Religion and Trade

Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000-1900

Bibliographic Data

ID20031872
EditorsFrancesca Trivellato (0000-0001-6864-1451, corresponding author), Leor Halevi, Cátia Antunes (0000-0003-4343-029X)
Year2014
Pages288
Publication date2014-09-17
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueReligion and trade (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199379187.001.0001
OpenAlexW573305309
Open LibraryOL27177127M
ISBN9780199379187
LanguageEN
Citations received18

This book focuses on trade across religious boundaries around the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans during the second millennium, when transportation technology was fragile and religion often a primary marker of identity. It examines a wide range of commercial exchanges from first encounters between strangers who worshipped different gods and originated in different continents to everyday transactions between merchants who lived in the same city yet belonged to diverse confessional groups. Risk and uncertainty often characterized cross-cultural ventures. The threat of violence frequently accompanied such exchanges, too, particularly in places where states lacked institutions to enforce contracts. Still, through gift-giving ceremonies, with the assistance of merchants’ networks, or as a consequence of piracy or pilgrimage, cross-cultural trade took place. The volume’s chapters, written by an international team of historians, shed light on the very mechanisms that facilitated these extraordinary exchanges between members of different religions. They point, for example, to methods for calculating the degree of risk associated with different kinds of economic transactions, the minting of local coins to conform to foreign currency standards, and a pragmatic legalistic approach to religious constraints. They reveal the political, economic, and juridical underpinnings of cross-cultural trade as it emerged or developed at various times and places. They also reflect on the cultural and religious significance of the passage of strange persons and exotic objects—from “infidel” captives to ivory salt cellars—across the many frontiers that separated humankind in the early phase of globalization

Business · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Commerce · Economic aspects · History · International economic relations · Religion · Religious aspects

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