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...

"The Merchant Republics" analyzes the ways in which three major economic powerhouses - Amsterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg - developed dual identities as 'communities of commerce' and as republics over the course of the long eighteenth century (c.1648-1790). In addition to discussing the qualities...