| Summary: | Although these essays concentrate on merchant initiatives, they are themselves innovative perspectives on early modern economic life and previews of substantial scholarly work in progress. Most new European trading ventures of the early modern period were not spectacular initiatives to exotic peoples and places. These nine essays amply document how challenging things could be for those entering a trade within the relatively familiar bounds of the North Atlantic world. Free of the “North Atlantic triumphalism” that can affect the study of early modern world trade, these studies emphasize the opportunities, aspirations and methods of the mercantile intruder into established trades, and of the innovator attempting their reorganization....
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