ABSTRACT

A History of Architecture and Trade draws together essays from an international roster of distinguished and emerging scholars to critically examine the important role architecture and urbanism played in the past five hundred years of global trading, moving away from a conventional Western narrative. The book uses an alternative holistic lens through which to view the development of architecture and trade, covering diverse topics such as the coercive urbanism of the Dutch East India Company; how slavery and capitalism shaped architecture and urbanization; and the importance of Islamic trading in the history of global trade. Each chapter examines a key site in history, using architecture, landscape and urban scale as evidence to show how trade has shaped them. It will appeal to scholars and researchers interested in areas such as world history, economic and trade history and architectural history.

chapter |9 pages

Introduction

The architecture of trade is as old as human history

chapter 1|34 pages

Legacies of colonialism

Towards an architectural history of capitalism

chapter 2|18 pages

Spices, spies, and speculation

Trust and control in the early Batavia-Amsterdam system

chapter 3|18 pages

Cities of incense and myrrh

Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf

chapter 5|13 pages

House as marketplace

Swahili merchant houses and their urban context in the later Middle Ages

chapter 6|14 pages

An anachronism of trade

The Mercato Nuovo in Florence (1546–1551)

chapter 7|14 pages

Merchant identity

The cartographic impulse in the architectural sculpture of the Llotja of Palma de Mallorca

chapter 9|26 pages

Savannah’s Custom House

A peculiar construction of galvanized iron, apparently durable and well-adapted to a southern climate

chapter 10|14 pages

The modernization of a port in British India

Calcutta, 1870–1880

chapter 11|15 pages

Building the marble elephant

The creation of Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall