Merchants
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The Community That Shaped England's Trade and Empire, 1550-1650
Edmond Smith
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Format: HardcoverPrice: $32.50
A new history of English trade and empire—revealing how a tightly woven community of merchants was the true origin of globalized Britain
In the century following Elizabeth I’s rise to the throne, English trade blossomed as thousands of merchants launched ventures across the globe. Through the efforts of these "mere merchants," England developed from a peripheral power on the fringes of Europe to a country at the center of a global commercial web, with interests stretching from Virginia to Ahmadabad and Arkhangelsk to Benin.
Edmond Smith traces the lives of English merchants from their earliest steps into business to the heights of their successes. Smith unpicks their behavior, relationships, and experiences, from exporting wool to Russia, importing exotic luxuries from India, and building plantations in America. He reveals that the origins of "global" Britain are found in the stories of these men whose livelihoods depended on their skills, entrepreneurship, and ability to work together to compete in cutthroat international markets. As a community, their efforts would come to revolutionize Britain’s relationship with the world.
Edmond Smith is a Presidential Fellow in Economic Cultures at the University of Manchester. Formerly a capital markets research manager, Smith now specializes in the histories of capitalism and globalization, having completed his PhD at Cambridge in 2016.
‘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.’—Professor Phil Withington, author of Society in Early Modern England
Publication Date: October 26, 2021
16 color illus.
