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This chapter discusses the historical development of the Commercial Court procedures, how they have adjusted to the needs of the commercial actors, and how they must keep to attempt to meet the needs of commercial litigants.

This chapter argues that the English Company was most successful in ports with a large local merchant class already adept at overseas trade. The captains were able to engage in trade because of preexisting financial and commercial networks that were willing and able to accommodate a large influx of small-scale commercial actors (factors, captains, officers, and seamen), as well as the larger interests of the Company itself. Overviews of foreign trade institutions, regulations, and practices at eight different ports of call—Batticaloa, Madras, New Guinea, Madagascar, Bantam (Banten), Whampoa (Huangpu, port of Guangzhou), Goa, and Batavia (Jakarta)—demonstrate this point. Each presents a window into the complex social and political structures of eighteenth-century Asian trading ports.

This chapter presents a theory that explains the ability of states to control or direct the economic behavior of commercial actors. Using this theory, it considers how states use economics to pursue their grand strategic objectives and how aggregate economic agents' microlevel incentives and consequent behavior generate national security outcomes at the macrolevel of China's grand strategy. The chapter describes five salient factors that determine when a state will be more able to control commercial actors: compatibility of goals between the state and the commercial actors that conduct the economic activity of the state; commercial market structure; unity of the state; the reporting relationship between the commercial firm(s) and the state; and relative distribution of resources between the state and commercial actor(s). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges involved in state control of economic actors.

This chapter provides an overview of economic statecraft and how it differs from “normal” commerce. It first challenges a common misconception in the field of international relations—that states conduct economic relations with each other—before discussing the relationship between economics and national security in the context of externalities. It then considers the specific microfoundations of economic statecraft as it is actually practiced in grand strategy, with particular emphasis on the element of state control—whether the state can control or direct the behavior of the commercial actors that are conducting the international economic activity. It also describes a framework for thinking about the relationship between the economic activities of commercial actors and the security of a nation-state.

This chapter examines the challenge of state control with regard to the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). It considers how the state utilizes economic statecraft in the context of efforts to secure oil through the creation and subsequent “going out” of the Chinese national oil corporations, which were among the earliest Chinese commercial actors to venture abroad. The chapter begins with a historical background on China's petroleum industry and its relationship to the Chinese state before turning to a discussion of the CNPC's early efforts to venture abroad. In particular, it discusses the CNPC's activities in Sudan and the strategic difficulties caused by the state's “going out” policy. It also explains how Chinese authorities sought to re-establish control over the international activities of its commercial actors in the extractive resources sector through balance of relative resources and unity of the state.

This chapter examines a case in which the state played an important role in controlling and directing the behavior of its commercial actors to achieve a national strategic objective in the context of iron: the proposed merger between Chinalco and Rio Tinto. It begins by providing the context that originally put Rio Tinto in play before discussing the origins and mandate of the China Development Bank (CDB), Chinalco's financial backer in its bid to acquire a large stake in Rio Tinto in 2007/2008. It then considers the CDB's financing activities and goes on to explain how the provision of state capital to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) can serve an important enabling and coordinating function for Chinese state control. The chapter also shows that the CDB was being directed by the State Council to underwrite a commercial acquisition that served China's national interests, even if these activities ran counter to the economic actors' own commercial motivations.

This book concludes by offering a few observations about economic statecraft in general and Chinese economic statecraft in particular. First, state control is an essential and often overlooked prerequisite of economic statecraft. Second, state unity is the most important of the five factors that determine when state control is more or less likely, whereas the balance of relative resources seemed to be the least significant. Another observation involves the so-called “king-making” capabilities of the state. By backing only those commercial actors that carry favor or prove amenable to advancing government agendas, the Chinese state is able to at least partially compensate for the problematic principal-agent challenges stemming from a fragmented market structure. The book also discusses the policy implications of its findings for China, particularly with regards to its political economy and its rise on the international stage, and the world.

This chapter offers an interpretation of David Hume's body of work as simultaneously sensitive to how uncertainty and risk can enervate commercial actors and committed to emboldening these actors to take more risks. Hume's writings on passion, cognition, politics, and commerce reveal an apt representation of how risk and uncertainty are entangled in the minds of subjects, as well as a robust explanation for why so many people are made anxious by risks, even ones that promise a good outcome. Hume's expressions of philosophical skepticism and his treatment of probability establish his view that deep uncertainty is the background condition for commerce and for the politics of commercial societies, and show that he is unusually mindful of the disconcerting experience of living with uncertainty.

Capital intentions underscore the fact that women were intentional about the ways in which they engaged in business. Following their capital intentions and going where they saw the opportunity, the number of female proprietors of apparel, laundry, accommodations, beauty, and retail increased dramatically in the 1850s. While women's choices as proprietors were shaped by legal, economic, and family restrictions, they were viewed as commercial actors who relied on impulse and intuition to guide their commercial behavior in the San Francisco marketplace. This conclusion analyzes the factors that helped San Francisco women operate a successful business, the challenges they faced in fiscal management, and the manner in which they grappled with commercial failure.