Commodity market integration, 1500-2000

This paper provides an introduction to what is known about trends in international commodity market integration during the second half of the second millennium. Throughout, our focus is on intercontinental trade, since it is the emergence of large-scale trade between the continents which has especially distinguished the centuries following the voyages of da Gama and Columbus. This is by no means to imply that intra-European or intra-Asian trade was in any sense less significant It is simply a consequence of the limitations of space