The Political Economy of Merchant Empires
State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750

This book focuses on why Europe became the dominant economic force in global trade between 1450 and 1750.

James D. Tracy (Edited by)

9780521410465, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 October 1991

516 pages, 8 b/w illus.
23.4 x 15.8 x 3.6 cm, 0.911 kg

"The contributors to The Political Economy of Merchant Empires are among the most prominent of those scholars who have produced during the past five or six years a remarkably impressive literature on what used to be called the 'Expansion of Europe.'...[This book] is an unusually fine collection of summary articles on a very important general theme." Edwin J. Van Kley, Journal of Modern History

The Political Economy of Merchant Empires focuses on why European concerns eventually achieved dominance in global trade in the period between 1450 and 1750, at the expense, especially in Asia, of well-organised and well-financed rivals. The volume is a companion to The Rise of Merchant Empires, also edited by James Tracy, which dealt with changes in the growth and composition of long-distance trade during the same period.

Acknowledgements
Introduction James D. Tracy
1. Institutions, transaction costs and the rise of merchant empires Douglass C. North
2. Merchants and states M. N. Pearson
3. The rise of merchant empires, 1400–1700: a European counterpoint Thomas A. Brady Jr
4. Europe and the wider world, 1500–1700: the military balance Geoffrey Parker
5. The pirate and the emperor: power and the law on the seas, 1450–1850 Anne Pérotin-Dumon
6. Transport costs and long-range trade, 1300–1800: was there a European 'transport revolution' in the early modern era? Russell R. Menard
7. Transaction costs: a note on merchant credit and the organization of private trade Jacob M. Price
8. Evolution of empire: the Portuguese in the Indian ocean during the sixteenth century Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Luís Felipe F. R. Thomaz
9. Comparing the Tokagawa Shogunate with Hapsburg Spain: two silver-based empires in a global setting Dennis O. Flynn
10. Colonies as mercantile investments: the Luso-Brazilian empire, 1500–1808 José Jobson de Andrade Arruda
11. Reflections on the organizing principle of pre-modern trade K. N. Chaudhuri
Selected bibliography of secondary works
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ]