ABSTRACT
How did "innovation" become something to strive for, an end in itself? And how did "the market" come to be thought of as the space of innovation? This edited volume provides the first historical examination of how innovations are conceived, marketed, navigated and legitimated from a global perspective that highlights contrasting experiences. These experiences include: colonial "projecting" in the Dutch New Netherlands, trust networks in the early US securities market, female investors during the Financial Revolution, life insurance in nineteenth-century France, "bubbles" and trusts in 1920s Shanghai, government regulation of the pre-Revolutionary stock market and the checkered success of today’s bit-coin technology. By discussing these diverse contexts together, this volume provides a pathbreaking reconsideration of market and business activities in light of both the techniques and the emotional vectors that infuse them.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|40 pages
Imagining New Markets
chapter 1|20 pages
Dealing With Uncertainty
chapter 2|18 pages
Looking for New Markets in a Time of Revolution
part II|59 pages
Navigating Markets
chapter 3|17 pages
Navigating the Spaces and Places of England’s First Stock Market
chapter 4|18 pages
A Criminal Enterprise
part III|45 pages
Controlling Markets