This book focuses on why Europe became the dominant economic force in global trade between 1450 and 1750.

Acknowledgements; Introduction James D. Tracy; 1. Institutions, transaction costs and the rise of merchant empires Douglass C. North; 2. Merchants and states M. N. Pearson; 3. The rise of merchant empires, 1400-1700: a European counterpoint Thomas A. Brady Jr; 4. Europe and the wider world, 1500-1700: the military balance Geoffrey Parker; 5. The pirate and the emperor: power and the law on the seas, 1450-1850 Anne Pérotin-Dumon; 6. Transport costs and long-range trade, 1300-1800: was there a European 'transport revolution' in the early modern era? Russell R. Menard; 7. Transaction costs: a note on merchant credit and the organization of private trade Jacob M. Price; 8. Evolution of empire: the Portuguese in the Indian ocean during the sixteenth century Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Luís Felipe F. R. Thomaz; 9. Comparing the Tokagawa Shogunate with Hapsburg Spain: two silver-based empires in a global setting Dennis O. Flynn; 10. Colonies as mercantile investments: the Luso-Brazilian empire, 1500-1808 José Jobson de Andrade Arruda; 11. Reflections on the organizing principle of pre-modern trade K. N. Chaudhuri; Selected bibliography of secondary works; Index.