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Taking a new approach to the study of cross-cultural trade, this book blends archival research with historical narrative and economic analysis to understand how the Sephardic Jews of Livorno, Tuscany, traded in regions near and far in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Francesca Trivellato tests assumptions about ethnic and religious trading diasporas and networks of exchange and trust. Her extensive research in international archives-including a vast cache of merchants' letters written between 1704 and 1746-reveals a more nuanced view of the business relations between Jews and non-Jews across the Mediterranean, Atlantic Europe, and the Indian Ocean than ever before. The book argues that cross-cultural trade was predicated on and generated familiarity among strangers, but could coexist easily with religious prejudice. It analyzes instances in which business cooperation among coreligionists and between strangers relied on language, customary norms, and social networks more than the progressive rise of state and legal institutions.

This article offers a nuanced ethnographic description of the encounter between multinational corporations and the economic actors who distribute and commercialize their commodities. By analyzing the labor of lower-level employees and the strategies of the middle management of Samsung Electronics Bolivia against traders’ practices and understandings and the vernacular market infrastructure, I offer a substantive interpretation of the obstacles and unintended outcomes of corporate commodity chain and brand management as it expands into an “emerging” market such as that in Bolivia. Street vendors, shopkeepers, and wholesalers are teased with personalized attention, gifts, and monetary incentives to sell the high-priced premium brands and build legible inventory, but they have remained notoriously disloyal. By focusing on the agreements and tensions between corporations and traders about how to move, store, categorize, advertise, and price the products, this article engages with the literature on urban marketplace trade and commercial transactions, counterfeit commodities, and economic power in globalized markets and supply chains. To think about the appeal and effectiveness of vernacular market channels and arrangements offers a conceptual lens to critically address the efficiency paradigm in supply-chain thinking, as well as to analyze discrepancies and power struggles not only among economic actors (such as traders and corporations) but also between different forms of valuation that co-exist and compete in markets. Este artículo ofrece una detallada descripción etnográfica del encuentro entre empresas multinacionales y los actores económicos que distribuyen y comercializan sus mercancías. Al analizar la labor y las estrategias de los empleados de Samsung Electronics Bolivia frente a las prácticas y visiones de los comerciantes, así como la infraestructura social, material y afectiva del mercado vernáculo, ofrezco una interpretación sustantiva de los obstáculos en la gestión corporativa de la cadena de productos (supply chain management) y en el marketing (branding) a medida que se expanden hacia mercados “emergentes” como el boliviano. Al centrarme en los acuerdos y las tensiones entre las empresas y los comerciantes sobre cómo mover, almacenar, categorizar, valorar y comercializar los productos, este artículo reconsidera la literatura sobre el comercio de las plazas de mercado, las mercancías falsificadas y los procesos de economización. Pensar en el atractivo y la eficacia de los canales y arreglos del mercado vernáculo ofrece una lente conceptual para abordar críticamente el paradigma de la eficiencia en el pensamiento sobre las cadenas de suministro, y permite observar discrepancias y luchas de poder no sólo entre unos agentes económicos (como los comerciantes y las empresas), sino también entre diferentes formas de valoración que conviven y compiten en los mercados.

The social rise of enriched merchants by colonial trade was a constant in Modern Centuries. In the noble promotion, the Entailed estate was consolidated as a fundamental way to allowed the conservation and perpetuation of the family’s heritage and memory. The Neve’s represent the prototypical image of a family of foreign origin living in Seville, attracted by the riches of Indies. They manage to ennoble themselves and form part of the local noble hierarchy. The foundation of Miguel de Neve’s Entailed estate allowed the consolidation of the lineage. The clauses laid down in this foundation caused a complex conflict of succession in the mid-18th Century, involving the Marquises of Moscoso, who were resident in Indies and who had been responsible for the succession of the Entailed estate. 

Los comerciantes en tierras extranjeras que comercian en ciudades hostiles y desconocidas, de manera natural se unían y designaban a un portavoz, o líder, para conducir los asuntos de interés común con las autoridades locales. Poco a poco su papel fue asumido por cónsules designados por los enviados diplomáticos de los Estados, y reconocidos por los países de destino, pero la transición no fue siempre igual, como lo demuestra la evolución de la red consular de la Orden Hospitalaria de Malta en la España de la Edad Moderna. De hecho, a pesar de los florecientes eslabones comerciales que se pueden observar en la España del siglo XVIII en la extendida diáspora mercantil de comerciantes malteses, posteriormente muchos de ellos tuvieron que hacer frente a acuerdos improvisados durante la mayor parte del siglo para defender y promover sus intereses. Merchants in foreign lands trading in alien and occasionally hostile cities naturally banded together and often appointed a spokesman or leader to conduct affairs of common interest with the local authorities. In due course their role was taken over by consuls nominated by sending states and recognized by the receiving states but the transition was not always a smooth one, as is demonstrated by the evolution of Hospitaller Malta’s consular network in Early Modern Spain. Indeed, despite burgeoning trade links which resulted in the presence in eighteenth-century Spain of a widespread mercantile diaspora of Maltese traders the latter often had to do with makeshift arrangements for much of the century to defend and promote their interests.

With the opening of sea routes in the 15th century, groups of men and women left Portugal to establish themselves across the ports and cities of the Atlantic or Ocean Sea. They were refugees and migrants, traders and mariners, Jews, Catholics, and the Marranos of mixed Judaic-Catholic culture. They formed a diasporic community known by contemporaries as the Portuguese Nation. By the early 17th century, this nation without a state had created a remarkable trading network that spanned the Atlantic, reached into the Indian Ocean and Asia, and generated millions of pesos that were used to bankroll the Spanish Empire. This book traces the story of the Portuguese Nation from its emergence in the late 15th century to its fragmentation in the middle of the 17th, and situates it in relation to the parallel expansion and crisis of Spanish imperial dominion in the Atlantic. Against the backdrop of this relationship, the book reconstitutes the rich inner life of a community based on movement, maritime trade, and cultural hybridity. We are introduced to mariners and traders in such disparate places as Lima, Seville and Amsterdam, their day-to-day interactions and understandings, their houses and domestic relations, private reflections and public arguments. This account reveals how the Portuguese Nation created a cohesive and meaningful community despite the mobility and dispersion of its members; how its forms of sociability fed into the development of robust transatlantic commercial networks; and how the day-to-day experience of trade was translated into the sphere of Spanish imperial politics as merchants of the Portuguese Nation took up the pen to advocate a program of commercial reform based on religious-ethnic toleration and the liberalization of trade.

Este articulo analiza la inserción del Caribe occidental en el proceso de globalización económico del siglo XVIII, en este sentido revisa como en ausencia de un control estricto de la corona española  los territorios del Caribe Occidental, compuesto por la costa de la Mosquitia y las islas adyacentes, junto a sus habitantes y un contingente de agentes imperiales y comerciales de diferentes partes de Europa cumplieron un papel fundamental en el proceso de construcción de una red global de comercio y de comerciantes que se insertaron en los circuitos de producción y mercados de consumo que se configuraban tempranamente entre Europa, América del Norte y el Caribe, tomando como vehículo las conexiones mercantiles británicas. Desde el punto de vista teórico y conceptualmente se utilizan los postulados de la historia global, pero enfocada desde un ámbito regional, y metodológicamente se aborda desde la disciplina de la historia utilizando un acervo documental del siglo XVIII, que se encuentra en los archivos españoles de y el archivo General de la Nación en Colombia.

El presente escrito tiene como objetivo central destacar aspectos específicos y características salientes de la práctica comercial de Jacinto de Castro en el circuito comercial región Río de la Plata- Santiago, en el reino de Chile a finales del siglo XVIII y principios del siglo XIX. A través de este estudio de caso nos podemos acercar a las lógicas comerciales que se dieron en la actividad mercantil relacionada con la venta de aguardiente, esclavizados y yerba mate. Las fuentes utilizadas son las cartas comerciales y privadas de Jacinto de Castro, que nos permiten reconfigurar su biografía comercial. El trabajo realizado no alcanza conclusiones, pero sí se presentan distintas lógicas comerciales seguidas por este actor que permiten comprender algunas de las prácticas mercantiles del Antiguo Régimen.