Title: German merchants in the nineteenth-century Atlantic /
Authors: Maischak, Lars, 1970-
Year: 2013
Subjects: Hanseatic League; Städtebund Die Hanse; Merchants Germany History; Merchants United States History; BUSINESS & ECONOMICS Economic History.; Commerce; Merchants; Kaufmann; Fernhandel; Bremen (Germany) History; Germany Commerce United States History; United States Commerce Germany History; Germany; United States; Deutschland; USA
Abstract: "This study brings to life the community of trans-Atlantic merchants who established strong economic, political, and cultural ties between the United States and the city-republic of Bremen, Germany in the nineteenth century. Lars Maischak shows that the success of Bremen's merchants in helping make an industrial-capitalist world market created the conditions of their ultimate undoing: the new economy of industrial capitalism gave rise to democracy and the nation-state, undermining the political and economic power of this mercantile elite. Maischak argues that the experience of Bremen's merchants is representative of the transformation of the role of merchant capital in the first wave of globalization, with implications for our understanding of modern capitalism, in general"--
Contents: Introduction -- Part I. Moorings of the Hanseatic Network: 1. Prudent pioneers: Hanseats in trans-Atlantic trade, 1798-1860; 2. The Hanseatic household: families, firms, and faith, 1815-1864; 3. Cosmopolitan conservatives: home-town traditions and Western ideas in Bremish politics, 1806-1860 -- Part II. Exchanges: In a Transnational World: 4. Free labor and dependent labor: from patronage to wage labor and social control, 1815-1861; 5. International improvement: Hanseats, Hamiltonians, and Jacksonians, 1845-1860; 6. Nations, races, and empires: Hanseats encounter the other, 1837-1859 -- Part. III. Decline of a Cosmopolitan Community: 7. The end of merchant-capital: crisis and adaptation in a world of industrial capitalism, 1857-1890; 8. Decisions and divisions: Hanseatic responses to nation-making wars, 1859-1867; 9. Patriarchs into patriots: Hanseats in a world of nation-states, 1867-1945 -- Conclusion.