Hope & Co. - Baring Brothers Bank

Eighteenth-century Amsterdam was the largest port in Europe and the continent's center of commerce and merchant banking. By that time, the Hope brothers were already established as leading merchants in the Netherlands, but when the younger Hopes joined the Amsterdam branch, the name was changed from Hope Brothers (more familiarly, "the Hopes") to Hope & Co..
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Hope & Co. is the name of a famous Dutch bank that spanned two and a half centuries. Though the founders were Scotsmen, the bank was located in Amsterdam, and at the close of the 18th century it had offices in London as well. SEARCH OFFSHORE COMPANY

The United East Indian Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie; VOC), referred to by the British as the Dutch East India Company, was originally established as a chartered company in 1602, when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on Dutch spice trade. It is often considered to have been the first multinational corporation in the world and it was the first company to issue stock. It was a powerful company, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts,negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.[6] Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asia trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

Hope & Co. soon played a major part in the finances of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company_(VOC)

In 1762 when the nephews Jan (John) and Henry Hope (1736–1811) joined Hopes, the name was changed to Hope & Co. At that time the Englishmen John Williams and Pierre Cesar Labouchere were also partners in the firm totalling 26 people.
Pierre's marriage in 1796 to the third daughter of Francis Baring, Dorothy, was the cement between the two firms Barings and Hopes a British merchant bank based in London, and the world's second oldest merchant bank (after Berenberg Bank). It was founded in 1762 and was owned by the German-originated Baring family of merchants and bankers. The bank collapsed in 1995 after suffering losses of £827 million ($1.3 billion) resulting from poor speculative investments, primarily in futures contracts, conducted by an employee named Nick Leeson working at its office in Singapore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barings_Bank
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Adriaan van der Hoop (1778–1854), https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/10084697
who had been active with the firm throughout the French occupation and who became full partner in Hope & Co. in 1814, on the death of Henry Hope inherited the Amsterdam portion of the investments, together with fellow partner in Amsterdam Alexander Baring, who then chose land over art and moved to America.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Baring,_1st_Baron_Ashburton

When Adriaan van der Hoop died, he was worth 5 million guilders. His art collection went to the city of Amsterdam that created a museum to house the collection after his death. Among the 250 17th and 18th century works in this collection were 'The Jewish Bride' by Rembrandt, 'Woman in Blue Reading a Letter' by Vermeer, 'Moederzorg' by Pieter de Hooch and 'De molen bij Wijk bij Duurstede' by Jacob van Ruisdael.

Of this great mercantile family the Duc de Richelieu wittily remarked; "There are six main powers in Europe; Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Prussia and Baring-Brothers!" (Vicary Gibbs, from the "Complete Peerage" 1910).

Hope Lodge Historic Site
553 S. Bethlehem Pike • Fort Washington, PA 19034 USA• 215-646-1595
Hope Lodge originally known as White Marsh Estate
Served as army medical headquarters Nov. and Dec. 1777 for George Washington's Army

Hope Lodge Video, Fort Washington, pennsylvania, historic site, philadelphia, samuel morris, degn, wentz

Henry Hope (1735–1811) was an Amsterdam merchant banker born in Boston, in Britain's Massachusetts Bay Colony in North America.

The Hope Diamond:" The diamond disappeared, and for many years it was not heard from at all, but in 1830, a large steel blue diamond of a different shape, and weighing only 44.50 carats appeared on the market in England was purchased by Henry Thomas Hope, an English banker. In 1851 the diamond was shown at a London exhibition and was insured for a million dollars, an INSANE amount of money for the time period, but then again, this was the largest diamond of it’s type in the world. It was later inherited by a descendant, Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope. His wife, formerly a prominent American actress, May Yohe, and a stage star at the beginning of the 20th century, ran away with another man. She died in Boston, Mass., in 1913, practically penniless and forgotten. She had little reguard for the Hope Diamond, and wrote the then owner, Evalyn Walsh McLean, commenting unfavorably on the jewel and the misfortune of it’s owners. Lord Hope eventually went bankrupt and again, the diamond vanished, only to be discovered by the estate trustees after it had been sold as a piece of costume jewelry and lightly reguarded. http://famousdiamonds.tripod.com/hopediamond.html

In 1762 when the nephews Jan (John) and Henry Hope (1736–1811) joined Hopes, the name was changed to Hope & Co. At that time the Englishmen John Williams and Pierre Cesar Labouchere were also partners in the firm totalling 26 people. In that year they expanded the offices in Amsterdam to house Henry and Jan in Keizersgracht 448. Thomas lived in the buildings next door, 444–446. Zachary's son Archibald (1747–1821) became a member of Dutch Parliament, regent of the West Indian Company (WIC), and owned the former palace 'Lange Voorhout' in the Hague.
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Pierre's marriage in 1796 to the third daughter of Francis Baring, Dorothy, was the cement between the two firms Barings and Hopes.
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The archive of the firm Hope & Co is mixed up with the archive of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)
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because in 1752 one of the founding Hope brothers, Thomas Hope (1704–1779), became a member of the "Lords XVII", the managers of the VOC.
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Four years later he became head regent of the VOC, and in 1766 he became the spokesperson for William V of Orange, the formal head of the VOC. In 1770 Thomas retired and passed his responsibilities to his son John (1737–1784), who remained with the VOC and Hope & Co. until his death.
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Pierre Labouchere
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played an important role in negotiations with France, handling most of the financing for Holland with that country. Adrian was a member of Dutch Parliament and the Amsterdam City Council. Unlike banks today, the partners of Hope & Co. mixed up their private business with public business and the bank's business. Letters in the archive touch on many subjects at once. The earliest letters go back to the 1720s and are addressed to Thomas and Adrian Hope.
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A particularly rich portion of the archive is the correspondence in the period 1795–1815, when Henry Hope was forced to leave the Netherlands and set up offices in London. The regular correspondence between the Amsterdam and London branches give important insights into trade negotiations of the period and how they were done. The day-to-day running of Hope & Co. in those days was in the hands of Thomas' American nephew Henry Hope (1736–1811), who did business with different countries, including Sweden, Poland, Russia, Portugal, Spain, France and the United States.

In 1804 Hope & Co. issued shares to finance the Louisiana Purchase, thanks to the negotiations of Henry Hope and Francis Baring.
Alexander was brought up in his father's business, and became a partner at Hope & Co. He was sent to the United States for various land deals, and formed wide connections with American houses. In 1807 Alexander became a partner in the family firm, along with his brothers Thomas and Henry, and the name was changed to Baring Brothers & Co. When Henry Hope died in 1811, the London offices of Hope & Co. merged with Baring Brothers & Co.
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Ashburton married Anne Louisa, daughter of the American statesman William Bingham, of Philadelphia, on 23 August 1798.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Baring,_1st_Baron_Ashburton
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Bubble Act 1720

Bubble Act 1720 forbade the formation of any other joint-stock companies unless approved by royal charter to include its colonies, particularly MA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_Act

Various motivations have been suggested for the Act. They include the desire to prevent the speculation that produced the contemporary South Sea Bubble, an attempt to prevent smaller non-charter companies from forming and so reduce the importance of Parliament in regulating businesses; or the South Sea Company itself wanting to prevent other bubbles from forming that might have decreased the intensity of its own.^[2] Recent scholarship indicates that the last was the cause: it was passed to prevent other companies from competing with the South Sea Company for investors' capital.

The most significant provision read:

All undertakings... presuming to act as a corporate body... raising... transferrable stock... transferring... shares in such stock..., either by Act of Parliament or any charter from the Crown,... and acting under any charter... for raising a capital stock... not intended... by such charter... and all acting... under any obsolete charter... for ever be deemed illegal and void.^[2]

Under the terms of the act, the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation and the London Assurance Corporation were granted charters to write marine insurance. Until 1824, they remained the only joint-stock firms with such a charter.

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Many bankers in Holland at that time went bankrupt, and many (including Henry) left the country. That this year was an important one for Dutch bankers is shown by the fact that when Rotterdam issued new telephone numbers in the 20th century, Hope & Co. beat Mees & Zn. in snapping up the number ending with 1720. In this early period the Hope brothers made money organizing shipment for Quakers out of Rotterdam (under the direction of Archibald, Isaac and Zachary) and the slave trade in Amsterdam (under the direction of Thomas and Adrian).

The top years for the Quaker transport to Pennsylvania were 1738, 1744, 1753 and 1765. These transports were paid for by the city of Rotterdam and the local Mennonite church, since the Quakers had no money and the city needed to do something about the refugees. In top years the Hopes received 60 guilders per Quaker, and in off years 11 guilders per Quaker. The slave trade was much less lucrative, but the care of the slaves on board the ships was worse. Of these, 16% died on board.

During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) the Hope brothers became very wealthy from speculation.
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