Pim de Zwart examines the Dutch East India Company s intercontinental trade and its effects on living standards in various regions on the edges of the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Contrary to conventional views, De Zwart finds significant evidence of the integration...

This work is split up into four parts. These are 'Overviews', 'The Pacific as Linchpin of World Trade', 'Winners and Losers in the Global Silver Trade', and 'Birth of Globalization Debate: Ecological, Economic, Epidemiological, and Demographic Interactions'