Merchant Kings

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Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world, as told by Steven Bown, "Canada's Simon Winchester" (Globe and Mail). Through the Age of Heroic Commerce, from the 17th to the 19th centuries, a rogue's gallery of larger-than-life merchant kings ruled vast tracts of the globe and expanded their far-flung monopolies to generate revenue for their shareholders, feather their own nests and satisfy their vanity and curiosity. Their exploits changed the world during an age of unfettered globalization, mirroring a world we know today. Merchant Kings looks at each ruling monopoly through its greatest merchant king and considers their stories together for the first time. Stephen Bown studied history at the University of Alberta. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail and A Most Damnable Invention, which was shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction and the Canadian Science Writers' Association Science in Society Book Award. His most recent book is Madness, Betrayal and the Lash. He lives in the Canadian Rockies.