Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World," by Stephen R. Bown, is an interesting hybrid of history and biography in which Bown tells the story of the golden age of European venture capitalism through the lives of six of the most influential businessmen between 1600 to 1900. These six men — Jan PieterszoonCoen of the Dutch East India Company, Peter Stuyvesant of the Dutch West India Company, Robert Clive of the British East India Company, George Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company, AlexandrBaranov of the Russian American Company and Cecil Rhodes of Cape Colony — lived in an "Age of Heroic Commerce."
They mixed personal ambition and ruthless business sense with imperialism and a desire to build worldwide monopolies that would send the treasures of the world back into their own pockets and those of their shareholders. Engagingly written, "Merchant Kings" relates the stories of these men and their endeavors, which preceded many subsequent socioeconomic problems enduring between the "first" and "third" worlds.
From 1600−1850, Europe's global expansion was largely led not by kings and governments but by merchants and joint−stock companies seeking spices and other valuable goods to supply the growing markets of its developing consumer culture. When they failed to negotiate better terms of trade using ruthless trade practices with local suppliers and cut−throat competition with their European rivals, the great trading companies furthered their interests by commanding their own private armies and using them in pitched battles against native peoples and European competitors alike. It was thus for profit, not empire, that most European nations ventured into Asia, Africa and the Americas.
These six corporate "kings" were all tough, calculating men with fine business senses and an unflinching commitment to extracting the greatest profit out of their respective territories, regardless of the human cost — a fact that made them unpopular even within their own companies. Peter Stuyvesant was so detested by the Dutch inhabitants of New Amsterdam, of which he was a Founder, Director−General and Governor, that they handed him over to an enemy British warship without a struggle.
Other "merchant kings," however, like Robert Clive, felt a moral responsibility to control some of the more outrageous human rights abuses and suffered as a result of their efforts to defend the third−world natives from the depredations of their European compatriots. Clive, a military genius who defeated the rival French East India Company in 1748, conquered Bengal for the British East India Company in 1756 and later became its Secretary−General, grew so despondent at his inability to control his company's practices in that territory that he committed suicide in 1774 at age 49.
Many of modern Western society's cruelest prejudices have origins in the adventure capitalist era. The "merchant kings" Baranov, Coen and Rhodes used racism to justify the continued expansion and governance of non−European peoples. While they exploited the bloody rebellions by local populations against subjugation in order to construct false perceptions in Europe of rapacious and barbaric peoples requiring an enforced "civilizing" presence, it was these Europeans, rather, who were the "uncivilized" ones. Nevertheless, this rationalization slowly worked its way into the European cultural psyche in the later years of imperialism (1850−1900), as famously represented in Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" (1899).
"Merchant Kings" is a thought−provoking and excellent read with a new perspective on some of the historical foundations of the current economic system and how the roles of business and government were intertwined in that era. Bown's focus on personalities and general trends does not make for particularly deep, scholarly or sophisticated reading, but its understandable style introduces to a general audience the lives and times of six influential traders, adventurers and early imperialists. Rating: ***1/2
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James Barasch is a sophomore majoring in history, reachable at James.Barasch@tufts.edu.
