The central issues in recent economic and historical research and debates on the emergence of a global economy are: How and when did the development of an economic world system start? What were the essential economic, social or cultural factors which contributed to the emergence of a world-encompassing commercial network? The book examines the expansion of commercial activities since the seventeenth century by analysing the various facets of commercial networking and their linkages at three different operational levels and for various countries and regions. The first part focuses on the emergence, decline and reconstruction of whole networks. The second part provides an actor-centered approach highlighting the role of actors, agencies and institutions in the networking process, while the third one explores the role of commercial cities as merger of global and local functions. The essays provide an innovative approach as they elaborate the interplay between different levels of the emerging world economy. The contributions to this book were originally delivered at a conference organized in Dusseldorf, 07-09 March 2002. The selected essays in this volume offer an international and interdisciplinary approach to the complex and multi-layered process of the expansion of the economic world system.