IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-03594359.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Private Governance of a Global Market: The London Corn Trade Association, 1885-1914

Author

Listed:
  • Jérôme Sgard

    (CERI - Centre de recherches internationales (Sciences Po, CNRS) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

The First Global Era (1870-1914) was not just about the Royal Navy securing the sea-lanes and the pound sterling towering over the international financial system. Rule Britannia, with all its explicit power relationships, rested as well on a wealth of private rules and self-governed institutions that made global trade reasonably secure and stable. While this private side of hegemony has been well identified for a long time, the actual construction of global markets, from a micro-perspective, remains largely unexplored – at least, when one looks beyond finance. The present contribution is based on the (as yet unexplored) archives of the London Corn Trade Association (LCTA), a rather small, non-profit, elite association that drafted and implemented the rules for the global cereal markets. From 1878 onwards, this asked that it did three main things. It adopted and updated grain standards, which transformed mere farm produces into globally traded commodities. It arbitrated disputes between merchants, an activity that earned its principals a substantial income flow. And it drafted and continuously amended tens of Standard Contracts that were offered to merchants worldwide. Standard Contracts established in general the market rules: there was no other forum where an adhesion to collective rules and the possibility of sanction were written down...

Suggested Citation

  • Jérôme Sgard, 2019. "The Private Governance of a Global Market: The London Corn Trade Association, 1885-1914," Working Papers hal-03594359, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03594359
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03594359
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03594359/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cranston, Ross, 2007. "Law through practice: London and Liverpool commodity markets c.1820-1975," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24619, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Sgard, Jérôme, 2015. "Global economic governance during the middle ages: The jurisdiction of the champagne fairs," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 174-184.
    3. Barry Eichengreen & Marc Flandreau, 2012. "The Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the Rise of the Dollar as an International Currency, 1914–1939," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 57-87, February.
    4. Jérôme Sgard, 2016. "A tale of three cities: the construction of international commercial arbitration," Post-Print hal-03394002, HAL.
    5. Pahre,Robert, 2012. "Politics and Trade Cooperation in the Nineteenth Century," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107407893, September.
    6. Barak D. Richman, 2006. "How Community Institutions Create Economic Advantage: Jewish Diamond Merchants in New York," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Roman Grynberg & Letsema Mbayi (ed.), The Global Diamond Industry, chapter 2, pages 44-86, Palgrave Macmillan.
    7. Ferderer, J. Peter, 2003. "Institutional Innovation and the Creation of Liquid Financial Markets: The Case of Bankers' Acceptances, 1914–1934," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(3), pages 666-694, September.
    8. repec:hal:journl:tel-01178105 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Francesca Carnevali, 2011. "Social capital and trade associations in America, c. 1860–1914: a microhistory approach," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(3), pages 905-928, August.
    10. Jérôme Sgard, 2015. "Global economic governance during the middle ages: The jurisdiction of the champagne fairs," Post-Print hal-01178105, HAL.
    11. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3snuc7o9rg8bv8860ken7l2agm is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Bernstein, Lisa, 1992. "Opting Out of the Legal System: Extralegal Contractual Relations in the Diamond Industry," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 115-157, January.
    13. Pirrong, Stephen Craig, 1995. "The Self-Regulation of Commodity Exchanges: The Case of Market Manipulation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(1), pages 141-206, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jérôme Sgard, 2019. "The Private Governance of a Global Market: The London Corn Trade Association, 1885-1914," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03594359, HAL.
    2. Jérôme Sgard, 2023. "Imperial Politics, Open Markets and Private Ordering: The Global Grain Trade (1875-1914)," Working Papers hal-04081417, HAL.
    3. Jérôme Sgard, 2023. "Imperial Politics, Open Markets and Private Ordering: The Global Grain Trade (1875-1914)," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-04081417, HAL.
    4. Accominotti, Olivier & Ugolini, Stefano, 2019. "International Trade Finance From the Origins to the Present: Market Structures, Regulation, and Governance," CEPR Discussion Papers 13661, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Jérôme Sgard, 2019. "The Simplest Model of Global Governance Ever Seen? The London Corn Market (1885–1914)," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-04081565, HAL.
    6. Jérôme Sgard, 2019. "The Simplest Model of Global Governance Ever Seen? The London Corn Market (1885–1914)," Post-Print hal-04081565, HAL.
    7. Sanchez-Pages Santiago & Straub Stéphane, 2010. "The Emergence of Institutions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-38, September.
    8. Olivier Accominotti, 2019. "International banking and transmission of the 1931 financial crisis," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 72(1), pages 260-285, February.
    9. Roth, M. Garrett & Skarbek, David, 2014. "Prison Gangs and the Community Responsibility System," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 1(3), pages 223-243, May.
    10. Benito Arruñada, 2016. "Coase and the departure from property," Chapters, in: Claude Ménard & Elodie Bertrand (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Ronald H. Coase, chapter 22, pages 305-319, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Calomiris, Charles W. & Flandreau, Marc & Laeven, Luc, 2016. "Political foundations of the lender of last resort: A global historical narrative," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 48-65.
    12. Arruñada, Benito, 2017. "Property as sequential exchange: the forgotten limits of private contract," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(4), pages 753-783, December.
    13. Leeson,Peter T., 2014. "Anarchy Unbound," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107025806, September.
    14. Cochrane, David Troy, 2015. "What’s Love Got to Do with It? Diamonds and the Accumulation of De Beers, 1935-55," EconStor Theses, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 157995, September.
    15. Egger, Peter H. & Ehrlich, Maximilian v. & Nelson, Douglas R., 2020. "The trade effects of skilled versus unskilled migration," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 448-464.
    16. Mark A. Carlson & Burcu Duygan-Bump, 2018. "“Unconventional” Monetary Policy as Conventional Monetary Policy : A Perspective from the U.S. in the 1920s," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-019, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Daron Acemoglu & Matthew O. Jackson, 2017. "Social Norms and the Enforcement of Laws," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 245-295.
    18. Barry Eichengreen & Arnaud Mehl & Livia Chiţu & Thorsten Beck, 2019. "Mars or Mercury? The geopolitics of international currency choice," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 34(98), pages 315-363.
    19. Accominotti, Olivier, 2012. "London Merchant Banks, the Central European Panic, and the Sterling Crisis of 1931," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(1), pages 1-43, March.
    20. Marselli, Riccardo & McCannon, Bryan C. & Vannini, Marco, 2015. "Bargaining in the shadow of arbitration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 356-368.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    First Global Era; private governance;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03594359. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.