ABSTRACT
In the 16th and 17th centuries, and even far into the 18th, the trade of the Levant as well as that with, and via, Spain and Portugal, was the broadest stream in the world's commerce. Another great characteristic of "Jew-commerce", one which all later commerce took for its model, was its variety and many-sidedness. When in 1740 the merchants of Montpelier complained of the competition of the Jewish traders, the Intendant replied that if they, the Christians, had such well-assorted stocks as the Jews, customers would come to them as willingly as they went to their Jewish competitors. The establishment of modern economic life meant, for the most part, and of necessity, the obtaining of the precious metals, and in this work no one was so successfully engaged as the Jewish traders.
