Merchant Cultures

Cátia Antunes is Professor of Global Economic Networks: Merchants, Entrepreneurs and Empires at the Institute for History at Leiden University. She is currently the principal investigator of the project Exploiting the Empire of Others supported by the Dutch Research Council.Francisco Bethencourt is Charles Boxer Professor of History at King’s College London. He is the author of The Inquisition: A Global History, 1478–1834 (Cambridge, 2009). In 2017 he organised the exhibition Racism and Citizenship in Lisbon. He is completing a new monograph entitled New Christian Trading Elite, Fifteenth–Eighteenth Century. His long-term research project is on the history of social inequality in the world.

“The 14 chapters of this book fruitfully explore different aspects and features of early modern merchant cultures around the globe, with particular emphasis on cross-cultural encounters and exchanges… the volume’s essays show profound similarities between mercantile practices and experiences worldwide, which suggests that a common, global merchant culture was in the making.”----Xabier Lamikiz, in: Hispanic American Historical Review (2022) 103 (3)“[...] it encompass a wide variety of topics and geographies related to mercantile history of the globe and provide a comparative platform for future research.” ---- Ines G. Županov, in: Journal of Jesuit Studies Vol 9 (2022): pp.591-594

• Merchant PrefaceAcknowledgementsList of Illustrations and TablesNotes on Contributors1 Merchant Cultures: An IntroductionFrancisco Bethencourt and Cátia AntunesPART 1: Questions, Approaches and Representations2 Merchant Strategies for Long Distance Trade in Aristocratic Political EconomiesLaurence Fontaine3 Commercial Practices by New Christian/Jewish Groups and Their Sense of ‘Cultural Identity’, ‘Loyalties’ and ‘Belonging’David Graizbord4 Subordinate to Strangers: Thomas Kerridge at Ahmadabad in 1615 and the Limits of Mercantilist Dogma in International Commercial SettingsWilliam Pettigrew5 Commercial Culture in Contested SpacesEdmond J. SmithPART 2: The Asian World6 ‘Indigenous’ Merchant Networks and the English East India Company on the Coromandel Coast in the Seventeenth CenturyRadhika Seshan7 Agents of Empire in Golconda and Bengal: 1630–1757Rila Mukherjee8 Doing Business by the Grace of the Shogun: Strategies, Trade Negotiations, and Cross-Cultural (Mis)Understandings in Early Modern NagasakiJurre J. A. Knoest9 Hindu Mercantile Culture and Practices in Goa, 1750–1818Noelle Richardson10 The ‘Way of the Merchant’ in Late Imperial ChinaJoseph P. McDermottPART 3: The Euro-Atlantic World11 Apprentices, Sojourners, Expatriates: Southern German Merchants in European Cities, c. 1450–1650Mark Häberlein12 Merchant Culture: Holbein’s TriumphsFrancisco Bethencourt13 Doing Business with One’s Sovereign: Merchant-Banking and Portfolio Management in Habsburg Portugal and the Empire (1580–1640)Edgar Pereira14 Religious Freedom and Institutions in Pre-modern Markets: Is Italy’s Case a Guide?Germano MaifredaIndex