Going the Distance

Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700

Bibliographic Data

ID23765671
AuthorsRon Harris (0000-0002-9257-9827, corresponding author)
Year2020
Publication date2020-02-11
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueGoing the Distance (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPrinceton University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.23943/princeton/9780691150772.001.0001
OpenAlexW4233666520
ISBN9780691150772
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Before the seventeenth century, trade across Eurasia was mostly conducted in short segments along the Silk Route and Indian Ocean. Business was organized in family firms, merchant networks, and state-owned enterprises, and dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Arabic traders. However, around 1600 the first two joint-stock corporations, the English and Dutch East India Companies, were established. This book tells the story of overland and maritime trade without Europeans, of European Cape Route trade without corporations, and of how new, large-scale, and impersonal organizations arose in Europe to control long-distance trade for more than three centuries. It shows that by 1700, the scene and methods for global trade had dramatically changed: Dutch and English merchants shepherded goods directly from China and India to northwestern Europe. To understand this transformation, the book compares the organizational forms used in four major regions: China, India, the Middle East, and Western Europe. The English and Dutch were the last to leap into Eurasian trade, and they innovated in order to compete. They raised capital from passive investors through impersonal stock markets and their joint-stock corporations deployed more capital, ships, and agents to deliver goods from their origins to consumers. The book explores the history behind a cornerstone of the modern economy, and how this organizational revolution contributed to the formation of global trade and the creation of the business corporation as a key factor in Europe's economic rise.

Business · China · Cornerstone · Corporation · Economics · Economy · Geography · International trade · Joint-stock company · Stock (firearms) · Finance · Historical Economic and Social Studies

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