Chamber of Commerce: From 1599 to 2008

This article provides very interesting historical data. Do you know when the first Chamber of Commerce was founded in the World? How about in the U.S.? Do you know when the first Hispanic Chamber of Commerce was founded? How about the first Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce? Grab a cup of coffee because we are going to take you a little bit back in time. We are going to go from 1599 all the way to April 23rd, 2008.

Continental Europe

We don’t want to overwhelm you with tons of data and irrelevant information so we are going to try to keep this article as informative as we can. We all are aware of the important role that a Chamber of Commerce plays and most of us belong to one. “As an association of business men, its history goes back at least to Roman times; the first such association to bear the name “chamber of commerce” was that of Marseilles, established in 1599.”(Friedman, 1947)

Marseille, the oldest city of France, was founded in 600 BC by Greeks from Phocaea as a trading port under the name Μασσαλία (Massalia). Massalia was one of the first Greek ports in Western Europe,[4] growing to a population of over 1000. It was the first settlement given city status in France. Facing an opposing alliance of the Etruscans, Carthage and the Celts, the Greek colony allied itself with the expanding Roman Republic for protection. This protectionist association brought aid in the event of future attacks, and perhaps equally important it also brought the people of Massalia into the complex Roman market. (Wikipedia)

The world's oldest English-speaking chamber of commerce is that of Glasgow, Scotland, that was established in 1783. Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. Glasgow grew from the medieval Bishopric of Glasgow and the later establishment of the University of Glasgow, which contributed to the Scottish Enlightenment. From the 18th century the city became one of Europe's main hubs of transatlantic trade with the Americas. After the Acts of Union in 1707, Scotland gained trading access to the vast markets of the British Empire and Glasgow became prominent in international commerce as a hub of trade to the Americas, especially in the movement of tobacco, cotton and sugar into the deep water port that had been created by city merchants at Port Glasgow.

United States

“The Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York was the first association of business men for the purpose of furthering their interests to be launched in America. When the Chamber was established in New York in 1768, the city of New York was the fourth port of the English Colonies, ranking only after Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia. By then the importing and exporting of merchandise between the Colonies and Great Britain had increased from a yearly average of £532,988 in the first decade of the eighteenth century to an annual average of £2,380110 by the decade 1750-60”(Friedman, 1947)

La Camara, 1939 – A “Mexican” Chamber of Commerce Forms in Dallas

“In 1939 eleven Hispanic small businessmen, one empresaria (female business owner), and Dallas’s Mexican consul formed a chamber of commerce. The founding was influenced by the social, political, and institutional isolation of the barrio, the default community leadership role of the local Mexican consul, and the greater chamber of commerce movement’s overall theme of providing protection to smaller businesses” (Tatman, 2006)

History shows that chambers of commerce have been founded for the purpose of furthering their interests. We all know that Chambers of Commerce varies widely in the range of its activities and functions.

The Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce was founded on April 23rd, 2008 and it isn’t that different from a Chamber of Commerce. Besides the legal status and the focus of their activities, an average Chamber of Commerce and the Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce are business associations founded for the purpose of furthering the interest of their members. They aren’t mutually exclusive, meaning that you can be an active member of both chambers at the same time. Every day, more business owners incorporate some sort of e-business activity into their business strategies.

The Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce defines ebusiness as the method comprised of both ecommerce (buying and selling online) and the restructuring of business processes to make best use of digital technologies.

We invite micro, small and medium size business owners, academics and other interested stakeholders to join the Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce.

If you are struggling to promote your business online, if you don’t know exactly what to do to implement a good ebusiness strategy, if you want to be part of a virtual community of small business owners, if you want to network with other business owners in your community, nation and worldwide; if you believe that the internet is a valuable tool for your business, if don’t have a web site but you still want to promote your business online, if you want to improve your online marketing strategies, if you want to contribute ideas that can help to educate business owners about the importance of the internet as a business tool or if you just want to be part of the Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce just because…join today, the more we are the better.

History shows that every Chamber of Commerce was founded by businessmen trying to protect their interests and promote their businesses as a team. The Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce, being a virtual organization isn’t any different. It has been put together to support businesses interested in using different ecommerce tools as a complement of their business strategy. Our mission, vision and goals are complemented by the following objectives:

- Discuss online marketing strategies.
- Learn together better ways to use the Internet as a Business Intelligence Tool, which is available free of charge via the open up website.
- Find State Funded ebusiness related educational material. Identify all sources of data relevant to business owners that are conducting business online.
- Monitor best practices. There are several micro, small and medium size businesses that have been able to implement successful ebusiness strategies. The idea is to discuss some of them in order to learn something from those successful ebusiness experiences.
- Recommend initiatives designed to facilitate ebusiness adoption and promotion.
- Create the Group Action Plan. A set of basic actions that can help each Member of the group improve his/her online marketing strategy.

As hard as we desire, we can’t accomplish everything along. We need your support, your companionship; we want you to share your ideas, thoughts, experiences, fears and more. We need your active participation because without you, our efforts are going to be meaningless.
We want you to make sure that you are not alone any more. There are several small business owners who are struggling day-by-day to make things happen, to stay competitive in the market and to keep contributing their share to the economy.

Benefit

Joining the Hispanic Chamber of E-commerce is an effective and cost efficient method of advancing the ebusiness agenda for each one of the members.
If you don’t have a business but you are a researcher or any other type of person interested in making a contribution to our members, we invite you to join the "Google Group" that has been created. The forum will be used to promote active communication among members and to post documents, articles, etc. of interest.

The ultimate goal that the Hispanic Chamber of E-commerce has as an organization is to be able to translate HISCEC’s objectives into deliverables.

The ability of the group to think together, to combine knowledge and experience will be reflected in the final deliverables. Every deliverable will provide a set of actions that is going to contribute to the growth and development of the business.

Become a member of the Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce and start writing with us a new chapter in the history of the Chambers of Commerce.