Publisher's Synopsis
Market forces - Adam Smith's "invisible hand" - have never operated unimpeded in any economic system. As this book shows, even the successful merchant communities of early modern Europe were directed by the conscious plans of individuals and associations; the archetypal markets were imperfect.;Pressure groups, city and state bureaucracies, princes and kings all sought to influence economic activity. This book is an account by leading European economic and urban historians of the methods these actors used and of the way they influenced each other.
