Connectors of commercial maritime systems: Merchants and trade networks between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean (1600-1800)”

Connectors of commercial maritime systems: Merchants and trade networks between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean (1600-1800)”

Organizer
Manuel Herrero Sánchez / Klemens Kaps, Area de Historia Moderna, Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla (UPO)
Venue
Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americános, CSIC, C/Alfonso XII, Nº16, 41002 Sevilla
Location
Sevilla
Country
Spain
From - Until
20.06.2014 - 21.06.2014
Website
By
Klemens Kaps

In recent years, historical scholarship on long-distance trade in the early modern period has focused commercial communities in different port cities and their social networks in order to explain the movement of goods, capital and information between different world regions. Within this picture, however, a variety of networks can be recognized such as ethnic and cultural, family based or transnational ones, of which the first ones have received particular attention by highlighting their function as generators of trust as basis for doing business.

These different conceptualizations of commercial exchange have gradually substituted the more traditional view of linear or bilateral exchange relations between regions or states and focused instead on a multi-polar perspective: Actors, communities and their networks are conceived as connectors between commercial systems, as recently conceptualized by Ana Crespo Solana or Isabel Lobato Franco. Commercial systems can be understood as exchange relations within maritime empires during the age of mercantilism (such as Spain, Portugal, France or Great Britain) or between regions whose production was complementary (such as the exchange of raw materials with manufactured goods etc.).

Starting from this background and studies of scholars such as Klaus Weber, Xabier Lamikiz, Sherrylynne Haggerty, Ana Crespo Solana, Catia Brilli and others, the conference intends to focus on merchants and their networks as connectors between different commercial systems in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic during the 17th and the 18th century including Spanish America, the Caribbean, and the European Atlantic coast and reaching out to Northern Europe. Papers can include either case studies of single merchants, companies, families or study mercantile communities.

Hereby one or more of the following research questions should be addressed:
- What kind of network configuration can be identified for mercantile exchange such as those based on family and kinship, origin (cultural or ethnic networks) or those reaching beyond linguistic, cultural and family-based boundaries?
- Was there one dominant network type or can we observe a combination of different network types, with a difference between the network’s core (meaning the actors with strong relations among each other) and its more peripheral parts (meaning those actors with weaker relations among each other)? E.g. Family-based relations or ethnic connections could form the network’s core (e.g. partners of a company), while transnational networks could be located rather in weaker contacts (e.g. partners for one business operation, eventual correspondents etc.).
- Did the network structure change over time, and if so, what shifts can be observed (strengthening of relations, rupture of networks etc.)? What were the driving elements of these changes (such as changing trust, failure of business operations)?
- What was the impact of mercantile networks for commercial exchange? In what way did they support market connections? Did they cut back competition from outsiders or was there also competition between different networks?
- What was the impact of the social and political dimension on mercantile networks? Was the formation of a cosmopolitan, trans-national merchant class limited to the upper strata of traders or can we find such examples also for small-scale tradespeople? What role did play marriages, political connections and the support by state institutions?

Conference languages are English and Spanish.

Programm

Program

20 June 2014

9.00: Inauguration

9.15: Manuel Herrero Sánchez / Klemens Kaps (UPO): Introduction

First Panel: Historiographical Debates on Theory and Methodology of Trade Networks
(Chair: Manuel Herrero Sánchez)

9.45: Montserrat Cachero Vinuesa (UPO): Understanding Networking: Theoretical Framework and Evidence from History

10.05: Ana Crespo Solana (CSIC-IH, Madrid): The merchants and the beating of a butterfly’s wings: from local to global in the transfer of economic behavior models in the 18th century

10.25: Xabier Lamikiz (Universidad del País Vasco): Networks, Trust and social Capital in the age of Commerce, 1500-1830: A historiographical appraisal

10.45: Sheryllynne Haggerty (University of Nottingham): “The Providence”: When Networks Don’t Exist

11.05-12.00: Discussion

12.00 – 12.30: Coffee Break

Second Panel: Nations, Ethnicity and Culture in Merchant Networks (Chair: Klemens Kaps)

12.30: Bethany Aram (UPO): The Gingerbread Men from Corsairs to Merchants. English, Dutch and French in the Spanish Caribbean, 1580-1655

12.50: Eberhard Crailsheim (Universität Hamburg): French and Flemish merchants in Seville as connectors of European and American markets (1570-1650)

13.10: Manuel Fernández Chaves / Mercedes Gamero Rojas (Universidad de Sevilla): Nations? What nations? Bussiness in the shaping of international trade networks. Seville, XVIIIth century

13.30: Orla Power (Trinity College Dublin): St. Croix, Danish West Indies: an unclaimed past. How ethnic and commercial networks can help to untangle complex and contentious transnational histories

13.50 – 14.30: Discussion

14.30 – 16.00: Lunch

Third Panel: Spatial connectors - connected spaces (Chair: Manuel Fernández Chaves)

16.00: Natalia Maillard Álvarez (UPO): The book trade in Seville from 1550 to 1650: intermediaries and distribution channels in the Spanish Empire

16.20: Renate Pieper (Universität Graz): The shifting geography of merchant’s networks in the 17th and 18th centuries

16.40: José Luis Gasch (UPO): Cochineal, silver and porcelain from New Spain to Iberia. The commercial network of Santi Federighi , c.1600-1643

17.00: Margrit Schulte-Beerbühl (Heine-Universität Düsseldorf): Interconnecting trade regions: International networks of German merchants in the eighteenth century

17.20-18.10: Discussion

18.10-18.30: Claims of travel expenses

20.00: Conference Dinner

21 June 2014

Fourth Panel: Family, Products and Finances (Chair: Fernando Ramos Palencia)

10.00: Yasmina Rocío Ben Yessef (UPO, Banco di Napoli): Family fortune or policentric enterprise? The “fedecommisseria” of a deceased Genoese in the service of the Spanish Monarchy in the 17th century: The case of Jerónimo Serra

10.20: Claudio Marsilio (Universidade do Lisboa): Why weak ties were so strong? The Genoese financial operators and the International Payment system: money, silver, and exchange fairs (1620-1660)

10.40: Pablo Hernández Sau (UPO): Bouligny’s family network: Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean (1717-1793)

11.00 – 11.30: Coffee Break

11.30 – 12.30: Discussion

12.30: Manuel Herrero Sánchez / Klemens Kaps: Closing remarks

Financed by:

Trade between Spain and Habsburg Monarchy (1725-1815). Merchant Networks in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic PEOPLE, Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships (IEF). Comisión Europea IEF VII Programa Marco (UE PIEF-GA-2011-299469).
http://www.upo.es/investiga/republicas/merchant_networks/index.jsp

“El papel de las repúblicas europeas en la conformación del Estado moderno. ¿Alternativa modernizadora o motor del sistema? (siglos XVI-XVIII)”
MINECO: HAR2010-19686
http://www.upo.es/investiga/republicas

Red Sucesión

Columnaria Ultraque Unum. Red temática de Investigación
http://redcolumnaria.inf.um.es

Unidad Asociada UPO- Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos de Sevilla (CSIC).
http://www.eeha.csic.es/

Organizers:
Manuel Herrero Sánchez
Klemens Kaps

Conference’s Organization Team:

Laura Borragán Fernández
Natalia Maillard Álvarez
Alberto Mariano Rodríguez Martínez

Área de Historia Moderna del Departamento de Geografía, Historia y Filosofía, Facultad de Humanidades

Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla

http://www.upo.es/historia_moderna/
http://www.upo.es/investiga/republicas/merchant_networks/index.jsp

Contact (announcement)

Dr. Klemens Kaps
Marie-Curie-Fellow (IEF)
Departamento de Historia, Geografía y Filosofía
Facultad de Humanidades
Área de Historia Moderna
Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla
Ctra de Utrera, km.1
Edificio 44/Despacho 1.05
41013 Sevilla


Editors Information
Published on
16.06.2014
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