The Merchant Diplomat: William Lee's Secret Dutch Treaty and the Victory at Yorktown
About this episode
This episode explores the life and contributions of William Lee in the context of the American Revolution and the tobacco trade.
A younger son of Thomas Lee, William Lee was the best businessman in the Lee Family of Virginia and used his skills as a merchant, trader, and radical London politician to help win the American Revolution through a clever bit of "militia diplomacy". Listen ad-free here: https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/the-merchant-diplomat-william-lees This episode follows William Lee of Stratford Hall, a younger son of the Lee family who was trained in the tobacco economy rather than given the advantages of his older brothers. After his father's death, he worked under Philip Ludwell Lee as a clerk, steward, and estate manager, overseeing tobacco rents, warehouses, and shipping operations at Stratford Hall, the seat of the Lee family of Virginia and a major center of commerce in the colonial tobacco trade. The experience taught him how the Atlantic tobacco trade worked and how British merchants and factors controlled much of its profit. William Lee then became a London tobacco factor and built his own merchant house in London, starting in 1768. He strengthened it through his marriage to Hannah Philippa Ludwell, which brought him capital and the historic Green Spring estate. From Tower Hill…
More episodes of The Old World with Will Tanner
- Arthur Lee: The Forgotten Founder, Spy, and Diplomat Who Armed the Revolution
- The Virginia Gentry: America's Only Aristocracy and What We can Learn from Them
- The Conway Cabal: Did Richard Henry Lee Betray George Washington?
- The First and Forgotten Founding Father: Richard Henry Lee's Creation of America
- Founding Brothers: How One Generation of Lees Won the Revolution and Built America
- Father of Four Founding Fathers: Thomas Lee of Stratford Hall
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