Business History Special Issue (Web); Guest editors: Luca Andreoni (Independent Scholar), Luca Mocarelli and Giulio Ongaro (University of Milan, Bicocca), and David Do Paço (Sciences Po, Paris)

Proposals by: 3004.2020

In recent years, the economic and social role played by ethnic-religious minorities in early modern Europe, especially in the Mediterranean, is at the center of growing historiographical reinterpretation (Baghdiantz and al. 2005; Harlaftis 2011; Christ and al. 2015; Do Paço 2015; Monge and Muchnik 2019).

Looking especially at the role of Jews, and starting with the work of Israel (1985), their economic role has been analyzed by many researchers, who stress especially the importance of networks and family ties, their involvement in the credit market and their functions in other fields of commerce (Penslar 2001; Karp 2008, 2009; Trivellato 2009; Levine 2010; Reuveni 2011; Hilaire-Pérez, Oliel-Grausz 2013, 2014; Kobrin, Teller 2015; Romani 2017).

Besides Jews, other minorities – such as Armenians or Greeks – have also played a fundamental role as economic intermediaries in international trade (Grenet 2012; 2016; Fusaro 2012; Aslanian 2014; Trivellato, Halevi, Antunes 2014).

Their enterprises often operated by sea – the best commercial route in early modern times – with private fleets that were sometimes very considerable. Seaports were the areas where Armenians, Greeks and Jewish communities flourished; just think, for the Italian case, of Venice, Trieste, Livorno, and Ancona and the other ports of the Papal State (Davis-Ravid 2001, Dubin 1999; Gatti 2008, Frattarelli Fischer 2008, Trivellato 2009, Fettah 2017, Tazzara 2017, Bonazzoli 1998, Andreoni 2019).

What is more, products unloaded from the ships on the seaside moved to the inland cities through navigable rivers and then spread in the inland territories. Remaining in the Italian peninsula, this was in part the role played by the Jewish communities (on the Po River) of Mantua and Ferrara (Graziani Secchieri 2014), again with families with private fleets aiming to connect the Adriatic Sea and the inland areas. Finally, we should not forget that the movement of products and goods often followed the opposite path, from the productive centers (in terms both of agricultural production and manufactural one) of the mainland to the seaports, ready to be sent around Europe and the world. Read more … (Web)