The Benefits of Banishment: The Lasting Influence of Loyalist Merchant Networks on the Early American Republic

Eight years after his eviction from Boston, loyalist merchant David Greene and his Antigua-based business partner were planning future enterprises: “the earlier we form good Connections the better.” By his death in 1812, Greene had returned to Boston and developed a flourishing import business with associates in Britain and the Caribbean. He served as a consul in Boston for two European nations and headed the city’s most prominent bank. He helped relations secure consular positions in other states and the Caribbean. Like the Greenes, multiple former New England loyalists later developed mercantile powerhouses in the United States or served the national interest abroad. The Jefferson administration’s consul in London, George William Erving, was part of a banished loyalist family. By 1805, Erving was defending American shipping rights in British courts.

The later-life successes of these loyalists were not merely from prewar family wealth or connections. The geographic upheaval of exile created social and financial opportunities. In this paper, I see these select refugees not as victims passively waiting out the war, but as active Atlantic players finding opportunities in exile. Inadvertently aided by forced movement around the Atlantic and socialization in loyalist enclaves, they formed new trade and correspondence networks. After the war, some returned to the United States and maintained influential connections across the Atlantic. Since the postwar Anglo-American relationship pivoted on trade agreements, merchant returnees were the perfect liaisons. They formed mutually beneficial alliances with the American government. To trace this, I follow several merchant loyalists through the war and into the early nineteenth century. I suggest that loyalists influenced the early republic’s diplomatic and financial development much more than scholars have noted. Exiles’ wartime actions made that influence possible.