Kenneth Pomeranz is University Professor in History at the University of Chicago, USA, and was President of the American Historical Association in 2013-14.　 Steven Topik is Professor of History at UC Irvine, USA, where he has worked since 1984. Previously he taught at Brazil’ s Universidade　 Federal Fluminense and Colgate University.

‘In this collection of short essays, Pomeranz and Topik masterfully depict the story of the creation of the world economy. Without using academic jargon, they explain how trade with commodities, drugs, animals, people and ideas moved among continents and transformed the world.’ — Manel Ollé, associate tenure professor in Modern and contemporary Chinese history and culture, Director of the Master in Chinese Studies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain ‘How invisible networks of trade ultimately came to compel producers, merchants, and even whole societies to adapt to the networks' needs as they grew is a fascinating story, and one just as important for understanding the world as developments in politics or culture are. I know of no other book that introduces trade networks so well. It is an ideal text for survey courses.’ — Roland Spickermann - Chair, Dept. of History, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, USA

• IntroductionChapter 1 The Making of Market Conventions The Fujian Trade Diaspora The Chinese Tribute System Funny Money, Real Growth When Asia Was the World Economy Treating Good News as No News Pearls in the Rubble: Rediscovering the Golden Age of Quanzhou, ca. 1000–1400 Aztec Traders Primitive Accumulation: Brazilwood A British Merchant in the Tropics How the Other Half Traded Deals and Ordeals: World Trade and Early Modern Legal Culture Traveling Salesmen, Traveling Taxmen Indian Ocean Commodity Circuit: How to Turn Cotton into Ivory Going Non-native: Expense Accounts and the End of the Age of Merchant Courtiers Empire on a Shoestring: British Adventurers and Indian Financiers in Calcutta, 1750–1850 Chapter 2 Transport and Tactics2.1 Human Ingenuity: Adapting to Natural Barriers, and Creating New Ones2.2 Power-Driven Transport: New Time, New Space, Old Conflicts2.3 Woods, Winds, Shipbuilding, and Shipping: Why China Didn’t Rule the Waves2.4 Better to Be Lucky Than Smart2.5 Seats of Government and Their Stomachs: An Eighteenth-Century Tour2.6 Pioneers of Dusty Rooms: Warehouses, Transatlantic Trade, and the Opening of the North American Frontier2.7 People Patterns: Was the Real America Sichuan?2.8 Winning Raffles2.9 Trade, Disorder, and Progress: Creating Shanghai, 1840–19302.10 Out of One—Many2.11 Guaranteed Profits and Half-Fulfilled Hopes: Railroad Building in British India2.12 A Brief Trip Across the CenturiesChapter 3 The Economic Culture of Drugs3.1 Chocolate: From Coin to Commodity3.2 Brewing Up a Storm3.3 Mocha Is Not Chocolate3.4 The Brew of Business: Coffee’s Life Story3.5 America and the Coffee Bean3.6 Sweet Revolutions3.7 Paying for Power: "Sin Taxes" and the Rise of the Modern State3.8 How Opium Made the World Go ‘Round3.9 Tobacco: the Rise and Decline of a Magical Weed3.10 Making Smoking Modern: From Pipes to Cigarettes in Egypt and Elsewhere3.11 Chewing Is Good, Snorting Isn’t: How Chemistry Turned a Good Thing BadChapter 4 Transplanting4.1 Unnatural Resources4.2 Bouncing Around4.3 Golden Misfortune: John Sutter in the Wilds of California4.4 California Gold and the World4.5 El Dorado or Wild Coast? How a Remote Place was washed by the Tides of World History4.6 Beautiful Bugs4.7 How to Turn Nothing into Something: Guano’s Ephemeral Fortunes4.8 As American as Sugar and Pineapples4.9 How the Cows Ate the Cowboys4.10 The Tie That Bound4.11 The Good Earth?4.12 One Potato, Two Potato4.13 Cocoa and Coercion: Advances and Retreats for Free Labor in West African Agriculture4.14 Trying to Get a Grip: Natural Rubber’s Century of Ups and DownsChapter 5 The Economics of Violence5.1 The Logic of an Immoral Trade5.2 As Rich as Potosí5.3 The Freebooting Founders of England's Free Seas5.4 Adventure, Trade, Piracy: Anthony Shirley and Pedro Teixeira, Two Early Modern Travelers5.5 The Luxurious Life of Robinson Crusoe5.6 No Islands in the Storm: Or, How the Sino-British Tea Trade Deluged the Worlds of Pacific Islanders5.7 The Violent Birth of Corporations5.8 Buccaneers as Corporate Raiders5.9 Looking for the Next Worst Thing: Emancipation, Indentures, and Colonial Plantations After Slavery5.10 Bloody Ivory Tower5.11 How Africa Resisted Imperialism: Ethiopia and the World Economy5.12 Never Again: The Saga of the RosenfeldersChapter 6 Making Modern Markets6.1 Silver and Gold in Mexico and Brazil6.2 Weighing the World: The Metric Revolution6.3 From Court Bankers to Architects of the Modern World Market: The Rothschilds6.4 Growing Global: International Grain Markets6.5 How Time Got That Way6.6 How the United States Joined the Big Leagues6.7 Clubs, Casinos, and Collapses: Sovereign Debt and Risk Management Since 18206.8 Fresher Is Not Better6.9 Packaging6.10 Trademarks: What’s in a Name?6.11 Learning to Feel Unclean: A Global Marketing Tale6.12 Chewing on global History: Wrigley, Adams, and the Yucatan6.13 Things Go Better with Red, White, and Blue: How Coca-Cola Conquered Europe6.14 Survival of the First6.15 It Ain’t Necessarily So6.16 Location, Location, Location: How History Trumped Geography in Andorra and PanamaChapter 7 World Trade, Industrialization, and Deindustrialization7.1 Sweet Industry: The First Factories7.2 Why We Work So Hard: The Industrious Revolution and the Early Modern World7.3 Fiber of Fortune: How Cotton Became the Fabric of the Industrial Age7.4 Combing the World for Cotton7.5 Killing the Golden Goose7.6 Sweet Success7.7 No Mill Is an Island7.8 Feeding Silkworms, Spitting Out Growth7.9 From Rocks—and Restrictions—to Riches: How Disadvantages Helped New England Industrialize Early7.10 Sideways Breakthroughs and Stalled Transitions: Crooked Paths from Coal to Oil, 1859–20127.11 American Oil7.12 Running on Oil, Building on Sand7.13 Not So Rare, But Pretty Strange: How Rare Earth Metals Became a Chinese "Monopoly"7.14 Minding the Store and Forgetting the Factory: U.S. "Fair Trade" Laws and the Rise of Offshore Manufacturing Since World War IIEpilogue: The World Economy in the Twenty-First Century