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Letter from Lisbon on the British Blockade of American Ports Cotton Prices and Wartime Correspondence with Britain: "Letters Coming from America are all Opened in Britain.
1813réf. BK0183Lisbon 1813. Autograph letter signed 3 pp. on a folded sheet with integral address panel to Messrs. Brown & Ives Providence Rhode Island and Newport "SHIP" and circular datestamps. 8 x 9 ¾ inches. Folded for mailing with considerable wear along the folds several tears and small losses including losses from opening the seal affecting scattered words. Good overall and substantially legible. A commercial letter written from Lisbon during the War of 1812 by "P. Falconer" probably the Baltimore merchant Peregrine Falconer. The identification remains somewhat tentative but the 1812 Baltimore directory lists Comegys Falconer & Co. merchants at 190 Baltimore Street while later Maryland Chancery records document the estate of Peregrine Falconer; Missouri archival records also document Falconer and Comegys and both "Perregrine" and "Perry" Falconer. Falconer was preparing to sail from Lisbon for Falmouth and writes Brown & Ives with the latest commercial and political intelligence reaching Portugal. He expected the widening European opposition to Napoleon to bring still more nations into the war then turned immediately to British policy toward American trade: "from the complexion of affairs that in the course of the Summer all the powers in Europe will be joined against France. If I am correctly informed a new duty of 6d. pr lb in addition is imposed in Britain upon American Cotton . Savannah Charleston & New York in a state of Blockade - this with the new duty has advanced the Price of Cotton .". The Russo-Prussian alliance had been concluded only weeks earlier Sweden joined the anti-Napoleonic alliance on March 24 and the coalition would continue to expand during the year. At the same time the English Parliament was debating additional duties on American cotton: on March 31 the government proposed sixpence per pound on American cotton imported in foreign vessels while Alexander Baring warned that American cotton carried by neutral ships would consequently bear a total duty of ninepence per pound. British naval pressure on the American coast was also rapidly increasing during the spring of 1813 trapping increasing amounts of American shipping in port. Falconer's letter thus records from Lisbon the immediate commercial relationship between the blockade British taxation and the price of American cotton. The war also forced Falconer to reconsider how Brown & Ives should communicate with him once he reached Britain. He gives explicit instructions intended to obscure their route: "I presume the only means of corresponding with Liverpool will be by the way of Lisbon. I have to request that you will write to me . frequently enclosing your letters under cover to Messrs. - & Brown without marking 'Via Lisbon' as letters coming from America are all opened in Britain." The remainder concerns the practical movement of merchants and shipping through the same wartime network including Falmouth and Liverpool passage arrangements vessels preparing to sail and convoying. Overall a useful merchant's-eye letter from the spring of 1813 with the blockade of American ports the British cotton duty the developing coalition against Napoleon and the routing of commercial correspondence all appearing as parts of the same Atlantic problem. . unknown
Auger Down Books · États-Unis600,00 $US≈ 536,05 €
