This book throws new light on the interlocking commercial relationships of the Atlantic trading world during the centuries ending with the American and French Revolutions. Grouped under four themes--the role of merchants and their connections; the development of trades; imperial economies; and colonial working societies--and written by an international team of economic historians, these essays increase our knowledge and understanding of the transatlantic economy. Contributions include studies of individual businessmen, labor patterns, port cities, branches of trade, and comparative studies of trading nations.

The handbook explains how money and exchange functioned as elements of the American economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; it also provides sufficient technical and statistical information to allow the reader to convert a sum recorded in one currency into its equivalent in another. McCusker combines this with a compilation of exhaustive tables that give the commercial rate of exchange between London and the major cities of Europe and the British colonies.