Espen Storli – författare

This book provides a unique insight into the world of commodity trading companies, often depicted as the hidden companies of the global economy and showcases how they were instrumental in bringing about the economic integration of new commodities and far-flung regions into the first global economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The late nineteenth century witnessed an unprecedented phase of global economic integration. As organisers of global trade, trading companies specialising in commodities were instrumental in creating this first global economy. From soybeans to cultural artefacts, from seal hides to rubber, trading companies connected far-flung regions at or beyond the frontier of empires to a growing global market for these commodities. Satisfying the unsatiable appetite for commodities of industrializing economies in North America, Europe and East Asia, their nimble organisations and specialised trading skills allowed trading companies to harness imperial geopolitics, latch onto local networks and move across borders. This book brings together a collection of case studies of commodity trading companies across a range of commodities and regions between the 1870s and the 1930s. Through the lens of global value chains, the contributions showcase how these companies continuously adapted their businesses to a world that was at once economically more integrated but politically increasingly competitive in this age of high imperialism and national competition.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Business History.

This book provides a unique insight into the world of commodity trading companies, often depicted as the hidden companies of the global economy and showcases how they were instrumental in bringing about the economic integration of new commodities and far-flung regions into the first global economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The late nineteenth century witnessed an unprecedented phase of global economic integration. As organisers of global trade, trading companies specialising in commodities were instrumental in creating this first global economy. From soybeans to cultural artefacts, from seal hides to rubber, trading companies connected far-flung regions at or beyond the frontier of empires to a growing global market for these commodities. Satisfying the unsatiable appetite for commodities of industrializing economies in North America, Europe and East Asia, their nimble organisations and specialised trading skills allowed trading companies to harness imperial geopolitics, latch onto local networks and move across borders. This book brings together a collection of case studies of commodity trading companies across a range of commodities and regions between the 1870s and the 1930s. Through the lens of global value chains, the contributions showcase how these companies continuously adapted their businesses to a world that was at once economically more integrated but politically increasingly competitive in this age of high imperialism and national competition.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Business History.

For most of the twentieth century tin was fundamental for both warfare and welfare. The importance of tin is most powerfully represented by the tin can - an invention which created a revolution in food preservation and helped feed both the armies of the great powers and the masses of the new urban society. The trouble with tin was that economically viable deposits of the metal could only be found in a few regions of the world, predominantly in the southern hemisphere, while the main centers of consumption were in the industrialized north. The tin trade was therefore a highly politically charged economy in which states and private enterprise competed and cooperated to assert control over deposits, smelters and markets.

Tin provides a particularly telling illustration of how the interactions of business and governments shape the evolution of the global economic trade; the tin industry has experienced extensive state intervention during times of war, encompasses intense competition and cartelization, and has seen industry centers both thrive and fail in the wake of decolonization. The history of the international tin industry reveals the complex interactions and interdependencies between local actors and international networks, decolonization and globalization, as well as government foreign policies and entrepreneurial tactics. By highlighting the global struggles for control and the constantly shifting economic, geographical and political constellations within one specific industry, this collection of essays brings the state back into business history, and the firm into the history of international relations.