Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700
A historical look at the early evolution of global trade and how this led to the creation and dominance of the European business corporation

Before the seventeenth century, trade across Eurasia was mostly conducted in short segments along the Silk Route and Indian Ocean. Business was organized in family firms, merchant networks, and state-owned enterprises, and dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Arabic traders. However, around 1600 the first two joint-stock corporations, the English and Dutch East India Companies, were established. Going the Distance tells the story of overland and maritime trade without Europeans, of European Cape Route trade without corporations, and of how new, large-scale, and impersonal organizations arose in Europe to control long-distance trade for more than three centuries.

Ron Harris shows that by 1700, the scene and methods for global trade had dramatically changed: Dutch and English merchants shepherded goods directly from China and India to northwestern Europe. To understand this transformation, Harris compares the organizational forms used in four major regions: China, India, the Middle East, and Western Europe. The English and Dutch were the last to leap into Eurasian trade, and they innovated in order to compete. They raised capital from passive investors through impersonal stock markets and their joint-stock corporations deployed more capital, ships, and agents to deliver goods from their origins to consumers.

Going the Distance explores the history behind a cornerstone of the modern economy, and how this organizational revolution contributed to the formation of global trade and the creation of the business corporation as a key factor in Europe’s economic rise.

1130779444
Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700
A historical look at the early evolution of global trade and how this led to the creation and dominance of the European business corporation

Before the seventeenth century, trade across Eurasia was mostly conducted in short segments along the Silk Route and Indian Ocean. Business was organized in family firms, merchant networks, and state-owned enterprises, and dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Arabic traders. However, around 1600 the first two joint-stock corporations, the English and Dutch East India Companies, were established. Going the Distance tells the story of overland and maritime trade without Europeans, of European Cape Route trade without corporations, and of how new, large-scale, and impersonal organizations arose in Europe to control long-distance trade for more than three centuries.

Ron Harris shows that by 1700, the scene and methods for global trade had dramatically changed: Dutch and English merchants shepherded goods directly from China and India to northwestern Europe. To understand this transformation, Harris compares the organizational forms used in four major regions: China, India, the Middle East, and Western Europe. The English and Dutch were the last to leap into Eurasian trade, and they innovated in order to compete. They raised capital from passive investors through impersonal stock markets and their joint-stock corporations deployed more capital, ships, and agents to deliver goods from their origins to consumers.

Going the Distance explores the history behind a cornerstone of the modern economy, and how this organizational revolution contributed to the formation of global trade and the creation of the business corporation as a key factor in Europe’s economic rise.

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Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700

Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700

by Ron Harris
Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700

Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700

by Ron Harris

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Overview

A historical look at the early evolution of global trade and how this led to the creation and dominance of the European business corporation

Before the seventeenth century, trade across Eurasia was mostly conducted in short segments along the Silk Route and Indian Ocean. Business was organized in family firms, merchant networks, and state-owned enterprises, and dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Arabic traders. However, around 1600 the first two joint-stock corporations, the English and Dutch East India Companies, were established. Going the Distance tells the story of overland and maritime trade without Europeans, of European Cape Route trade without corporations, and of how new, large-scale, and impersonal organizations arose in Europe to control long-distance trade for more than three centuries.

Ron Harris shows that by 1700, the scene and methods for global trade had dramatically changed: Dutch and English merchants shepherded goods directly from China and India to northwestern Europe. To understand this transformation, Harris compares the organizational forms used in four major regions: China, India, the Middle East, and Western Europe. The English and Dutch were the last to leap into Eurasian trade, and they innovated in order to compete. They raised capital from passive investors through impersonal stock markets and their joint-stock corporations deployed more capital, ships, and agents to deliver goods from their origins to consumers.

Going the Distance explores the history behind a cornerstone of the modern economy, and how this organizational revolution contributed to the formation of global trade and the creation of the business corporation as a key factor in Europe’s economic rise.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691150772
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 02/11/2020
Series: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World , #82
Pages: 488
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Ron Harris is professor of legal history and former dean of law at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Industrializing English Law.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Note on the Use of City Names xiii

Introduction 1

Part I The Context: Geography, Historiography, Theory

1 Environment and Trade 15

2 Theoretical Frameworks for Analyzing the Development of Institutions in Interaction with Their Environment 48

Part II Organizational Building Blocks

3 Universal Building Blocks 65

4 Varying Organizational Building Blocks 93

5 The Commenda 130

Part III Long-Distance Trade Enterprises on the Eve of the Organizational Revolution

6 Family Firms in Three Regions 173

7 Merchant Networks 198

8 Trade by Rulers and States 226

Part IV The Corporation Transformed: The Era of Impersonal Cooperation

9 The Origins of the Business Corporation 251

10 The Dutch East India Company 275

11 The English East India Company 291

12 Why Did the Corporation Only Evolve in Europe? 331

Conclusion: Institutional Migration and the Corporation 365

Notes 377

Bibliography 421

Index 457

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Harris’s deeply researched book shows that prior to the seventeenth century, societies had roughly the same framework of person-to-person contracts for organizing firms. Europeans, however, introduced the corporation, a firm that did not arise elsewhere or diffuse organically. Armed with this innovative structure, Europe came to dominate international trade. Going the Distance is a must-read for all those interested in the history and social science of the business enterprise.”—Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, coauthor of Dark Matter Credit

"Going the Distance focuses on the complex and contingent conditions that disadvantaged older business forms and gave rise to the joint stock company. Harris opens a space for debate about the role of law, culture, and politics in the emergence of the modern corporation, while proposing a new explanation for English and Dutch dominance of the Eurasian market."—Madeleine Zelin, Columbia University

"Among the most significant of the many virtues of Going the Distance is its uniquely comprehensive and detailed analysis of the organizational forms employed for commerce in Middle Eastern and Asian societies, on the eve of the Great Divergence between Eastern and Western economic institutions and activity."—Henry Hansmann, Yale Law School

"Between 1400 and 1700, long-haul shipping came to dominate the highways of world trade, producing a revolution in business organization. This pathbreaking work explores the connection between trade and institutional change and shows why organizational innovation mattered to Europe’s economic emergence."—Tirthankar Roy, London School of Economics

"Ambitious and skillfully executed, Going the Distance considers why Europeans colonized the rest of the world and not the other way around. Arguing that there was an underappreciated organizational revolution in England and the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth century, Harris looks at why the product of this revolution, the business corporation, was not adopted immediately by traders elsewhere. This is a fascinating book full of innovative ideas."—Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Columbia Law School

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