Nodes of Capitalism Cities and Commerce in the Early Modern World

Breaking from Eurocentric frameworks of global economic history, this study offers a connected and polycentric narrative of early modern capitalism. In a wide-ranging analysis of economic life in seventeen early modern cities, leading economic and urban historians highlight those urban centres which distinguished themselves by their sophisticated mechanisms of banking and credit allocation, those whose infrastructure attracted local and global trade networks, and those that specialised in particular commodities - such as spices, slaves, textiles and coffee - and thus assumed a particularly pivotal station in global trade. Rather than a single geographic centre around which the world economy pivoted, they demonstrate that numerous 'nodes' of capitalist activity existed, facilitating trans-regional economic exchange. From the slave trade in Kingston, Jamaica to the coffee trade in Mocha and the ties between Canton and Macau, these nodes revolutionized global trade and economic life. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.