Trade History

The history of the ancient incense trade routes often falls victim to the excitement of the stories of important men and women, as well as the conquest and empire building that constantly changed the organization of the ancient world. Yet the importance of these interlocking trade networks and the economies built around them cannot be denied. Ancient sources clearly delineate the immense demand for frankincense and myrrh, and later other spices and exotic products, that spanned for over a millennium, peaking between the fourth century BCE and the second century CE.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Eastern North America, Natives and newcomers alike understood the close relationship between political power and control of trade and land, but they did so in very different ways. For Native Americans trade was a collective act. The alliances that made a people powerful became visible through material exchanges that forged connections among kin groups, villages, and the spirit world.

In 2001, at 47, Thomas DeWolf was astounded to discover that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in American history, responsible for transporting at least 10,000 Africans to the Americas. His infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol, of Rhode Island, curried favor with President Jefferson to continue in the trade after it was outlawed.

Ackroyd portrays London from the time of the druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century, noting magnificence in both epochs, but this is not a simple chronological record. It is a comprehensive account, animated by Ackroyd's concern for the close relationship between the present and the past as well as by what he describes as the peculiar "echoic" quality of London whereby its texture and history actively affect the lives and personalities of its citizens.

We may think of "globalism" as a recent development but its origins date back to the fifteenth century and beyond, when seafarers pioneered routes across the oceans with the objectives of exploration, trade, and profit. These voyages only became possible after certain technical innovations—improvements in ship design, compasses, and mapping—enabled navigation across unprecedented distances.

The transatlantic slave trade was founded by the Portuguese in the 15th century for the specific purpose of supplying the New World colonies with African slave labor. It was soon joined by all the major trading powers of Europe, and it reached its peak in the 18th century with the founding and development of plantation economies that ran from the South American mainland through the Caribbean and into the southern states of the United States. The East African Slave Trade, on the other hand, was more complex, far older, and significantly more widespread.

Black Hands, White House documents and appraises the role enslaved women and men played in building the US, both its physical and its fiscal infrastructure. The book highlights the material commodities produced by enslaved communities during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. These commodities enriched European and US economies; contributed to the material and monetary wealth of the nation's founding fathers, other early European immigrants, and their descendants; and bolstered the wealth of present-day companies founded during the American slave era.

Situated about 25 miles off the Tanzanian coast, Zanzibar, with its sultans and spices, merchants and mosques, dhows and doorways of richly carved timber, has captured the imagination of travelers and writers for hundreds of years. It has long evoked a romantic mystique, calling up images of an island paradise in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Its gleaming Muslim Swahili town, built of white coralline limestone, can trace approximately 1,000 years of maritime trading.

Today’s major technology companies - Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, and others - wield more power than national governments. In this comprehensive, engaging, and prescriptive audiobook, Alexis Wichowski considers their growing and unavoidable influence in our lives, showing in eye-opening detail how these net states are conquering countries, disrupting reality, and jeopardizing our future - and what we can do to regulate and reform the industry before it does irreparable harm to the way we think, how we act, and how we’re governed.

In light of the intertwining logics of military competition and economic interdependence at play in US-China relations, Trading with the Enemy examines how the United States has balanced its potentially conflicting national security and economic interests in its relationship with the People's Republic of China (PRC). To do so, Hugo Meijer investigates a strategically sensitive yet under-explored facet of US-China relations: the making of American export control policy on military-related technology transfers to China since 1979.

A total of 305,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the New World aboard American vessels over a span of two hundred years as American merchants and mariners sailed to Africa and to the Caribbean to acquire and sell captives. Using exhaustive archival research, including many collections that have never been used before, historian Sean M. Kelley argues that slave trading needs to be seen as integral to the larger story of American slavery.

Javier Valdez ofrece un libro impactante que va del reportaje a la crónica para rescatar del silencio, de la nota roja y del olvido, a numerosas mujeres que viven entre las balas momentos cruciales de su vida. Amantes de capos, amigas de ellos o familiares, son mujeres con una verdad ardiente y dolorosa, que buscan el glamour y la hermosura, el poder económico y la huida de su realidad; mujeres que viven en el límite de la ley, la violencia y de la muerte.

The concept of international trade was born in the ancient Mediterranean, which provided the perfect set of circumstances needed to produce an intricate trading system whose influence can still be seen in present-day economic practices.

Few cities epitomize the best and worst of the United States like Detroit, which started as a remote trading post and grew into an industrious town before exploding into a bustling city. That city then fell, leaving a legacy of anger and despair only recently beginning to turn things around. At the same time, the same mighty city that proved capable of arming a nation at war found itself seething with social conflict. The massive labor force fought hard for their rights, as did the African-Americans fleeing Jim Crow in the South.

Like other major cities and the nation overall, the 20th century portended massive growth for Milwaukee, especially as rail and other forms of transportation helped connect the city to the rest of Wisconsin and beyond. With that growth came the growing pains of an industrial city gripped with all the plights of urban development and expansion, but despite that, the people of Milwaukee entered the new century in high hopes: hopes that survived the harsh realities of a century sundered by war, racism, and poverty.

Ancient remains are evidence that a huge amount of goods was once moved from one land to another, systematically transported and traded across the Mediterranean. A network of this size, with hundreds of colonies and thousands of ships, had to be well coordinated, and it was thanks to important cities along the Mediterranean coast. One of the most crucial cities in the system was hidden beneath the Greek, Roman, and Crusader ruins of Lebanon: the ancient city of Tyre.

The story of the Silk Road has been a popular topic among tourists, academics, economists, state parties, and daydreaming children for many centuries. In many ways the Silk Road can be seen everywhere, and it has existed for as long as people have traveled across Eurasia. Its impact is widely felt among the diverse peoples that live on the continent, through the unique regional art and architectural styles, as well as in countless films, books, academic studies, and organized tours devoted to the ancient trade routes.

In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of a once infamous but now largely forgotten terrorist attack. On September 16, 1920, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in a spray of metal and fire, turning the busiest corner of America's financial center into a war zone. Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation.

In the summer of 1860, more than 50 years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, one question has been on the mind of every American: "How did this happen?" Foreign Affairs' editor and managing editor, James Hoge, Jr. and Gideon Rose, have brought together an impressive list of experts to answer this question in all its critical aspects: the motives and actions of the terrorists, the status of our military, the current and historical context of the Middle East, airport security, biological threats, and more.