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Globalization in the Early Modern Era: New Evidence from the Dutch-Asiatic Trade, c. 1600–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2016

Pim de Zwart
Pim de Zwart*
Affiliation:
Pim de Zwart is Lecturer, Wageningen University, The Netherlands, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN Wageningen. E-mail: pim.dezwart@wur.nl.
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Abstract

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the origins of globalization. It examines the process of commodity price convergence, an indicator of globalization, between Europe and Asia on the basis of newly obtained price data from the Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives. Prices for many commodities in the Dutch-Asiatic trade converged already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of the growth of trade and competition among traders and companies. The extent of convergence, however, was determined, in part, by the ability of the VOC to control commodity markets.

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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 520 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2016 

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Footnotes

I thank Gerrit Knaap and Judith Schooneveld-Oosterling for early access to the Bookkeeper-General database. I am grateful to Daniel Curtis, Melissa Dell, Oscar Gelderblom, Lex Heerma van Voss, Joost Jonker, Robert Margo, Anne McCants, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Auke Rijpma, Klas Rönnbäck, Jeffrey Williamson, Jan Luiten van Zanden, and seminar participants at Harvard University and Utrecht University, as well as the editor, Ann Carlos, and the three referees of this Journal for comments on earlier versions of this paper. Of course, any remaining errors are my responsibility.

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