Commerce With The Classics

Download or read book Commerce with the Classics written by Anthony Grafton and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinctive history of the traditions of reading and life in the Renaissance library, as seen in the texts of Renaissance intellectuals

Download or read book New Worlds, Ancient Texts written by Anthony Grafton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1995-03-15 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describing an era of exploration during the Renaissance that went far beyond geographic bounds, this book shows how the evidence of the New World shook the foundations of the old, upsetting the authority of the ancient texts that had guided Europeans so far afield. What Anthony Grafton recounts is a war of ideas fought by mariners, scientists, publishers, and rulers over a period of 150 years. In colorful vignettes, published debates, and copious illustrations, we see these men and their contemporaries trying to make sense of their discoveries as they sometimes confirm, sometimes contest, and finally displace traditional notions of the world beyond Europe.

Download or read book The Classics and Colonial India written by Phiroze Vasunia and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-05-16 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a unique cross-cultural study, this book provides a detailed account of the relationship between classical antiquity and the British colonial presence in India. Vasunia shows how classical culture pervaded the minds of the British colonizers, and highlights the many Indian receptions of Greco-Roman antiquity.

Download or read book Commerce in Culture written by Cynthia Joanne Brokaw and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sibao today is a cluster of impoverished villages in western Fujian. But from the late 17th-early 20th centuries, it was home to a flourishing publishing industry supplying south China through itinerant booksellers. Brokaw describes this rural, low-level operation, tracing how Sibao's socio-geographical character shaped its progress.

Download or read book Lust, Commerce, and Corruption written by Mark Teeuwen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 1816, Japan had recovered from the famines of the 1780s and moved beyond the political reforms of the 1790s. Despite persistent economic and social stresses, the country seemed headed for a new period of growth. The idea that the shogunate would not last forever was far from anyone's mind. Yet, in that year, an anonymous samurai produced a scathing critique of Edo society. Writing as Buyo Inshi, "a retired gentleman of Edo," he expressed in An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard a profound despair with the state of the realm. Seeing decay wherever he turned, Buyo feared the world would soon descend into war. In his anecdotes, Buyo shows a sometimes surprising familiarity with the shadier aspects of Edo life. He speaks of the corruption of samurai officials; the suffering of the poor in villages and cities; the operation of brothels; the dealings of blind moneylenders; the selling and buying of temple abbotships; and the dubious strategies seen in law courts. Perhaps it was the frankness of his account that made him prefer to stay anonymous. A team of Edo specialists undertook the original translation of Buyo's work. This abridged edition streamlines this translation for classroom use, preserving the scope and emphasis of Buyo's argument while eliminating repetitions and diversions. It also retains the introductory essay that situates the work within Edo society and history.

Download or read book Stateless Commerce written by Barak Richman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-19 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Stateless Commerce, Barak Richman uses the colorful case study of the diamond industry to explore how ethnic trading networks operate and why they persist in the twenty-first century. How, for example, does the 47th Street diamond district in midtown Manhattan—surrounded by skyscrapers and sophisticated financial institutions—continue to thrive as an ethnic marketplace that operates like a traditional bazaar? Conventional models of economic and technological progress suggest that such primitive commercial networks would be displaced by new trading paradigms, yet in the heart of New York City the old world persists. Richman’s explanation is deceptively simple. Far from being an anachronism, 47th Street’s ethnic enclave is an adaptive response to the unique pressures of the diamond industry. Ethnic trading networks survive because they better fulfill many functions usually performed by state institutions. While the modern world rests heavily on lawyers, courts, and state coercion, ethnic merchants regularly sell goods and services by relying solely on familiarity, trust, and community enforcement—what economists call “relational exchange.” These commercial networks insulate themselves from the outside world because the outside world cannot provide those assurances. Extending the framework of transactional cost and organizational economics, Stateless Commerce draws on rare insider interviews to explain why personal exchange succeeds, even as most global trade succumbs to the forces of modernization, and what it reveals about the limitations of the modern state in governing the economy.

Download or read book Inventing Times Square written by William R. Taylor and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1996-04 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique volume, Inventing Times Square approaches the subject of twentieth-century American city culture through a multidimensional examination of one quintessential urban space: Times Square. Ranging in time from 1905, when the crossroad was given its present name, through to the current plans for redevelopment, the authors examine Times Square as economic hub, real estate bonanza, entertainment center, advertising medium, architectural experiment, and erotic netherworld. Though the volume centers on Times Square, the essays venture much further into urban history and American social history, revealing in the process how Times Square reflected—even epitomized—America as it became an urban consumer culture.