With Weber’s idea dispensed with, Lamikiz moves on to look at faulty system of economic governance and the purposeful collusion of foreign merchants, that when combined with the insular nationalism and failure to project Spanish market forces into the greater Atlantic world explain the reasons for Spain’s decline on the international economic stage. As a byproduct of this conclusion the author also makes bold statements as to the superiority of Castilian and Basque merchants within international trade networks, and attempts to reframe the Basque regions importance within Spanish history.
These conclusions aside, the book does suffer from some serious problems. The author, much like Ferguson, presupposes that his readers already understand …show more content…
: Business Culture in The British Atlantic 1750-1815, combines the best aspects of the previously mentioned works with a commentary of the business culture of British merchants in the Atlantic during what she sees as a “period punctuated by short term crisis.” The author’s goal is to understand and define the socially constructed culture of Atlantic merchants, and how they operated within it. Haggerty has limited her study mainly to the activities of several merchant houses based in Liverpool. However despite this limitation, she goes beyond this geographic constraint to encompass the entirety of merchant …show more content…
This is the same topic touched upon by Lamikiz when he referenced the infiltration of Spanish markets by British merchants. Haggerty’s thesis both affirms and contradicts Lamikiz. In Haggerty’s view, Spanish merchants’ over-reliance on imports of metals, and their isolated business networks ensured that by the eighteenth century the Spanish role in Atlantic commerce was marginal. This confirms part of Lamikiz contention on the limitations of Spanish