The Familiarity of Strangers

The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period

Bibliographic Data

ID19913136
AuthorsFrancesca Trivellato (0000-0001-6864-1451, corresponding author)
Year2017
Pages480
Publication date2017-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueFamiliarity of Strangers (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherYale University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.12987/9780300156201
OpenAlexW4205561100
Open LibraryOL29022336M
ISBN9780300156201
LanguageEN
Citations received20

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

Art · Ethnic group · Immigration · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Prejudice (legal term) · State (computer science) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · History · Law · Medieval History and Crusades · Commerce · Economic conditions · ethnic relations · Europe · Italy · Jews · Merchants · Sephardim · Social conditions · Social life and customs