Early Modern Mercantile Culture

Organised by Francisco Bethencourt, Charles Boxer Professor, King's College London and Cátia Antunes, Professor of History of Global Economic Networks, University of Leiden

Mercantile culture contributed decisively to connect and transform the world in the early modern period. There are significant studies of this culture, mainly on markets and organizational culture of merchants, but there is no systematic approach, since this issue touches many different areas of academic expertise. This is why we decided to organise this symposium.

The expansion of credit and financial transactions across continents through letters of exchange, investments in agriculture, industry, trade and finances in different parts of the world, partnerships between European, Asian and African merchants, development of techniques of ship building and maritime orientation are some of the features of this mercantile culture.

Frequent displacement and change of roles between partners, correspondents and factors are also part of the same setting, in which merchants got used to deal with different environments, cultures and political regimes. Low level of hierarchy, limited responsibility, temporary and flexible companies, relatively open opinions on innovation and tolerance (religious and ethnic) should also be better enquired. Cross-cultural trading networks, an area of research launched by Philip Curtin, has been inspiring a significant body of knowledge in the past decades, but there is still much to be done in other to understand the role of ethnic and interethnic exchange.

We also intend to develop our knowledge on legal culture pushed by trade, which includes the crucial role of contracts, the reflection on interests and usury, inheritance laws, the organisation of commercial codes, and the intervention of the state not only through the production of legislation and creation of institutions to regulate trade and solve conflicts, but also through tax farming, concessions of monopolised trade and emission of bonds.

We intend to involve scholars working on different parts of the world; this will be a first meeting to assess possibilities of exchange and expansion of collaboration.