F. de Goey’s Consuls and the Institutions of Global Capitalism

Ferry de Goey’s 2014 book, Consuls and the Institutions of Global Capitalism, 1783-1914, was published in the Perspectives in Economic and Social History series from the London-based Pickering & Chatto. It offers a comparison of the British, German, US, and Dutch consular services in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia. Brief case studies of particular consuls make up most of the chapters, and there is considerable emphasis on the first half of the nineteenth century.

De Goey points out that consuls as a whole have an ambiguous record when it comes to generating international trade, but they did facilitate the growth of capitalism by concentrating a wide variety of state functions in one flexible and inexpensive office.