“Transatlantic Finance Networks and American Development in the Early Republic" with C. David Carlson

The fourth 2024-2025 David Center for the American Revolution Seminar will take place February 12, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. ET on Zoom.

The seminar speaker, C. David Carlson, finished his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame in May of 2024, where Patrick Griffin advised his dissertation titled “Antislavery Feelings and Proslavery Steps: From the Atlantic to the Continental Slave Trade in Virginia, 1619-1820.” He currently works as an adjunct professor at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the University of Notre Dame Press at the University of Notre Dame.

Carlson will be presenting his paper titled: “Transatlantic Finance Networks and American Development in the Early Republic" A description of the paper is below. The paper will be pre-circulated to registered participants in advance of the seminar meeting.

To attend the seminar and to receive a copy of the paper, please register via Zoom.

The David Center for the American Revolution Seminar serves as a forum for works-in-progress that explore topics in the era of the American Revolution (1750-1820). Questions about the series may be directed to Brenna Holland, Assistant Director of Library & Museum Programs, at [email protected].

NOTE: Seminars are designed as spaces for sharing ideas and works still in-progress. For this reason, this event will not be recorded.

“Transatlantic Finance Networks and American Development in the Early Republic"

This paper, “Transatlantic Finance Networks and American Development in the Early Republic,” uses Alexander Baring’s first trip to the United States in the 1790s as a study in how contemporaries saw the early republic and its potential future development. Baring traveled as a representative both of the Baring Bank in London and its partners the Hope Company in Amsterdam. Baring toured much of the United States, establishing contacts with wealthy and influential Americans like William Bingham of Philadelphia. Throughout his travels he corresponded heavily with his father Francis Baring in London and his partner William Hope in Amsterdam, sharing frank observations about the nature of American government and society, its economic prospects, and the likely direction of its future growth. At that time, the future of the United States did not appear to Baring as one of cotton plantations. While he guessed the United States would spread across the Mississippi, he guessed the Mississippi Valley would develop into a supplier of provisions to Caribbean sugar plantations. While Baring latched onto land speculation in Maine as the best alignment of his business partners with the young republic at that time, the networks Baring developed on this trip went on to play a pivotal role in financing the Louisiana Purchase in the following decade.