Dari Perdagangan Rempah yang Menjadi Cikal Bakal Lahirnya Kapitalisme

The East India Company—or to give the formal name by which it was incorporated in 1600, the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies—was formed to gain a more active role for England in the East Indian spice trade. The risks associated with financing a voyage to India that would return with a shipload of pepper were high, so merchants initially bid for “shares” of a voyage, thus limiting the amount of potential loss for any one individual. Eventually this practice turned into buying shares of the company itself and thus could be considered responsible for the beginning of capitalism. It may be only a bit of a stretch to say that piperine, which surely nowadays must be considered a relatively insignificant chemical compound, was responsible for the beginnings of today’s complex economic structure of the world stock markets. (napoleon's button p25-26)