What was the contribution of the nobility to the economy? Can we consider noblemen to have been endowed with an entrepreneurial spirit? Research shows that far from being passive, throughout the century the European nobility were widely involved in business, carried on innovations, refined management strategies, and diversified their investments from agriculture to transport, industry and finance. Both in Europe and Asia businesses were embedded in social networks and personal relationships. In modern Japan after the Meiji Restoration - the unique case in Asia where a Western-style nobility was created - business, trust, personal connections and aristocratic marriages were intertwined and Japanese noblemen, especially the richer ones, acted as promoters of industrialisation, even though their role was certainly limited in time and space. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of economics, management, political science, sociology, public management and history. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of