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This article uses a new dataset of 330 slaving voyages to examine terms of credit issued for British American slave sales between 1755 and 1807. It shows that credit terms consistently varied between American colonies, and that slave ship captains considered these differences when electing where to land enslaved Africans. Our dataset also shows that credit terms were highly erratic, especially in the last quarter of the century, contributing to both surges and collapses in the slave trade to individual colonies, and in the trade as a whole. Four such instances are examined in detail to show that instability in credit terms played an important and hitherto unacknowledged role in the volume and direction of Britain's trans-Atlantic slave trade in the second one-half of the eighteenth century.

This article considers the role of a transformational retail setting in the development of an iconic brand identity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The focus of this research is Liberty of London. Through experiential engagement and augmented admission, Liberty created a retail environment that challenged existing practices. Coupled with the development of a brand identity enhanced through authoritative advocacy and consumers’ allegorical encounters with the firm’s core brand message, Liberty achieved the symbolic substantiation of a distinct taste regime through the market-mediation of authenticity. We discuss how brand representation in a transformational retail setting in the metropolitan market of the late nineteenth century legitimized and structured consumer expectations in a context of growing middle class demand for merchandise with enhanced aesthetic qualities and associated lifestyle values.