I'm changing. Very hard to take off a shirt dramatically. So let's say it's 1200 CE and you're a rug merchant. Just like merchants today, you sometimes need to borrow money in order to buy the rugs you want to resell at a profit, and then you pay that money back, often with interest, once you've resold the rugs. This is called mercantile capitalism, and it was a global phenomenon, from the Chinese to the Indian Ocean Trade Network, to Muslim merchants who would sponsor trade caravans across the Sahara. But by the 17th century, merchants in the Netherlands and in Britain had expanded upon this idea to create joint stock companies. Those companies could finance bigger trade missions and also spread the risk of international trade.