Studies the ties between America and Bremen in the nineteenth century, illuminating the role of merchant capital in making an industrial-capitalist world economy.Based on an examination of the merchant elite of the city-republic of Bremen and the trans-Atlantic ties they established in trading with the United States in the nineteenth century, this study illuminates the role of merchant capital in the making of an industrial-capitalist world economy.Based on an examination of the merchant elite of the city-republic of Bremen and the trans-Atlantic ties they established in trading with the United States in the nineteenth century, this study illuminates the role of merchant capital in the making of an industrial-capitalist world economy.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.Index of tables, graphs, and maps; Glossary; Prologue; Introduction; Part I. Moorings of the Hanseatic Network: 1. Prudent pioneers: Hanseats in trans-Atlantic trade, 17981860; 2. The Hanseatic household: families, firms, and faith, 181564; 3. Cosmopolitan conservatives: home-town traditions and Western ideas in Bremish politics, 180660; Part II. Exchanges: In a Transnational World: 4. Free labor and dependent labor: from patronage to wage labor and social control, lă(
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