Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700 (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

A historical look at the early evolution of global trade and how this led to the creation and dominance of the European business corporationBefore the seventeenth century, trade across Eurasia was mostly conducted in short segments along the Silk Route and Indian Ocean.Business was organized in family firms, merchant networks, and state-owned enterprises, and dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Arabic traders.However, around 1600 the first two joint-stock corporations, the English and Dutch East India Companies, were established.Going the Distance tells the story of overland and maritime trade without Europeans, of European Cape Route trade without corporations, and of how new, large-scale, and impersonal organizations arose in Europe to control long-distance trade for more than three centuries. Ron Harris shows that by 1700, the scene and methods for global trade had dramatically changed: Dutch and English merchants shepherded goods directly from China and India to northwestern Europe.T