Princeton University Press is publishing a new book on
Eurasian trade and the rise of the business corporation (1400-1700).
ABOUT THE BOOK
Before 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. To understand this transformation, Harris compares the
organizational forms used in four major regions: China, India, the Middle East,
and Western Europe. The English and Dutch were the last to leap into Eurasian
trade, and they innovated in order to compete. They raised capital from passive
investors through impersonal stock markets and their joint-stock corporations
deployed more capital, ships, and agents to deliver goods from their origins
to consumers.
Going the Distance explores
the history behind a cornerstone of the modern economy, and how this
organizational revolution contributed to the formation of global trade and the
creation of the business corporation as a key factor in Europe’s
economic rise.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ron Harris is professor of legal history and
former dean of law at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Industrializing
English Law.
