History
In 1707, the Treaty of Union between Scotland and England gave Scottish merchants access to the English overseas territories, especially in North America. Glasgow’s position on the River Clyde, where the trade winds first hit Europe gave its merchants a two to three week advantage over other ports in Britain and Europe. This position was enhanced by the French monarchy granting it a monopoly for the importation of tobacco into French territories, (1747) and, later, by the deepening of the Clyde in 1768. Moreover, Glasgow ships were American built specifically for the Atlantic crossing and were generally bigger than those of other ports. However, the main advantage of the Glasgow merchants seems to have been their extensive and personally supervised networks across Britain, Europe and the Americas.
The tobacco trade was part of the trade linking exports of consumer and manufactured goods from Britain and Europe to the North American and Caribbean colonies, who supplied tropical goods, including tobacco, sugar and rum in return. Later, a third leg on the transatlantic trade was added by English merchant carrying slaves from West Africa - thus establishing the so-called triangular trade.
From 1710 Glasgow became the focus of an economic boom which lasted nearly fifty years. This was the age of the Tobacco Lords, the nouveau riche of the mid eighteenth century. Arguably the greatest of these merchants was John Glassford who entered the tobacco trade in 1750 and soon made a success of his venture, with a fleet of vessels and a large number of tobacco stores across New England. Celebrated in his lifetime, Glassford was the most extensive ship owner of his generation in Scotland, and one of the four merchants who laid the foundation of the commercial greatness of Glasgow through the tobacco trade. Tobias Smollett wrote of a meeting with Glassford in 1771:
| “ | I conversed with Mr G--ssf--d, whom I take to be one of the greatiest merchants in Europe. In the last war, he is said to have had at one time five and twenty ships with their cargos – his own property – and to have traded for above half a million sterling a year. | ” |
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