Introduction

Summary

The Aim of the Book

This volume deals with commercial networks and how they were related to cities in the late medieval and early modern periods. Over the last few decades a number of books and articles have been published on trade, merchants and commercial institutions, encompassing European and – especially – non-European countries, showing the complexity of trading mechanisms, and discussing the constitution of groups, formal or informal associations, cross-cultural relations and religious boundaries across the world. Despite this rich amount of studies, the formation of networks, the exchanges between various networks and their relation to local or supra-local institutions, and the ways networks have influenced the territories they encompassed is still an open debate. This book therefore aims to contribute to this debate by presenting in-depth research on various parts of Europe mostly during the period at the beginning of overseas expansion, and demonstrating the opportunities of using the methodologies of social network analysis.

The paradigm of networks is well established for the study of merchants as well as for research in the social and economic history of the medieval and early modern periods. Networks generated by situated social interactions are increasingly being considered the base of studying social organization. The approach of multiple networks allows for linking commercial and other social interactions taking place in the cities. Cities and commerce were closely linked, and most large cities can be described as nodes, hubs and gateways of commercial relations.