ABSTRACT
In recent decades the circulation of people and goods has become the subject of renewed interest in the elds of social and economic history.1 is attention has stimulated new studies in the ways in which products have been transferred, appropriated and consumed. ‘Trading diasporas’ have been largely reconsidered and revaluated. As informal institutions, these groups ensured transactions and economic success across spaces, as well as sustaining exchanges beyond religious, cultural and social borders.2 e concept or research strategy of the ‘network’ allows researchers to focus on boundaries rather than on the homogeneity and structures of those groups.3 Moreover, it shows how modern institutions (normally conceived as legal) were not antithetical to ‘pre-modern’ ones (based on trust, reputation and reciprocity) and state commercial powers did not replace stateless merchant groups in dominating trade.4 Impersonal exchanges, which were placed on the market, were not automatically more e cient than personal exchanges, which were based on values such as kinship, friendship or communitarian membership. anks to these studies, the evolution of commercial institutions as a teleological process has been deeply criticized.5
