Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxix:2 (Autumn, 1998), 197–219.

David Hancock

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Commerce and Conversation in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic: The Invention of Madeira Wine In 1807, Madeira was the foremost luxury drink of the day—not a common beverage wine, but an expensive, exotic, status-laden, and highly processed wine produced on the Portuguese island of Madeira, 500 miles west of Morocco. By way of contrast, in 1703, it was a cheap, simple table wine, made from a base of white grape must to which growers and exporters added varying amounts of red must in order to give it color and taste. Between 1703—the year when the Methuen Treaty between England and Portugal was signed—and 1807—the year when Britain occupied the island—the wine that oenophiles and songsters extolled in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was invented. The story of this transformation offers a compelling insight into eighteenth-century Atlantic commercial life in all its complexity. The invention of Madeira wine was both an economic act—carried out in response to commercial motives—and a social act—not invented by a solitary “genius” but by an Atlantic network of producers, distributors, and consumers in intense conversation with one another. Trans-Atlantic commerce was a discursive system, a process that sprang from a continual, complicated, often confusing exchange of information about commodities—how they were made, packaged, and shipped; how they were distributed; and how they were stored, displayed, and consumed. The story provides a remarkable case study of the expansion of the Atlantic market economy in the eighteenth century—through product innovation, the elaboration of distribution channels and networks, and heightened consumption.1 David Hancock is Associate Professor of History, University of Michigan. He is the author of Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge, 1995). The author would like to thank Eliza McClennen for creating the map of the Atlantic ocean currents, trade winds, and shipping routes. © 1998 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 1 The role of conversation in modern business strategy has been examined by John J. Quinn, “The Role of ‘Good Conversation’ in Strategic Control,” Journal of Management Studies, XXX

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structural and sociological perspectives on the atlantic economy The idea of an Atlantic economy is relatively new. One of the more signiªcant developments in the historiography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during the past ªve decades has been the emergence of a fuller comprehension of the Atlantic community as an entity in its own right. What was earlier dubbed Anglo- or British, French, Spanish, or Portuguese America is now as often described as part of Atlantic America—a community that exchanged commodities, services, settlers, and laborers; waged war on itself; and shared political ideas and institutions, even while its constituent states also exhibited distinctive cultures. Scholars now see the Atlantic as “a waterway more than a moat,” and, with the application of new labels and metaphors, have found new perspectives on one of the world’s great stories of economic development. We now look at the lands fronting the ocean and see “the scene of a vast interaction,” the “steady, increasing contact, intermingling and sometimes direct blending” of peoples, plants, and animals, as well as goods, tools, services, and ideas.2 The initial trans-Atlantic perspective was deªned early in this century by the founders of what came to be known as “the imperial school of early American history.” Chief among them were Charles Andrews of Yale and Clarence Haring of Harvard, who wrote extensively from the 1910s through the 1940s— Andrews on England and Haring on Spain. They viewed the respective empires that they studied structurally, almost as ideal forms that were viable only as abstractions. This structural perspective found the sinew of empire in institutional, governmental, and bureaucratic activities. Accordingly, these authors interpreted the social and economic life of Atlantic empires as a matter of institutions, an extension of metropolitan governments and the creation of cabinet ministers.3 (1996), 381–394; Jeffrey D. Ford and Laurie W. Ford, “The Role of Conversations in Producing Intentional Change in Organizations,” Academy of Management Review, XX (1995), 541–570. 2 Ian Steele, “Empire of Migrants and Consumers: Some Current Approaches to the History of Colonial Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, XCIX (1991), 491; Donald W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History (New Haven, 1986), I, 65. 3 Charles Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (New Haven, 1934–1938), 4v.; Clarence Haring, The Spanish Empire in America (New York, 1947).

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The structural perspective eclipsed the ªeld until the 1950s, when a new group of scholars began to reexamine early-modern Atlantic empires, states, and communities from a more “sociological” perspective. A wider range of historical phenomena demanded explanation—ideologies, social forms, economies, and colonial laws and politics—and a wider array of evidence was marshalled to understand them. Scholars adopting the sociological perspective conceived of empire more as a process than as a structure, and the connections that they found were typically social and human. Such an approach allowed economic and social historians to investigate the “micro” context of early-modern European and African activity in the New World, as well as the “macro” context, the widening sphere of cause and effect as the empires interacted through expansion, trade, and war. In the study of commerce and exchange, “sociological” historians, like Tolles and Bailyn, emphasized the social bases of economies—for instance, the religious ties of America’s Quaker merchants and the kinship networks of New England’s mercantile force. Their perspective repeatedly identiªed individual choice within social and cultural contexts, rather than centrally directed, bureaucratically implemented policy, as the lens for understanding this subject.4 The new Atlantic perspective extends these sociologically informed histories to entire Atlantic communities. Its continuity is the examination of social, commercial, and cultural lives, especially of the marginal members of society. It also opposes the nearly total preoccupation with domestic colonial American affairs, and considers the larger Atlantic basin just as important as the smaller regional groupings or the still-smaller jurisdictions of colony, county, or town. Those who have focused on individuals’ contributions during the eighteenth century, in particular, have uncovered an intensiªcation of trans-Atlantic social linkages: a 4 The term, “sociological,” is not meant to limit the discussion to the subjects of modern academic sociology. The term more broadly refers to the social, economic, or ideational—as opposed to the formal, institutional, or structural—aspects of life in the past. For examples, see Frederick B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682–1763 (Chapel Hill, 1948); Thomas Doerºinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, 1986); William T. Baxter, The House of Hancock (Cambridge, Mass., 1945); Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1955). For recent work along similar lines, see John Clark, La Rochelle and the Atlantic Economy during the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, 1981).

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surge in commercial correspondence, a growth in the number and intricacy of supplier/consumer relationships, a rise in the availability and ºexibility of ªnancial services involving credit and insurance, and an increase in the publication and dissemination of maritime and mercantile information. These researches have also highlighted the dynamic growth and globalization of commercial activity during the eighteenth century, when more goods went to more and more distant places around the world. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Atlantic was more integrated economically than it had ever been.5 production, consumption, and conversation Since the Atlantic integration process was both an economic and a social event, this article extends current scholarship about the expansive social construction of the Atlantic market economy by emphasizing the interactive nature of much overseas trade. Madeira wine was invented in a century-long series of conversations, the record 5 Ralph Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies (London, 1973); Jacob Price, Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: The View from the Chesapeake, 1700–1776 (Cambridge, Mass., 1980); Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675–1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (New York, 1986); Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge, 1995). Kenneth Morgan, Bristol & the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1993), 9–10, traces the stretching of one port’s commercial lines. Similarly, American commodities were shipped to newer, more distant markets, as the century progressed. Price, France and the Chesapeake: A History of the French Tobacco Monopoly, 1674–1791, and of its Relationship to the British and American Tobacco Trades (Ann Arbor, 1973), 2v.; idem, The Tobacco Adventure to Russia: Enterprise, Politics, and Diplomacy in the Quest for a Northern Market for English Colonial Tobacco, 1676–1722 (Philadelphia, 1961); Paul Clemens, The Atlantic Economy and Colonial Maryland’s Eastern Shore: From Tobacco to Grain (Ithaca, 1980); Peter Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670–1920 (New York, 1989); Robert C. Nash, “South Carolina and the Atlantic Economy in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Economic History Review, XLV (1992), 677–702. On cloth distribution worldwide, see John Irwin and Katharine Brett, The Origins of Chintz (London, 1970), 3–6. Another mark of Atlantic economic integration was the rise of similar institutions and ideologies in different countries. Various cities served similar functions around the Atlantic rim. See Anne Perotin-Dumon, “Cabotage, Contraband, and Corsairs: The Port Cities of Guadeloupe and Their Inhabitants,” in Franklin W. Knight and Peggy K. Liss (eds.), Atlantic Port Cities (Knoxville, 1991), 61. Distinct similarities among labor markets emerged. See Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-Maritime World, 1700–1750 (New York, 1993), 80. Similar kinds of economic management—that is, plantation experts—appeared in all empires and created “a unique marketoriented set of cash crop-producing areas” (Pieter C. Emmer, “The Dutch and the Making of the Second Atlantic System,” in Barbara L. Solow [ed.], Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System [New York, 1991], 79).

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of which we ªnd in letters and visits between producers and customers. These conversations changed the product, its distribution, and, eventually, its social status over the course of the century. This article is concerned with their effect on innovation in the drink itself. Product innovation has been little explored and poorly understood by most students of Atlantic America’s history. Previous studies have focused on products statically, as either the end results of production processes or the carriers of meanings, rather than dynamically, not as evidence of the volatile social and material inºuences on trade. Madeira wine, to cite only one example, was invented by a highly verbal, contentious, and, to the participants, occasionally irritating discourse. This discourse informs a wider range of developmental economic, demographic, and social issues. In particular, the history of the conversations among producers, distributors, agents, and consumers and the resulting product innovation in Madeira wine shed light on two current vigorous debates among American and European historians: one about the origins of the Industrial Revolution and another about the engine and nature of the early American economy. Because they are not primarily interested in the social nature of trade, the participants in these debates have tended to focus on different groups—one side looking at producers and merchants, products and processes, and the other side at consumers and taste-setters, commodities and meanings. Sadly, the more these debates become polarized, the more the participants talk past each other. Historians of the production “school” deal with manufacturers, farmers, and laborers, and the tools and machines that they used, that is, the human and nonhuman agents that increased the supply of goods. These historians stress that, in the aggregate— taking storage into account—people cannot consume more than they produce: The dramatically rising standards of living in the industrialized world during the last two centuries could not have happened without the changes in technology that made people more productive and increased the amount of consumables. They account for America’s development by the availability of goods, as determined by production and transportation; they discuss the cultivation of food, economic cycles, the composition of the workforce, and shipping routes, with seldom a word about the

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tastes and needs of the eventual consumers. In short, they ignore the place of commodities in people’s lives. Their justiªcation for doing so is the belief that the nature of production determines the type of society, especially in vigorous periods of economic change.6 Historians from the more recent consumption “school” grant primacy to demand, and to the “work” of consumers in creating and manipulating the meanings of the goods that they buy and use. They point out that the two centuries from 1600 to 1800 witnessed a sustained increase in the consumption of marketed goods (as opposed to home-produced goods) well in advance of the legendary productivity increases of the Industrial Revolution. Accordingly, they see the Industrial Revolution as the producers’ creative response to consumers’ demand. Consumption-side historians who address issues central to the development of the American economy look at people as consumers—buyers and users of goods—often in the context of managing domestic households. The choices made by these consumers were not determined by impersonal forces or machines, but by consumers’ creativity in combining goods and attitudes to “produce” social roles and meanings.7 6 Phyllis Deane and William Cole, British Economic Growth, 1688–1959: Trends and Structure (Cambridge, 1967; 2d ed.), highlighted the importance of British exports to the rise of certain industries (like cotton manufacturing) and industrial production in the overall economy. They made no attempt, however, to incorporate consumer preferences into their calculations; they were concerned solely with large-scale production of goods and services. More recently, Joel Mokyr picked up this theme in discussing the importance of new technology to industries across the board (The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress [New York, 1990]; “Technological Change, 1700–1830,” in Roderick Floud and D. N. McCloskey [eds.], The Economic History of Britain since 1700 [Cambridge, 1994; 2d ed.], I, 12–43). Two outstanding examples of the production school are Richard Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill, 1972); Price, Capital and Credit. 7 Colin Campbell, Lorna Weatherill, Carole Shammas, and Richard Bushman have all looked at issues connected to spending: Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (London, 1987); Weatherill, Consumer Behavior and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (London, 1988); Shammas, The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford, 1990); Bushman, The Reªnement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992). Ann Martin has provided the best succinct summary of the scholarship. Her distinctions between consumption, consumerism, and materialism deserve wider notice (“Makers, Buyers, and Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework,” Winterthur Portfolio, XXVIII [1993], 141–157). Two collections of essays, one edited by John Brewer and Roy Porter that covers both sides of the Atlantic, and another edited by Cary Carson that covers America, have been highly inºuential: Brewer and Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1993); Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter Albert (eds.), Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, 1994), especially Carson’s chapter, “The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America: Why Demand?” 483–697.

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As provocative and fruitful as these approaches are, both are plagued by the problem of one-way causality: Either producers or consumers determine the outcome. Yet, in complicated reality, production and consumption, technology, use, and meaning constantly affect each other, offering individuals ever-changing opportunities to make and remake their lives, and to choose and structure the icons of their societies. On the one hand, consumers constrained production (and distribution); their preferences for certain goods in their domestic lives and social “projects” were not lost on producers and distributors. On the other hand, production and distribution constrained consumption: The organization of the market and the machinations of its entrepreneurs inºuenced what products were available, to whom, and on what terms. Moreover, producers and distributors actively manipulated meanings.8 To redress this problem of one-way causality, the concept of “reciprocal inºuence,” or “collaborative conversation,” seems bespoke. Though it is trendy to invoke “conversation” today in all sorts of contexts, its use is apposite in this one. “Conversation,” in the eighteenth-century sense of the term, meant dealing with others or things. It need not have been a public or private oral exchange, discussion, debate, or conference. Conversation only had to exhibit two characteristics: (1) collaboration, that is, an exchange of information between at least two persons, and (2) reciprocity, that is, an opportunity for all participants to reveal their knowledge and articulate their positions. As Fielding deªned it, conversation was “that reciprocal Interchange of Ideas, by which Truth is examined, Things are, in a manner, turned around, and sifted, and all our knowledge communicated to each other.” In the Atlantic commercial world, “conversation” was no mere metaphor.9

8 Jan De Vries avoids the causality problem by suggesting that rising production and consumption in the years from 1492 to 1776 were both the results of the spread of the European market economy (“Between Purchasing Power and the World of Goods: Understanding the Household Economy in Early Modern Europe,” in Brewer and Porter [eds.], Consumption, 85–132). 9 Richard Bradley, A Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature (London, 1721), 59; Alexander Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies (London, 1727), I, xxv, 320; Samuel Johnson to Edward Cave, c. April 1738, in Bruce Redford (ed.), The Letters of Samuel Johnson (Princeton, 1992), I, 14; John and William Langhorne (trans.), Plutarch’s Lives (London, 1770; new ed., London, 1786), I, 152; John C. Stephens (ed.), The Guardian (Louisville, 1982), 111;

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Through conversation, producers and distributors provided and obtained information about consumer needs and product problems; they created understandings among parties; and they built organizations. They made consumers partners in product innovation, enlisting their aid in design, assessment, and dispersal. Consumers expected to be heard and heeded. Producers and exporters also spoke to wholesalers, retailers, and customers—for instance, about how to “read” quality signals in Madeira wine (and thus how to reproduce them) and about how best to market the wine. The producers and distributors with the best transoceanic conversations—or at least the most extensive conversational networks—fostered commitment and loyalty. Extensive (and intensive) communication in the world of Atlantic commerce transformed a collection of individual exporters, wholesalers, retailers, and peddlers into an information channel for distributors to learn what was important to customers, and for buyers to be educated about the treatment and use of a product. It was the chief mechanism for creating an adaptive response to, and an appreciation for, the product on the part of consumers. the making of a wine And change the product did. What is known today as Madeira wine was invented between 1703 and 1807. Consider ªrst its variety. In 1703, only four grapes—white, black, Malvasia, and Vidonia—were grown on the island, and the wines made from them were mixtures of black and white grapes. By 1807, twenty-three varieties had been raised, including the

George B. Hill (ed.), Boswell’s Life of Johnson (Oxford, 1934), IV, 186; Henry Fielding, Miscellanies (London, 1743; 2d ed.), I, 119, 123. Peter Burke, The Art of Conversation (Cambridge, 1993), 91, provides the best modern explication of eighteenth-century “conversation,” although he narrows his focus to speech acts, ruled by “the spontaneity and informality of the exchanges” and “their ‘non-businesslikeness.’” Several recent studies explore the characteristics of conversation behavior in modern society and, although their work is not historically grounded, some of their insights are relevant: Susan K. Donaldson, “One Kind of Speech Act: How Do We Know When We’re Conversing?” Semiotica, XXVIII (1979), 259–299; Stephen Levinson, Pragmatics (Cambridge, 1983); H. Paul Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” in Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts (New York, 1975), 41–58; John Wilson, On the Boundaries of Conversation (Oxford, 1989). These scholars generally regard speech acts as oral forms distinct from literate discourse. One scholar who has paid attention to the similarities, as this article does, is Robin Lakoff, Talking Power: The Politics of Language in Our Lives (New York, 1990), 40–53.

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four “noble” varieties that were made from the unblended stock favored by consumers for their smoothness and ºavor—the dry Sercial, the less dry Verdelho, the medium sweet Boal, and the sweet Malvasia Candida (Malmsey).10 When unblended lots began to appear in Atlantic markets after mid-century, American and British consumers reported to the distributors that they preferred them to blended lots. American drinkers desired the dryer wines; British drinkers wanted the sweeter kinds. This divide spurred growers and distributors to produce new varieties with the requisite smoothness and sweetness. But, because agricultural constraints sometimes kept them from being able to satisfy demand, they had to ªnd ways to convince importers and consumers of the qualities of other, timehonored varieties that they had at their command.11 In addition to increasing varieties and introducing pure unblended drinks, the producers began to fortify Madeira with brandy. Fortiªcation is often singled out as one of the hallmarks of Madeira’s wine, but it was introduced into production and distribution only in the second quarter of the century, taking decades to become widespread. Although an English physician ªrst prescribed the practice in the early seventeenth century, descriptive mention of adding brandy to Madeira occurred in a 1743 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac, in which Benjamin Franklin urged readers who were either shipping or selling Madeira to mix it with brandy. The ªrst reference to island producers or distributors adding brandy as a supplement appeared ten years later, suggesting that the practice was gaining acceptance on the island by mid-century.12 10 Hans Sloane, A Voyage to Jamaica (London, 1687), 10; John Ovington, A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689 (London, 1696), 13; Graham Blandy (ed.), The Bolton Letters (Funchal, 1960), II, passim; “Inventories” Books, v. 1794–1797 & v. 1798–1800, Cossart & Gordon Papers, Madeira Wine Company Archives, Funchal; Nicholas C. Pitta, Account of the Island of Madeira (London, 1812), 66; William Gourlay, Observations on the Natural History, Climate and Diseases of Madeira (London, 1811), 15. 11 Thomas Murdoch to Francis Newton, May 4, 1792, v. 14, f. 180, Newton, Gordon & Murdoch to Harriet Horry, February 17, 1802, v. 23, f. 102, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks. 12 On alternative wines generally, see Alan D. Francis, The Wine Trade (London, 1972); Warner Allen, Sherry and Port (London, 1952); George Robertson, Port (London, 1978; 4th ed.), 12, 15, 16; Julian Jeffs, Sherry (London, 1992; 4th ed.). Although Madeira was the ªrst Iberian wine to be fortiªed, in the 1600s, Dutch merchants were already rectifying their own brandy and adding it to common beverage wines to produce brandewijn (named for the “burning” process of distillation), a drink more suitable for long-distance travel. On Madeiran

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Adding spirits to the wine was thought to “help” “very indifferent and clear” grades. It imparted a smooth taste to rough, acidic, or full-bodied wines. As one ªrm explained to London purchasers, since Madeira’s wine was “sweetish” in the must, it needed more brandy “than was common” to other wines to “eat off the sweetness” and thereby “prevent fretting.” Today, we know that the practice ensures microbiological stability, rendering impotent most bacteria and strains of yeast and thereby precluding further fermentation. It also pleased consumers in certain markets, like London, where “they like everything that is powerful and heady.” However contemporaries described or justiªed it, by 1760, fortiªcation appears to have been adopted by enough export ªrms to warrant the island government’s banning the importation of expensive French brandy, on the grounds that too much of it was being watered down; diluted brandies sullied the reputation of the island’s export wines. Some export ªrms, especially those specializing in higher-quality wines, initially refused to add brandy. As late as 1807, they were still decrying such “spoilage” and arguing for its use only as a last resort. But despite the remonstrations of a few, the “brandy doctrine” had gained general acceptance by 1790. Brandy became the “indispensable” component of all grades.13 fortiªcation, see William Vaughan, Directions for health, natural and artiªciall (London, 1633; 7th ed.), a reworking of his Natural and artiªciall directions for health (London, 1600); Richard Saunders, Poor Richard, 1743 (Philadelphia, 1743), in Leonard W. Labaree (ed.), The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1960), II, 367; Francis Newton to Thomas Newton, August 4, 1753, Francis Newton to George Spence, October 27, 1753, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks, v. 1, ff. 62, 77. 13 Newton & Gordon to Kearny & Gilbert, January 25, 1768, v. 4, f. 171, Thomas Murdoch to Thomas Gordon, January 28, 1789, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks; John Leacock to Michael Nowlan, June 2, 1779, Leacock Papers; Johann Wilhelm Von Archenholz, A Picture of England (Dublin, 1791), 203; James Gordon to Alexander Gordon, March 14, 1768, Gordon of Letterfourie Papers; Provedoria da Fazenda, no. 942, ff. 19–20, Arquivo Regional Madeira, Funchal; Newton & Gordon to Kearny & Gilbert, January 25, 1768, v. 4, f. 171, Thomas Murdoch to Thomas Gordon, January 28, 1789, v. 11, f. 218, Thomas Murdoch to Thomas Gordon, January 28, 1789, v. 11, f. 218, and June 15, 1789, v. 12, f. 86, Newton & Gordon to Thomas Gordon, August 19, 1789, James Gordon to Thomas Gordon, September 3, 1803, and Thomas Murdoch to Robert Lenox, September 30, 1803, v. 25, f. 173, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks; James Gordon to Alexander Gordon, May 22, 1769, Letterfourie Papers; Newton & Gordon to Thomas Gordon, January 28, 1789, v. 11, f. 177, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks; John Leacock, Sr. to William Leacock, May 29, June 27, 1799, Leacock & Sons Letterbook 1799–1802, 35, 52–58, Michael Nowlan to Gedley Clare Burges, February 25, 1762, Nowlan & Burges Letterbook, Leacock Papers.

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The widespread fortiªcation of Madeira wine with brandy, which preceded that in Port and Sherry production, was largely customer-responsive. Firms altered wine formulas to suit the various palates in British America, negotiating with American distributors in each region in response to the preferences of purchasers. The correspondence between island ªrms and their customers shows how producers and distributors varied the formulas. Foremost in the minds of customers were questions of color and taste. With no adulteration, new wine bore a reddish color and sweetish taste; old wine, having experienced additional fermentation and climatic heating, had a lighter hue and a drier ºavor. The addition of brandy accelerated both processes. In the British West Indies and the southern colonies of British North America, where there was no concern for wine spoiling for lack of heat, dark, sweet wines ºourished. To satisfy customers there, Madeira distributors put less brandy in their export. Sometimes, in response to requests from Caribbean planters, they sent a quarter cask of red must and another of brandy along with a pipe of unfortiªed wine so that it could be colored and strengthened to taste. In contrast, consumers to the north asked for a paler, drier wine, and so producers and shippers added one or two gallons more of brandy than they put in Caribbean wine. South Carolinians and Virginians preferred extremely pale, dry white wine (“white as water”) that had been heavily fortiªed; Philadelphians requested golden wines with slightly less brandy and slightly more sweetness; and New Yorkers wanted an amber, somewhat reddish drink with even less brandy and more sugar. Each market demanded and—after several rounds of serious negotiation about body, smoothness, and ºavor—each market received its own distinctive formula.14 Fortifying the wine created technical problems for wine makers. Unless treated further, fortiªed wines could be quite rough; the brandy spirit, with its lower density, tended to ºoat on top 14 Thomas Murdoch to Pierce Butler, October 18, 1800, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks; Spence, Leacock & Spence to John Erskine, June 26, 1762, John Leacock to William Leacock, May 10, 1796, Leacock Papers; Henry Laurens to Corsley Rogers & Son, May 16, 1755, in Philip M. Hamer (ed.), Papers of Henry Laurens (Columbia, S.C., 1968), I, 248; Newton & Gordon to John Diffell, January 17, 1776, v. 6, f. 38, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks; Thomas Newton to Newton & Gordon, November 26, 1759, Thomas Newton Letterbook, Madeira Wine Company Archives; Baynton & Wharton to Thomas Newton, October 2, 1763, Box 2, Cossart & Gordon Papers, Liverpool University Archives.

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of the wine. To solve this problem, the Madeirans introduced another vinicultural innovation—agitation. Shaking or rocking the wines had the effect of distributing the alcohol more evenly after the introduction of brandy; it also removed suspended and insoluble materials from the must and eradicated “the hot and burnt taste and twang” left behind after ªning with gesso.15 Agitation happened inadvertently at ªrst. Pipes in the hold of a vessel rocked to and fro as the ship rode out high waves or intense storms. Eventually, exporters and customers made the connection between the agitation and its effect. As John Leacock, a shipper, had learned from a two-year-long correspondence with one of his customers, a New York wine retailer, “in the course of eight or nine months’ continual agitation on board a vessel, the extra ªre and spirit of the brandy must be exhausted and softened, and the wine receive the strength.” He also had learned that not all voyages were alike: Since some ships experienced greater agitation than others, the quality of the wines varied greatly. Acting on knowledge gleaned from agents’ reports and consumers’ requests, island distributors resorted to direct agitation in the 1780s. Leacock, for instance, insisted that his growers install mechanical devices to stir the wine twice a day during fermentation. After initial fortiªcation and fermentation, island ªrms assigned ofªce servants to simulate the effect of stormy seas by manually rocking the wine in the casks. Later, toward 1800, as Americans began to report a preference for artiªcially rocked, rather than naturally but erratically rocked, wines, distributors employed new steam-powered machines to perform the task.16 A similar kind of intervention process occurred in aging the wine. Well before the eighteenth century, it was recognized that aging improved wine, making it “ªt for drinking much sooner.” It diminished the harsh taste and yeasty odor. To Madeira, it imparted a smooth, mellow, nutty ºavor and a clear, pleasing, often invigorating odor. Aging also allowed wine to fare “better” (that is, not sour as quickly) in “colder climates” like Boston, 15 Aaron Hill to William Popple, November 30, 1740, in Aaron Hill, The Works (London, 1754; 2d ed.), II, 103. 16 John Leacock to William Leacock, April 3, 1789, Leacock & Sons Letterbook, ff. 71–75, Leacock Papers; Richard Derby to Scott, Pringle & Cheap, June 1, 1767, Richard Derby Letterbook 1760–1772; John Searle & Co. to Elias Hasket Derby, March 23, 1788, Derby Family Papers, Box 12, Folder 6, Essex Institute; Pitta, Account, 71.

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Québec, and London. However, at ªrst, when aging occurred, it took place in the cellars of consumers. In 1700, when Madeira distributors described the wine that they shipped to America or Britain as “old,” they meant wines of eighteen months or so—the product of the previous year’s vintage that they had been unable to sell. Wine older than that usually had been hoarded by purchasers: When Dean Swift, for example, cracked open a bottle, he was pouring a wine purchased at least seven years before; when Charleston merchants advertised aged Madeira in 1761, they were referring to wines imported ªfteen years before and kept in their warehouses; and when Thomas Jefferson presented thirty-six bottles to an old science professor in 1775, he was giving Madeira his family had placed in its cellars eight years earlier.17 Not until the American Revolutionary period did distributors intentionally begin to keep wines for longer than a year or two. The commercialization of aged wines can be dated with some precision. Madeira’s merchants did not begin to charge £1 sterling more per pipe for every additional year of age until 1781. This new price followed the conjunction of two events: The ªrst was a run of low harvests between 1768 and 1772, when vintages fell to one-third of their usual output, and distributors almost ran out of wine to satisfy long-standing buyers. To guard against a recurrence of the problem, distributors began restocking their wines in earnest during the mid- and late-1770s, when harvests returned to average levels. At the same time that they were replenishing their wine stocks, however, the Revolutionary War cut off their access to American customers. The number of ships bound to British North America dropped by three-fourths—nine ships per year—and the amount of wine shipped by two-thirds.18 17 Nowlan & Burges to Samuel Hall, April 10, 1760, Nowlan & Burges Letterbook 1759–1762, Leacock Papers; Jonathan Swift to John Gay, March 19, 1729/30, in Harold Williams (ed.), The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1963), III, 381; Herman Moll, Atlas Geographus: Or, A Compleat System of Geography . . . for Africa (London, 1714), IV, 692; South-Carolina Gazette, 1761, 4; Thomas Jefferson to William Small, May 7, 1775, Julian Boyd (ed.), The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, 1950), I, 165. 18 Francis Newton to George Spence, June 9, 1756, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks, v. 1, f. 208; Francis Newton to Mackenzie & Edington, September 3, 1756, v. 1, f. 222, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks. At ªrst, the premium for older wines was £1 sterling for every year, but after March 1785, merchants were allowed to charge whatever “they [thought] the old wine [was] worth.” John Leacock to Michael Nowlan, March 26, 1785, Leacock, Spence & Leacock Letterbook 1784–1789, f. 116, Leacock Papers.

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To deal with the surfeit, the distributors bought or rented more storehouse space in Funchal. They also continued restocking, purchasing pipes and staves, hiring coopers, and buying more wine at the press. While the wine sat and aged in Madeira, the stores and cellars of revolutionary America were being exhausted and plundered. When the sizable American market for Madeira wine thirstily returned at war’s end, the distributors took advantage of the situation: Not only did they off-load their aging supply, but they also segmented the market and stratiªed their customers by wealth and taste, introducing a vocabulary of age distinctions that postwar consumers in Kingston, Philadelphia, New York, and London used to describe what they were drinking with more precision, and to distinguish themselves from those who drank new wine. “Age, Age” became “the grand sine qua non.”19 The Madeira shippers introduced aged wines and age distinctions with some apprehension, but the risk was worth taking. Consumers’ reports on old wines were largely favorable. Accordingly, shippers came to realize that “a reserve must be kept adequate.” As William Johnston wrote to his partner, “the taste for old wines” had “become so general” in America by 1787 that “none but old wines would please.” By 1793, some ªrms were selling eight- and ten-year-old wines; by 1807, they were offering ªfteen-year-old wines.20 Intentional aging of Madeira wine coincided with one ªnal product innovation—heating—which also developed in concert with customers’ views. Some heating occurred naturally on the island. The early blended wines were naturally heated from direct exposure to the sun during the harvest, as well as while stored in wooden attics before shipment. Additional heating occurred in the holds of ships. As Figure 1 shows, Madeira was the favored outbound stop for British and American ships en route to Africa, India, the Caribbean, and North America. Because of the conªguration of trade winds and ocean currents, wine destined for North America, Britain, and Northern Europe was forced to follow the 19 James Gordon to Alexander Gordon, September 21, 1769, Gordon of Letterfourie Papers; William Johnston to Thomas Gordon, November 10, 1788, v. 11, f. 177, Newton & Gordon to Thomas Gordon, November 24, 1791, v. 14, f. 15, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks; Francis Newton to Newton, Gordon & Murdoch, November 30, 1793, Loose Letters, Cossart & Gordon Papers, Madeira Wine Company Archives. 20 William Johnston to Thomas Gordon, March 25, 1787, v. 10, f. 380, and Thomas Murdoch to Thomas Gordon, August 5, 1793, v. 15, f. 207, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks.

Fig. 1 Atlantic Shipping Routes, Ocean Currents, and Trade Winds (Eliza McClennen, Cartographer)

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long, indirect southern route. On these trips, it was subject to extremely high temperatures, often 110° and 120° F, en route from the tropics to New York or London. Sometimes it was even removed from the ship and lodged with a resident in port for any number of years.21 Since buyers began reporting that they liked wines that had made the voyage, distributors began sending wine on a long circuit, even when quicker more direct routes were available. The ªrst mention of a distributor or consumer intentionally sending wine the long way round via the West Indies occurred in 1749, and the India subcontinent in 1772. Thereafter, shippers experimented aggressively and competitively with heating routes. Through numerous trials, they established a circuit of “ºoating ovens” by 1775.22 During the decade of the American Revolution, when the wine was being stockpiled, producers shifted the process to land. References to ovens, stoves, and hothouses being used for warming pipes and cellars on the island began to appear after the 1775 publication of Sir Edward Barry’s Observations Historical, Critical, and Medical, on the Wines of the Ancients, which lavished attention on the subject of wine heating. When Pantaleao Fernandes, a ninety-year-old Portuguese merchant, constructed an estufa (oven, stove, or hothouse) in 1794 and placed casks of wine in it, an industry was born. Although Fernandes’ estufa was little more than a room ªlled with barrels placed on trestles and warmed to 90° or 100° F by wood ªres—by all accounts, the work of a hobbyist—his estufagem 21 Knowledge about the inºuence of the ocean currents and the trade winds was not fully acquired until after 1850, even though the currents and winds, and the place of Madeira in them, had been studied for centuries. David W. Waters, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times (London, 1958), 20–21, 147–148, 201–206, 261–268, 284–287, 311–312. The winds were examined by Edmond Hally, who delivered what became the locus classicus on the subject to the Royal Society of London in 1686: “An historical account of the trade winds, and monsoons, observable in the seas between and near the Tropicks, with an attempt to assign the phisical cause of the said winds,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (London, 1686–1687), XVI, 153–168. For later accounts, see Franklin’s explication of the Gulf Stream, in Albert Smyth (ed.), The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1906), IX, 372–413; Thomas Pownall, Hydraulic and Nautical Observations on the Currents in the Atlantic Ocean (London, 1787). 22 Sloane, Voyage to Jamaica, 10; Warren Johnson Journal, sub January 12, 1761, in Milton W. Hamilton (ed.), The Papers of Sir William Johnson (Albany, 1962), XIII, 198; Francis White to Richard Derby, May 7, 1766, Richard Derby Papers, Box 10, Folder 5, Essex Institute.

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process initiated a frenzy of experimentation. Nearly every major house rushed to rent a stove or build its own. By early 1799, for instance, the large quality house of Newton & Gordon had ªnished building one estufa and was beginning work on another. Another ªrm built large tanks installed with hot-water coils to hold and heat new wine. The smaller, more typical house of Leacock & Sons, which had ªnished plans for its stove, awaited its completion by experimenting with the niceties of yet another technique—immersing pipes of wine in heaps of dung. The ªrm reported to American customers that the smell was ªne and the look good, but the taste somewhat harsh!23 By 1807, warming rooms had won out over dung heaps, and “all the Houses” were using estufas. Considerable savings in time and money accrued from shortening production and avoiding long-distance cargo fees: A wine that would have been palatable to Americans only after four or ªve years in England, three years in Madeira, or one year on the India subcontinent or in the West Indies could be readied in an estufa in three months. Moreover, 23 Livro do Saida, no. 22, f. 24, Arquivo Nacional, Lisbon. Experiments are recounted in Thomas Gordon to Francis Newton, October 24, November 17, 1783, v. 8, f. 124, April 14, 1785, v. 8, f. 139, Thomas Murdoch to Thomas Gordon, November 20, 1789, v. 12, f. 177, and Thomas Murdoch to Francis Newton, September 1, 1792, v. 14, f. 322, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks. On earlier uses of stoves, see Barry, Observations (London, 1775), 1–10, 48–58, 67–84, 442–443; Daniel Henry Smith to James & Alexander Gordon, December 1775, Gordon of Letterfourie Papers. As early as 1727, wine growers and makers along the Moselle appear to have been building iron stoves in their cellars and using them to meliorate wines. But the practice was not widely known, and no Madeiran mentioned German procedures. Barry’s inºuence is a far more likely one on the Anglo-centered Portuguese. On Fernandes and the ªrst estufas, see History of Estufa Heating, February 8, 1803, Arquivo Marino Ultramarino, no. 1,431, Arquivo Historico Ultramarino; Newton & Gordon to Henry Heskith, October 15, 1799, and to Edmund Middleton, April 20, 1801, v. 20, f. 67, v. 22, f. 367, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks. The love of experiment should not be overlooked; it played an important part. Visitors to the island, especially those among the foreign merchant community, remarked on it. On later estufas, see Thomas Murdoch to John Campbell, April 14, 1798, v. 18, f. 316, Thomas Murdoch to Thomas Gordon, June 27, October 15, 25, 1799, v. 19, f. 337, v. 20, ff. 52, 81, Thomas Murdoch to Robert Lenox, February 2, 1802, v. 23, f. 81, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks; John Leacock, Sr. to William Leacock, January 18, April 29, June 27, 1799, January 18, August 28, October 28, 1800, January 23, 1801, Leacock & Sons Letterbook 1799–1802, ff. 6–9, 27, 52–58, 107, 192–194, 223, Leacock Papers; Arquivo Marino Ultramarino, no. 1,431; Anonymous, A Guide to Madeira (London, 1801); Pitta, Account (1812). Throughout the period, however, ªrms remained reticent about placing their best wines in an estufa. See Newton, Gordon & Murdoch to Robert Lenox, v. 25, f. 173, September 30, 1803, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks. On early trials with dung heating, see Daniel Henry Smith to James & Alexander Gordon, December 1775, Gordon of Letterfourie Papers.

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in mellowing the wine, the distributors mitigated undesirable characteristics, thereby increasing the quality of their low-grade export wines. Ultimately, what guaranteed the success of the technology, however, was the response from the men and women who drank the wine in America, India, and Britain. The customers’ “candid opinion” was unanimous and positive. Oven-heated wines did not sour so quickly as unheated or traditionally heated wines, and, just as important, they retained the essential deªning characteristics of color and taste. Thus, Madeira became a reliable “manufactured” luxury wine that men and women in the empire could drink in the salons and stalls of fashionable London as well as obtain from the general stores or ºatboat warehouses in the Ohio River Valley.24 the sincerest form of flattery These innovations contributed to the success of the wine in the British colonies not only because they enhanced the reliability of the product but also because they instilled in it an air of luxury and European (yet non-British) status. Not coincidentally, Madeira was used to bribe the Indian chief Pontiac in 1766, to toast the work of the First Continental Congress in 1775, and to christen the launching of the Constitution in 1797.25 One way that producers and distributors created luxury status for the wine was by differentiating grades and types of Madeira. They sang the praises of new varieties like Sercial and Boal, and rare strains like Malvasia—all of which, even in the best vintage years, were harvested only in small lots—to their correspondents and customers. Certain grades they described as “opulent,” ªt only for those in the metropolis with discerning palates, or for those on the periphery who aspired to live like them, or at least were 24 John Leacock, Jr. to William Leacock, August 28, 1800, Leacock & Sons Letterbook, Leacock Papers; October 21, 1800, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks; John Leacock, Sr. to John Parker, March 21, 1798, and John Leacock to William Leacock, January 18, June 27, 1799, and August 28, 1800, Leacock & Sons Letterbook 1799—1802, ff. 6–9, 52–58, 192–194, Leacock Papers. 25 Normand Macleod to Sir William Johnson, August 4, 1766, in Hamilton (ed.), Papers of Sir William Johnson (1957), XII, 150; Lyman H. Butterªeld (ed.), Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 136, 149; The Independent Chronicle and the Universal Advertiser, 23 Oct. 1797, 1; Boston Gazette and Weekly Republican Journal, 23 Oct. 1797, 1; Massachusetts Mercury, 24 Oct. 1797, 1; Columbian Centinel, 25 Oct. 1797, 1.

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familiar with their genteel ways. Likewise, after 1780, they marketed wines of certain ages as more suitable for “intelligent” drinkers: the older the wine, the more distinguished its drinker. They went so far as to deploy testimonials from men of good family or high ofªce to seduce would-be wine bibbers into raising the quality of their purchases. Customized packaging—tailormade sizes, painted barrels, initialled and labelled casks, and the like—reinforced the notion of exclusivity.26 In the course of turning Madeira into a luxury, the producers and distributors raised its price. A compilation of the standard shipping prices for Madeira wine exported from the island, although fraught with difªculty, suggests that export prices rose dramatically during the century. In the ªrst decade, the average price of a pipe of London Particular—the grade generally deemed most suitable for discerning palates—was £5.5 at the dock in Funchal. By the third decade, that pipe’s price had risen to £8, by the ªfth, to £22.5, and by 1807, to £43. Unadjusted for inºation, the price rose eight-fold. Taking inºation into account, it tripled. Other qualities followed similar trajectories. The cheapest wine in the Kingston, Boston, or London market in 1700 had become the most expensive by 1800. Only “opulent people” could afford to drink it.27 26 Famous customers were often used to impress other prospective purchasers. John Marsden Pintard, for instance, “puffed” about his supply to George Washington and John Hancock ( Joseph Gillis to Henry Hill, August 2–September 20, 1783, v. 9, ff. 14–16, Hill Letterbooks, John Jay Smith Family Papers “A,” Historical Society of Pennsylvania). On the tailoring of packaging to suit buyers, see Newton & Gordon to John Munro, June 10, 1789, to Thomas Gordon, June 15, 1789, v. 11, ff. 75, 86, and to James Sheafe, March 18, 1801, v. 20, f. 315, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks. 27 Sources for the shipping prices charged by Madeiran exporters to middlemen distributors and consumers, even in the best years, are thin. There is no single series for the period from 1703 to 1807. The principal extant sources are the letters and accounts of the exporters themselves, as well as records of American and British importers. However, except for a letterbook kept by William Bolton, an island merchant, during the period from 1695 to 1715, and stray bundles of letters and accounts of other houses, ªrm papers have not survived for the years before 1739. Island shippers did not report prices systematically until 1753. The prices given in newspapers to advertise the sale of wines imported into America or Britain are useful and necessary in reconstructing colonial distribution patterns and purchasing constraints, but since they incorporate the importers’ or tavernkeepers’ markup, they do not reveal the exact prices of the wines from Madeira. By 1800, the shipping price of Madeira rose 3.02 times, as determined from the elements in John McCusker’s composite commodity price index for Great Britain (How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deºator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States [Worcester, 1992]). The sterling price index rose by a factor of 2.6 from 1703 to 1807. McCusker’s price index for

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These dramatic price increases were partially the result of an attempted cartel. With the sanction of the island’s local government, the island’s merchant and landed aristocracy aggressively tried to control prices at their end. Most notably, the British organized themselves into a trade association called the “Factory,” which was based in Funchal. From at least mid-century onward— the time when the British gained their own consul (no longer subordinate to the consul in Lisbon)—Factory members agreed upon shipping prices for each grade of export wine. During some decades, they held prices constant from year to year; during others, they adjusted them yearly. Prices were set at the beginning of January and seldom altered, if at all, until the next calendar year. Although, as the century progressed, the members constituted a declining share of the island’s merchant population, most merchants honored their rates. If they refused, they either had to undergo ostracism, pay severe ªnes, or leave the island.28 The rise in the number of entrepreneurs selling imitation Madeiras is evidence that the Factory’s attempts to create a luxury product succeeded. Counterfeiting took a number of forms. For instance, the mixture of inferior northside wines with superior southside wines on the island was considered a problem from the American commodities rose only by a factor of 1.2 during that period. Although it is difªcult to know for sure, given the absence of an adequate series of exchange-rate data for the years 1783 through 1807, it is possible that Madeira became even more expensive in America than in Britain. On the rise to opulence, see Francis Newton to Newton, Gordon & Murdoch, May 29, 1798, Loose Letters, Cossart & Gordon Papers, Madeira Wine Company Archives. 28 John Leacock accurately described the situation when he wrote to William Waddell of New York that, in greatest measure, “the price depends upon the demand” (November 16, 1764, Spence, Leacock & Spence Letterbook 1762–1765, f. 185). That demand, in turn, was largely due to the number of people willing and able to drink the wine, as well as the amount of wine available for importation. The rise in demand in North America was undoubtedly the driving force behind the price increases of the late 1700s; it overpowered the fact that the supply was increasing. Nevertheless, the organization of the distribution cannot be ignored; nor can the nearly constant warfare of the period. A British “factory” was established at Funchal at some point in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Daily affairs were managed by a vice-consul who was subordinate to the Lisbon consul. In 1755, the Crown began appointing a consul to Funchal. The consul and vice-consul were always drawn from the British merchant group on the island. They enforced matters relating to trade law and monitored the breach of treaty privileges. The ªrst recorded vice-consul was William Bolton in 1702 (Blandy [ed.], Bolton Letters, II, 21, sub November 1702; Brass-Studded Blue “Minutes” Chest, British Factory Records, Blandy’s Ofªce, Funchal; Arquivo Marino Ultramarino, no. 1,421). On self-regulation, see William Johnston to Thomas Gordon, September 14, 1785, v. 9, f. 84, Thomas Murdoch to Thomas Gordon, June 5, 1794, v. 15, f. 467, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks.

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outset of the eighteenth century. The aldermen of Funchal issued numerous edicts forbidding the movement of wines from one side of the island to the other, on the grounds that mixing the wine, or fobbing off north wine as south wine, would harm the general reputation of the island’s main export. As prices rose after mid-century, imitation occurred with greater frequency and greater creativity. In the early 1760s, for example, many of the smaller, undercapitalized ªrms that were establishing themselves on the island—largely to take advantage of rising prices—began to “correct” the colors of their northside must. One especially innovative entrepreneur added the juice of black cherries so that his thin must bore the look of full body. Another counterfeiter ground up almond bark and added it to his wine.29 Fraud also happened off-island. One aggressive “mushroom merchant” (so called as he had quickly sprung from obscurity) named Manoel Oliveira, who regularly brooked custom and made “advantageous offers” to other merchants’ suppliers and customers, in the late 1790s opened “an establishment” on the Azorean island of Fayal, where he successfully concocted a wine that bore the rough look and taste of Madeira. At the end of the century, Québec’s market, for one, was so ºooded with his counterfeit, which was produced and packaged with certain authentic materials, that no other exporters were able to make any headway there. Since he operated from outside the island, the island establishment was powerless to stop him. Yet, in the end, the authentic producers beneªtted, too; his “trash” only served to underscore in the minds of discerning Québécois what constituted a true Madeira.30 On the American side of the ocean, from Kingston to Louisbourg, wholesalers and retailers were also busily engaged in the business of imitation. Wine merchants Hugh and Alexander Wallace of New York warned their customer Sir William Johnson in 29 Report of the Governor of Madeira, October 17, 1761, no. 246, and Report of the Governor of Madeira and Public Notice, February 1, 1768, nos. 289–290, Arquivo Marino Ultramarino. Concerning the rise of alternative wines after the Revolution, see Newton & Gordon to Hugh Moore, May 9, 1784, v. 8, f. 232, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks. 30 Thomas Murdoch to Thomas Gordon, October 2, 1800, v. 21, f. 40, April 30, 1802, Newton & Gordon Letterbooks. For previous feints, see Francis Newton to Newton & Gordon, March 26, 1794, and Newton & Gordon to Thomas Gordon, July 8, December 7, 1797, Loose Papers, Cossart & Gordon Papers, Madeira Wine Company Archives.

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1772 that taverns in up-country New York punningly sold adulterated Tenerife wine as “Made, here, a.” Further south, John Guerard—a Charleston merchant who traded in dry goods and wines in the 1750s and 1760s—found the wines of Madeira “excessively dear”; most people were “forced to use wines that are imported from the Canaries at a much cheaper price.” To “remedy” the situation, he instructed his captain to load Canary wines at the Canaries and “colour them like Madeira” on board the ship, so as to “best please our planters & others.” To him, the arrangement was a proªtable resolution of a problem posed by the high shipping prices out of Madeira. Guerard and entrepreneurs like him knew ªrsthand that “a variety of mixtures pass for Madeira, some of which are compounded of wines that never grew on the island.” Yet, scoundrels that they were, they had the advantage of selling more cheaply while burnishing the status of true wine.31 Because we so often focus on the monumental increases in human productivity that followed the Industrial Revolution, it is easy to forget how innovative the eighteenth century was. The invention of Madeira wine helps to bring this preindustrial inventiveness back into the picture, displaying the social—that is, decentralized, discursive, and reciprocal—nature of the process, and the Atlantic scale on which it took place. Each aspect of Madeira wine’s invention unfolded through time and discourse. Producers and distributors continually “looked over their shoulders” to see what customers wanted, and consumers paid close attention to what producers and distributors (and their neighbors!) were telling them about the proper use of a status symbol. Innovations in selecting, fortifying, agitating, aging, and heating were not mainly responses to the ªne points of new technologies, but to negotiations between producers, distributors, and consumers. The traders and enterprisers who developed the Madeira market started small, eventually forming a network that linked producers on their little island to consumers around the 31 John Guerard to William Jolliffe, November 14, 1753, January 31, 1754, John Guerard Letterbook 1752–1754, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston. See also Hugh and Alexander Wallace to Johnson, November 20, 1772, in Alexander C. Flick (ed.), Papers of Sir William Johnson (1933), VIII, 662; “The Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXIII (1939), 434.

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world. They had to persuade consumers that changing varietals, agitating, and heating were valuable improvements. The goals of Madeira consumers were probably more cosmopolitan—to show their familiarity with a trans-Atlantic luxury discourse. By the end of the eighteenth century, they had convinced producers to “improve” the product by aging and fortifying it. Understanding eighteenth-century trade and economics as a reciprocal interchange and a collaborative conversation provides an alternative to one-sided explanations of economic progress before the Industrial Revolution, and of the growth of the American economy. The story of Madeira also demonstrates the Atlantic scale of the eighteenth-century economy. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Madeira was the drink of choice on the farms of backcountry Ohio and on the plantations of Jamaica and Curaçao; it was as much at home in the army messes and hospitals of India as in the clubs and taverns of London or the country houses of Scotland. The Atlantic community—made up of Europeans and the European diaspora—was linked by shared (and stolen) production techniques, kinship and friendship relations, common consumption patterns—and conversations. The conversation about Madeira was not grand, philosophical, nor even scintillating; it was plain, practical, and importunate. But it created a common commercial, cultural, and ideational space that pervaded the entire Atlantic basin—Europe, South America, Africa, and North America.