Citizens of the World examines the business and social strategies of the men who developed the British Atlantic community in the eighteenth century. This book focuses on twenty-three London merchants who traded with America in an age of imperial expansion.

Part I. The Crucible of Trade: 1. A larger world; 2. Mercantile origins: 'passengers only'; Part II. The Management of Trade: 3. Managing from a 'Merchant's public counting house'; 4. Shipping and trading in an 'empire of the seas'; 5. Planting: 'a great fund of riches and of strength to Great Britain'; 6. Slaving: Bance Island's 'general rendezvous'; 7. Government contracting: 'a work of Hercules'; 8. Financing: 'turning the great wheel of unfathomable commerce round'; Part III. Becoming a Gentleman: 9. The urge to improve; 10. The way to be rich and respectable; Epilogue: mercantile legacies: 'industrious friends'.