Edmond Smith

The Community That Shaped England's Trade and Empire, 1550-1650

Merchants

Richard L. Smith

Global Trade in the Premodern World offers an authoritative and expansive history of exchange and interaction across Eurasia from the prehistoric origins of trade to the integration of large parts of this world-system by the fifteenth century CE. The book tackles questions that are critical to our understanding of premodern globalization. How did global trade in the premodern world take shape? Who did the trading and what motivated them? Which commodities were traded and how did different goods influence how trading networks functioned? How did geography change how and where people carried goods? How did states and communities seek to control the practice of commerce? And finally, what was the impact of trade on political structures and in the relationship between different states, empires, and communities? Drawing on the fruits of research in history, anthropology, and archaeology, as well as primary sources produced by authors from Africa, Asia, and Europe, Global Trade in the Premodern World is a book of remarkable scope written engagingly and accessibly with scholars, students, and non-specialists in mind.

Thematic Approaches to Routes, Realms, and Networks

Global Trade in the Premodern World

Do we appreciate to the full why the Jewish believers of the early church "were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on Gentiles"? Why they were amazed that "God had granted repentance" to Gentiles for eternal life? Sacred history is to be seen through enlightened Jewish eyes, revealing that Israel was initially the sole beneficiary of God's revelation before Christ. For the most part the Gentiles were "allowed . . . to walk in their own ways." Such was according to divine predestination and the prerogative that God has the freedom to be merciful on whom he desires to be merciful. At the coming of Christ--to the surprise of Jewish believers--Gentiles in numbers became subjects of God's electing love as well. Jesus died for "the world" in the sense that he died for Jew and Gentile. And God's freedom in predestination continues to be manifested in the election of both Jew and Gentile, with Christ dying specifically for all those elected of God, as a wide survey of New Testament texts verify.

The Scandal of God’s Forgiveness

Colin Heywood

This volume publishes for the first time, the journal kept by John Looker (?1670—1715) recording his service as ship’s surgeon on the Blackham Galley, a London-built merchantman on its second trading voyage to the Levant, between December 1696 and March 1698. Preserved in the Caird Library of the National Maritime Museum, Looker’s ‘Journall’ describes his experiences on the voyage from the point at which he joined the ship at Gravesend, to March 1698, when the journal breaks off abruptly in mid-sentence when the ship was off the Kentish ‘Narrows’. John Looker was a Londoner, brought up in one of the parishes to the east of the City which furnished large numbers of mariners to the English sea-borne trades. He served an apprenticeship to a London barber-surgeon, and became a Freeman of the Company of Barber-Surgeons. His fifteen months of service on board the Blackham Galley appears to have been his only employment at sea, but his ready knowledge of maritime ways and language, which are apparent from the first pages of his ‘Journall’, make it more than likely that he came from a seafaring family. Subsequent to his voyage, he married, raised a family, practiced in London as a surgeon, and acquired land in East Anglia. He died at Bath in 1715. Looker’s ‘Journall’ divides naturally into three parts. The Blackham Galley’s outward and homeward voyages were largely without incident. The time spent by the Blackham Galley in Turkish waters, covers its voyage from Smyrna to Constantinople, where the ship stayed for a month, and then returned to Smyrna. Captain Newnam’s ill-advised and disastrous attempt at privateering in Ottoman waters on the return journey to Smyrna, led to the detention of his vessel at Smyrna under a double interdict from the English ambassador at the Porte and from the Ottoman authorities. Looker’s account of the Blackham Galley’s enforced stay in Smyrna furnishes a vigorous and detailed account of social life in the international merchant community, as well as portside life seen ‘from below’, with its taverns and prostitutes, and the activities and frequent ‘debauches’ of an increasingly bored and fractious crew. Looker’s record also provides interesting detail of his professional approach to treatment of the illnesses, accidents and occasional deaths of members of the company of his own and other ships anchored off Smyrna.

The Sea Journal of John Looker, Ship’s Surgeon

The Levant Voyage of the Blackham Galley (1696 – 1698)

A new history of English trade and empire—revealing how a tightly woven community of merchants was the true origin of globalized Britain In the century following Elizabeth I’s rise to the throne, English trade blossomed as thousands of merchants launched ventures across the globe. Through the efforts of these "mere merchants," England developed from a peripheral power on the fringes of Europe to a country at the center of a global commercial web, with interests stretching from Virginia to Ahmadabad and Arkhangelsk to Benin. Edmond Smith traces the lives of English merchants from their earliest steps into business to the heights of their successes. Smith unpicks their behavior, relationships, and experiences, from exporting wool to Russia, importing exotic luxuries from India, and building plantations in America. He reveals that the origins of "global" Britain are found in the stories of these men whose livelihoods depended on their skills, entrepreneurship, and ability to work together to compete in cutthroat international markets. As a community, their efforts would come to revolutionize Britain’s relationship with the world.

Aske Laursen Brock

Guido van Meersbergen

Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern World explores the links between trade, empire, exploration, and global information trans>fer during the early modern period. By charting how the leaders, members, employees, and supporters of different trading companies gathered, pro>cessed, employed, protected, and divulged intelligence about foreign lands, peoples, and markets, this book throws new light on the internal uses of information by corporate actors and the ways they engaged with, relied on, and supplied various external publics. This ranged from using secret knowl>edge to beat competitors, to shaping debates about empire, and to forcing Europeans to reassess their understandings of specific environments due to contacts with non-European peoples. Reframing our understanding of trading companies through the lens of travel literature, this volume brings together thirteen experts in the field to facilitate a new understanding of how European corporations and empires were shaped by global webs of information exchange

Edmond Smith

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