Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on April 4, 2008
Enterprise and Society 2008 9(2):281-313; doi:10.1093/es/khn003
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Caveat Emptor: Abolishing Public Measurements, Standardizing Quantities, and Enhancing Market Transparency in the London Coal Trade c1830
Aashish Velkar is PhD candidate at the London School of Economics
Contact information: Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. E-mail: A.Velkar{at}lse.ac.uk
This article evaluates efforts to standardize quantities in the London coal trade c1830, and traces the end of the public measurement system first introduced in the fourteenth century. Increasing traffic in coal, reduction of taxes on the commodity, inefficient public meters, etc., contributed to the demise of public measurements. This outcome was the result of extensive negotiations between merchants, the various levels of state bureaucracy, and the parliament. Switching measurement standards was difficult, if not costly, to coordinate. Abolishing public measurements and switching from volume to weight measurements was part of the efforts to strengthen governance along the commodity chain, secure property rights by making quantities predictable and alter a mechanism that powerful merchants considered had become inappropriate.
I am grateful for the generous help of the Carus-Wilson Graduate Research Studentship and the assistance of the project team of "How Well Do ‘Facts’ Travel?," a Leverhulme Trust/ ESRC funded project (No. F/07004/Z) that made this research possible. Early versions of this paper greatly benefited from comments by Mary Morgan, Peter Howlett, Jim Tomlinson, three anonymous referees, and seminar participants at London School of Economics, Economic History Society, Nuffield College, Oxford, and Imperial College, London.