Janette Holcomb, Early Merchant Families of Sydney: Speculation and Risk Management on the Fringes of Empire (Review)

The presence of merchants in Sydney Cove from the 1790s onwards is perhaps curious given the popular view that Botany Bay was a mere dumping ground for convicts. As Janette Holcomb reminds us in the introduction to this illuminating book, merchants take calculated risks. That they established wharves, counting houses, and agents' offices in the principal harbour of Britain's ‘thief colony’ stands testimony to the settlement's commercial attractions. While for many, Sydney lay on the fringe of Empire, it excited a great deal of mercantile attention – so much so that by 1831 the port's merchant population was proportionately higher than that of London.

This is a book about networks. Sydney merchants imported and exported a bewildering range of goods from destinations that spanned the globe. They were active in business partnerships that maintained offices and agents in multiple ports linked by complex transoceanic credit chains. They mobilised extended family connections, often reinforcing commercial arrangements through marriage and other familial alliances. Children, for example, were named after business collaborators and it was common for commercial partners to belong to the same lodges and congregations. There were, as one might expect, intense rivalries. Reputation mattered in a world that was usually short of hard cash and, as a result, awash with promissory notes. A barbed article in a colonial paper could do considerable damage to the interests of a competitor.