Warfare at sea and profit: Corsairs, institutions and partnership companies

Economou, Emmanouel/Marios/Lazaros and Kyriazis, Nicholas and Metaxas, Theodore (2014): Warfare at sea and profit: Corsairs, institutions and partnership companies.

Abstract

In the present paper we propose that in states with relatively weak central authorities, decision makers had to develop market oriented organisation solutions to successfully face a grave external threat, and these solutions proved to be efficient. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines institutional theory, history and strategy, we analyse a case study, the use of corsairs (privateers) by England and the United Provinces (Dutch Republic) in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. We have found that the development of partnership companies went hand in hand for commercial and military purposes. English and Dutch privateers proved to be economically efficient and superior to the centrally planned war operations of the Spanish empire.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Institutions, partnership companies, corsairs, strategy, coordination and cooperation mechanisms, 16th-17th century England and United Provinces (Dutch Republic).
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N2 - Financial Markets and Institutions > N24 - Europe: 1913-; N - Economic History > N4 - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation; N - Economic History > N4 - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation > N43 - Europe: Pre-1913; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology > Z13 - Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology ; Social and Economic Stratification

References

Adler, P. (2001) Market, hierarchy and trust: the knowledge economy and the future of capitalism. Organisation Science 12 215-234.

Andrews K.R. (1964) Elizabethan Privateering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Andrews, K.R. (1984) Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire 1480-1630. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Arrow, K.J. (1974) The Limits of Organization. New York: W. W. Norton.

Boxer, C.R (1965) The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800. Hutchinson.

Bradford, E. (1965) Drake. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Buchanan, J. And G. Tullock (1962) The Calculus of Consent. University of Michigan Press.

Cameron, R. (1993) A Concise Economic History of the World from Paleolithic times to the Present 2nd Ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

Coleman, J. (1990) Foundations of Social Theory. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

Cooper, J.P. (1970) “The decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War 1609-48/49”. In The New Cambridge Modern History, IV (pp. 226-238). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Craig, J. (1953) The Mint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Davids, K. and M. t’ Hart, M. (2012) “The navy and the rise of the state: The Case of the Netherlands c. 1570-1810”. In J. Backhaus, N. Kyriazis and N. Rodger, (eds), Navies and State Formation (pp. 273-316). Berlin: Lang Verlag.

Davies, C.S.L. (1963) Supply Services of the English Armed Forces. Ph.D. Thesis Oxford University.

Davis, R. (1973a) English Overseas Trade 1500-1700. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd.

De Vries, J. and Van der Woude, A. (1997) The First Modern Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fink, K.M. and A. Kessler (2010) Cooperation, trust and performance. Empirical results from three countries. British Journal of Management 21 469-483.

Fukuyama, F. (1995) Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity: Free Press.

Gaastra, F.S. (2003) The Dutch East India Company. Zutphen: Walburg Press.

Gillingham, J. (1981) The Wars of the Roses. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

Goldsmith, R.W. (1983) The Financial Development in India, 1860–1977. New Heaven and London: Yale University Press.

Goldsmith, R.W. (1987) Pre-modern Financial Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Halkos, G. and Kyriazis, N. (2005) Naval revolution and institutional change: The case of the United Provinces. European Journal of Law and Economics 19(1) 41-68.

Israel, J.I. (1995) The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477-1806. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kale, P., J.H. Dyer and H. Singh (2002), Alliance capability, stock market response, and long term alliance success: the role of alliance function. Strategic Management Journal 23 747-767.

Kendall, P.M. (1973) Warwick the Kingmaker. London: Cardinal-Sphere Books.

Kennedy, P. (1988) The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. London: Unwin-Hyman.

Konstam, A. (2000) Elizabethan Sea Dogs 1560-1605. Osprey Elite 70.

Konstam, A. (2001). The Armada Campaign. Osprey Campaign 86.

Kramer, A. (1999) Trust and distrust in organisations: emerging perspectives, enduring questions. Annual Review of Psychology 50 569-598.

Kyriazis, N. (2006). Seapower and socio-economic change. Theory and Society 35(1) 71-108.

Kyriazis, N. (2012). Why ancient Greece? Athens: Psychogios Publications.

Kyriazis, N. and Zouboulakis, M. (2003) The economics of sea power: Property rights arrangements and institutional change in Elizabethan England. Economic and Social Sciences Tribune 37 77-96.

Kyriazis, N. and Metaxas, T. (2010) Bounded rationality and institutional change. Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review 7(1) 1-19.

Kyriazis, N. and Metaxas, T. (2011) Path dependence and change and the emergence of the first joint-stock companies. Business History 53(3) 363-374.

Kyriazis, N. and Economou, E.M.L. (2013). Social contract, public choice and fiscal repercussions in the Athenian Democracy. Theoretical and Practical Research in Economic Fields 1(7) 61-76.

Kyriazis, N. and Economou, E.M.L. (under review). The emergence and the development of the federations: The Achaean federation, the United Provinces and the EU.

van Loo, I. (1998) “For freedom and fortune: The rise of Dutch privateering in the first half of the Dutch Revolt, 1568-1609”. In M. van der Hoeven (ed.) Exercise of arms. Warfare in the Netherlands 1568-1648 (pp. 173-196). Leyden: Leyden-Brill.

Malone, T. and K. Crowston (1994) The Interdisciplinary Study of Coordination. ACM Computing Surveys 26(1) 87-119.

Mooers, C.P. (1991) The Making of Bourgeois Europe: Absolutism, Revolution, and the Rise of Capitalism in England, France and Germany. New York: Verso.

North, D. (1981) Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

North, D. (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

North, D. and Thomas (1973) The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

North, D. and Weingast, B. (1989) Constitutions and commitment: The evolution of institutional governing public choice in seventeenth-century England. The Journal of Economic History 49(4) 803-832.

Palliser, D.M. (1983) The Era of Elizabeth. London: Longmans Publishers.

Parker, G. (1977) The Dutch Revolt. London: Penguin.

O΄ Brien, P. (2012) “State formation and Economic Growth: The case of Britain 1688-1846”. In J. Backhaus, N. Kyriazis and N. Rodger, (eds), Navies and State Formation (pp. 217-272) Berlin: Lit Verlag.

Rodger, N.A.M. (1997) The Safeguard of the Sea. New York City: Harper Collins.

Rodger, N.A.M. (2004) The Command of the Ocean. London: Penguin-Allen-Lane.

Simon, H. (1982) Models of Bounded Rationality (vols. 1 and 2). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Simon, H. (1991) Bounded Rationality and organizational learning. Organization Science 2(1) 125-134.

Stone, L. (1972) The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642. New York: Routledge.

t’ Hart, M. (1996) The Making of a Bourgeois State: War, Politics and Finance during the Dutch Revolt. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Tincey, J. (1988) The Armada Campaign. Osprey Elite 15. Trevor-Roper, H.R. (1970), “The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War 1609-48/49”. In The New Cambridge Modern History, IX (pp. 260-282). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Verge-Franceshi, M. (1998) Henri le Navigateur. Paris: Editions du Félin.

Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press.

Warwick, P.V. (1990) Culture, Structure or Choice? Essays in the Interpretation of the English Experience. New York: Agathon Press.

Weingast, B. (1995), The economic role of political institutions: Market preserving federalism and economic development. Journal of Law, Economics and Organisation, 11 1-29.

Weir, A. (2009) Lancaster and York. The Wars of the Roses. London: Vintage Books.

Xu, L. and B. Beamon (2006) Supply chain coordination and cooperation Mechanisms: An attribute-based approach. The Journal of Supply Chain Management Winter, 4-12.