"Fichter has given us a powerful and authoritative book of major importance to students of empire and business alike." --

"David Abulafia's new book guides readers along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans-the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian-which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. Over time, as passage through them gradually extended and expanded, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks developed, evolving from local exploration to lines of regional communication and commerce and eventually to major arteries. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and of course people-free and enslaved-across vast expanses, transforming and ultimately linking irrevocably the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas"--

Born poor in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1755, the young Israel Thorndike was a fisherman and ship owner who made a small fortune as a Revolutionary War privateer. Later he became a wealthy merchant, a delegate to the Massachusetts Ratification Convention and a director of the National Bank in Boston. A longtime Federalist legislator, he was highly regarded within the radical circles that contemplated secession during the Jefferson administration and the War of 1812. After the war, Thorndike concluded his multifaceted career as the leading venture capitalist financing the early Industrial Revolution. Sadly, his story is little known. Federalist Tycoon pulls Thorndike's life and career from the shadows and fully examines his impact on American economic development. Born poor in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1755, the young Israel Thorndike was a fisherman and ship owner who made a small fortune as a Revolutionary War privateer. Later he became a wealthy merchant, a delegate to the Massachusetts Ratification Convention and a director of the National Bank in Boston. A longtime Federalist legislator, he was highly regarded within the radical circles that contemplated secession during the Jefferson administration and the War of 1812. After the war, Thorndike concluded his multifaceted career as the leading venture capitalist financing the early Industrial Revolution. Sadly, his story is little known. Federalist Tycoon pulls Thorndike's life and career from the shadows and fully examines his impact on American economic development.

Originally published in hardcover in 2012.

This study explores the relationship between the prevailing concept of "just profit" and contemporary reactions to the Sixteenth-Century Price Revolution by tracing the evolving meaning of "profit" in religious, political, and social discourse. Using the period's own macrocosmic-microcosmic analogy, the book examines family correspondence, wills, and court cases in addition to formal tracts to move outward from issues of spiritual profit to family values, employment relationships, and church and state. While England's experience provides a focal point, extensive use of continental sources reveals the problem's broader context. This study should prove particularly useful to those wishing to knit together the now particularized and separated strands of early modern economic, political, social, and religious history.

An examination of sea otters in a Pacific World context and an exploration of how this iconic sea mammal once defined the world’s largest oceanscape.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade "A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.

Jonathan Chu explores individual economic and legal behaviors, connecting them to adjustments in trade relations with Europe and Asia, the rise in debt litigation in Western Massachusetts, deflation and monetary illiquidity, and the Bank of North America.

Americans look to China with fascination and fear, unsure whether the rising Asian power is friend or foe but certain it will play a crucial role in America’s future. This is nothing new, Gordon Chang says. For centuries, Americans have been convinced of China’s importance to their own national destiny. Fateful Ties draws on literature, art, biography, popular culture, and politics to trace America’s long and varied preoccupation with China. China has held a special place in the American imagination from colonial times, when Jamestown settlers pursued a passage to the Pacific and Asia. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Americans plied a profitable trade in Chinese wares, sought Chinese laborers to build the West, and prized China’s art and decor. China was revered for its ancient culture but also drew Christian missionaries intent on saving souls in a heathen land. Its vast markets beckoned expansionists, even as its migrants were seen as a “yellow peril” that prompted the earliest immigration restrictions. A staunch ally during World War II, China was a dangerous adversary in the Cold War that followed. In the post-Mao era, Americans again embraced China as a land of inexhaustible opportunity, playing a central role in its economic rise. Through portraits of entrepreneurs, missionaries, academics, artists, diplomats, and activists, Chang demonstrates how ideas about China have long been embedded in America’s conception of itself and its own fate. Fateful Ties provides valuable perspective on this complex international and intercultural relationship as America navigates an uncertain new era.

Author of cult classics The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur offers a simple, counterintuitive cash management solution that will help small businesses break out of the doom spiral and achieve instant profitability. Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales - Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren't always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales - Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows. Using Michalowicz's Profit First system, readers will learn that: · Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances. · A small, profitable business can be worth much more than a large business surviving on its top line. · Businesses that attain early and sustained profitability have a better shot at achieving long-term growth. With dozens of case studies, practical, step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz has the game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur to make money they always dreamed of.