James Dunlop

James Dunlop was a merchant and financier born in in Glasgow, Scotland, who made his fortune in Canada.

Dunlop received his commercial education at the High School of Glasgow and as the other young men of the city’s mercantile class, he was sent out to Virginia, the focus of the tobacco trade and the main center of Scottish overseas enterprise, where he arrived, early in 1773 and settled on the James River opposite Jamestown.

Dunlop moved to Quebec in 1779 where he established a small store in which he sold dry goods, hardware, groceries, and “fancy goods,” imported on credit from Glasgow. His business in Quebec was started in partnership with Andrew Porteous, but was dissolved in 1781. In 1782 Dunlop set himself up in Montreal, which was burgeoning as the center of Canadian commerce. By 1785 he had his own warehouse, with its own wharf, on Montreal’s business thoroughfare, Rue Saint-Paul. He sold the large assortments of dry goods, cutlery, alcoholic beverages, sugar, and other products that he continued to import. From the early 1780s he traveled extensively throughout the colony, negotiating purchases of grain and timber.

Dunlop was also active in wine and spirits trade business. He imported high-grade rums and whiskies from Greenock and found a ready market among habitants and fur traders. Until 1796, Dunlop imported from Cadiz shiploads of Spanish, Madeira, and Portuguese wines, supplying the domestic cellars of most of the fur-trade magnates. Also from Cadiz, he imported on a large scale rum, sugar, and tobacco. His commercial agents, mostly Scottish, were working in in Tuscany (Italy) at Leghorn, in Spain at Cadiz and Barcelona, in Portugal at Lisbon, and on Madeira.

By the beginning of the 19th century his original import business had been overshadowed by new lines of activity; in 1800 he stated that his imports from Scotland made him no profit, but that he was rapidly accumulating a large fortune through bill brokering, shipowning, shipbuilding, and the export of bulk products.