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Baltimore Foreign Trade 65
trading patterns of Baltimore can be explained on a personal basis. Brune, one of the larger German merchants, for instance, had come from Bremen and dianks to his connections there Bremen remained a port with which Baltimoreans always did considerable business. Refugees from the Santo Domingo uprising of 1793 did not become great traders themselves when they settled in Baltimore, but they must have been responsible for the close linkage that began then and remained between Baltimore houses and Santo Domingo.
These merchants were, in the classic sense, undifferentiated. Most were involved in wholesale as well as retail trading and acted as commission merchants as well as acting for themselves. Most were shipowners, too. It is a measure of the increasing prosperity of the town that as the West Indian trade, in particular, expanded, most of it was carried in Baltimore bottoms. In 1799, of the 412 West Indian entries, 345 were Baltimore bottoms; the following year, of 308 West Indian entries, 256 were Baltimore bottoms. Not until 1804-5 did any considerable number of New England bottoms begin to appear in Baltimore to use it as an entrepot in their reexport trade.
The ten years between 1815 and 1825 were for Baltimore, as for the other seaport cities, a time of readjustment. For reasons which will be noted, if they cannot always be explained, Baltimore's readjustment to the economic conditions of peace was not crowned with spectacular success by 1825 and this caused the decline of the port emphasized by Mr. Bjork. Because of the nature of its trade Baltimore was bound to face problems in the postwar world. The end of the war brought a sharp decline in demands for foodstuffs, an end to the reexport trade in West Indian commodities, and increased rivalry for the carrying of whatever was traded. With the coming of peace, there was no particular advantage either in the location of Baltimore or in the nature of its distinctive ships, for Baltimore boats were, in comparison with others, expensive to operate. Some additional industry had started up around Baltimore during the embargo, but not enough to diversify the economic base of the city in any permanent way. As late as 1825 there were within twenty miles of Baltimore only some sixty mills manufacturing, besides flour, largely duck and iron—a small number compared with the size of industrial growth farther north.
The merchant group that dealt with these changing conditions had some new blood, for during the postwar years men like Peabody,
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