Staying Afloat: Risk and Uncertainty in Spanish Atlantic World Trade, 1760-1820

摘要

This book is a study on Spanish Atlantic trade in the period 1760-1820, with a focus on the issues of risk and uncertainty in trading and the manner in which Spanish merchants managed these difficulties. Its intellectual context includes Douglas North's "institutional economics" and work on chartered companies, which pioneered longdistance trade in the early modern period. The author's claim is that the institutional arrangements adopted for the Spanish Atlantic trade-the fleet system and the conceding of commercial monopolies, first to Seville and then Cadiz, and, in the colonies, to Mexico and Peru-considered generally as sui generis are more aptly paired with the risk-management strategies of these companies.