Journal articles on the topic 'Merchants – Europe – History'
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1
Gelderblom, Oscar, and Regina Grafe. "The Rise and Fall of the Merchant Guilds: Re-thinking the Comparative Study of Commercial Institutions in Premodern Europe." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 40, no. 4 (April 2010): 477–511. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jinh.2010.40.4.477.
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Although the importance of merchant guilds for the commercial development of Europe is beyond doubt, scholars do not agree about why they emerged, persisted, and ultimately declined between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries. Historical studies usually focus on individual cases and idiosyncratic circumstances that restrict comparisons, whereas economic approaches based on game or contract theory often impose narrow assumptions on their models that tend to neglect two key features of these institutions: In imperfect markets, merchants used more than one institution to solve a given problem, and individual institutions often addressed more than one problem. However, a new methodological approach (maximum likelihood estimation) permits rigorous comparative analysis of the probability that merchants, under a given set of market and political circumstances, will delegate control of their dealings. This model requires only one assumption—that merchants relinquished such control only when they expected a positive return.
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Kallioinen, Mika. "MEDIEVAL MERCHANTS’ LETTERS IN NORTHERN EUROPE." Scandinavian Journal of History 44, no. 1 (August 13, 2018): 53–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2018.1501417.
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Safley, Thomas Max. "Business Failure and Civil Scandal in Early Modern Europe." Business History Review 83, no. 1 (2009): 35–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0007680500000192.
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The failure of one of the most prominent German merchant-banking houses of the early sixteenth century, Ambrosius and Hanns, the Brothers Höchstetter, and Associates, serves as the point of departure for an exploration of why early modern merchants failed and what the consequences of failure were. This single example illuminates a variety of issues: state engagement in commerce and finance; legal development of bankruptcy procedures; economic strategies against failure and scandal. It reveals the limits of modern economic theories of economic crisis and development.
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Fontaine, Laurence. "A Reflection on the Concept of Social Identity: Migrant Merchants in Early Modern Europe." East Central Europe 34-35, no. 1-2 (2008): 267–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18763308-0340350102012.
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This essay reflects on the theoretical and methodological complexities of the concept of social identity, using a case study of migrant merchants in early modern Europe. The essay opens with an analysis of historians’ usages of the important but contested concept of identity. Then, it attempts to demonstrate how the literate society, political and religious officials, sedentary merchants, and the host populations with which itinerant merchants entered into contact, tried to impose identities on these migrants. Finally, the study attempts to show how migrants used this polyphony of external representations in order to understand the limits of the merchants’ abilities to utilize these imposed identities for their own advantage.
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Greif, Avner. "History Lessons: The Birth of Impersonal Exchange: The Community Responsibility System and Impartial Justice." Journal of Economic Perspectives 20, no. 2 (May 1, 2006): 221–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/jep.20.2.221.
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This paper describes the premodern European institution that supported impersonal exchange, in which a merchant's decision to exchange is independent either of expectations of future exchange with the same partner or of knowledge of that partner's past conduct or the ability to report misconduct to future trading partners. Economists know surprisingly little about how institutions evolved to support impersonal exchange. The standard story asserts that in the early stages of market development, exchange tends to be personal and is supported by reputation; then, after an economy becomes sufficiently large, society establishes centralized and impartial courts that, by the threat of coercively imposed sanctions, enable widespread impersonal exchange. But during the late medieval period, there was no centralized legal system capable of effectively supporting impersonal exchange among merchants from different localities; and, although local courts existed throughout Europe, they were not impartial dispensers of justice but were attentive to local interests and were controlled by the local elite. This paper describes how a particular institution, the “community responsibility system,” nevertheless enabled European merchants to commit to keep their contractual obligations in impersonal exchange from the late medieval to the modern period.
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van den Bel, Martijn M. "French Governors and Dutch Merchants." Journal of Early American History 12, no. 2-3 (December 9, 2022): 121–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18770703-12020001.
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Abstract Where most scholarship on the origins of the sugar revolution has focused on the English islands, this article draws on detailed research in Dutch and French archives to show how Dutch merchants were crucial actors in promoting the sugar revolution in the Lesser Antilles. Despite the fact that both English and French islands experienced similar developments, the relationship between these islands is barely known in English literature largely due to the language barrier. Illustrating the Dutch-French relationship allows us to develop a more regionally inclusive and trans-national perspective that shows how the early Caribbean economy, French and English, benefitted from a web of links forged by ambitious Dutch merchants between Europe, Brazil, and the Caribbean.
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Crailsheim, Eberhard. "Seville and Manila: Illegal trade, corruption, and the phenomenon of trust in the Spanish Empire." International Journal of Maritime History 29, no. 1 (February 2017): 175–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0843871416679120.
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At the beginning of the early modern period, the two port cities of Seville and Manila became bottlenecks in the rich inter-oceanic trade connecting Europe, America and Asia. To control this trade, the Spanish Crown tightly regulated all traffic between these continents and levied heavy taxes on all merchandise. The stricter the regulations became, the more the merchants tried to outwit them through contraband trading and bribery. Within this setting, it was often impossible for merchants to bring cases of non-compliance of agreements to the official courts. Hence, the question arises, how were merchants, lacking an institution in charge of penalizing dishonest commercial conduct, able to find the trust in partners to establish trans-oceanic trading networks? This note argues that the answer lies in the common ground that united certain groups of shared mental models, which enabled the merchants to trust in the social coercive power of these groups and consequently to trust their partners overseas.
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Pettegree, Andrew. "The Exile Churches and the Churches ‘Under the Cross’: Antwerp and Emden During the Dutch Revolt." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38, no. 2 (April 1987): 187–209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046900023046.
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In the middle years of the sixteenth century Antwerp reached the zenith of its economic power. With ninety thousand inhabitants it was far from being the largest city in Europe, but its pre-eminence as a centre for European trade was now universally acknowledged. As a money market, commodity market and, above all, as a centre of the cloth trade Antwerp had by 1550 eclipsed its rivals in Flanders and Brabant and made itself indispensable to merchants from all over the continent. Germans made up the largest contingent among Antwerp's foreign merchant community, but there were substantial numbers of both Portuguese, still dominant in the international spice trade, and Italians, who had first introduced the sophisticated financial and accounting techniques which were now developed to a new peak of refinement in Antwerp. The concentration of capital in the city was an inducement to every major banking house to maintain a permanent representation there, as did their most regular clients, the princely houses of Europe. The real foundation of Antwerp's greatness, however, was the trade in English broadcloths, established there since the turn of the century and carried on by an English merchant community that numbered three or four hundred by 1560. All this frenetic economic activity was presided over with studied negligence by the city elders, whose tradition of minimum controls was calculated to avoid alarming an extremely heterogeneous trading community.
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Kadı, İsmail Hakkı. "Explaining the Vitality of Eighteenth-century Non-Muslim Ottoman Merchants: How to Cope with Transaction Costs." Medieval History Journal 22, no. 2 (November 2019): 253–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0971945819893033.
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The role of non-Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire has been a topic of debate among scholars who approached the issue from various perspectives at different times. One thread in this debate focused on these communities’ role in Ottoman trade with Europe and emphasized their relations with western capital in explanation of their prominence in the Ottoman economy. This article attempts to explain the vitality of non-Muslim merchants through the centuries in the face of Western economic penetration of the Ottoman Empire, by focusing on transaction costs and market imperfections in North-western Anatolia. The article focuses on the trade in mohair yarn and cotton, which were the most important commodities exported to the Netherlands from the Ottoman Empire. Relying on data obtained from Dutch archives on cotton and mohair yarn consignments from Ankara and Izmir to Amsterdam, the article emphasises the diversity and complexity of the various transactions and expenses required to deliver these consignments to Amsterdam. It suggests that the local merchants were able to take advantage of the market imperfections and high transaction costs in North Western Anatolia while interacting with European merchants in the region.
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Rabuzzi, Daniel A. "Women as Merchants in Eighteenth-Century Northern Germany: The Case of Stralsund, 1750–1830." Central European History 28, no. 4 (December 1995): 435–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008938900012267.
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The purpose of this paper is to bring to our attention the important role of women in wholesale international commerce in eighteenth century northern Germany, using examples from Stralsund as a case study. (Stralsund, a port-city formerly in the Hanse, was at that time the capital of Swedish Pomerania and had a population, including garrison, of some 14,000 around 1800; it was an economic center of regional importance, specializing in the production of malt and the export of grain to Sweden and Western Europe). After sketching a social and economic profile of Stralsund's female merchants ca. 1750–1830, I will discuss the crucial issue of control, i.e., to what extent and how these women were able to operate independently within a political and legal system that favored men. In my conclusion, I suggest that women left, or were forced out of, the wholesale trade around 1850 as a result of political changes and a shift in the meaning of the concept of Bürger, rather than as a result of industrialization or market expansion. Throughout, I consider whether my observations about female merchants in Stralsund have any wider validity by comparing them with research on the commerce of other ports in Northern Europe and in North America.
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Reynard, Pierre Claude. "Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (review)." Technology and Culture 43, no. 3 (2002): 591–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.2002.0136.
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Kow, Simon. "Book Review: Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe." International Journal of Maritime History 14, no. 2 (December 2002): 411–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/084387140201400240.
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Wood, Ellen Meiksins. "Capitalism, Merchants and Bourgeois Revolution: Reflections on the Brenner Debate and its Sequel." International Review of Social History 41, no. 2 (August 1996): 209–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0020859000113872.
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The “Brenner Debate” launched by Past and Present in 1976 was about “agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe”. Robert Brenner's recent book, Merchants and Revolution, has opened a new front in the debate by introducing merchants and “commercial change” into the equation. Although the book's massive Postscript carefully situates Brenner's analysis of commercial development in the context of his earlier account of the agrarian transition from feudalism to capitalism, this is unlikely to foreclose debate about how, or even whether, his more recent argument about the role of merchants in the English revolution can be squared with the original Brenner thesis. What is at issue here is not just divergent interpretations of historical evidence but larger differences about the nature of capitalism. The following argument has more to do with the latter than with the former, and it will be concerned with Brenner's work and the debates surrounding it not just for their own sake but for what they reveal about the dominant conceptions of capitalism, in Marxist and non-Marxist histories alike.
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Corredera, Edward Jones. "The History of Fair Trade: Hugo Grotius, Corporations, and the Spanish Enlightenment." Grotiana 42, no. 1 (July 1, 2021): 137–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18760759-42010008.
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Abstract The early Spanish Enlightenment was shaped by debates over corporations, sovereignty, and the balance of power in Europe. Spanish officials, in this context, turned to the ideas of Hugo Grotius to establish joint-stock companies that could allow the Crown to regain control over its imperial domains and establish perpetual peace in Europe. This article recovers the writings of Félix Fernando de Sotomayor, Duke of Sotomayor (1684–1767), who drew on the works of Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, and Charles Dutot in order to show that the history of these corporations chronicled the contestation and erosion of Spanish power and the diversion of European states from their true interests. Sovereigns, not merchants, argued Sotomayor, could guarantee fair trade and the equitable distribution of wealth. The study of Sotomayor’s views on trade, natural law, and alienation challenges traditional interpretations about the Iberian engagement with Grotius, the rise of capitalist hopes in Southern and Northern Europe, and Spain’s investment in the Enlightenment.
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Price, Jacob M. "What Did Merchants Do? Reflections on British Overseas Trade, 1660–1790." Journal of Economic History 49, no. 2 (June 1989): 267–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022050700007920.
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The relative dynamism of English and Scottish foreign trade from 1675 to 1775 can largely be explained by the interrelated phenomena of the growing domestic demand for American and Asian consumer goods and North European raw materials; the growing market in northern and western Europe for re-exports of American and Asian consumables; and the growing protected market for British manufactures in the American colonies and Africa. Trade growth depended on development of a wide variety of credit practices, supported primarily by big wholesalers and export merchants. Wholesalers and merchants also accounted for important institutional innovations.
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Vanneste. "Unpaid Diamonds: Trust, Reputation, and the Merchants' Style in Eighteenth-Century Europe." Shofar 38, no. 3 (2020): 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/shofar.38.3.0013.
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Vanneste, Tijl. "Unpaid Diamonds: Trust, Reputation, and the Merchants' Style in Eighteenth-Century Europe." Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 38, no. 3 (2020): 13–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sho.2020.0037.
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Karg, Sabine, and Carsten Jahnke. "Reishandel im Hanseraum." Hansische Geschichtsblätter 134 (April 18, 2020): 97–130. http://dx.doi.org/10.21248/hgbll.2016.37.
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The rice trade in the Hanseatic AreaOn the cusp of the 14th century, rice (starting from a low base) became increasingly important in Hanseatic trade. Even though rice was considered to be a luxury good, prized as a thickener for almond-puddings and as a dish in the Lenten-fare, all Hanseatic merchants were acquainted with it. In the following article, we discuss six aspects of the medieval rice trade in Northern Europe. First, we analyze historical and archaeological sources for evidence of rice. Second, we discuss the use of rice in medieval cuisine, and trace the origins of the rice traded in the Middle Ages. As a fourth and fifth point, we describe the trading routes by which rice entered and circulated within the Hanseatic realm, and determine the quantities of rice imported. Finally, we discuss prices, analyzing specific examples of merchants trading in this product. The intention of this article is to draw attention to the archaeobotanical and historical sources which demonstrate that rice was a Hanseatic commodity.
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Whigham, Thomas. "Some Reflections on Early Anglo-paraguayan Commerce." Americas 44, no. 3 (January 1988): 279–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1006907.
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Scholars of the British experience in Latin America have given considerable attention to the adventures of the two Scottish merchants John Parish Robertson and his brother William, who visited Paraguay between 1811 and 1814. The image of the taciturn Dictator José Gaspar de Francia attempting to use the two British subjects to establish commercial links with Europe has appeared in virtually all histories of the period. Francia's failure in this regard, we are frequently told, ushered in a period of self-imposed isolation for Paraguay. Few foreigners, merchants or otherwise, were permitted to breech the barriers set up by the Dictator and Paraguay quickly took on the reputation of an “inland Japan.” That these barriers were not as absolute as the traditional portrayal would suggest has been established only in the last fifteen years. With few exceptions, the historical accounts have assumed that, with the departure of the Robertsons, British merchants lost all interest in Paraguay. In fact, however, a strong desire to “open” the trade of that country characterized the British mercantile community of Buenos Aires throughout the life of the Dictator and, on one occasion at the very end of Dr. Francia's reign, a concerted effort was made by certain Britons to reintroduce British commerce to Paraguay.
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Salomon Arel, Maria. "The Price of Friendship." Canadian-American Slavic Studies 52, no. 2-3 (November 21, 2018): 117–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22102396-05202010.
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Abstract This article discusses the gift-giving behaviour of English merchants involved in the Russia trade in the Muscovite era. Drawing on a small, but growing body of historical literature relating to the role of gifts in the cultivation of mutually beneficial relations between people across the social spectrum in early modern Europe, it explores the various ways in which the English deployed the practice of giving to their advantage, both in England and in Russia. In particular, as ‘strangers’ in Russia who operated beyond the parameters of traditional kin- and community-based networks of support, English merchants (and other foreigners, such as their Dutch competitors) needed to both ‘befriend’ Russian clients on the ground in every-day trade and nurture relationships in high places to ensure smooth, profitable, and secure business. As the sources reveal, they engaged in a variety of gift-giving behaviours in building relationships with Russians advantageous to their enterprise.
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Beachy, Robert. "Reforming Interregional Commerce: The Leipzig Trade Fairs and Saxony's Recovery from the Thirty Years' War." Central European History 32, no. 4 (December 1999): 431–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008938900021774.
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Wares are consigned to the Leipzig merchants year round from all corners of Europe and then sold during the trade fairs. Leipzig has three fairs: the first begins the Monday after New Year's and lasts two weeks counting the last week for the settling of accounts (Zahlwoche); the spring fair (Jubilate) begins the third Sunday after Easter and runs a total of three weeks; while the autumn fair (Michaelis), likewise three weeks long, begins the fourth Sunday of September. An indescribable wealth of goods is on offer at the fairs. With the foreign merchants and royal personages, the throngs of visitors are so great that it is usually difficult to find lodging in the city. The conflux of sellers and buyers is very advantageous, and during peacetime virtually every order is filled. Many thousands have never even considered provisioning their trade or selling their products other than in Leipzig, though the source of their purchases might lie closer to home. This is because of the commercial services and security provided by such a large fair, including the selection and quality of goods, the strong credit, a reliable circle of customers, a ready supply of bullion, and the efficient Exchange.
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Gargan, Edward T. "The Purpose of Tocqueville’s Democracy." Tocqueville Review 7, no. 1 (January 1986): 67–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ttr.7.1.67.
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C. S. Lewis. (he brilliant and graceful historian of sixteenth-century English literature, summarizing the impact on Europe of the discovery of America, observed: “The existence of America was one of the greatest disappointments in the history of Europe.” Lewis was referring to Europe’s unfulfilled expectations that the winds and currents of the Atlantic would bring her bankers, merchants, soldiers, and priests to the Orient. This disillusionment was, however, less significant than other negative reactions that accompanied Columbus’s news. Renaissance Europe was forced, not without reluctance, to rethink its own place in history, its philosophy, theology, anthropology, linguistic theories, geographic knowledge. When the Renaissance got down to the task of comprehending the explosive announcement, and Europe’s writers, commentators, and observers employed what John H. Elliott has called a “selective eye” and not Ruskin’s “innocent eye.” From this vision classical antiquity, Christian tradition, humanist aspirations, and the politics of Europe determined what would be seen when Europe encountered the New World; what would be admitted into the collective consciousness of scholars, clerics, popes, adventurers, and poets. Pride, the not so hidden inflexibility at the heart of Renaissance civilization, framed and fixed what America would be permitted to mean.
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Gargan, Edward T. "The Purpose of Tocqueville’s Democracy." Tocqueville Review 7 (January 1986): 67–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ttr.7.67.
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C. S. Lewis. (he brilliant and graceful historian of sixteenth-century English literature, summarizing the impact on Europe of the discovery of America, observed: “The existence of America was one of the greatest disappointments in the history of Europe.” Lewis was referring to Europe’s unfulfilled expectations that the winds and currents of the Atlantic would bring her bankers, merchants, soldiers, and priests to the Orient. This disillusionment was, however, less significant than other negative reactions that accompanied Columbus’s news. Renaissance Europe was forced, not without reluctance, to rethink its own place in history, its philosophy, theology, anthropology, linguistic theories, geographic knowledge. When the Renaissance got down to the task of comprehending the explosive announcement, and Europe’s writers, commentators, and observers employed what John H. Elliott has called a “selective eye” and not Ruskin’s “innocent eye.” From this vision classical antiquity, Christian tradition, humanist aspirations, and the politics of Europe determined what would be seen when Europe encountered the New World; what would be admitted into the collective consciousness of scholars, clerics, popes, adventurers, and poets. Pride, the not so hidden inflexibility at the heart of Renaissance civilization, framed and fixed what America would be permitted to mean.
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Weber, Klaus. "The Atlantic Coast of German Trade: German Rural Industry and Trade in the Atlantic, 1680–1840." Itinerario 26, no. 2 (July 2002): 99–119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0165115300009153.
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Throughout the last decade a number of rather detailed studies on eighteenth-century Atlantic merchants and merchant colonies in Atlantic port cities has been published. The works ofJacob Price, David Hancock, Jonathan Israel, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, and Manuel Bustos Rodríguez demonstrate the growing historical interest in maritime trade and Atlantic studies. All of these works carry on the investigative traditions of the authors respective countries, represented, for example, by Bernard Bailyn's works on the New England merchants, Pierre and Huguette Chaunu's and Paul Butel's studies on the economies of the Spanish and French Atlantic, and the investigations of Antonio García-Baquero González on the topic of Spanish Atlantic trade. As a pervasive pattern within this field of research it can be observed that, since the foundations had been laid with these classical studies, the focus of historical inquiry has shifted from quantitative investigations (that is, those on the currents of ships, goods, and precious metals) and from studies on the legal frameworks regulating the Atlantic trades to detailed studies of the individuals responsible for this trade. Arising from their countries colonial pasts, it is not surprising that most of these author's works concentrate on the colonial trade of the Western European sea powers, thus neglecting the central and eastern interiors of the continent. In the 1960s and 70s, some German historians, notably Hermann Kellenbenz and Hans Pohl, published studies in this area, but it has lain fallow ever since. The aim of this article is to shed some light on the perspectives that might open up by reconsidering the influence of Atlantic trade on Central Europe in the Early Modern period.
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Mentz, Søren. "The Commercial Culture of the Armenian Merchant: Diaspora and Social Behaviour." Itinerario 28, no. 1 (March 2004): 16–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0165115300019100.
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Historians have very little information about the operation of Asian commercial networks and the social interaction between merchants. Hampered by this lack of data scholars have focused on trade routes and commodities. Our knowledge of the Armenian trading network is more or less limited to its geographical dispersal. The network stretched from New Julfa, a suburb of the Iranian capital of Isfahan, to Amsterdam and London in Europe, and to important centres in the Levant and Central Asia, covering the Indian Subcontinent, and extending eastwards to Manila in the Philippines. Armenian merchants were prosperous and communities were located in commercial towns all over the world. The brothers Khojah Joseph and Khojah Johannes Marger, for instance, established a partnership at Hyderabad in 1666 with a starting capital of 27,550 rupees. Some forty years later on the death of Joseph Marger, the trading activity of the two Armenians was worth more than two million rupees.
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Bincsik, Monika. "European collectors and Japanese merchants of lacquer in ‘Old Japan’." Journal of the History of Collections 20, no. 2 (August 5, 2008): 217–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhn013.
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Abstract During the Meiji period, following the opening of Japan's borders to foreign trade, not only did the Japanese lacquer trading system and the market undergo a marked change but so too did almost all the factors affecting collecting activities: the European reception of the aesthetics and history of Japanese lacquer art, the taste of the collectors, the structure of private collections, the systematization of museum collections, along with changes in the art canon in the second half of the nineteenth century. The patterns of collecting Japanese lacquer art in the second half of the nineteenth century cannot be understood in depth without discussing shortly its preliminaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing also on the art historical reception of Japanese lacquer in Europe. Supplementary material relating to this article in the form of a list of dealers and distributors of lacquer in Japan during the Meiji period (1868–1912) is available online.
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Sebastiani, Silvia. "A ‘monster with human visage’: The orangutan, savagery, and the borders of humanity in the global Enlightenment." History of the Human Sciences 32, no. 4 (July 22, 2019): 80–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0952695119836619.
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To what extent did the debate on the orangutan contribute to the global Enlightenment? This article focuses on the first 150 years of the introduction, dissection, and public exposition of the so-called ‘orangutan’ in Europe, between the 1630s, when the first specimens arrived in the Netherlands, and the 1770s, when the British debate about slavery and abolitionism reframed the boundaries between the human and animal kingdoms. Physicians, natural historians, antiquarians, philosophers, geographers, lawyers, and merchants all contributed to the knowledge of the orangutan, while also reshaping the boundaries of humanity: when the human/animal divide narrowed, the divide between ‘savage’ and ‘civilized’ peoples crystallized, becoming wider than in any previous period.
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Guzman, Gregory G. "European clerical envoys to the Mongols: Reports of Western merchants in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 1231–1255." Journal of Medieval History 22, no. 1 (January 1996): 53–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0304-4181(96)00008-5.
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Everaert, Janna. "Power in the metropolis: the impact of economic and demographic growth on the Antwerp City Council (1400–1550)." Urban History 47, no. 4 (October 4, 2019): 589–609. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s096392681900066x.
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AbstractCurrent historiography endorses a narrative that the political elite of pre-industrial gateway cities became more ‘open’ in the wake of efflorescence and that their city councils became populated with merchants. Yet, according to the existing literature, Antwerp challenges this narrative, as the influx of merchants was very limited during late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries when Antwerp transformed from a medium-sized Brabantine city into the leading economic centre in western Europe. Moreover, scholars disagree on whether the economic expansion had any impact at all on the composition and profile of Antwerp's political elite. By analysing the social composition of the city council and how this evolved from the beginning of Antwerp's commercial expansion around 1400 until its apogee around 1550, I revisit the question whether Antwerp constitutes an exception to the established pattern of elite formation in gateway cities and, if so, why.
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Davids, Karel. "Seamen's Organizations and Social Protest in Europe, c. 1300–1825." International Review of Social History 39, S2 (August 1994): 145–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0020859000112969.
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The friend of Havelock Wilson, the founder of the National Union of Seamen, who once told him that true unity among seamen would never be achieved because seamen were like “a rope of sand”, washed away with every tide, would no longer be considered a sage. It was not only Wilson who, during his career as trade unionist, proved beyond any doubt that the “rope of sand” could indeed hold together. The seamen, too, had shown long before the rise of the new unions at the end of the nineteenth century that they possessed more cohesive power than Havelock's friend was prepared to credit them with – at least, if British employers are to be believed. One of the first occasions on which British employers appealed to the Combination Act of 1799 was during a labour dispute in December 1799, when coal merchants (through the intermediary of the Mayor of London) urged the Home Secretary to take action against an alleged combination of seamen in Shields. The Coal Trade Committee of 1800 blamed combinations of seamen for the high wages, which had reached an unprecedented level.
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LIN, MAN-HOUNG. "Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Pacific, 1895–1945." Modern Asian Studies 44, no. 5 (December 2, 2009): 1053–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x09990370.
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AbstractFor the history connecting East Asia with the West, there is much literature about contact and trade across the Atlantic Ocean from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries.1 This paper notes the rapid growth of the Pacific Ocean in linking Asia with the larger world in the early twentieth century by perceiving the economic relationships between Taiwan and Hong Kong while Japan colonized Taiwan. The Pacific route from Taiwan directly to America or through Japan largely replaced the Hong Kong–Atlantic–Europe–USA route to move Taiwan's export products to countries in the West. Other than still using Hong Kong as a trans-shipping point to connect with the world, Japan utilized Taiwan as a trans-shipping point to sell Japanese products to South China, and Taiwan's tea was sold directly to Southeast Asia rather than going through Hong Kong. Taiwan's exports to Japan took the place of its exports to China. Japanese and American goods dominated over European goods or Chinese goods from Hong Kong for Taiwan's import. Japanese and Taiwanese merchants (including some anti-Japanese merchants) overrode the British and Chinese merchants in Hong Kong to carry on the Taiwan–Hong Kong trade. America's westward expansion towards the Pacific, the rise of the Pacific shipping marked by the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, and the rise of Japan relative to China, restructured intra-Asian relations and those between Asia and the rest of the world.
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Vladimir Torres, James, and Leonardo Moreno-Álvarez. "INTRODUCCIÓN: INLAND PORTS IN THE ANGLO-IBERIAN ATLANTIC: NEW APPROACHES FROM ECONOMIC, POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL HISTORY." Illes i imperis, no. 24 (November 24, 2022): 9–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.31009/illesimperis.2022.i24.01.
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Inland waterways had an expansive role in the economic performance of preindustrialand early industrial societies. The lower freight rates and lower biomass consumptioncharacteristic of riverine trade allowed merchants to export bulky, low-value-to-weightcommodities to distant nodes and successfully compete in global, competitive markets.As a growing literature has shown, economies endowed with an extensive network of inlandwaterways were better positioned to benefit from regional specialization andSmithian growth.1 The increasing integration of markets in China, Europe, and other regionsbefore the twentieth century was driven, among other things, by fundamental organizationaland technological changes in river navigation, such as improvements in portfacilities, canalization, customs simplification, and elimination of barriers to entry.2 Theadvent of steam navigation strengthened the productivity gains in river trade, makingupriver navigation cost-effective and further connecting inland nodes to the expansivewaves of global trade.3
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Lowry, S. T. "On the Shoulders of Merchants: Exchange and the Mathematical Conception of Nature in Early Modern Europe." History of Political Economy 27, no. 4 (December 1, 1995): 787–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00182702-27-4-787a.
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Goldberg, Kevin D. "Reaping the Judenfrage: Jewish Wine Merchants in Central Europe before World War I." Agricultural History 87, no. 2 (April 1, 2013): 224–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.3098/ah.2013.87.2.224.
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Yagou, Artemis. "Popular Luxury in Southeastern Europe in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Case-Study of Italian Ceramics and Ottoman Greek Clients." Journal of Early Modern History 24, no. 4-5 (September 21, 2020): 407–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700658-12342652.
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Abstract In late eighteenth-century Ottoman Epirus (today northwestern Greece), novel and pleasurable objects expressed on a material level the rise of new mentalities. We discuss specifically the ceramic trefoil jugs with Greek verses manufactured in Pesaro, Italy, by the firm of Casali and Callegari and its successors. These wine jugs follow a pre-existing formal typology and bear painted decoration; their particularity is that they are also inscribed with verses written in Greek, as they were produced following commissions by merchants from Epirus. This region boasted centers of commerce, wealth, and education of an emerging middle class; the economic power of this rising Greek bourgeoisie was combined with deepening ties with Europe, intellectual growth, and the strengthening of a distinct identity. We argue that these jugs are examples of popular luxury and the commissioning individuals were knowledgeable and proactive consumers exhibiting a growing confidence and indeed a new awareness with political connotations.
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Clulow, Adam. "Unjust, Cruel and Barbarous Proceedings: Japanese Mercenaries and the Amboyna Incident of 1623." Itinerario 31, no. 1 (March 2007): 15–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s016511530000005x.
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AbstractIn 1623, the Dutch governor of Amboyna, an important clove-producing island in modern-day Indonesia, executed a group of English merchants and Japanese mercenaries accused of plotting to seize control of the VOC castle on the island. After news of these events reached Europe, the Amboyna Massacre, as it came to be called in England, rapidly became invested with great consequences as English and Dutch leaders fought over the issues of blame and compensation. This article examines the Japanese mercenaries accused by the VOC, the silent participants whose cause was not taken up by any national government.
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Polasky, Janet. "A “Whirlpool of Gain”." Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 48, no. 3 (December 1, 2022): 9–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/hrrh.2022.480302.
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The thousands of aristocratic emigrants from revolutionary France who found asylum in the independent German city city-state of Hamburg and the neighboring Danish city of Altona were not the only immigrants arriving in the neutral ports. Alongside these flamboyant newcomers, merchants, scholars, artisans, and others continued, as they had for decades, to come in pursuit of the economic opportunities denied them at home. With harbors on the Elbe River just downstream from the North Sea, the two cosmopolitan port cities flourished as wars and revolution roiled the rest of Europe. Diplomatically neutral and open to trade, these two cities opened their doors to newcomers from around the world. Over the decade, the aristocrats, who thought themselves cosmopolitan, tested their welcome in the prosperous ports with no native nobility. While most of the newcomers assimilated readily, contributing to the ports’ prosperity, the aristocrats left to reclaim what remained of their estates.
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Jones, Geoffrey, and Judith Wale. "Merchants as Business Groups: British Trading Companies in Asia before 1945." Business History Review 72, no. 3 (1998): 367–408. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3116215.
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Merchants formed an important component of British foreign direct investment before 1945. Locating in parts of Asia, Latin America and other developing economies, they often diversified into non-trading activities, including the ownership of plantations. This article examines three such British firms active initially in Asia, though with operations also in North America, Europe, and Africa. Often regarded as handicapped by managerial failings, especially from the early twentieth century, the authors cast these firms as more entrepreneurial and possessing greater managerial competencies than has been suggested. The article argues that their business strategies continued to evolve in the interwar years and that, when viewed as business groups, their organizational forms were robust, though considerable diversity in the performance of the three British firms can be observed. This evidence is shown to have implications for wider debates about the competencies of British management as a whole.
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Staub, Martial. "Trust, Globalisation and Citizenship in Renaissance Europe: The Case of the South German Merchants of Lisbon Around 1500." Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 103, no. 1 (June 30, 2021): 83–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.7788/arku.2021.103.1.83.
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SHANTY, Dewi, Triyani TRIYANI, Muhammad SADIKIN, and Sarfilianty ANGGIANI. "Analysis Is The Relationship Of Leader Member Exchange (LMX) Towards Employee Performance Medited By The Employee Commitment." International Journal of Environmental, Sustainability, and Social Science 3, no. 3 (November 30, 2022): 544–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.38142/ijesss.v3i3.239.
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Indonesia is an archipelagic country with a long history as a maritime country. In the past, the maritime archipelago had many kingdoms, such as Sriwijaya, Majapahit, and the kingdoms in Maluku had once held a vital route for world trade through the sale of spices. Merchants from Gujarat and China took herbs and spices from the Maluku Islands and then sent them via merchant ships to China, the Arabian Peninsula, Europe, and Madagascar. Maritime leadership can be defined as the ability of maritime leaders to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute to the effectiveness and success of maritime organizations. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) can be a way to promote better leader-follower relationships and, ultimately, improve performance in public sector organizations. Social Exchange Theory (SET) argues that employees can improve performance with high-quality LMX. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of LMX on organizational commitment and employee performance and to determine the impact of LMX on employee performance by mediating organizational commitment variables. The results prove that LMX affects organizational commitment; LMX has a beneficial effect on employee performance; organizational commitment is significantly positive. Effective LMX is beneficial for employee performance with organizational commitment as a mediating variable
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Pérez Fernández, José María. "Introduction: Approaches to the Paper Revolution: The Registration and Communication of Knowledge, Value and Information." Cromohs - Cyber Review of Modern Historiography 23 (March 24, 2021): 76–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.36253/cromohs-12572.
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Invented in China and brought to Europe by Muslim merchants across the Silk Road, the use of paper in the West took off in the Mediterranean towards the end of the Middle Ages. Overshadowed in cultural and media history by the invention of print, paper has played a fundamental role as the media infrastructure for innumerable processes involving the registration and communication of knowledge and value in communities and institutions, from religious orders, mercantile societies, to global empires.
This thematic section of Cromohs features four essays. Three essays examine particular cases of paper as a medium for the codification and exchange of knowledge, information and value, whereas the fourth outlines the state of the art on the history of the so-called paper revolution and methodological issues illustrated with relevant case studies. These essays exemplify the research conducted by the Paper in Motion workgroup within the People in Motion COST action.
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Chaudhury, Sushil. "European Companies and the Bengal Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century: The Pitfalls of Applying Quantitative Techniques." Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 2 (May 1993): 321–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x00011513.
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Bengal textiles enjoyed a unique place and an indisputable supremacy in the world market for centuries before the invasion of the machinmade fabrics in the early nineteenth century following the industrial revolution of the West and Political control of the Indian sub-continent by the English East India Company. It need not be emphasized that the products of the Bengal handloom industry reigned supreme all over the accessible Asian and North African markets in the middle ages, and later became one of the major staples of the export trade of the European Companies. Most travellers from Europe starting with Tomé Pires, Varthema and Barbosa in the sixteenth century to Bernier, Tavernier and others in the seventeenth singled out especially textiles of Bengal for comments on their extraordinary quality and exquisite beauty. But it was not only in the field of high qulity cloth that Bengal had a predominant position; it was also the main Production centre of ordinary and medium quality textiles. Long before the advent of the Europeans, the Asian merchants from different parts of the continent and Indian merchants from various regions of the country derived a lucrative trade in Bengal textiles.
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Brown, K. M. "In Search of the Godly Magistrate in Reformation Scotland." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 40, no. 4 (October 1989): 553–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046900059017.
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The godly magistrate was an essential figure in the progress of the Protestant Reformation throughout Europe, and Scotland with its very powerful nobility was no exception. Prophetic preachers, discontented lairds, cosmopolitan merchants, and English troops all contributed to Protestant success in 1560, but there can be little doubt that it was the Lords of the Congregation themselves, the nobility, who made the Reformation happen. Furthermore, only by harnessing lordship to Protestantism could John Knox and his colleagues ensure that the fortuitous circumstances which provided the protesters with their opportunity in 1560– the fusing of patriotic and religious ideals – could be built on to ensure the future of a reformed kirk. The godly magistrate provided that combination of theological truth and practical reality which could translate the ideas of the new Church's clerical leaders into practice, particularly in the context of a hostile Crown.
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De Caro, Antonio. "From the Altar to the Household. The Challenging Popularization of Christian Devotional Images, Objects, and Symbols in 16th and 17th Century China." Eikon / Imago 11 (March 1, 2022): 129–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.5209/eiko.77135.
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After the expeditions of wealthy merchants and Franciscan missionaries during the 14th century, the Chinese empire under Ming rule did not engage profusely with the European world, and vice versa. This period of artistic and intellectual silence and detachment was broken in the late 16th century when the Jesuit missionaries reconnected two worlds –Europe and China– reactivating previous medieval commercial, artistic, and intellectual routes. Silk –the product par excellence commercialized along the routes connecting China and Europe– was then accompanied by other precious products, including Chinese ceramics reaching various European courts and European paintings that reached the Ming court in Beijing. This paper addresses the complex and challenging popularization of Roman Catholicism through objects and images during the early modern era. In particular, it focuses on the diffusion of devotional images and objects used by Roman Catholic missionaries and the religious practices related to them.
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Clulow, Adam. "European Maritime Violence and Territorial States in Early Modern Asia, 1600-1650." Itinerario 33, no. 3 (November 2009): 72–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0165115300016260.
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The European overseas enterprises that began to push into Asian waters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were maritime organisations geared towards commerce and seaborne warfare. As such, they looked very different from the powerful territorial states like Mughal India that traditionally dominated early modern Asia, and they were able to create a new kind of empire consisting of a network of fortified ports and trading centres connected by long sea routes. The construction of these empires was initially driven and subsequently sustained by maritime technology. To borrow Carlo Cipolla's words, guns, sails, and empire were always bound tightly together in this period. European vessels held a significant advantage over local shipping; neither the wealthiest groups of merchants nor the most formidable Asian states were in a position to field maritime forces that could challenge them on the open ocean. In virtually every encounter at sea, ships from Europe were able to inflict overwhelming defeats on the fleets assembled to oppose them. Since it represented their most significant advantage, Europeans made frequent use of maritime violence: against competing merchant groups (in order to disrupt commercial networks and to gain a dominant position), and against Asian states (to pry open port cities and improve trading conditions). This article explores the role played by maritime violence in the relationship between European overseas enterprises and two powerful territorial states, Mughal India (1526-1757) and Tokugawa Japan (1600-1868), in the first half of the seventeenth century.
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Borscheid, Peter, and Niels-Viggo Haueter. "Institutional Transfer: The Beginnings of Insurance in Southeast Asia." Business History Review 89, no. 2 (2015): 207–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0007680515000331.
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At the turn of the nineteenth century, modern insurance started to spread from the British Isles around the world. Outside Europe and the European offshoots in North and South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, it began to compete with other forms of risk management and often met with stiff opposition on religious and cultural grounds. Insurance arrived in Southeast Asia via British merchants living in India and Canton rather than through agencies of European firms. While the early agency houses in Bengal collapsed in the credit crisis of 1829–1834, the firms established by opium traders residing in Macau and Hong Kong, and advised by insurance experts in London, went on to form the foundations of the insurance industry in the Far East. Until the early twentieth century, they sought to use the techniques of risk management that they had developed in Europe to win Europeans and Americans living in Southeast Asia as clients, along with members of the local population familiar with Western culture.
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Van Den Boogaart, Ernst. "The Trade between Western Africa and the Atlantic World, 1600–90: Estimates of Trends in Composition and Value." Journal of African History 33, no. 3 (November 1992): 369–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021853700032539.
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Extending the approach of D. Eltis and L. C. Jennings to the seventeenth century, the author takes estimates for the decades 1623–32 and 1680–90 as the starting points for his discussion of trends in the composition and value of the Atlantic imports and exports of Western Africa. Contrary to prevalent opinion, he argues that at least from 1600 onwards the value of slave exports was two to three times higher than that of commodity exports, as measured according to the prices in America and Europe. However, during most of the century more imports were bartered in the commodity trade than in the slave trade, since the trading margin in the latter sector was considerably higher than in the former. The different margins go some way to explaining why the Portuguese concentrated on the slave trade from Angola between 1600 and 1635, which they could carry on with fewer European imports and more effectively protect, while the more efficient Dutch merchants achieved primacy in the competitive commodity trade of West Africa. The different margins also meant a very uneven distribution of imports over coastal regions. Owing to the predominance of Akan gold in the commodity trade, the Gold Coast drew an estimated fifty per cent of all imports at the beginning of the century and still accounted for 34 per cent at the end. Owing to its predominance in the slave trade, West-Central Africa drew 25 per cent of all imports throughout the century. The few available data on the composition of imports suggest that there may have been a shift from metal goods to textiles and a marked increase of Asian textiles and cowries. From 1593 on the Dutch may have initiated a shift in the gross barter terms of trade in favour of the African merchants which spread from the Gold Coast to other areas when the North-west Europeans obtained the major share in the Atlantic slave trade.
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Williams, Michael E. "The English Hospice Of St. George at Sanlucar De Barrameda." Recusant History 18, no. 3 (May 1987): 263–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0268419500020602.
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NOT FAR from Cadiz there is an English property that has remained Catholic for close on five hundred years. Its history goes back to pre-reformation days, indeed to the thirteenth century when the port of Sanlucar de Barrameda was recaptured from the Moors by the Guzman family who later became the Dukes of Medina Sidonia. Strategically Sanlucar was an important port because it was at the mouth of the Guadalquivir and as well as capturing the Seville trade it also commanded the traffic from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe and eventually it was the point of departure for ships leaving for the New World. Among the various nations using the port the English were conspicuous and their merchants were granted various privileges by the Dukes of Medina Sidonia during the fifteenth century. By the early sixteenth century there is evidence of a sizeable colony in the town; in fact the English were the largest single group of foreigners and many English names appear in the baptismal registers as both parents and godparents. At least one of them held high public office in the town. On the accession of Henry VIII to the throne of England, the situation further improved as he abandoned the neutrality of his father and allied himself with Spain against France. So it was that in 1517 a new charter of privileges for the English merchants in Sanlucar was drafted. A grant of land by the river was made so as to provide a chapel and a burial place for Englishmen. The chapel was dedicated to St. George and it was to be looked after by a confraternity. The chaplain was to be appointed by the Bishops of London, Winchester and Exeter, since it was from these dioceses that most of the merchants came. Although there have been rebuildings, this site has remained English ever since.
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Ialongo, Nicola, Raphael Hermann, and Lorenz Rahmstorf. "Bronze Age weight systems as a measure of market integration in Western Eurasia." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 27 (June 28, 2021): e2105873118. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105873118.
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Weighing technology was invented around 3000 BCE between Mesopotamia and Egypt and became widely adopted in Western Eurasia within ∼2,000 y. For the first time in history, merchants could rely on an objective frame of reference to quantify economic value. The subsequent emergence of different weight systems goes hand in hand with the formation of a continental market. However, we still do not know how the technological transmission happened and why different weight systems emerged along the way. Here, we show that the diffusion of weighing technology can be explained as the result of merchants’ interaction and the emergence of primary weight systems as the outcome of the random propagation of error constrained by market self-regulation. We found that the statistical errors of early units between Mesopotamia and Europe overlap significantly. Our experiment with replica weights gives error figures that are consistent with the archaeological sample. We used these figures to develop a model simulating the formation of primary weight systems based on the random propagation of error over time from a single original unit. The simulation is consistent with the observed distribution of weight units. We demonstrate that the creation of the earliest weight systems is not consistent with a substantial intervention of political authorities. Our results urge a revaluation of the role of individual commercial initiatives in the formation of the first integrated market in Western Eurasia.
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Gatejel, Luminita. "Verkehr, Warenfluss und Wissenstransfer. Überlegung zu einer internationalen Geschichte der Unteren Donau (1829–1918) / Transport, Trade and Transfer of Knowledge. Towards an International History of the Lower Danube." Südost-Forschungen 73, no. 1 (August 8, 2014): 414–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/sofo-2014-0118.
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Abstract Since the Treaty of Adrianople 1829 the Lower Danube underwent major political, economic and territorial transformations. It changed from a quasi-closed river entirely under Ottoman rule into a site of Great Power intervention. This new found international interest mobilised sustained efforts to make the Danube from the Iron Gates to the Black Sea navigable. Within a few years the Lower Danube turned into an important commercial and communication hub of continental dimensions. It also turned into a place of pilgrimage for politicians, diplomats, merchants and hydraulic engineers from all over Europe enabling a vivid exchange of ideas. The goal of this article is twofold: on one hand it sets out to give an overview over the existing body of historical literature that places the Lower Danube into a transnational framework, and on the other it makes several suggestions for further studies.