Merchants to Multinationals examines the evolution of multinational trading companies from the eighteenth century to the present day. During the Industrial Revolution, British merchants established overseas branches which became major trade intermediaries and subsequently engaged in foreign direct investment. Complex multinational business groups emerged controlling large investments in natural resources, processing, and services in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. While theories of the firm predict the demise over time of merchant firms, this book identifies the continued resilience of British trading companies despite the changing political and business environments of the twentieth century. Like Japanese trading companies, they 're-invented' themselves in successive generations. The competences of the trading companies resided in their information-gathering, relationship-building, human resource, and corporate governance systems. This book provides a new dimension to the literature on international business through the focus on multinational service firms and its evolutionary approach based on confidential business records.

Originally published in 1969, this book discusses the growth of foreign trade between 1600 and 1775 which brought about a commercial revolution in England. English merchants developed the exchange of manufactured goods for primary products such as tobacco, sugar, cotton and silk. A notable feature of these years was the American orientation of English overseas trade. This expansion of commerce made a decisive contribution to national economic growth. Its implications for the economy as a whole and the process of industrialization are reviewed at length in the substantial introduction.

For too long there has been an unquestioning acceptance that Britain's economic decline began long before the First World War. By focusing on international trade in the 1873-1914 period this book analyses the facts behind this myth, examining Britain's performance in comparison with that of its major rivals in the very areas where they came into competition with each other. What emerges is a much more complex picture of both losses and gains, in which Britain's position gradually adjusted to a changing world economic order, and appeared to be doing so remarkably successfully.

This volume is an attempt to give the American reader an idea of the extent of the Dutch network of trade in the seventeenth century. Although some effort is made to sketch out, however briefly, the activities of the Dutch in various regions throughout the century, emphas1s has been placed on their first entrance into these areas in that period. In each area the goods which the Netherlanders received have been indicated as well as the products they traded for them. The arrangement of the chapters calls for an explanation. Students of Dutch history will think of Surat and Persia as a natural unit, and of Malabar and Ceylon, Japan and China, West Africa and Brazil as being other entities which one would naturally discuss together. I have adopted the more obvious national divisions, Persia, India, Japan, Brazil, etc., as being more easily com prehensible for the casual reader. Within the chapters I have then explained the trade connections between West Africa and Brazil, Surat and Persia, and so forth.

The Northern Black Sea in Antiquity brings together the latest research on an important region of the ancient Mediterranean world.

Many books have addressed the economic and financial history of Hong Kong, and the imperialist conflicts in the key Chinese port-cities but very few books have explored French initiatives and performance in this area, beyond diplomacy, geopolitics or cultural issues. In this book, Hubert Bonin confronts arguments about "the great divergence", "the first globalisation", and forms of "economic patriotism". He gauges the competitive edge of French companies and banks, their struggle with British domination (HBSC, Chartered, shipping, trade houses/hongs) and their resistance against competitors from other countries (Japan, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, USA, or Russia). The book delves into studies of management abroad, therefore mixing broad geo-economic issues with precise business history and deep banking history. The connections between French interests in China and Hong Kong and the colony of Indochina are established too. A second part of the book is dedicated to the case study of Hong Kong, as the British colony acted as a hub for Asian and European interests at the heart of connections with mainland China and some neighbouring territories (Indochina, etc.). This is essential reading for academics interested in banking and business history, the history of entrepreneurship, as well as, those involved in the contemporary history of China and Hong Kong, in the assessment of world-wide geo-economic competition between European powers in Asia (Great-Britain, and France), and in the first stages of economic "modernity", along European models, in emerging modern China.

A groundbreaking work-broad in scope and closely detailed study of the true nature of early Chrsitanity in Rome. >

This book examines the role of mercantile networks in linking Asian economies to the global economy. It contains fourteen contributions on East, Southeast and South Asia covering the period from 1750 to the present.

A ground-breaking account of British and French efforts to channel their eighteenth-century geopolitical rivalry into peaceful commercial competition Britain and France waged war eight times in the century following the Glorious Revolution, a mutual antagonism long regarded as a “Second Hundred Years’ War.” Yet officials on both sides also initiated ententes, free trade schemes, and colonial bargains intended to avert future conflict. What drove this quest for a more peaceful order? In this highly original account, John Shovlin reveals the extent to which Britain and France sought to divert their rivalry away from war and into commercial competition. The two powers worked to end future conflict over trade in Spanish America, the Caribbean, and India, and imagined forms of empire-building that would be more collaborative than competitive. They negotiated to cut cross-channel tariffs, recognizing that free trade could foster national power while muting enmity. This account shows that eighteenth-century capitalism drove not only repeated wars and overseas imperialism but spurred political leaders to strive for global stability.