The Self-Perception of Early Modern Capitalists

A collection of essays by leading historians of early modern Europe and the U.S., this books explores how merchants, entrepreneurs, and other early modern capitalists viewed themselves.

"This collection is highly original and will appeal to all students of early modern Europe. The editors have assembled front-line pieces of scholarship that put European townsmen, and some townswomen, on the verge of the modern in an entirely new light. The new sources revealed here give a tolerant yet precise view of the the early modern middle class that comes out of actually listening to it, and will inspire a new generation of scholars."

• Deirdre McCloskey, author of The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (2006)

  Autorentext
  Author Margaret C. Jacob: Margaret C. Jacob is Distinguished Professor of History at UCLA, USA. She is the author of numerous books in the history of science, intellectual history, and early modern studies, most recently The First Knowledge Economy: Human Capital and European Economic Development, 1750-1850 (2013). Author Catherine Secretan: Catherine Secretan is Directrice de recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. She has published many scholarly papers, monographs and translations on Dutch political ideas in the Early Modern Period (16th-17th century). Among her recent work is Le 'marchand philosophe' de Gaspar Barlaeus (2002), De la Vie Civile: 1590 (2005), and A Letter on the Principles of Justness and Decency, Containing a Defence of the Treatise De Cive of the Learned Mr. Hobbes (2013).

  Inhalt
  Theological Roots of the Medieval/Modern Merchants' Self-Representation- G. Todeschini PART I: SELF-IMAGES Images and Self-Images of Sephardic Merchants in Early Modern Europe and the Mediterranean- F. Trivellato Merchants in Charge. The Self-Perception of Amsterdam Merchants, ca. 1550-1700- C. Lesger Merchants on the Defensive: National Self-Images in the Dutch Republic of the Late Eighteenth Century- D. Sturkenboom PART II: CAPITALISM AS NORMATIVE "Merchants" and "Gentlemen" in Eighteenth-Century Sweden: Worlds of Jean Abraham Grill- L. Müller Professional Ethics and Commercial Rationality at the Beginning of the Modern Era- J. Hoock The Anxious Merchant, the Bold Speculator, and the Malicious Bankrupt: Doing Business in Eighteenth-Century Hamburg- M. Lindemann Accounting for War and Revolution: Philadelphia Merchants and Commercial Risk, 1774-1811 PART III: INDIVIDUALS AND STRIVING Accounting for Science: How a Merchant Kept His Books in Elizabethan London- D. Harkness Coming of Agein Trade: Masculinity and Commerce in Eighteenth-Century England- J. Smail Success and Self-Loathing in the Life of an Eighteenth-Century Entrepreneur- M. Kadane