The Organisation of Global Trade

The Monopoly Companies, 1600–1800

Bibliographic Data

ID12416679
AuthorsPieter Emmer (Leiden University, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume22
Issue1
Pages106-115
Publication date2014-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1062-7987 • E-ISSN: 1474-0575
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1062798713000677
OpenAlexW2169495889
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited18

In the early modern period (1500–1800), shipping and trade within Europe were the domain of individual merchants and small companies organised on a temporary basis. Outside Europe, however, new financial and commercial institutions such as permanent joint stock companies came into existence in order to limit the risks. These large institutions played an important role in inter-continental trade and shipping, albeit that their role in Asia differed from that in the Atlantic, where small companies as well as individual merchants remained the dominant form of organisation. In addition, privateers played an important role in the Atlantic economy in times of war while piracy could flourish in those parts of the overseas world where the Iberian trade circuits bordered on those of France, England and the Dutch republic. The conclusion points to the fact that a direct link between the overseas expansion of Europe and its industrialisation might be difficult to construct, but that the creation of long distance trading companies created the institutional environment that must have facilitated Europe's rapid economic growth after the middle of the eighteenth century

Business · Economics · Economy · Geography · Industrialisation · International trade · Joint-stock company · Market economy · Monopoly · Order (exchange · Stock (firearms · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Finance

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