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This chapter examines the socio-economic environment of the overseas trader as a necessary prelude to concentration on the merchant as a political figure. It outlines the organizational structures of London's overseas commerce, seeking to clarify the workings of the complex interrelationships that lay at the heart of mercantile activity. This analysis provides a realistic portrait of the character of mercantile society, and also tests several recent theories concerning the City's political development. In particular, it seeks to square continuing scholarly emphasis on the political importance of mercantile ‘interests’ with the findings of economic historians, who suggest that merchants were in general independent traders, a contrast which begs very serious questions concerning the cogency of mercantile political activity.

Chapter 8 details the trade in those products discussed above. As the conditions that rendered surplus production not only likely, but integral to the functioning of the late antique economy, the chapter turns to explore the scale and significance of that trade. Quantitative study based on ceramic finds is supplemented by textual sources that detail the sustained trade in grain, wine, and olive oil that flourished in overseas commerce and allowed large cities to sustain themselves.

This chapter looks at the circumstances in which Étienne Cleirac composed his writings. Whether Cleirac coined or merely repeated it, the legend of the Jewish invention of marine insurance and bills of exchange was his attempt at making sense of the changes in the legal, political, and social orders that the expansion of overseas commerce set in motion. Cleirac's life unfolded in a city where Jews were indistinguishable from local and foreign Christian merchants involved in long-distance trade, many of whom no longer belonged to a guild. It would not have surprised anyone in seventeenth-century France that New Christians, Catholics, and Protestants signed each other's bills of exchange and underwrote each other's marine insurance policies. Until 1723, however, crypto-Judaism was an institutionalized reality in Bordeaux. As such, the specter of crypto-Judaism infuses Cleirac's narrative of the origins of marine insurance and bills of exchange.

It examines the relation of contemporary polity to overseas commerce. An overview of the overland exchange networks in the Mauryan Empire, subsequent Deccan and beyond against the political formations has been provided. It shows how the statecraft under the Mauryas protected trade and trade routes. A critical review of the structure of polity in the Deccan, the role of the Sātavāhanas as the lords of the southern trade routes and of the political formation of contemporary Tamil region is made. This is followed by an analysis of the relation between contemporary polity and overseas exchanges. At the end, it examines the feasibility of political control of contemporary exchanges by the chiefdoms.

This chapter explains the effect which the spoils of British Empire had on Scotland. It is also argued that one prime source of the new wealth was the profits of Empire gained through trade with the Americas, the Caribbean and India, together with the impact of ‘sojourners’ returning with fortunes made in merchanting, plantation ownership, the professions and colonial administration, some of which found its way into large-scale productive investment. Atlantic trade dominated the Scottish overseas commerce. The Caribbean became even more important after the American War. The Scots par excellence were to the fore in the exploitation of the new imperial bounty. It is noted that the success in the Empire became the solid political foundation of the Anglo-Scottish union by the later eighteenth century, but it was also a crucial source of capital.

The chapter analyses the nature, modes, and forms of exchange against the character of the social formation of early northern India in general and the Deccan and the Tamil region in particular. It provides an overview of the overland exchange networks of the Mauryan Empire, the subsequent situation of the Deccan, and a detailed analysis of the forms of exchange, coins, currency, and nature of markets of the Tamil region. It does a comparative study of the contrasting political economies of Rome and peninsular India on the one side and of the Roman Britain and the Tamil chiefdoms on the other. At the end, it examines whether overseas commerce has any impact on the political economy of the peninsular India, particularly the Tamil south.

This chapter discusses exports, and how the Brazilian elite believed that it provided the only means to wealth, both private and public. The governments of the Brazilian Empire depended upon tariffs for the greater part of their income, and in turn utilized much of this income to foster “improvements” that facilitated international trade. Trade required credit to expand, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, foreign credit had become available to finance both overseas commerce itself and projects, especially railroads, necessary to promote exports. For the Brazilian elite, the international system of credit presented major opportunities as well as significant dangers, as contemporaries understood in varying degrees. An understanding of the development of this financial system is essential in order to evaluate Brazil's policies as abolition approached.