The monograph Actors of Globalization portrays a group of New York businessmen engaged in global trade from 1784 to 1812. It follows their businesses around the world and shows how through wit, flexibility, and the help of a worldwide net of business partners the merchants were able to quickly rise to global entrepreneurs speculating on wars, food crises and slave revolts. The ramifications of their commerce were felt at home, where the merchants invested in land and city development, established new financial institutions and contributed to a rising consumer culture. This book brings together global and local history, arguing that private actors played an important role in the economic and social development of the young United States.

Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Habit Forming traces the history of unregulated drug use and dependency before 1914, when the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act limited sales of opiates and cocaine under US law. Many Americans used opiates and other drugs medically and became addicted. Some tried Hasheesh Candy, injected morphine, or visited opium dens, but neither use nor addiction was linked to crime, due to the dearth of restrictive laws. After the Civil War, American presses published extensively about domestic addiction. Later in the nineteenth century, many used cocaine and heroin as medicine. As addiction became a major public health issue, commentators typically sympathized with white, middle-class drug users, while criticizing such use by poor or working-class people and people of color. When habituation was associated with middle-class morphine users, few advocated for restricted drug access. By the 1910s, as use was increasingly associated with poor young men, support for regulations increased. In outlawing users' access to habit-forming drugs at the national level, a public health problem became a larger legal and social problem, one with an enduring influence on American drug laws and their enforcement.

Introduction: borderless societies -- The borderland -- Political conflicts -- Rebels and runaways -- The centrality of smuggling -- The web of debt -- Borderless businessmen -- Conclusion: the shape of empire.

Lucas Haasis found a time capsule: A complete mercantile letter archive of the merchant Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens who lived in 18th century Hamburg. Luetkens travelled France between 1743-1745 in order to become a successful wholesale merchant. He succeeded in this undertaking via both shrewd business practice and proficient skills in the practice of letter writing. Based on this unique discovery, in this microhistorical study Lucas Haasis examines the crucial steps and activities of a mercantile establishment phase, the typical letter practices of Early Modern merchants, and the practical principles of persuasion leading to success in the 18th century.

The open access publication of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation. This book examines the European commercial landscape of the early China trade, c.1700–1750. It looks at the foundational period of Sino-European commerce and explores a world of private enterprise beneath the surface of the official East India Company structures. Using rich private trade records, it analyses the making of pan-European markets, distribution networks and patterns of investment that together reveal a new geography of a trading system previously studied mostly at Canton. By considering the interloping activities of British-born merchants working for the smaller East India Companies, the book uncovers the commercial practices and cross-Company collaborations, both legal and illicit, that sustained the growth of the China trade: smuggling, wholesale trading, private commissions and the manipulation of Company auctions.

"Brooklyn has a distinct story in the history of social justice. Explore the rich history of New York City's second largest borough, and the thriving nineteenth-century free Black community that once called it home"--

The historical moment Forsyth's Italy -- Forsyth's prisons -- The 1813 and the 1816 versions of Forsyth's Italy -- Talking to Italians -- The hidden thoughts of Joseph Forsyth -- Visual arts, architecture, and literature -- The letters of the Forsyth brothers.