Globalization in the Early Modern Era: New Evidence from the Dutch-Asiatic Trade, c. 1600–1800
利用荷兰东印度公司档案中的新价格数据，研究17-18世纪欧亚商品价格收敛过程，发现贸易增长和竞争推动了价格收敛，但东印度公司的市场控制力影响了收敛程度。
This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the origins of globalization. It examines the process of commodity price convergence, an indicator of globalization, between Europe and Asia on the basis of newly obtained price data from the Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives. Prices for many commodities in the Dutch-Asiatic trade converged already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of the growth of trade and competition among traders and companies. The extent of convergence, however, was determined, in part, by the ability of the VOC to control commodity markets.