Ray, Just a quick reply for now concerning merchants' associations:
At 16:21 11/10/02 -0400, you wrote: ---> cut to >As for your Associations, I don't have time to consult my Braudel so I will >just ask: Weren't those trade associations about export/imports and the >arrival of the most recent "exotic"? The slowness of camels and sailing >ship plus their relatively small amounts meant that quality was more of an >issue, with "quality" being the synonym for "durability" and durability >being a synonym for a "productive worker" rather than the current >definition of productivity as "cheap and easy replacement." Braudel is silent about Western versus Islamic laws as they affected trade. He says only the following (Volume 2, page 447): "And the collapse of the Great Mogul's empire at the beginning of the eighteenth century delivered India up to the greed of Western merchants." (Presumably, according to Braudel, Islamic merchants weren't greedy!) More recent research shows that the crucial issue was quite simple. Islamic law meant that, if a merchant partner died, then his assets were divided among many direct and indirect members of his family who could then seldon agree whether an ongoing trade should continue or not. However, in a Western firm, the assets of a partner passed directly to the eldest son who would, more often than not, allow an existing trade to continue to completion. The relative complexities of trading firms in the event of a death of one of the shareholders meant that Islamic merchant partnerships remained very small, while Western firms could grow very large. In fact, the more partners they had the smaller the individual shareholdings and the more likely it was that an heir would allow an existing trade to proceed. Thus, Western firms were much more likely to take the risk of long-distance trading with China, thus gradually elbowing out the Mogul traders of India and the Muslim traders of the Mediterranean. The first recorded English joint stock trading firm, the Muscovy Company (1553), became the forerunner of the typical joint stock firms that became the basis of the banks and industrial firms of the industrial revolution century or so later. Keith ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
