This paper discusses the implications of organizational control on the race for technological leadership in merchant empires. I provide an illustrative framework in which poor organizations have reduced incentives to invest, which in turn stifle technology improvements making leaders lag new entrants. In the late sixteenth century, Portugal’s large ships carried more merchandise and were more fitting of the monarch’s grandiose preferences, but they also were more prone to disaster. The merchant-controlled Dutch East India Company however, invested in smaller but more seaworthy vessels conducting more voyages at a much lower loss rate. The surviving historical evidence shows Portugal relying on large ships well into the seventeenth century suggesting her technological edge was gone by the time the Dutch dominated the Indian Ocean.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Pepijn Brandon;
Marten Dondorp;
(2023)
Nodes of knowledge, managing transfer: Shipbuilding and repair during the transformation from sail to steam
(/isis/citation/CBB029547827/)
Chapter
Jong, Johan de;
(2011)
Drawings, Ships and Spices: Accumulation at the Dutch East India Company
(/isis/citation/CBB001200093/)
Book
Djoeke van Netten;
(2014)
Koopman in kennis : de uitgever Willem Jansz Blaeu in de geleerde wereld (1571‒1638)
(/isis/citation/CBB594687495/)
Book
Roberts, Lissa;
(2011)
Centres and Cycles of Accumulation in and around the Netherlands during the Early Modern Period
(/isis/citation/CBB001200085/)
Book
Huigen, Siegfried;
Jong, Jan L. de;
Kolfin, Elmer;
(2010)
The Dutch Trading Companies as Knowledge Networks
(/isis/citation/CBB001031668/)
Book
Günter Schilder;
Hans Kok;
(2019)
Sailing Across the World's Oceans: History & Catalogue of Dutch Charts Printed on Vellum 1580-1725
(/isis/citation/CBB507660547/)
Article
John McCarthy;
Wendy van Duivenvoorde;
(2023)
A Virtual Reconstruction of the Batavia Shipwreck in Its Landscape
(/isis/citation/CBB525230345/)
Article
Gelderblom, Oscar;
Jong, Abe de;
Jonker, Joost;
(2013)
The Formative Years of the Modern Corporation: The Dutch East India Company VOC, 1602--1623
(/isis/citation/CBB001450378/)
Article
Susanne Friedrich;
(2020)
Caveat from the Archive: Pieter van Dam’s Beschryvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie and Crisis Management
(/isis/citation/CBB746223772/)
Article
Pooley, Simon;
(2009)
Jan van Riebeeck as Pioneering Explorer and Conservator of Natural Resources at the Cape of Good Hope (1652--62)
(/isis/citation/CBB001231347/)
Book
Schilder, Günter;
(2013)
Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica, vol. 9
(/isis/citation/CBB001551666/)
Book
Edmond Smith;
(2021)
Merchants: The community that shaped England's trade and empire, 1550-1650
(/isis/citation/CBB539685943/)
Article
Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin;
(2019)
‘A Place of Great Trust to Be Supplied by Men of Skill and Integrity’: Assayers and Knowledge Cultures in Late Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century London
(/isis/citation/CBB737897913/)
Book
Erlichman, Howard J.;
(2010)
Conquest, Tribute, and Trade: The Quest for Precious Metals and the Birth of Globalization
(/isis/citation/CBB001023149/)
Chapter
Delmas, Adrien;
(2010)
Writing History in the Age of Discovery, According to La Popelinière, 16th--17th Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB001000153/)
Chapter
Penman, Leigh T. I.;
(2011)
The Wicked and the Fair: Changing Perceptions of Terra Australis through the Prism of the Batavia Shipreck (1629)
(/isis/citation/CBB001201516/)
Book
Hoving, A. J.;
Wildeman, Diederick;
Witsen, Nicolaas;
(2012)
Nicolaes Witsen and Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age
(/isis/citation/CBB001422453/)
Book
Hoving, Ab;
(2011)
The Statenjacht Utrecht 1746
(/isis/citation/CBB001421485/)
Book
Davids, C. A.;
(2008)
The Rise and Decline of Dutch Technological Leadership: Technology, Economy and Culture in the Netherlands, 1350--1800
(/isis/citation/CBB000951849/)
Book
Angelo Cattaneo;
Sabrina Corbellini;
(2019)
The Global Eye: Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese Maps in the Collections of the Grand Duke Cosimo III De’ Medici
(/isis/citation/CBB149842887/)
Be the first to comment!