Acknowledgements -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Changing strategies and global power in the long eighteenth century -- Eighteenth-century realities and historiographical approaches -- Administering the fiscal-military state : ordinary revenues : trusting in a consumers world -- Increasing...

Steel and silk -- Silk in Roman society -- The Chinese empire and the Xiongnu -- The discovery of the west -- Securing the silk routes -- The Kushan empire -- The Sogdian intermediaries -- Caspian routes and the Crimea -- Black Sea voyages -- The Sarmatians -- The Parthian empire -- Parthia and...

Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on contributors -- Gerald D. Feldman : an appreciation / Jeffrey Fear, Glasgow University -- Starting from scratch? : the beginnings of Banca Commerciale Italiana 1893-1894 / Peter Hertner, Marthin Luther University Halle Wittenberg -- Jewish financiers in...