Between Monopoly and Free Trade
：The English East India Company, 1600-1757
( Princeton Analytical Sociology Series )
Publication subTitle ：The English East India Company, 1600-1757
Publication series ：Princeton Analytical Sociology Series
Author： Erikson Emily;;;
Publisher： Princeton University Press
Publication year： 2014
E-ISBN: 9781400850334
P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780691159065
Subject： C91 Sociology;F1 The World Economic Profiles , Economic History , Economic Geography;K1 World History;K3 Asian History;K5 European History
Keyword： 社会学,世界史,亚洲史,欧洲史,世界各国经济概况、经济史、经济地理
Language： ENG
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Description
The English East India Company was one of the most powerful and enduring organizations in history. Between Monopoly and Free Trade 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. Exploring trade network dynamics, decision-making processes, and ports and organizational context, Emily Erikson demonstrates why the English East India Company was a dominant force in the expansion of trade between Europe and Asia, and she sheds light on the related problems of why England experienced rapid economic development and how the relationship between Europe and Asia shifted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Though the Company held a monopoly on English overseas trade to Asia, the Court of Directors extended the right to trade in Asia to their employees, creating an unusual situation in which employees worked both for themselves and for the Company as overseas merchants. Building on the organizational infrastructure of the Company and the sophisticated commercial institutions of the markets of the East, employees constructed a cohesive internal network of peer communications that directed English trading ships during their voyages. This network integrated Company operations, encouraged innovation, and increased the Company’s flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness to local circumstance.
Between Monopoly and Free Trade highlights the dynamic potential of social networks in the early modern era.
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