Merchants

“Wonderfully wide-ranging and deeply-researched.”—William Dalrymple, Financial Times

“An assured study of the merchants who changed England’s relationship with the world in the century after 1550. . . . Edmond Smith’s analysis of merchant activity has clear relevance for contemporary debate about Britain’s role in the world, and how to understand global economic change.”—Times Literary Supplement

“A very welcome book. . . . The argument that merchants’ cooperation, skills, and adaptable corporate structures were essential to England’s global trade and nascent empire is both compelling and important.”—Eleanor Hubbard, Journal of Modern History

“This exceptional, scholarly book is written with verve and style and will immerse readers in a vibrant world glimpsed only occasionally in plays and histories. It will widen their scope of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries not just geographically but culturally and socially. . . . A colourful, witty treat, from the pages of which waft exotic spices and sea salt.”—Steven Veerapen, Aspects of History, “Books of 2021”

“Merchants is a fine book, full of humanity and insight. . . . This excellent new book . . . is not economic history as we know it [and] Smith uses his vivid reconstruction of the lives of merchants to make an important point about the birth of capitalism: it depended on culture, on institutions, on people getting together and doing things. The blind force of the market was just one part of the story; the meeting, greeting, schmoozing, learning, counting and thinking undertaken by the merchants themselves were integral to the birth of England as an international trading power.”—Literary Review

“This scholarly yet highly readable—indeed, page turning—text is certainly timely. . . . Throughout, Smith demonstrates an exemplary handling of sources, weaving together an enormous variety (both printed and manuscript) into a delightful narrative. The resultant history of the trade—or art—of merchandising becomes a wide and compelling picture of innumerable interesting personalities trading, arguing, and organising their communities across place and time.’”—Aspects of History

“The book sets out its stall to demonstrate how the contacts, community, and astonishing confidence of the merchant class were so central to the development of early modern England and its subsequent role on the world stage.”—Helen Tovey, Family Tree Magazine

“Packed with detailed archival evidence and brimming with palpable stories of the lives of English merchants, this is a vivid and telling account of what it meant to be a merchant in sixteenth and seventeenth century England, and how that simple fact changed not only England but also the world forever.”—Business History

“An invaluable addition to scholarship of the early modern period. Merchants gives a fresh and vital insight into the human relationships behind the vast networks of trade and diplomacy which drove England’s development as a global force.”—Emily Stevenson, Cultural and Social History

“Smith makes an important contribution to the field of early modern trade and trading companies, and Merchants should be read by any scholars interested in the history of capitalism, globalization, and corporations.”—Jason C. White, Journal of British Studies

“At last an account of early modern merchant communities that balances the cold, hard reality of profit and investment with the intangible capital of trust, sociability and human connection that drove English trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sharply observed, innovatively analysed, and always accessible, this is a book that demands the attention of anyone who is interested in the traffic between English trade and imperialism in this early, foundational period.”—Nandini Das, University of Oxford

“A terrific achievement. Written with pace and panache, Merchants shows how in the space of 100 years England’s merchants went from a group of largely irrelevant traders on the fringes of Europe to international empire builders. Managing to combine intricate detail of mercantile innovations within a broad sweep of English commercial relations from the Americas to Japan, Smith is brilliant at recording the credits and debits of this most decisive period in English commercial history. A superb book.”—Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps

“‘Mere merchants’ as individuals, but as a class they shaped modern English history. This is a rich and deeply fascinating account which addresses fundamental questions about England’s rise to commercial power.”—James Evans, author of Merchant Adventurers

“Merchants is an important new study of the men who, for better or worse, laid the foundations of England’s first commercial empire. Drawing on impeccable research, Smith shows how it was corporate institutions and collaborative practices that turned England from European backwater into global power.”—Phil Withington, author of Society in Early Modern England