ABSTRACT
This collective volume explores the ways merchants managed to connect different spaces all over the globe in the early modern period by organizing the movement of goods, capital, information and cultural objects between different commercial maritime systems in the Mediterranean and Atlantic basin.
Merchants and Trade Networks in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1550-1800 consists of four thematic blocs: theoretical considerations, the social composition of networks, connected spaces, networks between formal and informal exchange, as well as possible failures of ties. This edited volume features eleven contributions who deal with theoretical concepts such as social network analysis, globalization, social capital and trust. In addition, several chapters analyze the coexistence of mono-cultural and transnational networks, deal with network failure and shifting network geographies, and assess the impact of kinship for building up international networks between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. This work evaluates the use of specific network types for building up connections across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Basin stretching out to Central Europe, the Northern Sea and the Pacific.
This book is of interest to those who study history of economics and maritime economics, as well as historians and scholars from other disciplines working on maritime shipping, port studies, migration, foreign mercantile communities, trade policies and mercantilism.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |36 pages
Connectors, networks and commercial systems
part |70 pages
Merchant networks, early modern long-distance trade and globalisation
chapter |23 pages
Social capital, networks and trust in early modern long-distance trade
chapter |24 pages
Merchants and the beating of a butterfly's wings
part |62 pages
The social composition of networks
chapter |21 pages
Adaptive strategies
chapter |15 pages
Agents of globalisation
chapter |24 pages
Nations? What nations? Business in the shaping of international trade networks
part |50 pages
Connecting spaces
chapter |25 pages
Interconnecting trade regions
chapter |23 pages
Merchants between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean
part |36 pages
The complexity of networks