A Trading House of Treasure: The Movement of Gold and Silver through England in the Early 1850s
The merchants in England played an essential role in the global movement of gold and
silver throughout the nineteenth century. That task was made all the more critical in the
early 1850s with new, extensive finds of gold and silver. Parcels of treasure arrived at
various ports of England, primarily from the Americas and Australia. Though some precious metals remained in England, most were re-exported globally to the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. Thus, England was the principal trading house within the overall global treasure movement of the mid-nineteenth century. The paper broadens the wide-ranging historiography on England as the centre of finance in the nineteenth century. The paper uses a micro-historical window of the period following the opening of the goldfields to explain how treasure moved globally in the mid-nineteenth century. It does this at the transactional level and reveals a complex network of treasure trading through an analysis of archival and newspaper sources. Specifically, the paper treats gold and silver as commodities bought and sold on the open markets in England. The paper also explores the trade decision-making of capitalists in England. New loans requesting finance appeared continuously, whether local or global. Further, the treasure trade created a market of new companies, whether to mine the treasure or transport it. The paper thus investigates the concerns of investors, bond or share-holders, at the time and proposes how these concerns may have altered the thinking of investors in London as to where they may want to accommodate their capital. Finally, using Prices Current data, the paper tentatively explores the global money markets to advance theories on how arbitrage may have affected the overall treasure trade.
