Conclusion

The endurance of terrestrial forms of connectivity over the Eurasian continental interior lies at the heart of this book. By reviewing the life of such connections in the twentieth century, this chapter draws out this book’s four major interventions. The first concerns the value of examining long-term patterns of change and the virtue of thinking across such divides as Mughal and British, pre-colonial and colonial. The second relates to the way this book thinks about empires in novel ways, whether by taking a trans-imperial framework or by focussing on the ways non-political entities—such as merchant networks—persisted through periods of imperial flux and the rise and fall of empires. The third is the focus on space, particularly interior or inner-continental space, and its place within global history. The final contribution is to provide an impetus to scholars to think of the synchronicity of multiple forms of globalisation and their interrelation.

Makler im Hansisch-Niederdeutschen Handelsgebiet

Brokers in the Hanseatic - Low-German Trading WorldThe modern scholarly world has not been kind to medieval brokers. Investigations of their activities are few and far between and, for the most part, outdated. The one exception, Anke Greve’s analysis of brokers in Bruges, skews the picture, since they were - viewed from the perspective of the Hanseatic trading world - something of a one-off. In Bruges, innkeepers, who provided lodging, and brokers, who enabled trade between natives and foreigners, belonged to the same guild (from 1303) and customarily combined both activities. Generalizing from the Bruges example is, therefore, fraught with danger.This scholarly neglect is entirely unwarranted, and it is high time that we broadened our perspective to include brokers in other towns in the Hanseatic trading world. This article begins with a survey of the literature, spotlighting the various theories on the origins of brokerage and the explanations offered for the terms used to designate theni (mekeler, underkoper or sensal). The article then turns to a comparative analysis of brokerage in Lübeck and Brunswick. In both towns, brokerage arose in order to facilitate trade between Hanseatic and non-Hanseatic merchants (the latter being called ’guests’). Common to both towns, too. was the brokers’ status as urban office-holders. In contrast to Bruges, the Lübeck and Brunswick brokers never organized themselves as a guild, nor is there any evidence that they had any connection with the innkeepers whatsoever.Our first (indirect) evidence of brokerage comes from a Lübeck regulation of the early 14Ih Century requiring foreign traders to display their merchandise for sale on the quay for three days. This regulation feil into disuse because of the intensification of trade between natives and foreigners on the cusp of the 16lh Century, while direct trade between ’guests’ continued to be prohibited throughout the 15,h Century. While Brunswick also generally prohibited direct trade between ’guests', it did provide for one exception, namely if the brokers had been unable to midwife the sale of the goods in question to a native merchant. Here, too, we find a curious bifurcation of the designations for brokers, the terms mekeler and underkoper appearing simultaneously. Both in Lübeck and Brunswick, there is ample evidence of brokers who specialized in the grain trade. In the case of Lübeck, it is apparent that the brokers played a major role in inspecting imported goods (especially herring) and certifying their quality. Goods which had passed inspection were designated as Ventegüter (’vendible goods’), which meant that they could be sold elsewhere without further ado.This initial investigation of brokerage in Lübeck and Brunswick opens the field to new questions, in particular regarding the interrelation of brokers and merchant networks and their role in direct trade between ’guests’.

Red Atlantic

The Red Atlantic is a concept by scholars in Native American history and Native American and Indigenous studies (NAIS) to address one of the perennial issues facing the study of the Atlantic world: the exclusion of the Indigenous Peoples of North America. In many years of existence, Atlantic world studies has focused on the movement of peoples (immigrants, slaves), goods (trade, food, diseases, etc.), and empires across the Atlantic Ocean, but rarely do such works engage with how Indigenous Americans contributed to, negotiated, and at times dictated transatlantic movements and connections. Instead, Indigenous Americans remain obstacles of empire, faceless suppliers of transatlantic goods like deerskins, peripheral figures who occupied the fringes of the Atlantic world, or proverbial boogeymen to transatlantic migrants (i.e., invaders) who settled in North America. However, as scholars of the Red Atlantic have articulated, our understandings of the Atlantic world—whether about merchant networks in New England and the West Indies or Spanish missions in Mesoamerica and Florida—are limited and altogether incomplete if Indigenous Peoples are relegated to the margins of the Atlantic world. In fact, there is much that scholars can learn from the Red Atlantic. For instance, groups like the Wabanaki were maritime people, like their European and African counterparts, as their everyday lives and cultures revolved around interactions with the Atlantic Ocean, such as enfolding European merchant networks into their own economies or turning to piracy to combat imperial expansion in their territories. Meanwhile, scholars of the Red Atlantic have brought to life the Indian slave trade in 17th- and 18th-century New France, between French and Algonquian peoples who carved out a traffic in human beings that connected Canada to France, the West Indies, and Africa, before the wholesale importation of African peoples. Indigenous American languages and local knowledge also shaped how European natural scientists came to understand foreign places, flora, and fauna, as Europeans proved dependent on Native knowledge systems to gain a better understanding of the world around them. In so many instances like these, the Red Atlantic demonstrates how to broaden interpretations of the Atlantic world paradigm and how to provide a more inclusive, holistic understanding of history. What follows is a sample of some of the most important works that have spurred or contributed to the Red Atlantic and concludes with those that have most recently nuanced, complicated, or redirected Atlantic world studies.

Merchant Networks

This chapter provides three microstudies on real-life examples of merchant networks in operation. The first microstudy is the Cairo-based Jewish merchants' network, whose records from the tenth through twelfth centuries were preserved in the Geniza and represents, in its India segments, a simple and thin network. Next is the Armenian network centered in New Julfa from the seventeenth through eighteenth centuries that represents the epitome of the merchant network in its most sophisticated, elaborated, and expanded form. Finally, the Sephardic Jewish network based in Livorno in the eighteenth century that exemplifies the marginalization of the network in the shadow of the corporation. The three microstudies provide a taste of some episodes in the rise and decline of merchant networks.