Drawing on a rich trove of documents, including correspondence not seen for 300 years, this study explores the emergence and growth of a remarkable global trade network operated by Armenian silk ...merchants from a small outpost in the Persian Empire. Based in New Julfa, Isfahan, in what is now Iran, these merchants operated a network of commercial settlements that stretched from London and Amsterdam to Manila and Acapulco. The New Julfan Armenians were the only Eurasian community that was able to operate simultaneously and successfully in all the major empires of the early modern world—both land-based Asian empires and the emerging sea-borne empires—astonishingly without the benefits of an imperial network and state that accompanied and facilitated European mercantile expansion during the same period. This book brings to light for the first time the trans-imperial cosmopolitan world of the New Julfans. Among other topics, it explores the effects of long distance trade on the organization of community life, the ethos of trust and cooperation that existed among merchants, and the importance of information networks and communication in the operation of early modern mercantile communities.
Review of:
The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire
, Joseph Sassoon (2022)
New York: Pantheon Books, 412 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-59331-659-7, h/bk, $35.00
InThe Merchants of Siberia, Erika Monahan reconsiders commerce in early modern Russia by reconstructing the trading world of Siberia and the careers of merchants who traded there. She follows the ...histories of three merchant families from various social ranks who conducted trade in Siberia for well over a century. These include the Filat'evs, who were among Russia's most illustrious merchant elite; the Shababins, Muslim immigrants who mastered local and long-distance trade while balancing private endeavors with service to the Russian state; and the Noritsyns, traders of more modest status who worked sometimes for themselves, sometimes for bigger merchants, and participated in the emerging Russia-China trade.
Monahan demonstrates that trade was a key component of how the Muscovite state sought to assert its authority in the Siberian periphery. The state's recognition of the benefits of commerce meant that Russian state- and empire-building in Siberia were characterized by accommodation; in this diverse borderland, instrumentality trumped ideology and the Orthodox state welcomed Central Asian merchants of Islamic faith.
This reconsideration of Siberian trade invites us to rethink Russia's place in the early modern world. The burgeoning market at Lake Yamysh, an inner-Eurasian trading post along the Irtysh River, illuminates a vibrant seventeenth-century Eurasian caravan trade even as Europe-Asia maritime trade increased. By contextualizing merchants and places of Siberian trade in the increasingly connected economies of the early modern period, Monahan argues that, commercially speaking, Russia was not the "outlier" that most twentieth-century characterizations portrayed.
Taking a new approach to the study of cross-cultural trade, this book blends archival research with historical narrative and economic analysis to understand how the Sephardic Jews of Livorno, ...Tuscany, traded in regions near and far in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Francesca Trivellato tests assumptions about ethnic and religious trading diasporas and networks of exchange and trust. Her extensive research in international archives-including a vast cache of merchants' letters written between 1704 and 1746-reveals a more nuanced view of the business relations between Jews and non-Jews across the Mediterranean, Atlantic Europe, and the Indian Ocean than ever before.
The book argues that cross-cultural trade was predicated on and generated familiarity among strangers, but could coexist easily with religious prejudice. It analyzes instances in which business cooperation among coreligionists and between strangers relied on language, customary norms, and social networks more than the progressive rise of state and legal institutions.
In 1780 Richard Sheridan noted that merchants worked 'merely for money'. However, rather than being a criticism, this was recognition of the important commercial role that merchants played in the ...British empire at this time. Of course, merchants desired and often made profits, but they were strictly bound by commonly-understood socio-cultural norms which formed a private-order institution of a robust business culture. In order to elucidate this business culture, this book examines the themes of risk, trust, reputation, obligation, networks and crises to demonstrate how contemporary merchants perceived and dealt with one another and managed their businesses. Merchants were able to take risks and build trust, but concerns about reputation and fulfilling obligations constrained economic opportunism. By relating these themes to an array of primary sources from ports around the British-Atlantic world, this book provides a more nuanced understanding of business culture during this period. A theme which runs throughout the book is the mercantile community as a whole and its relationship with the state. This was an important element in the British business culture of this period, although this relationship came under stress towards the end of period, forming a crisis in itself. This book argues that the business culture of the British-Atlantic mercantile community not only facilitated the conduct of day-to-day business, but also helped it to cope with short-term crises and long-term changes. This facilitated the success of the British-Atlantic economy even within the context of changing geo-politics and an under-institutionalised environment. Not working 'merely for money' was a successful business model.
Gaining prominence as a seaport under the Ottomans in the mid-1500s, the city of Mocha on the Red Sea coast of Yemen pulsed with maritime commerce. Its very name became synonymous with Yemen's most ...important revenue-producing crop -- coffee. After the imams of the Qasimi dynasty ousted the Ottomans in 1635, Mocha's trade turned eastward toward the Indian Ocean and coastal India. Merchants and shipowners from Asian, African, and European shores flocked to the city to trade in Arabian coffee and aromatics, Indian textiles, Asian spices, and silver from the New World.
Nancy Um tells how and why Mocha's urban shape and architecture took the forms they did. Mocha was a hub in a great trade network encompassing overseas cities, agricultural hinterlands, and inland market centers. All these connected places, together with the functional demands of commerce in the city, the social stratification of its residents, and the imam's desire for wealth, contributed to Mocha's architectural and urban form.
Eventually, in the mid-1800s, the Ottomans regained control over Yemen and abandoned Mocha as their coastal base. Its trade and its population diminished and its magnificent buildings began to crumble, until few traces are left of them today. This book helps bring Mocha to life once again.
Cuando los españoles conquistaron la isla de Santa Catarina en 1777 ya hacía mucho tiempo que habían perdido las opciones de dominar este importante puerto en la ruta hacia el Río de la Plata. Fue ...durante el período de la Unión de las Coronas Ibéricas (1580-1640) cuando se abandonaron los planes castellanos para impulsar un enclave atlántico con el que se pretendían acortar las comunicaciones con Asunción, y cuando, por otra parte, también se desarrolla la acción de los bandeirantes en la Guairá y la de los comerciantes portugueses en Buenos Aires. Tres elementos que resultarán determinantes para la posterior y definitiva inclusión de los territorios situados al sur de la capitanía de São Vicente en la esfera colonial luso-brasileña.
Within the last decade a new economic paradigm has emerged that emphasizes the variability in economic strategies the pre‐Hispanic Maya employed. Among the most important developments is the ...discovery of marketplaces at several Classic Maya (250–900 CE) sites. Investigations into them and into market systems continue to fuel research, but invite broader consideration of what the presence of marketplaces might mean for regional systems of provision and control. The settlement densities revealed by new lidar data add urgency to this quest. Researchers should also consider the role of merchants, which is looming larger in our views of the pre‐Hispanic Maya world. This article examines the implications of the preliminary identification of a marketplace at the city of Maax Na for economic activities, actors, and market systems in the Three Rivers Region of Guatemala and Belize.
Review(s) of: The global merchants: The enterprise and extravagance of the Sassoon dynasty, by Joseph Sassoon, UK: Allen Lane, Penguin Random House, 2022, 409 pages. ISBN 978-0-241- 38864-8, 30. ...pounds
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