The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770-1820

Offers detailed consideration of forms of knowledge production and circulation at a key moment in the development of global scientific, commercial and political systems. In particular, it focuses on the roles of intermediaries such as brokers and spies, messengers and translators, missionaries and entrepreneurs, in linking different parts of these ever more densely entangled systems. The period 1770-1820 was decisive for the reformation of imperial projects in the wake of military catastrophe and politico-economic crisis, both in the Atlantic and the Asian/Pacific spheres, economic and political worlds dominated by complex trade systems and violent contest.