MISFORTUNES may be sure to happen! Merchants such as James Clemens understood that risk was an everyday part of their work; it was frequent and pervasive. More importantly, they realised that some risks could not be guarded against, but that prudence and attention to detail could help to manage others. Benjamin Franklin noted in 1760 that whilst the needs of life were fixed and determined, ‘The Variety of Losses a Trader is liable to, by Trusting at Land, and Adventuring by Sea, by perishable commodities, and Perils from Thieves and Fire, make it manifest, that he is set in the midst of Contingencies’ [emphasis in original]. Franklin clearly perceived that risks were of different types: trusting at land we can understand to be the moral hazard of other people; the risk of the sea and fire we can take to be natural hazards; and in perishable commodities we can think of technical hazard or knowledge aspects of the market. Moreover, the ever-present nature of these risks caused constant anxiety. In another advice book of 1763 William Gordon noted that ‘No profit is equal to the anxiety a man must be under, who hath perhaps as much at risk as he is worth in the world.’ Coping strategies varied: some merchants were risk averse, whilst others fully embraced risk, thriving in times of war, or being involved in the slave trade for example. Risks, however, are socially constructed, and it is therefore important to place the perception and management of risk in historical context.

This chapter first considers the socio-cultural construction of risk before discussing risk and risk management in terms of natural, moral, and technical hazard. It will argue that although eighteenth-century merchants did not use terms such as natural, moral or technical hazard, they did perceive these types of risks separately and differently. Moreover, their nuanced understanding of these risks meant that they were mostly able to manage them extremely well.