Even if one defines commerce quite strictly as the wholesale exchange of goods over distance by specialized traders, there is little doubt that it had a pervasive reach in early modern England. More open to debate, however, have been questions about the meaning and significance of commerce. Was the landed elite open to newcomers from the merchant class? Did this period see the origins of the capitalist economy? What was the impact of commerce on politics and religion? Rather than take on any of these venerable debates directly, Natasha Glaisyer's book adopts a different perspective, exploring the ways in which “commerce was portrayed and packaged” during the period of rapid economic change that occurred in the thirty years on either side of the financial revolution (19).

Glaisyer's treatment of her subject is divided into four relatively discrete chapters. The first examines the ways in which the Royal Exchange, the hub around which all of England's commerce revolved, was represented. She shows, for example, that the presence of a second-floor gallery of fashionable shops established a physical setting in which visitors could marvel at the commercial power manifest in the bustling courtyard below while at the same time indulging in the luxury consumption such trade made possible. Similar evidence of the celebration (or at least acceptance) of commerce is evident in the second chapter, an examination of the sermons preached before the Levant Company. While none of these sermons denounce commerce as a legitimate calling, neither do they celebrate profit at any price. Rather, they stress the merchant's obligation to trade fairly and use wealth wisely and thus reveal the image that the Levant Company's merchants presented to the public. The third chapter examines “manuals for merchants” that instructed and informed readers in accounting practices, commercial terminology, and the like. Ostensibly written for practitioners, it is clear that works in this genre also had a wide audience among “recreational” readers eager to understand the mysteries of trade. The final chapter makes a similar point about the reading public's interest in commercial information by examining the publication of prices for commodities and stocks in metropolitan and provincial newspapers.

On the whole, Glaisyer is successful in what she sets out to do, establishing that there was an interest in and awareness of things commercial, at least among those with means and literacy. Ironically, one of the book's strengths, the broad range of topics that it considers in establishing this point, raises questions that are not really answered. The treatment of the Levant Company, for example, deals with a group of merchants who would have frequented the Royal Exchange but otherwise covers sources and a topic quite distinct from the rest of the book in that it treats the ways one group of commercial men projected themselves to society rather than evidence about the society's interest in commerce. To give another example, the chapter on merchant's manuals deals with types of commerce much more generic than (and perhaps even distinct from) the specialized trade of the Levant Company.

To be fair, this diversity is inherent in Glaisyer's topic, for commerce in early modern England was a piebald beast. The world of the Levant Company merchant trading on the Royal Exchange twice a day was quite different from that of the grain merchant in King's Lynn, the owner of a slave factory on Bance Island, or the clothier in Wiltshire, yet commerce encompasses all four. These examples reference three other recent books on commerce—by Craig Muldrew, David Hancock, and myself—all of which, with allowances for some anachronism, might be compared with Glaisyer's in their attempts to draw some general conclusions about the place of commerce in early modern England. My point is not to criticize the treatment of “commerce” in this book as incomplete but rather to suggest that those working in this field (myself included) need to be more attentive to the many different guises of commerce in situating their conclusions. To give one example, trust and reputation were crucial in commercial exchanges, a point Glaisyer makes in her discussion of information on the Royal Exchange. However, trust works quite differently in a setting where agents interact with one another personally on a regular basis—at the Royal Exchange or in a provincial market—than it does in the export trade where personal contact was minimal. Even in the latter case, trust works differently for a merchant dealing with a limited number of correspondents in long, stable relationships compared to one who deals with hundreds of correspondents for a handful of transactions each. There is a common element, trust, but is it the same in each case? However, if, as I have suggested, the broader goal of understanding the “culture of commerce” may not yet be within our grasp, the great value of Glaisyer's contribution to its study is the shift in focus away from merchants themselves to the society as a whole, and the innovative ways in which she has set about establishing the existence of an awareness and acceptance of things commercial within early modern England.