Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T19:31:43.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Organisation of Global Trade: the Monopoly Companies, 1600–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2014

Pieter Emmer
Pieter Emmer*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Leiden, the Netherlands. E-mail: P.C.Emmer@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Type
Sea, North, History, Narrative, Energy, Climate: Papers from the 2012 Academia Europaea Bergen Meeting
Information
European Review , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 106 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Curtin, P. D. (2004) Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
2.Steensgaard, N. (1974) The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: Chicago University Press); K. N. Chaudhuri (1985) Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); P. Mushgrave (1981) The economics of uncertainty: the structural revolution in the spice trade, 1480–1640. In: P. L. Cottrell and D. H. Aldecroft (eds) Shipping, Trade and Commerce: Essays in Memory of Ralph Davis (Leicester: Leicester University Press).Google Scholar
3.Davis, R. (1973) The Rise of the Atlantic Economies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press); J. A. Rawley with S. D. Behrendt (2005) The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History, Revised Edition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press); K. G. Davies (1974) The North Atlantic World in the Seventeenth Century (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).Google Scholar
4.Emmer, P. C. (1991) The two expansion systems in the Atlantic. Itinerario, 15(1), pp. 21–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. M. J. MacLeod (1984) Spain and America: the Atlantic trade, 1492–1720. The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 341–388; Ribeiro da Silva, F. (2011) Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa. Empires. Merchants and the Atlantic System, 1580–1674 (Leiden/Boston: Brill).Google Scholar
6.Philips, C. R. (1990) The growth and composition of trade in the Iberian empire, 1450–1750. In: J. D. Tracy (ed.) The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 34–101.Google Scholar
7.Subrahmanyam, S. and Thomaz, L. F. F. R. (1991) Evolution of empire: the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean during the sixteenth century. In: J. D. Tracy (ed.) The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 298–331.Google Scholar
8.Yun-Casalilla, B. (1998) The American empire and the Spanish economy: an institutional and regional perspective. Revista de Historia Económica, XVI(1), p. 140.Google Scholar
9.Israel, J. (1989) Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
10.Ashton, T. H. and Philpin, C. E. (eds) (1985) The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11.Pearson, N. (1991) Merchants and states. In: J. D. Tracy (ed.) The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 41–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12.Glamann, K. (1958) Dutch-Asiatic Trade, 1620–1740 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff); O. Prakash (1987) The Dutch East India Company in the trade in the Indian Ocean. In: A. DasGupta and M. N. Pearson (eds) India and the Indian Ocean (New Dehli: Oxford University Press), pp. 185–200.Google Scholar
13.Gaastra, F. S. (2003) De Geschiedenis van de VOC (Zutphen: De Walburgpers)Google Scholar
14.Bruijn, J. R. and Gaastra, F. S. (1993) Ships, Sailors, and Spices. East India Companies and their Shipping in the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries (Amsterdam: NEHA).Google Scholar
15.Emmer, P. C. (1981) The West India Company, 1621–1791: Dutch or Atlantic? In: L. J. Blussé and F. S. Gaastra (eds) Companies and Trade: Essays on Overseas Trading Companies during the Ancien Regime (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff), pp. 71–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16.Steele, I. K. (1986) The English Atlantic, 1675–1760: An Exploration of Communication and Community (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
17.Price, J. M. (1991) Transaction costs: a note on merchant credit and the organization of private trade. In: J. D. Tracy (ed.) The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 276–297.Google Scholar
18.Emmer, P. (2011) ‘Slavery and the slave trade of the minor Atlantic powers. In: D. Eltis and S. L. Engerman (eds) The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol 3 AD 1420- AD 1804 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 450–478; G. D. Winius (1981) Two Lusitanian variations on a Dutch theme: Portuguese companies in times of crisis, 1628–1662. In: L. J. Blussé and F. S. Gaastra (eds) Companies and Trade: Essays on Overseas Trading Companies during the Ancien Regime (Dordtrecht: Martinus Nijhoff), pp. 119–134.Google Scholar
19.Emmer, P. C. (2006) The Dutch and the Atlantic challenge. In: P. C. Emmer, O. Pétré-Grenouilleau and J. V. Roitman (eds) A ‘deus ex machina’ revisited. Atlantic colonial trade and European economic development (Leiden/Boston: Brill), pp. 151–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20.Klooster, W. W. (1995) Illicit Riches. The Dutch Trade in the Caribbean, 1648–1795 (Leiden: KITLV).Google Scholar
21.Pérotin-Dumon, A. (1991) The pirate and the emperor: power and the law on the seas. In: J. D. Tracy (ed.) The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 196–227; J. L. Anderson (1995) Piracy and world history: an economic perspective on maritime predation. Journal of World History, V, pp. 175–199.Google Scholar