Harris’ Going the Distance is a conceptually large, engrossing, multilayered book. It is not so much about the Eurasian trade as about the institutions that allowed for the existence of a Eurasian trade. Selling goods from China, East Asia, and India in the Middle East and Western Europe required moving products over long distances, at high cost, to uncertain markets. If markets were favorable and agents were honest, profits were possible; if markets were unfavorable, goods were seized in transit, or agents cheated, merchants faced losses. How then did merchants organize the trade to overcome capital constraints, personnel issues, or information flows? Answering these questions is the focus of Going the Distance.
Harris asks a series of descriptive questions. What were the institutions that merchants used to conduct trade? Did these institutions emerge endogenously in all regions, migrate between regions from one or two initial locations, or were they...