Description
Book SynopsisThe English East India Company was one of the most powerful and enduring organizations in history. This book locates the source of that success in the innovative policy by which the Company's Court of Directors granted employees the right to pursue their own commercial interests while in the firm's employ.
Trade ReviewWinner of the 2016 Gaddis Smith International Book Prize, MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University Winner of the 2016 James Coleman Award for Outstanding Book, Rationality and Society Section of the American Sociological Association Co-Winner of the 2015 Ralph Gomory Prize, Business History Conference Co-Winner of the 2015 Sharlin Memorial Award, Social Science History Association "It offers a fresh perspective on a key aspect of the Company's development and provides some impressive data to support the idea that private trade was the crucial dynamo driving Company innovation and expansion."--John McAleer, Journal of Maritime History "Between Monopoly and Free Trade is a spectacular debut that will mark Erikson as a luminary of historical sociology and earn her many intellectual followers... Though the sociologist familiar with, but not in thrall to, analytical sociology will be prone to approach the text with skepticism (as I was), he or she will soon be won over by the author's excellence in scholarship."--Isaac Ariail Reed, American Journal of Sociology
Table of ContentsPreface vii 1. Introduction 1 2. Merchant Capitalism and the Great Transition 31 3. The European Trade with the East Indies 51 4. Social Networks and the East Indiaman 77 5. Decentralization, Corruption, and Market Structure 107 6. The Eastern Ports 125 7. Eastern Institutions and the English Trade 154 8. Conclusion 173 Appendix 183 Notes 193 Bibliography 203 Index 231
