The Rise of Commercial Empires
The Rise of Commercial Empires
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GBPIn 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.
- Sustained analysis of a period crucial to the development of the global economy
- A major contribution to debates on the commercial origins of economic growth
- Incorporates statistical findings, drawing especially on contemporary merchants' correspondence in Britain and the Netherlands
Reviews & endorsements
'… 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
Product details
March 2003Hardback
9780521819268
420 pages
235 × 158 × 33 mm
0.773kg
10 b/w illus. 1 map 33 tables
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Table of Contents
- List of maps and illustrations
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1. National economies and the history of the market
- Part I. England, Holland and the Commercial Revolution:
- 2. Dutch trade hegemony and English competition, 1650–1700
- 3. English commercial expansion and the Dutch staplemarket, 1700–1770
- Part II. English Trade with the Dutch Staplemarket:
- 4. Rivalry, crisis and reorganisation in the woollen export trade
- 5. Import substitution and European linen imports
- 6. The Dutch staplemarket and the growth of English re-exports
- 7. England, Holland and the international grain trade
- 8. The coal trade and energy resources
- Part III. Dutch Decline and English Expansion:
- 9. The shipping industry and the impact of war
- 10. Protectionism and Dutch economic decline
- 11. Conclusion. Commercial growth and the divergence of England
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index.
