The Rise of Commercial Empires
England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1770
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:3rd Jan '08
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
A work of major importance for the economic history of both Europe and North America.
In early modern Europe, and particularly in the Netherlands, commercial empires were held together as much by cities as by unified nation states. David Ormrod here takes a regional economy as his preferred unit of analysis, the North Sea economy: an interlocking network of trades shaped by public and private interests, and the matrix within which Anglo-Dutch competition, borrowing and collaboration took shape. He shows how England's increasingly coherent mercantilist objectives undermined Dutch commercial hegemony, in ways which contributed to the restructuring of the North Sea staplemarket system. The commercial revolution has rightly been identified with product diversification and the expansion of long-distance trading, but the reorganization of England's nearby European trades was equally important, providing the foundation for eighteenth-century commercial growth and facilitating the expansion of the Atlantic economy. With the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707, the last piece of a national British entrepot system was put into place.
'… this book is a thought-provoking interpretation of the rise of the English/British commercial empire, placed firmly in the context of recent theories of economic development …' History
'… a very detailed analysis …' Reviews in History
'Ormrod has produced a very detailed analysis on the basis of years of scholarship; the British and Dutch economies have been compared time and again but never in as much depth as in this study.' Institute of Historical Research
ISBN: 9780521048644
Dimensions: 229mm x 153mm x 24mm
Weight: 637g
420 pages