Henry Hope
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Henry Hope (1735 - 1811) was born in Boston, New England. His Scottish father Henry was a merchant banker who had left for the "new world" after experiencing financial difficulties in the bubble of 1720 in Rotterdam. Henry Hope the elder had run a merchant banking business in the Netherlands with his brothers Archibald and Thomas. Henry Hope the younger moved first to London for 6 years and then to the Netherlands and settled in Amsterdam. In 1762 he went to work for his uncles together with his cousin John (or Jan) Hope(1737-1784), father of Thomas Hope, in the family business. By that time the Hope brothers were established as leading merchants in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, but when the younger Hopes joined the company, the name was changed to Hope & Co.. In the 18th century Amsterdam as the largest port of Europe was the center of commerce and merchant banking in Europe, and Hope & Co. played a major part in the finances of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).
[edit] Welgelegen
Henry was a particularly good networker and had many influential friendships among important figures of the day, thanks to his good command of English, French, and Dutch. He acquired a large art collection and built villa Welgelegen in Haarlem to house it. Here he received many heads of state, including the Americans Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams who came to Europe for trade negotiations. William V of Orange also visited him there, along with his wife Wilhelmina of Prussia, who much later lived there as Princess of Orange until her death in 1820.
[edit] The Wealth of Nations
In 1782 Holland was the first country to recognize the young United States and when John Adams became first ambassador of his country in the Hague, he became a frequent guest of Henry Hope at his summer home in Haarlem, sometimes visiting with his sons. From 1782 Henry became the manager of Hope & Co. and he, his art collection, and his company were famous. In 1786 Adam Smith dedicated the fourth edition of his book 'The Wealth of Nations' to Henry Hope in hopes of increasing his readership:
In this fourth Edition I have made no alterations of any kind. I now, however, find myself at liberty to acknowledge my very great obligations to Mr. HENRY HOP of Amsterdam. To that Gentleman I owe the most distinct, as well as liberal information, concerning a very interesting and important subject, the Bank of Amsterdam; of which no printed account had ever appeared to me satisfactory, or even intelligible. The name of that Gentleman is so well known in Europe, the information which comes from him must do so much honour to whoever has been favoured with it, and my vanity is so much interested in making this acknowledgment, that I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of prefixing this Advertisement to this new Edition of my Book.[1]
Henry had many connections among Quakers in the United States, London and Scotland. He purchased the Pennsylvanian Hope Lodge in 1782 for a wealthy Philadelphia banker, James Horatio Watmough.
[edit] Relocation to London
Henry Hope fled to London in 1794 before the French revolutionary forces. In the Amsterdam archives of Hope & Co. it states that he took 372 paintings with him. Among these were important works by Frans Hals, Rubens, Rembrandt and Sir Anthony van Dyck.[2] He started a London branch of Hope & Co. and became friendly with Francis Baring with whom he entered upon many large land deals with various royal names. He clearly shared the genius of his uncle Thomas Hope (the elder), who died in 1799, leaving him the business spread over London and Amsterdam. The largest land deal that he and Barings entered upon was the issue of shares to finance the Louisiana Purchase in 1804, more than a year after the treaty was signed. He and Barings had been working on the deal for almost a decade in secrecy.
Though he always hoped to return to Amsterdam, Henry died childless in London in 1811.
