Chapter 2 explores the regional context and significance of Tivinat’s capture and imprisonment in the strategic port of Dieppe in the province of Normandy. Establishes the importance of Normandy’s connections with the Huguenot diaspora in England and cross-Channel connections and conflicts. Focuses on the development of the Reformation in Dieppe and its connections with Beauvais, the Huguenot leadership and local nobility, its progress during the first religious war (1562–63) and ongoing conflict with local Catholics. In particular, relations with regional and town governors were fraught, resulting in heated confessional clashes during the second and third wars of 1567–1570. The link between these events and the role of the governors in enabling Tivinat’s interrogation is established, too, as Norman connections with the cardinal of Châtillon’s exile in England. Examines the career of Tivinat’s interrogator, Michel Vialar, president of the parlement of Rouen, and his contribution to confessional tensions in the region through prosecution and fiscal exactions as well as interpersonal clashes with fellow judges. Discussion through detailed examples of the contemporary challenges of crossing the Channel by boat provides further context for the experience of Tivinat and other couriers.

This chapter outlines the history of previous institutions that created forms of capital in Europe, including land, dowries, banks, bills of exchange, and government debt. It examines the reasons why the system of informal oral credit, as it had developed over the previous 100-odd years, began to be criticised during the Commonwealth period. Many authors started to claim that it was both inefficient and an obstacle to economic growth. Many pamphlets were published containing proposals of different sorts of banks, which would issue paper currency to speed up circulation. Some of these were based on previous European examples. The nature of these proposals is examined, together with a summary of how they related to the creation of the Bank of England. Its establishment is normally seen as the successful outcome of this debate, but in fact it was not primarily created as an institution to expand the supply of credit, but to help fund the government debt. The increasing cost of the War of Spanish Succession did, however, result in the issue of things like Exchequer or Treasury bills, as well as South Sea and Bank stock to fund the war. The last part of the chapter focuses on the significant effect these multiple forms of paper currency had on liquidity within London.

This chapter introduces the merchants who are the principal focus of this study and the sources on which the study is based. It also forecasts the argument that will be made about the class identity these merchants fashioned.

The second chapter is devoted to the lure of India felt increasingly by the English merchant community, and the Company’s first, tentative attempts to gain a foothold in the great Mughal port of Surat. Frustrated by repeated failures to gain a favourable hearing from the emperor Jahangir, and the hostility of the Portuguese who were determined to resist any challenges to their trading privileges in the region, the EIC court petitioned James I to appoint Sir Thomas Roe as an ambassador. Although he was treated with respect, at the end of the three years of his embassy, Roe returned to London having gained few trading privileges. In the meantime, mounting hostilities between the EIC and Dutch VOC prompted protracted negotiations invoking the fledgling law of nations and culminating in the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1619.

This chapter surveys Qiu’s ideas about financial administration, drawing on Section 4, “Administering State Finances” (Chapters 20–35) of the Supplement. The chapter discusses Qiu’s recommendations for regular and light taxation centred on the land tax and how to control government expenditure, before turning to his view of the state’s relationship with the market and merchants. The state must only involve itself in the market in a limited way, with the exception of moderating the supply of grain, since it is a basic necessity for life and the fundamental source of wealth. A brief overview of policies illustrates Qiu’s support for commerce. Throughout, the chapter also considers how Qiu’s ideas might have reflected or influenced actual practice. While there is some indication that his proposals may have been implemented, by the late Ming and especially from the later Wanli era onwards, the prudent financial administration that Qiu advocated did not exist.

This chapter explores the merchant houses of the port city of Rander, which were built by families involved in major colonial enterprises from cotton to shipping, to sugar and oil production, across an Indian Ocean geography from Durban to Rangoon. The continued attachment of these families to the old port, despite their residence in places across the Indian Ocean, suggests the significance of domestic space to wider colonial economic markets, ideas of family, and historic belonging in Gujarat. The chapter centers themes of travel, work, friendship, loss, celebration, and dwelling, as well as the impact of the 1857 rebellion and Muslim reformist movements on the built space of the port. The chapter also engages with contemporary merchant families and their relationships to their homes as sites of Indian Ocean pasts. In exploring the port’s homes and the itineraries that they orient, the chapter presents a nuanced interpretation of how the past is inhabited by port residents and the histories preserved through their efforts.

By the 1720s, the city born of shogunal vision and warrior needs pulsed with townspeople, the artists and merchants of commoner status who began to rival samurai in number among the residents of Edo. With a staggering one million people calling Edo home, the shogun’s capital also became the city of Edoites through a dance of shogunate authority, samurai prestige, and commoner interests. Destructive fires were occasions for such negotiations, and their frequency left a deep imprint on the physical landscape and culture of the city. Kabuki theater too was a site of political push and pull, as well as rambunctious amusement for both townspeople and samurai partaking in the flourishing urban popular culture of the world’s largest city.

Besides mercantile, shipping, legal, insurance and financial services, the capital’s maritime connections extended to large-scale manufacturing like shipbuilding, ship repairing, marine engineering, sail-making and sugar baking. Shipping investors, almost exclusively involved in some aspect of sea trade, varied from those holding a few shares to the relative few reliant on ship owning for their income. The wealthiest shipowners and merchants, as well as the Royal Navy, were among the customers of London’s shipyards, clustered along the waterfront. Subject to severed cyclical swings, shipbuilding was a highly skilled, unionised occupation. Many of those employed in port industries lived in London’s then quite socially mixed waterfront parishes of East London. Seamen ashore in colonial and foreign trades also gathered here in response to a sailor economy serving their need for credit, lodging and entertainment.

This chapter addresses the rapid increase in the consumption of white wines in the 1950s. It traces some of the changes to the efforts of the wine companies to develop the consumer market through brand building. But the breakthrough came with the perfection of the method of cool fermentation that permitted the preservation of the aromatic character of white wines. Boosted by innovations in the cellar, in the form of temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, it became possible to produce wine of a reliable quality on an industrial scale. The chapter argues that while the KWV criticised the merchants, they worked with selected farmers to improve the quality of the wine. This was true of Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery (SFW) and Distillers. The greater costs involved, however, led many farmers to resort to selling their grapes to the cooperatives rather than making their own wine. The chapter focuses on specifc farms like Rustenberg where it is possible to precisely date the turn to cool femerntation The importance of brand development is underlined through an account of the meteoric wise of SFW’s Lieberstein, which was reputedly the world’s largest brand in the early 1960s.

The first substantive chapter addresses the structural problem facing wine farmers at the Cape. Much like in France, there was a serious problem of overproduction of wines of indifferent quality leading to unstable prices. The chapter details the struggle between wine merchants and farmers, which led to the constitution of the Koöperatieve Wynbouwers Vereniging van Suid-Afrika (KWV) in 1918. It shows how the KWV successfully lobbied the Smuts government for devolved regulatory powers that enabled it to control the pricing for distilling wines from 1924. At the same time, the chapter shows that the market was constrained by low consumption amongst whites, including the Afrikaner wine farming community itself. This was compounded by the efforts of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and its allies in the South African Temperance Alliance (SATA) to pursue local option for whites and a form of temperance for the black population. The former failed, but the passage of the 1928 Liquor Act prevented the majority of the population from purchasing wine or brandy. Hence the victory of the KWV over the merchants was tempered by the legislative success of the temperance movement.

Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526 the kingdom of Hungary was divided into three parts: the north and west came under Habsburg rule, the east formed the new principality of Transylvania while the rest was occupied by the Ottomans. That division created a favourable environment for the spread of the Reformation. The new religious ideas had already spread quickly to Hungary after 1517 with merchants and students from the German-speaking communities of the royal free cities being among the first to adopt and disseminate them. Even the royal couple, King Louis II and Queen Mary of Habsburg, showed a receptiveness to the Reformation through their relationship with Prince George of Brandenburg. However, after Mohács 75 per cent of Hungary’s medieval parishes collapsed and different variants of Protestantism won wide support across all three areas into which the former kingdom was divided. Antitrinitarianism also gained many adherents in those parts of Hungary that were not subject to the Habsburgs. Between the Catholics, Protestants and Antitrinitarians, as well as the substantial Orthodox Christian communities in the region, and the Muslims in Ottoman areas, Hungary became remarkably multi-confessional. However, the Catholic Church retained enough support across all three areas to form the basis of a remarkable renewal under Habsburg auspices in the seventeenth century.

Taking a pause from direct focus on the Jhaveris, Chapter 4 is an interlude that outlines major shifts across the Mughal Empire between the 1680 and 1720s. I suggest that military campaigns in the Deccan region impinged the Mughal treasury and undermined administration to an extent never seen before. Officials in Gujarat started to engage in behavior that undermined Mughal sovereignty. Yet, they also had little choice as monetary resources were becoming scarce. Financial limitations impacted the quality of state machinery including the upkeep of buildings, delay in salary payments, and even the ability of officials to legitimately demand taxes. Despite this, local Gujarati poems suggest that residents preferred Mughal rule to ruthless attacks from the Maratha marauders, whose periodic raids were increasing in frequency and intensity. After Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, successive Mughal emperors were poorly equipped to revive the grandeur of their ancestors. Their short stints as emperors, sometimes as brief as a few months, led to the further breakdown of Mughal authority. This manifest most clearly in the form of rivalries between Mughal governors sent to control and profit from Gujarat. Insecure in their positions and strapped for cash, these governors turned to assaulting key members of the business fraternity in the city of Ahmedabad.

This chapter introduces the study, setting, argument, and plan of progression of Bankrolling Empire. In particular, I introduce the Jhaveri family of Ahmedabad and identify how the Mughal state provided new opportunities and challenges for the family by the early seventeenth century. The reader is left with the idea that traditional explanations of Mughal collapse such as bigotry of emperors, superior fighting power of rival warlords, and communal distrust between Muslim rulers and Hindu subjects are not adequate. Instead, I suggest financial crises were the chief cause that tipped Mughal administration beyond recovery. Such transformations in state and locality in Mughal Gujarat are highlighted by focusing on four generations of a remarkable business family, the Jhaveris of Ahmedabad, and their relations with political elites. The Jhaveris were deeply involved in political intrigue, courtly life, and the finances of Mughal officials and their rivals across two centuries.

Chapter 2 pursues a novel approach by combining the study of the local printing production and book imports to examine the different forms of market supply. It argues that the book trade was a rising though risky business. Mapping the workshops in Lima, it shows that print production was continuous and the output growing. However, even more reading material was imported into Peru, as proven by the quantitative evaluation of the number of boxes containing books, including the works of several representatives of the Catholic Enlightenment. Although most books had a licence, this chapter focuses on the illicit trade, in the form of titles in ships’ freight that were prohibited by the Inquisition and products from secret presses in Lima. The chapter lays bare the characteristics of a colonial book market fed by two totally differently structured supply sources that were both growing in late colonial times.

The development of Afro-Brazilian slave society and demography, the class of free persons and their occupations. The growth of port cities and São Paulo and the transitition from slave to free labor