Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600-1900

Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world, as told by “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:
• Jan Pieterszoon Coen of the Dutch East India Company
• Pieter Stuyvesant of the Dutch West India Company
• Robert Clive of the English East India Company
• Alexandr Baranov of the Russian-American Company
• George Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company
• Cecil John Rhodes of the British South Africa Company