The nineteenth century saw the expansion of Western influence across the globe. A consular presence in a new territory had numerous advantages for business and trade. Using specific case studies, de Goey demonstrates the key role played by consuls in the rise of the global economy.

The nineteenth century saw the expansion of Western influence across the globe. A consular presence in a new territory had numerous advantages for business and trade. Using specific case studies, de Goey demonstrates the key role played by consuls in the rise of the global economy.

This book provides a unique insight into the world of commodity trading companies, often depicted as the hidden companies of the global economy and showcases how they were instrumental in bringing about the economic integration of new commodities and far-flung regions into the first global economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The late nineteenth century witnessed an unprecedented phase of global economic integration. As organisers of global trade, trading companies specialising in commodities were instrumental in creating this first global economy. From soybeans to cultural artefacts, from seal hides to rubber, trading companies connected far-flung regions at or beyond the frontier of empires to a growing global market for these commodities. Satisfying the unsatiable appetite for commodities of industrializing economies in North America, Europe and East Asia, their nimble organisations and specialised trading skills allowed trading companies to harness imperial geopolitics, latch onto local networks and move across borders. This book brings together a collection of case studies of commodity trading companies across a range of commodities and regions between the 1870s and the 1930s. Through the lens of global value chains, the contributions showcase how these companies continuously adapted their businesses to a world that was at once economically more integrated but politically increasingly competitive in this age of high imperialism and national competition. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Business History.

"Joel Roberts Poinsett is one of those figures who show up all across the expanding United States in the early nineteenth century. His career culminated as Secretary of War but also encompassed time as a secret agent in South America, ambassador to Mexico, South Carolina state legislator, and US Congressman-as well as as a naturalist and namesake of the poinsettia, which he stole from Mexico. While Poinsett was not an ideologue with a master plan, his consistently self-interested actions reveal an America defined by selfishness, cruelty, greed-and the use of federal power in support of them"--

Observers and historians continue to marvel at the diversity and complexity of the Ottoman Empire. This book explores the significant and multifaceted role that Orthodox Christian networks played in the sultan’s realm from the 17th century until WWI. These multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-confessional formations contributed fundamentally to the political, economic, social, and cultural development of the Empire as well as to its gradual disintegration. Bringing together scholars from most Balkan countries, Christian Networks in the Ottoman Empire describes the variety of Orthodox Christian networks under Ottoman rule. The examples examined include commercial relations, intellectual networks, educational systems, religious dynamics, consular activities, and revolutionary movements, and involve Muslims and Christians, Romanians and Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks, Albanians and Turks. The contributions show that the Christian populations and their elites were an integral part of Ottoman society. The geographical spread of the formal and informal networks enriches our understanding of the terms ‘center’ and ‘periphery.’ They were either centered within the official Ottoman borders and extended their activities to other states and empires, or vice versa, located elsewhere, but also active in the Ottoman Empire. A common feature of these formations is their constant fluctuation, which enables a dynamic understanding of Ottoman history.

New Diplomatic History has turned into one of the most dynamic and innovative areas of research – especially with regard to early modern history. It has shown that diplomacy was not as homogenous as previously thought. On the contrary, it was shaped by a multitude of actors, practices and places. The handbook aims to characterise these different manifestations of diplomacy and to contextualise them within ongoing scientific debates. It brings together scholars from different disciplines and historiographical traditions. The handbook deliberately focuses on European diplomacy – although non-European areas are taken into account for future research – in order to limit the framework and ensure precise definitions of diplomacy and its manifestations. This must be the prerequisite for potential future global historical perspectives including both the non-European and the European world.

Weaving U.S. history into the larger fabric of world history, the contributors to Crossing Empires de-exceptionalize the American empire, placing it in a global transimperial context. They draw attention to the breadth of U.S. entanglements with other empires to illuminate the scope and nature of American global power as it reached from the Bering Sea to Australia and East Africa to the Caribbean. With case studies ranging from the 1830s to the late twentieth century, the contributors address topics including diplomacy, governance, anticolonialism, labor, immigration, medicine, religion, and race. Their transimperial approach—whether exemplified in examinations of U.S. steel corporations partnering with British imperialists to build the Ugandan railway or the U.S. reliance on other empires in its governance of the Philippines—transcends histories of interimperial rivalries and conflicts. In so doing, the contributors illuminate the power dynamics of seemingly transnational histories and the imperial origins of contemporary globality. Contributors. Ikuko Asaka, Oliver Charbonneau, Genevieve Clutario, Anne L. Foster, Julian Go, Michel Gobat, Julie Greene, Kristin L. Hoganson, Margaret D. Jacobs, Moon-Ho Jung, Marc-William Palen, Nicole M. Phelps, Jay Sexton, John Soluri, Stephen Tuffnell