British Merchant Houses in Mexico, 1821–1860: Conforming Business Practices and Ethics

Abstract

R E F E R R I N G to the problems raised by the house correspondence of business firms, historian Robert Greenhill wrote, No merchant willingly admits that he is doing well: he is much more likely to grumble about goods badly sold than to offer praise when they go off well.1 The nature of the correspondence between British merchants stationed overseas and their consuls was no different and hardly could be, considering the function of consular agents. The picture of trade with Mexico from the 1820S to the i86os, as gleaned from Foreign Office documents, is indeed bleak: trade was stagnant, imports did not pay, contraband drove prices down, debts private and public went unpaid, merchants suffered all manner of in-justices and operated at the mercy of weak and corruptible governments, commercial houses skirted bankr-uptcy. It is not always easy to draw a line between exaggeration and reality.2 The situation in newly independent Mexico was uncertain, frequently turbulent, and, it would appear, hardly conducive to a flourishing trade. Constraints to the growth of external trade pervaded the import-export process and included physical, social, economic, and political barriers. Rugged terrain, climate, and the primitive state of transportation slowed down