The Smugglers' Trade in Sixteenth Century England

这是最复杂的历史研究所进行的非法贸易，在这个国家或国外。以前关于走私的所有研究，其中大部分涉及18世纪至19世纪初的非法贸易，都满足于审查国家对违禁品贩运的反应。相比之下，这本书从走私者的角度审视世界，广泛利用商人走私者产生的商业记录。为了检查这些记录，申请人使用了与现代欺诈调查人员所使用的方法类似的方法。正是由于这些方法论的发展和应用，他赢得了经济史学会的“T. S。2001年阿什顿奖。这本书利用走私者的商业记录，调查了为什么个人走私，他们如何管理他们的业务，他们如何保护他们的非法贸易，以及他们做了什么来防止发现和捕获。此外，该书还探讨了走私者运作的经济框架，特别是不断变化的财政、监管和市场条件如何影响中世纪晚期和现代早期走私的规模和性质。集中在证据从布里斯托，这本书因此打开了一扇窗户，第一次，对走私者的世界。这本书之所以成为一本重要的出版物，有两个原因。第一，它表明有可能实现长期以来被认为不可能的事情-详细重建非法贸易。由于本研究所采用的资料来源并非该时期所独有，其他历史学家将能够采用这种方法对国内外的走私贸易进行类似的调查。事实上，由于17 - 19世纪的私人商业记录比都铎王朝时期的记录更详细，数量也更多，因此研究后来几个世纪的历史学家进行类似的调查应该会更容易。因此，这本书有可能打开一扇创造商业史新分支的大门。这本书之所以重要的第二个原因是，它的发现将迫使经济历史学家重新评估他们对英国早期现代商业史的假设。它还将首次揭示非法贸易对经济、社会、政治和城市发展的影响。这本书对现存的历史争论最明显的贡献是，它将迫使历史学家重新考虑他们对来自海关账目的数据的使用，所有对英格兰早期现代商业发展的解释都是基于海关账目。该书表明，虽然海关数据通常可以被接受为对官方成本（税收和规章）较低的货物贸易的准确记录，但当这种成本很高时，非法贸易可能占贸易总额的大部分。这对经济史学家利用海关数据来确定英国海外贸易的结构或发展具有重要意义。例如，该书揭示，由于在16世纪，出口的官方成本远高于进口，因此从海关账户中得出的数据对英国的贸易平衡和进口相对于出口的重要性都产生了高度误导性的印象。同样，由于官方费用和对贸易的限制在十六世纪后半叶显著增加，非法贸易的规模也会扩大。因此，海关账目低估了英国海外贸易的增长。

This is the most sophisticated historical study every undertaken of the illicit trade, in this country or abroad. All previous studies of smuggling, most of which concern the illicit trade of the eighteenth -early nineteenth centuries, have contented themselves with examining the reaction of the State to contraband traffic. By contrast, this book examines the world from the smugglers' point of view, making extensive use of business records generated by merchant-smugglers. To examine such records, the applicant uses methodologies similar to those employed by modern fraud investigators. It was for the development and application of these methodologies that he won the Economic History Society's 'T.S. Ashton prize' in 2001. Using the business records of smugglers, the book investigates why individuals smuggled, how they managed their businesses, how they protected their illicit trade and what they did to prevent detection and capture. In addition, the book examines the economic framework within which smugglers operated and, in particular, how changing fiscal, regulatory and market conditions affected the scale and nature of smuggling during the late medieval and early modern period. Concentrating on evidence from Bristol, the book thus opens a window, for the first time, on the smugglers' world. There are two reasons why this book will be an important publication. First, it demonstrates that it is possible to achieve something that has long been thought impossible - a detailed reconstruction of the illicit trade. Since the sources employed in this study are not unique to the period, other historians will be able to adopt this methodology to undertake similar investigations of the smugglers' trade, both in this country and abroad. Indeed, since the private commercial records of the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries are more detailed and numerous than those of the Tudor period, it should prove easier for historians working on later centuries to undertake similar investigations. This book therefore has the potential to open the door to the creation of a new branch of commercial history. The second reason why this book is important, is that its findings will force economic historians to re-evaluate their assumptions about England's early modern commercial history. It also will reveal, for the first time, the impact the illicit trade had on economic, social, political and urban development. The book's most obvious contribution to existing historical debates is that it will force historians to reconsider the use they make of data derived from the customs accounts, on which all interpretations of England's early modern commercial development are based. The book demonstrates that while customs data can generally be accepted as an accurate record of trade for goods subject to low officials costs (taxes and regulations), when such costs were high the illicit trade could account for the bulk of total trade. This has important implications for the use of customs data by economic historians seeking to determine the structure or development of English overseas trade. For example, the book reveals that since exports were subject to far higher official costs than imports in the sixteenth century, the data derived from the customs accounts provide a highly misleading impression of both England's trade balance and the importance of imports relative to exports. Similarly, since official costs and restrictions on trade increased markedly during the second half of the sixteenth century, the illicit trade would have grown in size. The customs accounts therefore underestimate the growth of England's overseas trade at this time.