Early Merchant Families of Sydney: Speculation and risk management on the fringes of empire

Abstract

This book examines the antecedents, commercial lives and networks of a select group of merchants who established private business enterprises in New South Wales during its first sixty years. Too frequently, historians have submerged the human face of our commercial history beneath an ocean of macro- and microeconomic themes, analysing government monetary policy, regulation and trade statistics. An attempt is made here to redress the balance through a series of semi-biographical essays, rather than a general study of Sydney's merchant class. History is, after all, the story of real people, their challenges and trials, their successes or their failures. I first conceived the idea for this book while writing my doctoral thesis, 'Opportunities and Risks in the Development of the NSW Shipping Industry, 1820-1850'. My curiosity was aroused by the number of British and foreign merchant families who willingly chose to live in a remote, undeveloped penal colony. Their decision to leave familiar surroundings and undertake the long sea voyage to Australia was courageous enough. To risk their wealth in new business enterprises seemed to me to defy sound business principles.