The Familiarity of Strangers
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The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period
Francesca Trivellato
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Format: PaperPrice: $49.95
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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.
“A magisterial study.”—Choice
"One could not find a better example of the marriage between theory and practice, secondary and primary literature."—John A. Marino, University of California, San Diego
"This book is certainly important, the kind that appears once every few years, if that. It is the best book on cross-cultural trade since Philip Curtin invented the field more than two decades ago."—Steven Epstein, University of Kansas
“One of the most important books that have been published on early modern Jewish history.”—HNet Reviews
“A well-written and well-constructed study that utilizes an intriguing body of sources.”—H-Judaic
“…a most important and original description of the economic and social history of this major Jewish community.”—Edgar Samuel, Jewish Historical Studies Vol. 43
Publication Date: September 25, 2012
19 b/w illus.
