Collective Action when Needed: The Kingston Chamber of Commerce in Jamaica, 1778–85.

A chamber of commerce in Kingston was a response to defects in local projections of the British imperial state. It met immediate needs to organise naval convoys and liaise with the local naval commander in the face of breakdown of effective government resulting from conflicts between Governor John Dalling and Jamaica's Assembly. The efforts of collective action were mitigated by being shared across a range of activities that the chamber either developed or collaborated in providing: convoys, negotiations over naval impressment, a coffee room, help with credit and specie, marine insurance and response to the disastrous hurricane of October 1780. The chamber is a significant illustration of the growing development of voluntary formal rules-based business interest representation in the eighteenth-century British Empire. Although short-lived, it is important as an early example of chamber bodies that later helped the management of empire and covered all its major cities. It shows these locally based bodies seeking new opportunities to represent commercial interests directly, rather than through traditional intermediaries, and beginning to fill gaps to support the development of trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]