Commodity Trading, Globalization and the Colonial World

Commodity Trading, Globalization and the Colonial World: Spinning the Web of the Global Market provides a new perspective on economic globalization in the 19^th and 20^th century. Instead of understanding the emergence of global markets as a mere result of supply and demand or as the effect of imperial politics, this book focuses on a global trading firm as an exemplary case of those actors responsible for conducting economic transactions in a multicultural business world. The study focusses on the Swiss merchant house Volkart Bros. which was one of the most important trading houses in British India after the late 19^th century and became one of the biggest cotton and coffee traders in the world after decolonization.

The book examines the following questions: How could European merchants establish business contacts with members of the mercantile elite from India, China or Latin America? What role did a shared mercantile culture play for establishing relations of trust? How did global business change with the construction of telegraph lines, railways and the development of economic institutions such as merchant banks or commodity exchanges? And how was the relation between the business interests of transnationally operating capitalists and the territorial aspirations of national and imperial governments?

Based on a five year-long research endeavour and the examination of 24 public and private archives in seven countries and on three continents, Commodity Trading, Globalization and the Colonial World: Spinning the Web of the Global Market goes well beyond a mere company’s history as it highlights the relation between multinational operating firms and colonial governments on the one hand and the role of business culture for establishing notions of trust both, within the firm and between economic actors in different parts of the world on the other. It thus provides a cutting edge history of globalization from a micro-perspective. Following an actor-theoretical perspective, the book maintains that the global market that came into being in the 19^th century can be perceived as the consequence of the interaction of various actors. Merchants, peasants, colonial bureaucrats and industrialists all were involved in spinning the individual threads of this commercial web.

By connecting established approaches from business history with recent scholarship in the fields of global history and postcolonial studies Commodity Trading, Globalization and the Colonial World: Spinning the Web of the Global Market offers a new perspective on the emergence of global enterprise and provides an important addition to the history of imperialism and economic globalization.

Dr Christof Dejung is a Marie Curie Senior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.