The conduct of the coastal metropolitan corn trade during the later seventeenth century: an analysis of the evidence of the Exchequer port books

The later seventeenth century witnessed a marked increase in the proportion of London's expanding coastal corn imports handled by large shippers. However, while heavy concentrations of trade in few hands at ports supplying the capital alert us to the possibility that leading merchants may have been able to rig local markets, they are not in themselves reliable indicators of oligopsonistic market relations since it is impossible to determine the status of corn shippers from the entries in the London coastal port books covering the post-Civil War period. It seems likely that the period saw the growth of a class of substantial provincial corn merchants and of a breed of agents who organized and oversaw corn exports belonging to producers or other middlemen. Local port book evidence reveals some striking variations in the conduct of the corn trade along the coast of north-east Kent, particularly in respect of the roles played by shipmasters.