A Revolution in Commerce

Book excerpt: "Kessler shows how the merchants who were associated with the court - and not just elite thinkers and royal reformers - played a key role in reconceptualizing commerce as the credit-fueled private exchange necessary to sustain the social order. Deploying this modern conception of commerce in a variety of contexts, ranging from litigation over negotiable instruments to corporatist battles for status and jurisdiction, these merchants contributed (largely inadvertently and to their ultimate regret) to the demise of corporatism as both conceptual framework and institutional practice. In so doing, they helped bring about the social and political revolution of 1789." "A Revolution in Commerce provides new insights into the rise of commercial modernity by demonstrating the remarkable role played by the law in ideological and institutional transformation."--BOOK JACKET.