ABSTRACT

This book has attempted to answer two questions. The first one is a specific historical question: How did international, cross-cultural commerce take place in the first half of the eighteenth century? The second question is more general: How did a growing evolution of international and cross-cultural trade contribute to globalizing movements? If many of the claims about global trade made in large-scale histories are to be taken seriously, two questions need to be addressed regarding the concrete and durable organization of trade and the best methodology of analysis.