London's Royal Exchange, 1660-1750: The Trading World in Miniature

Natasha Glaisyer 

At the heart of international trading networks in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, London's Royal Exchange was a commercial and information entrepôt where metropolitan merchants and traders, and those from further afield, engaged in commercial transactions. This paper employs a cultural approach to explore both the activities the Exchange accommodated and textual and visual images of the building during this period of commercial and financial "revolution." The notion of the Exchange's reputation was keenly articulated and formed part of a larger rhetoric on London as a trading center. Moreover, as an icon of trade, the Exchange brought glory not only to the city, but to the nation as well. Visual depictions of the Exchange quadrangle indicated the various "walks" where merchants from all corners of the commercial world gathered; many contemporary travelers and satirists commented upon the diversity of the traders gathered there. This was the trading world in miniature.

[WP # 99004]