A history of commerce

=1. The purposes of commerce.=—The reader will follow more intelligently the history of commerce if he will stop a moment at the start to consider the purposes of commerce and t...

=6. Prehistoric commerce. Ancient Egypt.=—The origins of commerce are lost in obscurity. Before people are sufficiently civilized to leave written records of their doings they e...

=15. Greece, physical character and products.=—The mention of the Greeks at the close of the last chapter introduces us to a people who were, for a time, the leading merchants o...

=25. The Roman state; Rome not a commercial city.=—In entering on the period of Roman domination we need spend no time over the earlier history of the city which came to rule th...

=30. Political conditions affecting commerce; the modern system of government.=—The reader who studies the history of commerce in the medieval period faces a system of governmen...

=43. Significance of towns in the economic organization; decline of the Roman towns.=—In the latter part of the Middle Ages, beginning after the year 1000, a striking change too...

=59. Roads neglected, or left to benevolent associations.=—The maintenance of the roads was still left to local authorities. We find in the court records of manors that the peop...

=71. Fairs; the reason for their existence.=—The foregoing description of medieval commerce will have shown that trade was far less extensive than it is now, and will suggest th...

=77. Rise of sea commerce. The Scandinavians.=—We might suppose, in view of the difficulties and dangers of travel on land, that the trade of Europe would have been forced to th...

=88. Wares of the Levant trade. Slaves.=—The “colonial products” of the modern world (tea, coffee, spices, etc.) have familiarized us with a class of wares which cannot be produ...

=100. Position of Venice; early history.=—The course of the eastern trade can best be followed in connection with the fortunes of the city of Venice which still shows, in the sp...

=114. Development of commerce in South and North.=—Medieval commerce reached its highest development on opposite sides of the continent of Europe, in the Levant trade of the Sou...

=127. Types of medieval traders; pedler, shopkeeper.=—Enough has already been said to guard the reader against the idea that great wholesale merchants of the modern type were co...

=138. Development of the modern political system in the later Middle Ages.=—Toward the close of the Middle Ages the feudal system of government gave place gradually to a system...

=144. The revolution about 1500; topics to be considered.=—The period centering about the year 1500 was marked by changes so rapid and so extensive that they deserve the name of...

=156. Agriculture.=—The next important subject to be discussed in considering the great changes in commerce in the modern period is the development of the economic organization....

=168. Growth of credit business and of banking.=—The rise of the joint stock companies was a great step in the development of the power of capital and of credit. Individual savi...

=181. Growth of modern states under the influence of commerce.=—If the modern reader is impressed, in studying the history of Europe before 1500, with the influence on commerce...

=197. Extent and power of the Spanish monarchy.=—Pursuing now the history of modern commerce by studying its development in different countries, we turn first to the states of t...

=216. Establishment of the United Netherlands.=—With the decline of Spain and Portugal the supremacy in European commerce passed definitely to the countries of the North. The co...

The English economist, James E. Thorold Rogers, has included in his *Story of Holland, N. Y., Putnam, 1889, several chapters on topics of economic importance. A better, though l...

=227. Survey of England’s position and resources about 1500.=—The importance which English commerce assumed in this period and has since maintained, justifies us in pausing at t...

=238. Survey of topics to be considered in studying the development of English commerce.=—Such is the bare outline of the development of English commerce in the period preceding...

=250. (4) Analysis of English imports in the modern period.=—After this survey of one side of English trade we have to consider the other, the imports which England purchased wi...

=264. Natural advantages of France in the modern period.=—In preceding sections we have considered countries which for a time took the leading place in commerce among the states...

=280. History of the French customs tariff.=—After this survey of the development of French commerce we can gain an appreciation of the opportunities for still greater growth th...

=289. Political survey of Germany about 1500.=—After considering a country in which the central government was, so to speak, too strong for the interests of commercial developme...

=306. Political condition of Italy in the modern period.=—In the history of Germany we have seen the fate of a country that entered the modern period lacking a political organiz...

=315. Statistical survey of development since 1800.=—In entering the nineteenth century the student approaches the period in which commerce has achieved the most notable progres...

=327. Development of agriculture.=—Pursuing now our survey of the technical advances of the century, we must notice first the oldest and perhaps the most important branch of pro...

=341. Commercial importance of the subjects of the chapter.=—“Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing-press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have...

=354. Transportation by sailing vessels and steamers.=—Steam has won for itself, in the course of the century, the commanding place in sea transportation as well as in land tran...

=371. Effect on commerce of technical progress.=—It is now time to discuss the effects on commerce of the technical changes which have been described in preceding chapters. Foll...

=385. Qualities of modern commerce. Certainty.=—The changes in the instruments and objects of commerce, described in preceding chapters, have had far-reaching effects on commerc...

=404. War and peace in the nineteenth century.=—Although, for the convenience of a round number, the date 1800 has been chosen in this book to fix the beginning of the recent pe...

=417. Importance of the commerce of England.=—In returning to the study of the development of commerce in different countries we shall take up first the country which at the beg...

=430. Burden of tariff on trade and manufactures.=—After this survey of the development of English trade in the first half of the century we must attend to a most important chan...

=440. Development of English commerce since 1850.=—An accompanying table sets forth the course of English trade down to the outbreak of the World War. The figures refer, as in t...

=452. Relative decline in value and quality of English exports.=—The questions agitating the minds of English business men and statesmen at the opening of the twentieth century...

=468. Connection of the commercial and the political development of Germany.=—Standing next to England in the extent of its commerce about 1900 is a country which at the beginni...

=480. Effect on economic development of the establishment of the Empire.=—Leaving now the topic of commercial policy until we return to it in a concluding paragraph, we must att...

=495. Condition of France before the Revolution.=—France was considered, as the reader will recall, the richest and most powerful state of Europe till near the end of the eighte...

=511. States of minor commercial importance.=—In the year 1912 four great states carried on nearly one-half of the foreign commerce of the world, considerably more than one-half...

=529. Condition of Italy in the first half of the century.=—Of the countries of southern Europe none has gained so rapidly as Italy in the latter part of the nineteenth century....

=543. Great size and small commerce of the Russian Empire.=—The attention and imagination of men have long been impressed by the size of the Russian empire, which included an ar...

=560. Comparison of conditions in 1789 and in 1914.=—The United States was in 1914 recognized as one of the greatest countries of the world in area, in population, in wealth, in...

=577. Development of internal trade 1789-1914.=—It will be impossible, in the later chapters of this book, to describe in detail the development of the internal trade of the Uni...

=594. Importance of commercial policy in this period.=—The two preceding chapters have described the conditions of commerce in the United States about 1789, with but an occasion...

=612. Survey of commerce, 1815-1860.=—In contrast with the period ending in 1815, the next period which we study, extending from 1815 to 1860, was marked by the slowness and the...

=633. Chief exports in 1860.=—The following table gives the chief items among the exports of the country in 1860, and corresponding items made up from the annual average of the...

=646. Chief imports in 1860.=—The imports of the United States have been so varied in character that it is impossible to classify them with any exactness. An attempt will be mad...

=663. Survey of commercial development, 1860-1914.=—In the chapters introductory to the history of commerce in the nineteenth century, attention was directed to the increasing r...

=679. Chief exports in 1913.=—The principal items of the export trade of the United States in 1913 are given in the following table, with which should be compared the table in s...

=695. Survey of the import trade, 1860-1914.=—The development of the import trade of the United States since 1860 is shown in the following table, which gives the values in mill...

=712. Commercial antecedents of the war.=—To picture the World War of 1914-18 as a necessary result of the commercial conditions in the period immediately preceding would be a d...

Germany and the industrial revolution, London, 1915, is the most thoughtful; the work by Snow and Kral is a government report, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Misc. Ser...

=727. Statistics of English trade, 1913-1919.=—Statistics of the general trade of the United Kingdom in the war period are given in the following table, to which is added a colu...

=741. Effects of the war upon the commerce of belligerent and of neutral states.=—The commerce of the United Kingdom in the period of the war has been treated at considerable le...

=754. Territorial losses of Germany.=—By the terms of peace Germany ceded territory in the west to France and Belgium, in the north to Denmark, in the east to Poland. The most s...

=771. Statistics of American Commerce, 1914-1920.=—The course of the commerce of the United States during the war and the few years of peace immediately following appears in the...