Rufino’s Employers

Rufino’s employers are the focus of this chapter. The Ermelinda’s owner was José Francisco de Azevedo Lisboa, a slave trader also known by the nickname Azevedinho (little Azevedo). He was well-known to the British authorities for his extensive slave trading activities in Angola, West Africa, Bahia, and Pernambuco in the 1830s and 1840s. He was the equivalent of the CEO of a large slave trading firm based in Recife that brought together some of the wealthiest local merchants, such as Angelo Francisco Carneiro, later Viscount of Loures, and had formed a vast network of connections with slave dealers all over Brazil. According to an investigation by the British, this organization smuggled massive numbers of slaves to Brazilian shores.

On Assemblages and Things: Fluidity, Stability, Causation Stories, and Formation Stories

This article conducts a dialogue and creates a new synthesis between two of the most influential ontological discourses in the field of sociology: assemblage theory and critical realism. The former proposes a focus on difference, fluidity, and process, the latter a focus on stability and structure. Drawing on and assessing the work of Deleuze, DeLanda, and Bhaskar, we argue that social ontology must overcome the tendency to bifurcate between these two poles and instead develop an ontology more suited to explaining complex social phenomena by accommodating elements of both traditions. Going beyond DeLanda’s recent work, we argue that a concept of causal types must be used alongside a typology of structures to give us an ontology that can sustain sociology’s need for both formation stories and causation stories. We illustrate the necessity and value of our proposed synthesis by discussing MacKenzie’s recent empirical analysis of a high-frequency trading firm.

Mohammad Ali Rogay

Mohammad Ali Rogay, long-time participant in the Bombay Country Trade with China in the first half of the nineteenth century, and partner in the prominent trading firm of Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy & Co, was also the most prominent Muslim citizen of Bombay during his lifetime. He was also the leader of the Konkani Musalman community which had been settled in Bombay for many centuries. In spite of his prominence in business and political spheres, very little information is available on him, nor has he, or the community he hails from, attracted serious scholarly attention. This essay outlines Rogay’s trading career in China and India, his public career in Bombay, his role as a patron of publishing and printing, his secular and religious charities, and his leadership of the Konkani Musalman community. A wide variety of sources including contemporary newspapers, government archives, private business archives, contemporary Urdu imprints and community histories, have helped in reconstructing Rogay’s life, which has largely remained obscure. This investigation explores the reasons why Rogay (and, by extension, his community) continues to remain on the fringes of the mainstream historical narrative on nineteenth-century Bombay.

Venetian Trading Firm of the Soranzo Brothers (1406-1434) and Its Commercial Network

This paper contributes to the discussion of merchant networks in late medieval Europe by presenting a case study of the Soranzo fraterna, a Venetian trading firm which comprised brothers Donado, Giacomo (Jacopo), Piero, and Lorenzo Soranzo and operated in the first half of the 15th century, specializing mainly in the import of raw cotton from Syria. The author applies the methodology of so-cial network analysis (SNA) in order to reconstruct the egocentric (ego-centered) network of ties linking the Soranzo firm (“the ego”) with its partners and clients (“alters”).

THE EFFECT OF FIRM PERFORMANCE, LEVERAGE, FIRM SIZE, AND FIRM GROWTH ON AGENCY COST OF TRADING COMPANY IN INDONESIA, MALAYSIA, AND THAILAND: RESEARCH PERIOD OF 2009 – 2013

In this study,the author investigate the relationship of firm performance, leverage, firm size, and firm growth on the agency cost. In the company’s life, there are several holders an important role in the company itself. Agency theory explains that there are two parties to a company, the agent and principal.Researcher use firm performance, leverage, firm size, and firm growth as the independent variables. Researcher use the operational expenses ratio as proxy of agency cost. The high firm performance, expected to leads the lower agency cost.Researcher use the 19 listed trading firm on Indonesia, 26 listed trading firm on Malaysia, and 29 listed trading firm on Thailand. The empirical result show varying effect on agency cost in those three countries. The result of research depends on the characteristics of each country Keywords: Agency Cost, firm performace, leverage, firm size, firm growth