'… [this book] enhances our understanding of late eighteenth-century debates over the place of commerce in state and society. In an erudite and theoretically sophisticated account, Anoush Terjanian breaks with a long historiographic tradition that has emphasized the Enlightenment's favorable attitude to 'sweet commerce'. Focusing on Abbé Raynal's best-selling, multivolume History of the Two Indies - a work that is shown to have been every bit as important as The Wealth of Nations - Terjanian uncovers the deep ambivalence attached to practices such as monopoly, slavery and piracy … Thoughtful and elegantly written … a major reference for scholars of Enlightenment, empire and political economy.' Madeleine Dobie, Columbia University