Toshiaki Tamaki is Professor of Economic History at Kyoto Sangyo University, where he researches the institutional role of commission-based intermediaries in global trade from antiquity to the digital age.

• Introduction: What are the Reasons for Economic Growth? 1. Origins of Commerce and Markets 2. Integrating Eurasia: Islam, the Mongol Empire and the Economic Rise of Song–Yuan China 3. Trade and European External Expansion 4. Four-Continent Chains: The Maritime Revolution of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 5. Printing, Price Currents and the Industrious Revolution 6. Family Firms and Institutional Foundations: A Comparative Perspective on Sephardic, Armenian and Japanese Merchants 7. From the Netherlands to Britain: Hegemonic Transition 8. Commission Capitalism and the Making of the Global Economy: Britain, Diasporic Merchants, and Asia, 1415–1914 9. Financialisation, Digital Platforms and the New Inequalities. Conclusion

Toshiaki Tamaki is Professor of Economic History at Kyoto Sangyo University, where he researches the institutional role of commission-based intermediaries in global trade from antiquity to the digital age.

• Introduction: What are the Reasons for Economic Growth? 1. Origins of Commerce and Markets 2. Integrating Eurasia: Islam, the Mongol Empire and the Economic Rise of Song–Yuan China 3. Trade and European External Expansion 4. Four-Continent Chains: The Maritime Revolution of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 5. Printing, Price Currents and the Industrious Revolution 6. Family Firms and Institutional Foundations: A Comparative Perspective on Sephardic, Armenian and Japanese Merchants 7. From the Netherlands to Britain: Hegemonic Transition 8. Commission Capitalism and the Making of the Global Economy: Britain, Diasporic Merchants, and Asia, 1415–1914 9. Financialisation, Digital Platforms and the New Inequalities. Conclusion