This panel will analyse the opportunities and challenges faced by merchants in a global context, stressing the unique dimensions of mercantile capitalism. Presenting several important case studies, it will cover long period of time and a vast geographical area. Presenters will focus especially on trading practices and regulatory environments in different parts of the world over the last seven centuries.
Session Outline:
Chair: Ann Carlos (University of Colorado at Boulder)
Paper 1: Merchant Marks in Renaissance Italy and the Mediterranean: The Case of the Medici Wool Trade
Robert Fredona (Harvard Business School) and Teresa da Silva Lopes (University of York)
rfredona@hbs.edu; teresa.lopes@york.ac.uk
Paper 2: Remaking the Bengal market in the 1830s - Mercantile Responses to Financial Crisis
Michael Aldous, (Queen's University of Belfast)
Paper 3: Western Merchants and the Meiji Restoration: The Case of John H. Duus and Anglo-Danish Merchant at Treaty Port Hakodate, 1868-1889
Steven Ivings (Kyoto University)
ivings.stevenedward.8a@kyoto-u.ac.jp
paper 4: Trade Policies in the British Empire, Sugar Business and Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century Mauritius
Carolina Hutkova (London School of Economics)