The Political Economy of Merchant Empires

"...forms an exciting introduction to relatively recent and exotic discoveries in early modern economic history, and to the broad issue of western economic dominance." The Northern Mariner

• 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.