012: 26) notes that the title “merchant” was prestigious,
designating the “elite of the trading community”, giving them clear precedence over Others,
although nobody would argue that Merchants were above Gentlemen in status. The effect sizes
represent the likelihood of an overseas trader who has not yet invested in slaving taking a stake
in a slave voyage. Other is the comparison category (with a likelihood of entering the slave trade
of 1.00). Merchants were twenty-percent more likely than Others to enter the slave trade, and
Gentlemen sixty-five percent more likely. Traders with higher status were indeed more likely to
flaunt the norms against participation in the slave trade.
Multiplier of the Tranistion to Slaving
Rate
2.4
2.23
2.2
2
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.18
1.2
1
1.00
Others
Merchants
Gentlemen
Figure 2 Transition to Slaving as a Function of Legal Status (Table A1, Model 2)
Figure 2 indicates that anti-normative slave trading increased monotonically with the
status of the trader, which does not on the surface appear consistent with the prediction that the
greatest conformity will be at middle-status levels. It is important to remember, however, that
our data represents a truncation of the status hierarchy. All of the overseas traders, even those
that appear in our data with the rank of Other, were relatively wealthy. For example, in 1800,
when there were approximately 80,000 residents of Liverpool, our data identify 748 distinct
Liverpool traders. These were not necessarily the 748 wealthiest in the town, but they were
among the roughly 12% of Liverpool residents at that time that appeared in Gore’s directory of
15
“principal residents.” The vast majority of residents could not have invested in overseas trade.
This was certainly true for the lowest rungs of the status hierarchy, the group that would,
according to the middle-status conformity prediction, be expected to join the high-status
Gentleman in the slave trade. The fact that the lowest of the low could not invest in the slave
trade did not stop them from participating in other ways, particularly as crew. Consider this
account of a Liverpool slave ship captain:
“With respect to the mortality amongst the crews of African ships5, it must be taken into
account that many of the individuals composing them were the very dregs of the
community. Some of them had escaped from jails, others were undiscovered offenders,
who sought to withdraw themselves from their country, lest they should fall into the
hands of the officers of justice. These wretched beings used to flock to Liverpool
(Williams, 1897: 688).”
Phillips and Zuckerman (2001) suggested that the anti-normative behavior of those of high- and
low-status could take different forms. With Gentleman being most likely among overseas traders
to invest in slaving, and the “dregs of the community” carrying out the dirty business as crew,
the result is indeed middle-status conformity.
For us, one of the appeals of the Gentleman category as an indicator of status is that it is
completely independent of trading, or indeed, any economic activity. By decoupling conduct
and status, a cleaner view of the liberating potential of high status becomes possible. We do
have access to another measure of status among Liverpool traders. A trader’s status in the intertrader network created by co-investments6 does not have the advantage of being completely
separate from slaving, but it nevertheless represents a form of “honor or esteem” in the sense of
indicating that a trader is an attractive partner. Furthermore, the familiar Matthew Effect
(Podolny, 1993) creates stickiness in this hierarchy, such that highly central traders may feel safe
in their network status, while low centrality traders may feel sufficiently peripheral as to be
emboldened to flaunt the broader social norm against slaving. As Figure 3 shows, the likelihood
of engaging in slaving is highest for those at the high and low end of the network status
hierarchy. Conformity to the anti-slaving norm is highest at middle status.
5
The mortality rate of European crew on transatlantic slave voyages was approximately 20%, owing mostly to
malaria and yellow fever (Curtin, 1969).
6
Network status is operationalized as the trader’s rank by eigenvector centrality in the year.
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
1
67
133
199
265
331
397
463
529
595
661
727
793
859
925
991
1057
1123
1189
1255
1321
1387
1453
Multiplier of the Transition to Slaving
Rate
16
Rank in Year by Eigenvector Centrality
Figure 3: Transition to Slaving as a Function of Network Status (Table A1, Model 2)
We also examined for Liverpool slaving one of Phillips and Zuckerman’s (2001) key caveats,
that the middle-status conformity prediction holds only when status does not equal power,
ability, or resources. Network centrality in particular is a function of previous voyageinvestments, and might therefore be expected to correlate with ability (through experience) and
wealth (through previous successful voyages). However, our models include a direct measure of
previous non-slaving voyages, an appropriate control for both trader experience and wealth
through trading investments. As would be expected this variable is highly correlated with
network status (.54). Interestingly, it is negatively associated with the likelihood of participating
in a slave voyage (see table A1). Furthermore, the models in the appendix includes another
variable that proxies material resources, the percentage of an investor’s previous ships that have
been lost (sunk, seized or condemned). That variable has a positive relationship to the likelihood
of entering the slave trade. This, combined with the effect of direct-trade experience, suggests
that it is not simply the case that those made wealthy in the direct trade went into the slave trade.
Instead, the results suggest that engaging in the slave trade was more an act of desperation of
traders who had not experienced success in the direct trade.
17
Despite the assurance provided by these control variables, we were still concerned that
the Gentleman category might represent material endowments that made it easier to get into the
expensive slave trade. We consulted the data on the values of personal estates of leading
Liverpool slave traders presented in Pope (2007) as one source of insight into the levels of
wealth represented by our status categories. The Gentlemen in that list left estates with an
average value of £18515. Merchants left estates averaging £11767, while the comparable figure
for the Other rank was £9303. The much larger average estates of the Gentlemen was mainly
due to one massive estate. When the largest estate in each category is eliminated the averages
for Gentlemen and Merchants were not significantly different (£8824 and £7561), although
larger than the Other category (£4688). Of course, Pope’s list is a sample of leading slavers, not
a census, and the figures represent wealth upon death, not at the time of entering the slave trade.
Nevertheless, it is consistent with the fact that there is nothing in the legal definition of
Gentleman that necessitates wealth, particularly relative to the active merchant class.
As yet another investigation into whether Gentlemen brought non-status advantages to
the conduct of the slave trade, we conducted an extensive analysis of the investments and
performance of Gentlemen in the slave trade. It is detailed in the section in the appendix titled
“Did Gentlemen Slavers Perform or Invest Differently?” and results are summarized in Table
A2. That analysis indicates that slaving investments by Gentlemen were no more or less likely
than investments by non-Gentlemen to sink, to be captured, or to experience crew deaths. There
is an indication that ships Gentlemen invested in suffered smaller shortfalls between their
planned and actual number of slaves. Six extra slaves per voyage represent a modest
performance advantage. Gentlemen’s voyages were shorter than others, because they went to
different ports in Africa. Combined with the higher yield of slaves, this is a positive
performance indicator. Gentlemen invested in larger ships than others, ranked higher on the
lists of owners, and were more likely to serve as ship’s husband (akin to managing partner).
They were also more likely to invest in particularly risky voyages. As we explain in the
appendix, whatever small performance advantages occurred were probably attributable to the
particular success of a very few Gentlemen slavers, who themselves were not renown. Our
conclusion is that the evidence is weak that Gentlemen slavers were in general more successful
than others.
18
Network Influences on the Transition to Slaving
A large and robust literature on social contagion shows that attitudes and behaviors are more
likely to be shared among connected actors. After countless studies, researchers still identify
questions such as “who will be influential?” as pressing (see for example Iyengar et al., 2011,
and the co-published commentaries). Overwhelmingly, however, the literature on social
contagion examines the diffusion of opinions, knowledge, and the adoption of innovation. These
things are different fundamentally from entry to slaving. In the typical example of social
contagion, what is in question is the utility of a product or idea (e.g., Tolbert and Zucker, 1983).
The backdrop is uncertainty and the absence of normative expectations, not, as in the case of
slaving, a normative expectation not to adopt the “innovation.” Potential slave traders did not
face uncertainty as to whether slaving was an effective economic strategy, and neither could they
claim uncertainty as to its illegitimacy. Moreover, the status of a trader as an “opinion leader”
cannot be assumed to be independent of the normative evaluation of their behavior. Social
influence in this situation cannot operate according to the same mechanisms as it does in others.
There are some studies that have identified social contagion in the context of antinormative behavior (e.g., Christiakis and Fowler’s 2007 analysis of the diffusion of obesity;
Bearman and Stovel, 2000 on becoming a Nazi). Norms rely on social sanctions, so if one’s
social group adopts anti-normative behavior, one could find local social support for engaging in
the same behavior. In Liverpool, a trader might feel enabled (or even pressured) to enter slaving
if his network contacts were slavers. Very relevant empirical evidence for the question of social
contagion in the entry to the slave trade comes from Younts’ (2008) experimental analysis of the
social influences on anti-normative behavior. He identified that (a) endorsement of antinormative behavior (cheating) by a reference group increased the likelihood of the subject
cheating; and (b) the suggestion to cheat was more influential when it came from a higher status
confederate.
Figure 5 shows the impact of a trader’s network contacts on the likelihood of entering the
slave trade. The first six columns represent the influence of ties in the trading network
(slavers/non-slavers * Gentlemen/Merchants/Others). The last two columns represent ties
formed through membership in an elite club, the Mock Corporation of Sephton (which we’ll
refer to as the Sephton Club). The Sephton Club operated from 1753 to after abolition,
19
essentially the whole period during which Liverpool dominated the slave trade7. More than 1000
men were members at some point during that time. In the Sephton Club civic and business
leaders of Liverpoool gathered ostensibly to engage in a role play of governing the suburban
town of Sephton (they would conduct mock elections for municipal offices), but mostly to drink.
In contemporary terms, it was like a model U.N. populated by actual leaders from the U.N., with
alcohol. Two-hundred and thirty nine of our 5920 traders were members of the Sephton Club,
and compared to traders who were not part of the Sephton Club they invested in many more
voyages (26.4 vs. 8.7), were more likely to be Gentlemen (11% vs. 3%), more likely to be
Merchants (72% vs. 51%) and less likely to hold the lowest legal status of “Other” (16% vs.
46%). For every Sephton Club member, we count the number of slavers and non-slavers they
were tied to through the club, and represent these effects in the last two columns in Figure 5.
The results show that social contagion did indeed operate in the Liverpool slave trade.
With the exception of one of eight coefficients (that for Other Slaver Ties), it is always the case
that network ties to slavers increase the likelihood of entering the slave trade, while ties to nonslavers decrease that likelihood. Further, there is a clear influence of legal status: Gentlemen
were much more influential on their social contacts than Merchants or Others.
7
Haggerty and Haggerty (2011) examine the associational structure of eighteenth-century Liverpool with reference
to a number of organizations. These included another social club, the Ugly Face Club, that operated for a much
shorter period than Sephton. They also included smaller and special purpose organizations such as the Library and
the Committee of African Merchants. We’re coding networks created through those organizations, but the
Sephton Club seems likely to be the most significant for our analysis given its temporal scope and size.
20
Multiplier of the Transition to Slaving Rate
1.2
1.1
1
0.9
Gentlemen Gentlemen Merchant Merchant
Other Other Non- Sephton Septhon
Slaving Ties Non-Slaving Slaving Ties Non-Slaving Slaving Ties Slaving Ties
Club
Club NonTies
Ties
Slaving Ties Slaving Ties
0.8
0.7
0.6
Figure 5: Social Influence through the Trading Network (Table A1, Model 4)
Younts’ (2008) explanation for the status effect on the diffusion of deviance depended on
the correlation between status and ability, such that the high status endorsement is more credible.
We are doubtful of that mechanism, at least in our context, because we simply don’t believe
there was uncertainty about the efficacy of a slaving investment. Moreover, with an antinormative behavior as opposed to one whose efficacy is uncertain, the costs of social sanction
must be considered. As explained, we don’t think that Gentlemen would necessarily have been
viewed as more competent about trading or slaving—their status comes from a different
institutional source. We expect instead that the contagiousness of Gentlemen slavers comes from
the “moral cover” that their status provides. Consistent with this, in supplementary analysis we
found that traders with more network status, gained as a function of voyages, were not more
influential on their network partners’ likelihood to enter slaving. Whether or not one entered the
slave trade was not a function of technical uncertainty but moral authority. Legal status provided
a dispensation that centrality in the network of traders did not.
21
The bottom line is that social structure operated to increase the likelihood of entering the
slave trade in Liverpool. Gentlemen slavers were particularly infectious on the likelihood that
their partners would enter the trade (and similarly, Gentlemen non-slavers were influential in
keeping their partners out of slavery). The relevant structural influences included not only the
domain-relevant trading network, but also the network created by an elite social club.
Social Movement Influence: Switching the Locus of Social Control
The abolition movement in Britain started in earnest in 1787, and succeeded in legislation
twenty years later. The mystery of the movement is perhaps that it did not happen sooner.
Intellectual and economic currents had been moving against the slave trade throughout the
eighteenth century, and “every argument in favor of abolition and emancipation had been present
for a long time” (d’Anjou, 1996; d’Anjou and Van Male, 1998: 222). These arguments were
proffered by radicals and conservatives, Whigs and Tories, essentially everyone of influence
without a direct financial interest in the slave economy (Duncan, 2001). The ideas were “in the
air” waiting action (Davis, 1966: 489; Anstey, 1975). As for sources of the necessary action,
d’Anjou and Van Male (1998) examine the successful efforts of social movement actors to frame
issues in a cultural context that was unsettled, at least in the sense that the primacy of competing
issues was unclear. Drescher (1986) examines action in the form of petitions, which were
pervasive and drew wide-ranging support. Parliament’s increasing willingness to accept
petitions as “a mode of integrating public opinion into the legislative process (83)” provided a
political opportunity.
Excellent histories of the abolition movement appear in the sources cited above. Our
interest is in its effects, through the mechanism of cultural change, on the choices of Liverpool
traders. The common conclusion is that the cultural influence of the movement was striking and
sudden, affecting a re-ordering of value claims that had before permitted the slave trade to be
justified as a necessary evil, or more often allowed Brits to avoid confronting it at all.
According to d’Anjou and Van Male (1998: 221) it “succeeded… in fundamentally changing the
way people thought about trade in slaves and about slavery itself. After 1792 both practices
were collectively defined as abject and immoral.” But how if at all did this shift, documented in
literature and eventually manifest in law, affect individual behavior? And was it pervasive
enough to reach even the Liverpool slave traders?
22
In the twenty years after 1787, Liverpool did not shrink in the face of contention, but
rather increased its dominance of the slave trade. The city provided a defense of slaving that
was unique in the country. Every major British city produced petitions for the abolitionist cause
save Liverpool, which instead produced frequent petitions in favor of the slave trade. The
motivation for this resistance was not merely economic interest. In Manchester, which had a
deep economic interest in Liverpool’s slave industry as the source of manufactured goods for
trade, 10,000 people signed an abolition petition in 1787. By that time most Brits were
economically dependent on the slave trade, some intensely so, but only in Liverpool were actual
slave traders common. That difference mattered, at least at the level of political action.
There were occasional episodes of mob violence against abolitionists in Liverpool. But
without a doubt, the arguments for abolition from outside the community of traders became
prominent. “The friends of the hapless Africans, and many such are to be found even here, have
not been passive and unconcerned in the struggle…They have remonstrated in public and in
private (The Picture of Liverpool, 1805: 148).”As Howell (2007: 282) puts it, “It seems that the
matter was being widely discussed [in Liverpool] and strong positions on both sides of the
argument were being adopted.”
Drescher (1988) observes a shift in the content of arguments that Liverpudlians produced
for the consumption of outsiders. Before the abolition movement, there appears almost no
explicit defense of the trade from Liverpool, probably because there was no active threat against
it. Discussions of the slave trade in guides to Liverpool before the abolition movement were
matter of fact descriptions, with no justifications (or condemnations). The abolition movement
ignited an active defense of the trade. The Liverpool Council commissioned an extensive
defense of the trade on religious grounds (Harris, 1788). Letter writers, poets, and others
presented secular arguments.
The content of published documents suggests the discussions and arguments that must
have been happening in Liverpool at this time. Harris (1788) cited many non-condemning
references to slavery from the Old Testament. Observing that “an argument that proves too
much proves nothing” he shrewdly claimed that abolitionists’ frequent use of the golden rule
against slavery could similarly be used to invalidate every other hierarchical human arrangement
(72). Secular arguments included that Africans were already enslaved in Africa; that the
23
transatlantic trade exposed them to Christianity; and that it presented them with some chance of
emancipation. Of course the economic benefits of the trade were also cited. In petitions and
Parliamentary debates, economic issues were the foundation of the antiabolitionist argument
(Drescher, 1990). In the local discourse, it was sometimes observed that economic benefits were
spread wide in Liverpool through its generous charitable institutions (Drescher, 1988).
On the abolition side, the arguments targeted the inhumanity of the practice. They
backed up that characterization with stories of brutality from the ships, and a very early effort of
abolitionists was to collect such testimonials from captains and seamen in Liverpool and
elsewhere. They also challenged the anti-abolitionists’ claims about the condition of Africans in
Africa. The economic interest argument was met with the response that trade with Africa could
continue, but with a commodity other than humans. Wilberforce (1807) provides an excellent
summary of the abolitionists’ case. Drescher (1990) shows abolitionists’ emphasis on moral
issues, for example that their most characteristic arguments in Parliamentary debates were:
Policy Irrelevance (the idea that economic interests are irrelevant to the fundamentally moral
issue); British guilt; British pride; religion; and justice. The champion of abolitionism in
Liverpool was William Roscoe, who argued for decades against the trade. Roscoe was an
historian, the author of an influential biography of Lorenzo de’Medici, and he frequently
compared Liverpool to renaissance Florence. That flattering analogy offered redemption of
identity to Liverpudlians who were willing to sacrifice the naked commercialism of the slave
trade and invest in culture (Wilson, 1998).
Ultimately, the cultural revolution reached Liverpool as well. Liverpool elected Roscoe,
the face of abolition in the town, to Parliament in 1806. Further evidence that attitudes to slavery
shifted in Liverpool is apparent in the tone of guides to the town published in the earlynineteenth century (Drescher, 1988). The Picture of Liverpool published in 1805 begins its
discussion of the trade by calling the label “metropolis of slavery” an unfounded and illiberal
characterization of the town. The slave trade is attributed to three or four houses, and to
merchants from outside Liverpool. It is “the duty of those who feel for the honour of the town,
and disapprove of the traffic to rescue it from this general opprobrium by every means in their
power (147).” The slavers are recognized as being sometimes “of fair, unblemished characters,
but of mild and conciliatory dispositions, exemplary not only for their public spirit, but also for
24
their private munificence and liberality (147).”
These concessions remind us that that the
slavers were neighbors of the writer, but they were also made under the rubric of “giving the
devil his due.” The emerging picture is of a society that separated itself from the slavers.
Status Effects During the Abolition Movement
If the abolition movement’s cultural revolution affected Liverpool, what response would
we expect from traders? With regard to status effects, the prediction is clear. The abolition
movement strengthened and clarified the normative prescription against the slave trade, so we
expect that status will have a larger effect to increase entre into the slave trade. Status increases
liberty from normative prescriptions, so when the prescriptions are stronger and clearer, status
should matter more.
Multiplier of the Rate of Entering Slave Trade
Non-Abolition Years
Abolition Years
6
5
4
3
2
1
Others
Merchants
Gentlemen
0
Figure 6: Status Effects During The Abolition Movement (Table A1, Models 5 and 6)
Figure 6 compares the effect of legal status for abolition and non-abolition years. It
clearly shows that the role of legal status to encourage entry to the slave trade is markedly
stronger during the abolition movement, when social pressure against the slave trade was intense,
compared to the non-abolition years when it was latent. This difference is wholly consistent with
the idea that high status traders flouted social pressure against the slave trade and is also useful
for ruling out an alternative explanation, that Gentlemen invested in the slave trade due to
advantages of capital or competence. The increased impact of status when social pressure was
25
stronger cannot be explained by differential investment advantages or economic risk propensity
of Gentlemen, as the abolition movement did not change those things. We are left to conclude
that the highest status traders were the ones most likely to enter the slave trade, and they did so
because they were less subject to social pressure against the trade.
Network Effects During the Abolition Movement
Regarding the effect of the abolition movement on network influence, a useful starting
point is Davis and Greve’s (1997) finding that a normatively ambiguous corporate governance
practice diffused through a business network, while a clearly anti-normative one did not. They
cite long standing evidence that pro-normative practices diffuse faster than anti-normative ones.
That argument doesn’t fit our context perfectly. The slave trade was never pro-normative, rather
it was anti-normative, but ambiguously so, and then clearly anti-normative during the abolition
movement. Our theoretical attention is drawn to the individual relationship that is the structural
foundation of network diffusion. The relational effect we have demonstrated is based on
contacts between slavers and non-slavers. These increase the likelihood of non-slavers entering
the slave trade, more so if the slavers are of higher status and therefore more influence. The
congress that produces this effect can be imagined in the absence of the abolition movement, as
slavers would at least be able to offer justifications for the trade, and attest to its rewards. But
just how could that conversation work in the heat of the abolition movement, when the trade had
been “collectively defined as abject and immoral (d’Anjou and Van Male, 1998:221)?”
Put differently, the abolition movement transforms the relationships through which
slaving could diffuse, indeed it wrenches them by undermining the morale equivalency of the
actors on each side of the relationship. The abolition movement transforms relationships
between slavers and non-slavers from structural holes, where the parties have access to different
but potentially reconcilable bases of knowledge, to what Pachuki and Breiger (2010) call
“cultural holes”, which span vast and potentially irreconcilable differences of values. Cultural
holes are much harder to traverse, suggesting that network influence on the likelihood of entering
the slave trade would be less strong during the abolition movement.
26
Non-Abolition Years
Abolition Years
1.3
Multiplier of the Entry to Slaving Rate
1.2
1.1
1
Gentlemen
Slaver
Gentlemen
NonSlv
Merchant Slaver
Merchant
NonSlv
Other Slaver
Other NonSlv
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
Figure 7: Social Influence Effects During Abolition Movement. (Table A1, Models 5 and 6). Statistically significant effects are
solid bars.
Figure 7 compares the influence of network ties in abolition and non-abolition years. The
difference is striking. Essentially, the network which was so potent in non-abolition years
matters almost not at all during abolition movement. The figure shows that there were five
significant network influences in the non-abolition years (nine including the effects of the
Sephton network and network centrality which aren’t shown in Figure 68) and only one during
the abolition movement (two counting ties to slavers through the Sephton Club). Notably, major
network influences that pulled people into the slave trade in non-abolition years—the positive
effects of ties to slavers who were Gentlemen and Merchants—do not operate during abolition.
It is almost as if a switch was flipped, such that diffusion through much of the network was
turned off.
8
These network effects are relevant to our argument but don’t appear in Figure 6 because the variables are not
simple counts of ties, so the magnitude of their effects is not comparable to those in the Figure. The network
centrality measures are ranks among active traders, and the Sephton tie variables were orthoganized because of
multicolinearity, so are not simple counts of ties.
27
If diffusion through the network stopped during the abolition movement, what did
operate? The structural change models (5 and 6 in Table A1) show that a number of individualcharacteristics operate differently during abolition to predict whether a trader enters slaving. We
have already noted that legal status matters more during abolition. Before abolition, traders were
more likely to enter slaving if they had suffered recent losses in the direct trade, but that effect
doesn’t operate during abolition, suggesting a reduction in the legitimacy of the slave trade as
part of a portfolio of investment options that a trader can choose from depending on his risk
preference. Related, the effect of competition from slave traders outside Liverpool to discourage
entering the slave is many times larger during abolition years. This heightened sensitivity to
competition suggests that traders insist on a higher level of profitability to enter slaving during
abolition, in line with the idea that the illegitimacy of the trade increased.
A different dynamic comes from looking at traders who live in Liverpool, as opposed to
living elsewhere. Liverpool residents were 46% more likely to enter the trade than non-residents
in the non-abolition years, but 104% more likely during abolition. As we have noted, Liverpool
was stigmatized by anti-slavery rhetoric during abolition, and its residents responded to the
external threat to their identities with a unique stance in favor of the slave trade. They carried
their case to the end, indeed, beyond it as Roscoe was met by a violent mob when he returned to
Liverpool after casting his vote for abolition.
The theoretically relevant point is that while network position mattered very much to
determine who enters the slave trade before abolition, during abolition years, the influences did
not depend on the network position of a trader. The abolition movement represented an
activation of latent cultural values, such that all traders were now exposed to arguments that
might have previously be shared in private between network partners. In effect, the locus of
social control switched from the network to the culture, and the mechanism switched from
network diffusion to broadcast diffusion (Strang and Soule, 1998).
Were the Quakers Slavers?
Quakers are typically recognized as the most significant cultural entrepreneurs of the
British abolition movement (d’Anjou, 1996). Fascinatingly, our multivariate models do not
indicate that Quakers were less likely to enter the Liverpool slave trade, regardless of whether
28
the abolition movement was active. Indeed, as Table 2 shows, Quakers among Liverpool traders
were actually more likely to participate in the slave trade than non-Quakers (although that basic
difference is not statistically significant in multivariate models). It is worth reminding here that
our dependent variable is not participation in the abolition movement, but rather the slave trade.
That some prominent Quakers were intellectual leaders of the abolition movement is undeniable,
and indeed, reflected in our analysis in the fact that the entre to slaving decreased after Anthony
Benezet began his campaign against it in Britain in 1761. Furthermore, it is a possible that
Quakers in general may have been active participants in the abolition movement, while Quakers
among the Liverpool traders were not discouraged from the slave trade, although such an effect
would be intriguing at the least. Also it should be noted that accounts of the abolition movement
that attend to broad indicators of participation rather than focusing on intellectual arguments give
less emphasis to Quakers. Most notable in this regard is Drescher (1985) who concludes based
on analyses of petition signers that “the data squares poorly with the attribution of abolitionism
as a nonconformist middle-class movement (1986:130; see also Hudson, 2001).”
Quakers were active and successful in commerce and the evidence is clear that some
Quakers participated in the slave trade even as other Quakers railed against it. Leading Quakers
prosecuted the slave trade in Rhode Island, and served as members of the Royal Africa
Company, the early British slave trading monopoly (Davis, 1966: 304-305). Quakers were
prominent and influential in Bristol when it was a leading slave port, and were leading slavers in
Lancaster, close to Liverpool (Hudson, 2001: 562).
Table 2 presents a comparison between
Quaker and Non-Quaker traders in our data. The Quakers among Liverpool traders represented
higher status than non-Quakers. They were more likely to be Gentlemen and Esquires, more
likely to participate in the elite Sephton Club, and more central in the trading network. So, our
arguments about the direct and network effects of status on the entre to slaving would have
operated to push and pull Quakers into the trade. Add to this the idea that tight-knit Quaker
networks promoted the transfer of capital and minimized business risk during the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries (Prior and Kirby, 1993), which would make the Quakers less sensitive
to the capital requirements and risks of the slave trade. These arguments suggest that while the
Quakers may have been subject more than other traders to ideological arguments against the
slave trade, they also had more of the status, social and economic resources that we have shown
made traders more likely to participate in slaving.
29
Table 2
Quakers Among the Liverpool Traders
Non- Quakers Quakers
Number
5272
648
% Slavers
28%
38%
% Sephton Club Members 4.2%
10.6%
% Gentlemen/ Esquire
3.2%
5.1%
% Merchants
51.0%
54.3%
% Other Status
45.8%
40.6%
Network at the End of Trading Career
Number of Ties
7.1
13.2
% Ties to Quakers
17%
20%
We further investigated the role of the Quakers by running our full model, with additional
network variables to capture ties to slaving and non-slaving Quakers, on four subsets of our data:
(Non-Quakers vs. Quakers) * (Abolition vs. Non-Abolition Years). This allows us to identify any
differences in the forces that affected entre to slaving for Quakers and Non-Quakers. Most of the
influences we identified (33 of 42) were statistically the same for Quakers and Non-Quakers. A
few differences don’t invite systematic explanations, and might be attributed to chance (e.g., ties
to non-slaving Gentlemen and non-slaving Others did more to dissuade Non-Quakers from
slavery than Quakers in non-abolition years). More interesting to us was the fact that in nonabolition years, network ties to Quakers who were slavers did more to encourage non-Quakers to
enter the slave trade. In the same years, ties to non-slaving Quakers did more to keep other
Quakers out of the slave trade than non-Quakers. The second part is consistent with existing
history, which has anti-slaving sentiment diffusing through the Quaker network at least since
1761. The first part suggests that those Quakers who were slavers were particularly influential
on non-Quaker partners, perhaps because they represented a higher morale standing with regard
to the trade that served as a shield for their network partners.
Discussion
30
We justified analysis of the Liverpool slave trade as a source of insight about the trade itself,
the phenomenon of dirty business, and theory. We’ll consider these in the reverse order in this
discussion. One of the great opportunities for theory presented by the case is to examine the
understudied effect of social movements on culture (Earl, 2004; Poletta, 2008). The abolition
movement has previously been identified as an example of this effect. Our contribution comes
from our analytic attention to individual choices made in cultural context. Poletta (2008 93)
identifies the “methodological precision of psychological treatments of cognitive schemas” as a
model for analyzing changes in “people’s beliefs about appropriate means.” We aimed to reveal
the impact of the abolition movement on the models of action of Liverpool traders by comparing
the effects of the same influences on their behaviors when the movement was on and when it
wasn’t. Factors like individual status, social relationships, residential identity and economic
interests operated differently on the traders depending on the status of the abolition movement.
The differential effect of, for example, foreign competition or institutionalized status, on the
investment decision of a trader, can only be attributed to a change in his model of action.
Models of action, along with definitions of success, are culture as it manifests itself in
individuals.
Attention to individual models of action not only provides a rare opportunity to document
cultural change. It also provides insight into cultural change as it occurred in higher-order
structures. Changes in organizations and states, the typical explanatory targets of social
movement analysis, occur on the foundation of changes in the people who populate them. This
suggests another path for social movement theorists seeking to understand the macro effects of
movements, through changes they create at the micro level. Of course, social movement
research has examined individuals, but typically those who are mobilized, rather than those they
mobilize against. Our approach suggests that the culturally informed models held by the
individuals that populate the institutions social movements target matter for social movement
outcomes. Understanding those models could help predict which social movement tactics will be
effective and when macro change will occur. As Drescher (1986: 94) put it, “[t]he creation of a
climate of opinion was therefore the most important residue of frequently renewed petitions.”
That climate of opinion not only changed the behavior of Liverpool traders, but ultimately lead
to a change in British law to outlaw the slave trade.
31
Our analysis also suggests that social movements might examine culture’s effects on
individual choice as an end in itself, and not only as a trigger for more macro change. For
example, we wonder if the abolition movement could have eventually strangled the Liverpool
slave trade through normative pressure, absent a change in law. Regardless, there were certainly
other behavioral changes that resulted from the cultural shift affected by the abolition movement.
Soon after British abolition Liverpool became an enthusiastic center of support for subsequent
abolition and emancipation campaigns, an effect that is hard to explain except as a redemptive
response to earlier normative targeting of the city by abolitionists. Attention to the cultural
impacts of social movements invites attention to the models of action of individuals. This opens
up a range of potential outcomes of social movements, micro and macro, intended and
unintended.
Our findings also encourage increased attention to the cultural context of social networks,
even to the point of suggesting that ties and networks cannot be understood independent of their
cultural context. In our analysis, the same network tie had very different effects depending on
the cultural context. The normative status of slaving transformed the identity of slavers, and
their potential relationships with others. Emirbayer and Goodwin (1994: 1441) observed that
”[s]ympolic polarities crystallize within cultural structures, dividing social and metaphysical
reality into such antithetical categories as “pure” and “polluted,” “just” and “unjust,” and
“sacred” and “profane.” Such categories provide the groundwork for normative evaluations as
well as the guidelines for action.” We would add that they provide the foundation on which
relationships, and networks of relationships, are built.
The transformation, at least in its influence, of the Liverpool trading network wrought by the
abolition movement, reminds analysts that relationships depend on identities, status including
morale standing, and the quality of interaction, which in turn is affected by shared values and
symbols. This idea has been applied to understand cross-national results of brokerage (Xiao and
Tsui, 1997). We think it deserves consideration whenever the effects of structure are compared
across organizations, places and times. It may be critical to understanding the operation of
structure even within a single network in times of cultural tumult. The concept of a cultural hole
(Pachuki and Breiger, 2010) is a useful way to think of one extreme effect of culture on a dyadic
relationship, when the two parties to a relationship represent incompatible value systems. We
32
have shown that influence through the relationship, at least in the domain of the conflicting
values, decreases in this situation.
Future research should examine other implications of cultural holes. Staying in our empirical
context, we wonder about the domain specificity of the effect we identified. After abolition,
might slavers and non-slavers influence each other in ways besides entre into the slave trade, for
example might they influence each other’s votes for parliament, or taste in art? And what of the
ongoing dynamics of the trading relationship? Tripedo (2013) showed that Whigs and Tories
partnered under certain conditions in overseas trading voyages in Bristol, in the same period we
study. It remains to be determined if the much wider cultural hole between slavers and nonslavers after the abolition movement could be traversed to allow co-investment. Future research
should also embrace the fact that cultural holes do not represent mere incompatibility, but are in
many cases associated with negative value judgments. This suggests the possibility of second
order effects of stigma in networks. Pontikes, Negro and Rao (2010) showed that the network
partners of stigmatized actors were penalized. Status matters also in the diffusion of stigma. In
a result that may be a cousin of our finding that high status traders violate strong norms, they
found that academy Academy Award winning actors who make films with communists were
penalized less than lower status actors who did the same. And it may not only be actors that
suffer stigma, but also ideas. Silverman and Ingram (2013) show that the Liverpool slavers were
responsible for early innovations in economic governance that did not transfer smoothly to other
commercial cities. Were the ideas themselves, which were applicable to many trading situations,
tainted through association with slaving? The recognition that relationships depend on cultural
understandings leads to many research topics, and the concept of the cultural hole serves to
connect many of them.
Of course, our case has limits as a basis for future theorizing. Obvious among them is that
we have treated the abolition movement as a purely exogenous influence in our analysis. We see
that as justified given our focus on the investing behavior of Liverpool traders, but we do not
suggest that the abolition movement emerged independent of the economic interests that it
affected. We encourage theories of the reciprocal relationships between social movements and
their targets, even when those targets are individuals. Similarly, the abolition movement is
probably an unusual case in terms of its impact on cultural change. The culture it affected was
33
unusually ripe for change. d’Anjou (1996) considers the implications of this for general theories
of social movements and cultural change. Furthermore, the “cultural hole” we study, that
between slavers and non-slavers in the heat of the abolition movement, may itself be unusual. It
represents an extreme case of value-incompatibility, and may therefore be unrepresentative of
the ways that cultural differences effect relationships and networks.
Beyond theories of social movements, culture and networks, we also see in our study an
opportunity to examine an important phenomenon, which we called dirty business. When will
economic actors do things which are legal but against cultural values? The answer includes the
ingredients of individual status and social influence, but their quantities are contingent on the
clarity of the cultural values (Davis and Greve, 1997). When slaving was anti-normative in an
ambiguous sense (“a necessary evil”, distasteful but not confronted openly), social influence
through the trading network mattered. It was apparently possible to sustain social spaces where
slaving was endorsed, or at least not penalized. These spaces were influenced by individuals of
high status. When the cultural ordering was settled decisively against slaving by the abolition
movement, entre to slaving continued, but with different predictors. Network influence
mattered much less, but individual status mattered much more.
These results can help to both predict and prevent the emergence of dirty business. For
prediction, our results suggest that there is an element of chance as to whether and where dirty
business first takes root. Before abolition, Gentlemen were more likely to enter the slave trade
than others, but the effect was relatively small. Whether or not they did enter, they weighed
heavily to influence their network partners to do as they did. If chance had played out slightly
differently, and one or two Gentlemen slavers had foregone the trade, it may have been much
harder for it to take root in the network. Similarly, opportunities for contact will also influence
the emergence of dirty business. Yue, Luo and Ingram (2013) found that collusion was more
likely to emerge among New York bankers connected through private clubs than through public
directorships. Relationships in the Liverpool trading network were private, embedded as they
were in small voluntary groups. And the Sephton Club in Liverpool offered a space where the
elite could associate in private, and it was a fertile site for the incubation of the slave trade
(related, it is interesting that ties to slavers through this private club were the only ones that
34
promoted slaving after the onset of abolition). One strategy for reducing the incidence of dirty
business would be to publicize the associations of the elite.
Another way to defuse the social influence that may encourage dirty business is to clarify the
normative status of the practices. When that was clearly negative for slaving in Liverpool, the
network lost sway, and individual status was the big gainer in influence. It is interesting here to
think about the nature of status in our analysis, embedded in law, and often derived from birth.
This is just the sort of sticky status that would be most likely to encourage norm violations
(Philips and Zuckerman, 2001) and British society is probably safer now that the categories of
Gentlemen and Esquire have lost their legal status and social meaning. More generally, we
recommend that analysts consider the conditions under which status is sticky, and when it can be
eroded by anti-normative behavior.
Another change when norms turned against slaving concerned the influence of risk and
reward on the entry choice. In the face of abolition, risk-taking traders were less likely to turn to
slaving, and economic rewards for entering the slave trade had to be higher to induce entry.
Others such as North (1990: 22) have suggested a trade-off between individual values and
economic returns. Our evidence suggests that others’ values also enter the equation, and that
variance in the strength of values should be considered in addition to variance in the economic
price of maintaining them. This indicates another point of pressure for efforts to reduce the
practice of dirty business, targeting the economic risks and returns directly. Effects of this
strategy will depend on normative clarity regarding the targeted practices. This suggests an
addition to emerging theories about corporate response to boycotts, and may help understand the
theoretical route through which the media affects boycott impact (King, 2008).
Our final step is to interpret our analysis for what we know about the slave trade itself.
We see our results as conforming what is perhaps the core tenant of the last half-century of
history on the trade: That it was counter to key elements of the British culture, but that these
differences were mostly tacit until the abolition movement. We approached participation in the
slave trade as an act of economic deviance, and gained substantial purchase on it by applying
theories as to who breaks social rules. On the other hand, there is no anticipation in the extant
literature of our finding that Gentlemen played a key role in the persecution of the trade, or that
social-structural positions affected who took up the trade. In the infrequent instances when the
35
question of who the slave traders were has been considered at all, the conclusion has been (upon
little or no evidence) that they were no different from their contemporaries, and the implication
that the decision to take up slave trading was comparable to the decision to take up any other
business (High, 1959). That idea we have shown to be false. Entering the slave trade was
different even from participation in the direct trade to the slave colonies, although that business
too was sometimes challenged as morally tainted. It was nothing like becoming a grocer.
The particular role of Gentlemen does suggest an interpretation for British history beyond
the one for social theory. Gentlemen (and Esquires) in the late eighteenth century did not merely
represent an institutionalized social status. They could also be seen as the representatives of a
hierarchical system that would soon fall away. Our analysis might not have been possible a
generation alter, as the titles, particularly Esquire, proliferated to the point of losing their
meaning (Leneman, 2000). Given this, the question occurs as to whether Gentlemen entered the
slave trade not only because they were less subject to social penalties, but because they were
more attracted its inherent hierarchy. Drescher (1986: 140) generalizes that “the British elite’s
reaction to abolitionism….is that the higher the social level the deeper was the opposition.” This
may over-simplify the battle lines. Hudson (2001) shows the Tory and Church of England ties of
a number of abolitionist leaders. He also identifies planters who returned to Britain with slavemade wealth as a boorish threat to the country gentry. Compelling histories of the abolition
movement have been based on the idea that exogenous forces such as the industrial revolution
and rivalry with the U.S. cemented surprising alliances (Drescher, 1986; Brown, 2006). Our
focus on the commercial partnerships of the time provides a new methodology for examining the
impact of the myriad political, social and cultural forces on actual Brits as they pursued their
fundamental interests (see also Trapido, 2013).
The flip side of the fact that some high Tories were abolitionists is the fact that many
Quakers were slavers. The Quaker participation in the slave trade has sometimes been cited as
an illustration of the tensions for Quakers between piety and worldliness. But Quakers are
usually credited with resolving decisively against slavery by the middle of the eighteenth
century, and Quaker arguments, diffused initially through Quaker networks, are routinely cited
as at the heart of abolitionist propaganda. Not only did Quakers push the cause, but purportedly
enforced it in their community: “Quaker elders agreed to disown slave traders (Brown, 2006;
36
90).” Yet we find that even when the abolition movement was hot, Quakers in Liverpool were
no less likely than non-Quakers to enter the trade. They were never influential on their nonQuaker network partners to forego the trade. The trade-off between profits and other interests is
the crux of political economy, and our evidence suggests that there is even more to be gleaned
about it from the Quakers’ relationship to the institutions of slavery. Our evidence also yields an
observation about historical methods. Our micro study of who participated in the slave trade
parallels Drescher’s (1986) examination of who participated in the abolition movement. Both of
these efforts conclude that the Quakers were less exceptional than do the histories that focus on
the writings about abolition by great men (Davis, 1966; Anstey, 1975; Brown, 2006). We do not
make an argument for history “from above” or “from below”, but instead cite this example to
justify taking multiple perspectives on important phenomena.
Conclusion
We opened the paper by citing to promise of history to help us understand who we are as
a people, and we’ll finish there. We do not claim direct insight regarding contemporary
American (or British) culture from the case of the Liverpool slave traders. Indeed, we see the
case as a caution against drawing straight cultural connections between times and peoples. Yet,
that style of cultural determinism is apparent when American scholars think of Britain’s cultural
influence with regard to race. From the expectation that eighteenth century Londoners would
view an interracial marriage the way we do today, to the idea that brutality against Africans in
the in the seventeenth century Chesapeake was a cultural import from Britain. It is tempting to
respond that early Americans may have imported their racial attitudes not from British culture
but from British slave traders. But even that idea falls on the evidence. The slave traders were
mercantilists and materialists. They valued profits more than the freedom of Africans, but they
did not act on a theory of racial inferiority as Bailyn (2012: 175) suggested. Most important, the
slave traders were deviants, rather than paragons of the British culture of the time. Whatever our
own cultural schema with regard to race are, they are not directly descended from British slave
traders. This, of course, is a statement of “who we are not” rather than “who we are.” But in the
face of the frequent treatments of race in culture that assume a determinism that is almost
genetic, we intend it to liberate the scholarly imagination.
37
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Appendix
Data, Methods and Analysis
We relied on data from four sources: (1) The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (to identify
slave voyages and their owners); (2) Liverpool Plantation Register (to identify non-slave voyages
and their owners); (3) Gore’s Directories (to identify the occupation and status of owners); (4)
Archival records of the Mock Corporation of Sephton to identify members and their dates of
joining. We created a trader network where two traders were connected if they had ever coinvested in an overseas shipping venture. The Sephton Club network counted two individuals as
connected to each other if they were simultaneously members of the club.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (TAST)) compiles data on all known slave voyages
throughout the entire trans-Atlantic slave-trade period, between 1514 and 1867. For each
voyage, the database includes the following information where possible: the names of all vessel
owners, the dates on which the voyage began and ended, the location(s) on the African coast
where the vessel embarked slaves, the location(s) in the Americas where the vessel disembarked
slaves, and the outcome of the voyage – successful completion, sank, captured by privateers or
pirates, lost to some other calamity, etc. We use these data to identify the number of voyages by
year and departure port for Figure 1. We use the data for Liverpool-departing voyages to
identify slave voyages undertaken by Liverpool ships, and the shipowners involved in these
voyages. Co-ownership of vessels in this database is used as an input into the construction of the
shipowner network.
The Liverpool Plantation Register database (Schofield et al., undated) is a series of computer
files compiled by historians of Liverpool’s maritime trade. The files cover a range of data,
including information on all vessels registered at the port of Liverpool between 1734 and 1784
(as recorded in the official Register of Vessels at Liverpool) and on all voyages known to have
been undertaken by these vessels (as recorded in voyage registration documents, insurance
documents, and newspaper advertisements and articles). For each voyage, the database includes
the following information: the names of all vessel owners, the occupations of many vessel
owners, the dates on which the voyage began, the destination(s) of the voyage, and the outcome
of the voyage – successful completion, sank, captured by privateers or pirates, lost to some other
calamity, etc. These data cover both slave-trade and non-slave-trade voyages. We use these data
to identify the non-slave voyages undertaken by Liverpool ships, and the shipowners involves in
these voyages. We also use these data to double-check the TAST data on slave voyages.
Beginning in 1766, John Gore began publication of Gore’s Liverpool Directory, Containing an
Alphabetical List of the Merchants, Tradesmen, and Principal Inhabitants of the Town of
Liverpool with their Respective Addresses. This directory was published roughly every three
years through the mid-1800s. We used this directory to identify occupations of those shipowners
43
whose occupations were not provided in the Liverpool Plantation Register database, and to
double-check the occupation data that were provided in that database. By integrating
information in Gore’s Directory with that in the Liverpool Plantation Register database, we were
able to identify occupations for more than 98% of all owners appearing in our data set.
The Records of the Mock Corporation of Sephton were accessed directly by us in the National
Archives housed at the Liverpool Record Office. These were complemented by reference to
Horley (1893) who wrote a history of Sephton that relied extensively on the Records of the Mock
Corporation. He transcribes some records that we have not found the originals of. The records
present summaries of meetings. They also present a comprehensive list of members, which
provides information on when they joined in most cases. We relied on this list to construct the
associational network of the Sephton Club. The members list also presents the legal status of the
members, which we used in some cases to fill in status data that was missing from other sources.
Analysis of Transition to Slaving
Our statistical analysis looks at the likelihood of a trader first entering the slave trade by
investing in a slaving voyage. The unit of analysis is the investor-voyage, and the dependent
variable is a zero if that investment is not slaving, one if it is. The models below are logit
models. We have also estimated event history models with comparable results, but prefer the
logit specification because it explicitly recognizes that the risk of engaging in the slave trade is
higher for traders that invest in more voyages. Results appear in Table A1.
There are a number of interesting results among the variables that are not central to our
arguments in this paper. % Ships Lost, which is the percentage of a trader’s previous voyages
that have not returned, increases the likelihood of entering the slave trade. Traders that suffered
losses in the direct trade turned to slavery, perhaps in search of a business they could succeed at,
or because their propensity to take risks increased as a function of their losses. Direct Trade
Experience, which is the log of the number of direct trade voyages a trader has invested in, is
negatively associated with entering the slave trade. In one sense, this is unsurprising, as knowhow in one business should predict persisting at it. However, direct trade activity is an indicator
of wealth, so the result indicates that it was not simply the wealthiest traders who entered slaving
(that conclusion is reinforced by the evidence that direct trade losses prompted entrance to
slaving).
The transition to slaving was reduced during the US Revolutionary War, a time when the British
slave trade was greatly reduced. We conducted supplementary analysis to see if other variables
in our model (e.g., status or networks) functioned differently during the War, as they did during
the abolition years. They did not; instead it was an across-the-board decrease in the likelihood of
entering the slave trade. Liverpool residents were more likely to enter slaving than investors
who lived elsewhere, and more so during abolition. We interpret this as a result of the
oppositional identity that Liverpool developed as a result of its deep association with slaving.
44
Global Competition is the number of slaving voyages in a year launched from outside England.
It is negatively associated with the transition to slaving, more so during abolition. We also
include a dichotomous variable “Post 1761” to capture the increasing momentum and salience of
intellectual arguments against slavery as the eighteenth century advanced (d’Anjou, 1996). We
chose 1761 as it was the year that Anthony Benezet, probably the most influential anti-slavery
thinker, began communicating his arguments and exhortations to British Quakers.
We operationalize the active years of the abolition movement based on Drescher’s categorization
of the “hot” years of the movement as 1788-1792 and 1804-807 (1986:12-13). These years
include eighteen percent of the voyages and nineteen percent of the slaving voyages in our data.
In Models 1-4, Abolition Year attracts a negative coefficient, indicating that on average, traders
were less likely to become slavers during the movement. Models 5 and 6 present a structural
change model by estimating our full model on two exclusive subsets of our data, that
representing non-abolition and abolition years.
Did Gentlemen Slavers Perform or Invest Differently?
We argue that Gentlemen entered slaving at a higher rate, and influenced others to enter, as a
function of their social status. We have already explained that we rely on the fact that status
effects were strongest when the normative pressure against the slave trade was strongest to rule
out the alternative explanation the Gentlemen’s entry into slaving was due to superior resources
or capabilities. The fact that the greater infectiousness of Gentlemen disappears during abolition
similarly works against the argument that they were more influential simply because they were
more capable. Nevertheless, the fact that Gentlemen’s status mattered does not mean other
differences between Gentlemen and others didn’t, so here we investigate whether Gentlemen had
differential success or patterns of influence.
We explored those questions by looking at all Liverpool voyages in the Slave Voyages data base,
and considering whether Gentlemen were among the ownership team for the voyage. We
differentiated between whether the Gentlemen was first in the ownership list or occupied a
subordinate position. We differentiated this position based on the assumption that the firstranked owner represented a larger share of ownership and/or acted as “ship’s husband”, the
leader of the venture who gave instructions to the captain (Stephen Behrendt, personal
communication). The variable Gentleman Husband indicates that the first owner was a
Gentlemen, Other Gentlemen is a count of how many other Gentlemen were among the
ownership group. Parallel specifications consider simply whether there were Any Gentlemen in
the ownership team. Additionally we control for the year of the voyage, the size of the ship
(tons), whether the voyage was in wartime, the size of the ownership group, the experience of the
ship’s husband, and whether the captain had an ownership stake in the venture.
Our dependent variables for performance include the likelihood of being captured or sunk, the
number of crew who died on the voyage, the shortfall in slaves (the number planned for the
45
voyage less the actual number obtained, which is a negative indicator of performance), the time
of the overall voyage and the time spent in the Americas selling slaves and acquiring cargo
(shorter voyages are better because they increase the likelihood of time for a voyage the
following year). Gentlemen slavers were neither more nor less likely to see their ships sink, or
their crew die. Voyages with Gentlemen Husbands were less likely to be captured, and voyages
with Any Gentlemen among the owners experienced smaller shortfalls of slaves.
Additionally, voyages with Gentlemen Husbands were shorter in time overall. To further
investigate this interesting effect we re-estimated our duration models using fixed effects. In the
overall voyage length model we included an effect for the first destination in West Africa. The
inclusion of fixed effects causes the Gentlemen Husband variables to become insignificant. This
means that the shorter durations of voyages with Gentleman Husbands was due to the fact that
they went to different places in Africa. The choice of places to acquire slaves was a strategic one
and typically represented trade-offs. For example at places in West Africa with a centralized
slave fort, acquiring slaves was faster but also more expensive. So, it could well be that
Gentlemen slavers paid a higher price for slaves in exchange for their shorter voyages.
Alternatively, it could be that Gentlemen had some particular advantage that allowed them to
operate more quickly. For example, African traders like the Efik in Old Calabar had a banded
status system that in some ways mirrored that of Britain (Behrendt et al., 2010). Perhaps high
status African traders favored high status English traders. Both of these mechanisms are
different from our focus on “freedom from normative control”, however they both depend on
Gentlemen’s high status. Overall, the fact that Gentlemen Husband’s voyages were shorter and
less likely to be captured, and that Gentlemen’s voyages experienced lower slave shortfalls are
all indicative of better performance. However, given the trade-offs between different dimensions
of performance, we cannot draw firm conclusions in the absence of systematic data on prices and
profits.
Turning to the nature of the voyages Gentlemen engaged in, they were less likely to employ the
governance mechanism of extending an ownership stake to the captain. Silverman and Ingram
(2013) show that captain ownership was an effective governance mechanism for reducing some
risks of long distance trade. Although it was used more often in Liverpool than in other English
ports, it was not typical even in Liverpool. We speculate that Gentlemen may have been less
likely to employ this effective governance mechanism because including Captains among owners
with Gentlemen is to form a cross-class equivalency that may have offended their status.
In an analysis not reported, we found that Gentlemen tended to be higher on the ownership list
than non-Gentlemen (average rank 2.6 for Gentlemen, 3.1 for non-Gentlemen) and were more
likely to show up listed first (the role we call “Husband”) among the owners (36% vs. 26%). If
that tendency indicates a higher ownership stake, it might mean that Gentlemen invested more
than others, but listing first may represent not the magnitude of Gentlemen’s investments, but
instead a form of deference. Moreover, Gentlemen invested in larger ships, and were more
likely to invest during wartime, which represents particularly high risks and rewards.
46
Apparently, Gentlemen made different trade-offs between risk and return than other traders. We
do not know whether this is attributable to economic wealth or status differences.
We also examined whether Gentlemen’s slaving investments were more successful during
abolition years (supplementary analyses available from the authors). There was no systematic
indication that they were. Given that Gentlemen slavers were relatively few, we repeated the
analysis of slave voyage outcomes using fixed effects to identify the Gentlemen slaver that was
highest ranked on the ownership list. Results (available from the authors) indicated that when
fixed effects are included, there are no main performance effects for Gentlemen Husbands or
Others (effects regarding the size of ships and propensity to invest during war remain). Further,
no individual Gentlemen Slavers jump out as having consistently better performance. The
closest are probably Thomas Hughes and Richard Stevens who had unlikely runs of slaving
voyages that experienced neither capture nor shipwreck. Yet neither of these seem to have left
much of an imprint on history (for example, neither appear in the name index of Richardson,
Schwarz and Tibbles (2007) recent history of Liverpool slaving, nor in Williams (1897) older
history). Together, the various analyses of the performance of Gentlemen slavers suggest that it
would have been very hard for even a careful observer of the industry to develop a belief that
Gentlemen had a performance advantage in slaving based on anything except superstition.
Despite our doubts that industry observers would have attributed superior performance to
Gentlemen, given the evidence that suggests that Gentlemen were more risk-taking in
investments, and that they may have performed better in slaving voyages, it is worth returning to
our findings that they were more likely to enter the slave trade, and more influential on their
network partners choices to enter. In particular, it is worth re-emphasizing that both the direct
effect of legal status, and its effect on network influence depend on the normative environment
regarding slavery, particularly that they differ during the abolition movement. Our results allow
the possibility that investing competence, wealth, and risk profile account for some of the reason
Gentlemen were more likely to enter the slave trade and more influential on the decisions of
others to enter. But those factors cannot account for the fact that Gentlemen were more
influential, and network influence less influential, during the abolition movement, while our
arguments that focus on the effects of status can. We therefore conclude that while part of the
Gentlemen effects we identify may be attributable to economic factors, social status and social
influence were also operative.
47
Table A1:
Logit Models of The Likelihood of Trader Investing in The Slave Trade for the First Time
VARIABLES
Gentlemen
Merchant
(1)
All Years
(2)
All Years
(3)
All Years
(4)
All Years
(5)
Non
Abolition
Years
(6)
Abolition
Years
0.759***
(0.103)
0.174***
(0.0576)
0.0315
0.801***
(0.103)
0.169***
(0.0578)
0.0241
0.762***
(0.104)
0.160***
(0.0578)
0.0196
0.489***
(0.111)
0.0993*
(0.0590)
0.0139
0.242*
(0.128)
0.0858
(0.0621)
0.0274
1.640***
(0.299)
0.508**
(0.219)
-0.0508
(0.0718)
0.587***
(0.185)
(0.0719)
-0.00136***
(0.000301)
8.27e-07***
(2.47e-07)
0.616***
(0.186)
(0.0721)
-0.00137***
(0.000302)
8.55e-07***
(2.47e-07)
0.599***
(0.187)
0.0711*
(0.0401)
0.124***
(0.0361)
-0.105***
(0.0382)
-0.825***
(0.0298)
0.498***
(0.0561)
-0.987***
(0.252)
-0.535***
(0.0841)
-0.000728*
(0.000413)
-0.667***
(0.0612)
-1.388***
(0.108)
-0.718***
(0.0347)
0.505***
(0.0562)
-1.074***
(0.252)
-0.555***
(0.0843)
-0.000353
(0.000418)
-0.605***
(0.0625)
-1.332***
(0.111)
-0.733***
(0.0350)
0.506***
(0.0563)
-1.047***
(0.254)
-0.554***
(0.0846)
-0.000247
(0.000420)
-0.613***
(0.0629)
-1.330***
(0.113)
(0.0741)
-0.00162***
(0.000308)
8.21e-07***
(2.54e-07)
0.655***
(0.191)
0.0932**
(0.0403)
0.117***
(0.0365)
-0.100***
(0.0381)
0.155**
(0.0623)
-0.405***
(0.0851)
0.0400***
(0.00874)
-0.0212*
(0.0118)
-0.104***
(0.0329)
-0.0527***
(0.0133)
-0.548***
(0.0405)
0.408***
(0.0577)
-1.020***
(0.253)
-0.560***
(0.0858)
4.40e-05
(0.000425)
-0.626***
(0.0636)
-1.312***
(0.114)
(0.0774)
-0.00178***
(0.000333)
9.36e-07***
(2.79e-07)
0.717***
(0.200)
0.0920**
(0.0447)
0.109***
(0.0379)
-0.149***
(0.0416)
0.201***
(0.0702)
-0.454***
(0.0968)
0.0500***
(0.00959)
-0.0135
(0.0122)
-0.155***
(0.0359)
-0.0560***
(0.0141)
-0.547***
(0.0427)
0.378***
(0.0612)
-0.996***
(0.255)
(0.264)
-0.000590
(0.000884)
6.01e-08
(6.87e-07)
0.122
(0.692)
-0.107
(0.138)
0.934**
(0.399)
0.0601
(0.0953)
-0.164
(0.156)
-0.166
(0.171)
0.0261
(0.0269)
-0.129***
(0.0416)
0.0322
(0.0924)
0.0751
(0.0460)
-0.550***
(0.134)
0.715***
(0.199)
0.000523
(0.000445)
-0.619***
(0.0646)
-1.390***
(0.120)
-0.00480***
(0.00155)
26,047
26,047
26,047
26,047
21,152
4,895
Quaker
Network Status
(Network Status)2
% Ships Lost
Septhton Member
Sephton Slaving Ties
Sephton NonSlv Ties
Gentlemen Slaving Ties
Gentlemen NonSlv Ties
Merchant Slaving Ties
Merchant NonSlv Ties
Other Slaving Ties
Other NonSlv Ties
Direct Trade Exp.
Liverpool Resident
US War
Abolition Year
Global Competition
Post-1761
Constant
Observations
Standard errors in parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
-1.803***
(0.541)
48
Table A2
Did Gentlemen Slavers Invest or Perform Differently?
VA RIA B LES
Year
Num. Owners
Captain Owner
Husband Exp.
Size
War Year
Gent Husband
Other Gents
A ny Gent
Co nstant
Observatio ns
R-squared
ShipShipCrew
Captured Captured
wrecked wrecked
Died
Crew
Died
Slave
Slave
Vo yage
Sho rtfall Sho rtfall Length
Vo yage
Length
Vo yage
Length
Time in
Time in
Captain
A mericas A mericas Owner
Captain
Owner
Size
Size
0.01**
(0.00)
0.00
(0.03)
-0.34*
(0.19)
-0.00
(0.00)
-0.00
(0.00)
0.11
(0.14)
0.14
(0.21)
-0.16
(0.17)
-0.14***
(0.02)
-0.04
(0.06)
0.54
(0.45)
0.03***
(0.01)
0.01***
(0.00)
-0.21
(0.38)
-2.40***
(0.09)
1.42***
(0.54)
4.94
(3.29)
0.18***
(0.06)
0.29***
(0.01)
-9.74***
(2.85)
-5.25
(4.29)
-2.12
(3.06)
-1.83***
(0.14)
2.94***
(0.86)
13.57**
(5.49)
0.20**
(0.10)
0.04
(0.03)
16.36***
(4.76)
-2.39***
(0.17)
0.44
(0.95)
16.21***
(5.73)
0.08
(0.10)
0.19***
(0.03)
14.70***
(5.05)
-1.24
(7.27)
0.69
(5.23)
-0.47***
(0.07)
-1.25**
(0.49)
3.42
(3.17)
-0.06
(0.05)
0.10***
(0.01)
1.62
(2.77)
0.33
(3.42)
1.48
(2.64)
-0.01***
(0.00)
0.30***
(0.02)
-0.01***
(0.00)
0.30***
(0.02)
2.69***
(0.05)
-2.13***
(0.47)
2.70***
(0.05)
-2.26***
(0.46)
-0.04***
(0.00)
0.00
(0.00)
-0.03
(0.10)
0.06
(0.21)
-0.21**
(0.11)
-0.04***
(0.00)
0.00
(0.00)
-0.03
(0.10)
0.01**
(0.00)
-0.01
(0.03)
-0.34*
(0.19)
-0.00
(0.00)
-0.00
(0.00)
0.11
(0.14)
0.05***
(0.00)
-0.02
(0.03)
-0.17
(0.17)
-0.01**
(0.00)
-0.00***
(0.00)
1.58***
(0.12)
-0.43**
(0.22)
0.22*
(0.13)
0.04***
(0.00)
-0.01
(0.02)
-0.18
(0.17)
-0.01**
(0.00)
-0.00***
(0.00)
1.56***
(0.12)
-0.14***
(0.02)
-0.04
(0.06)
0.53
(0.45)
0.03***
(0.01)
0.01***
(0.00)
-0.21
(0.38)
-0.26
(0.40)
-0.23
(0.33)
-2.40***
(0.09)
1.52***
(0.52)
4.91
(3.29)
0.18***
(0.06)
0.30***
(0.01)
-9.76***
(2.85)
-1.81***
(0.14)
2.53***
(0.88)
13.85**
(5.49)
0.23**
(0.10)
0.04
(0.03)
16.79***
(4.76)
-15.35**
(7.19)
3.97
(4.99)
-0.01
0.02
-0.17
-5.95**
-2.99
(0.15)
(0.14)
(0.31)
(2.90)
(4.85)
-19.26*** -19.68*** -83.06*** -81.90*** 249.38*** 249.27*** 4,267.24***4,271.89***3,590.12***3,630.05***4,623.38***895.74***
(7.14)
(7.13)
(7.75)
(7.73)
(27.59) (27.53) (154.55) (154.22) (244.17) (243.54) (308.21) (118.29)
-19.26*** -19.68*** -83.04*** -81.88*** 249.38*** 249.27*** 4,267.24***4,271.87***3,590.21***3,630.15***4,623.79*** 896.07***
-7.14
-7.13
-7.75
-7.73
-27.59
-27.53
-154.56 -154.23 -244.17 -243.54 -308.21
-118.29
4,591
Standard erro rs in parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
4,591
4,591
4,591
2,159
0.06
2,159
0.06
3,860
0.19
3,860
0.19
3,317
0.1
3,317
0.1
2,646
0.27
1,746
0.04
-0.47***
(0.07)
-1.23***
(0.47)
3.42
(3.16)
-0.06
(0.05)
0.10***
(0.01)
1.56
(2.76)
2.18
(2.47)
895.85*** 16.51***
(118.12)
(5.07)
896.20*** 16.52***
-118.12
-5.07
1,746
0.05
4,591
11.22***
(4.27)
5.21*
(3.01)
Vo yage
in War
Vo yage
in War
-0.03***
(0.00)
0.04***
(0.02)
-0.00
(0.10)
0.01***
(0.00)
-0.00***
(0.00)
-0.03***
(0.00)
0.04**
(0.02)
-0.00
(0.10)
0.01***
(0.00)
-0.00***
(0.00)
0.37***
(0.13)
0.05
(0.09)
-0.20*
9.36***
(0.11)
(2.89)
16.26*** -4,624.70***
-4,637.64***
47.76***
(5.06)
(94.60) (93.82) (4.07)
16.27*** -4,624.70***
-4,637.64*** 47.77***
-5.06
-94.6
-93.82
-4.07
4,591
4,810
0.36
4,810
0.36
4,591
0.15*
(0.09)
47.06***
(4.04)
47.06***
-4.04
4,591