Lessons in global commerce (from an early East India Company employee)

• Main Author: SOON, Emily
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
• Subjects: Early modern; East India Company; exchange; globalisation; modernity; post-modernity; trade; William Mountford; Asian Studies; Political History
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3386; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4643/viewcontent/Lessons_in_Global_Commerce_Emily_Soon.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

International trade hurts local communities. It causes economic hardship at home and destroys the environment, while the culture of consumerism it fuels is destroying our values and way of life. Similar sentiments to these recur across the media today: this so-called backlash against globalisation is said to have contributed to Brexit and the rise of Trump, and to have transformed the shape of political movements across the world. This pent-up frustration seems to be quintessentially twenty-first century, the disillusioned rant of a world no longer charmed by the siren song of free trade and borderless commerce. And yet, the sentiments I began with are taken not from a present-day party political tract, but from a play written almost 400 years ago. While William Mountford’s amateur dramatic effort, The Launching of the Mary: Or the Seaman’s Honest Wife (ca. 1632-3).