Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600-1900 by Stephen R. Bown
English | ISBN: 0312616112 | 2010 | EPUB | 336 pages | 2,2 MB
Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world
It was an era when monopoly trading companies were the unofficial agents of European expansion, controlling vast numbers of people and huge tracts of land, and taking on governmental and military functions.