Hierarchies of trade in Yiwu and Dushanbe: The case of an Uzbek merchant family from Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the trading trajectory of an Uzbek family of merchants from Tajikistan. This family runs businesses in both Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, and China’s famous international trading city: Yiwu. The analysis is centred on the accounts placed by Tajikistan’s Uzbek merchants about their historically sustained experience, often across several generations, in trading activities. These merchants’ claims of belonging to a ‘historical’ trading community rather than being ‘newcomers’ to long-distance commerce are articulated in relation to notions of ‘hierarchies of trade’ as they evolve in a twofold relational model linking Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood and Dushanbe. I suggest that the forms of conviviality enacted in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood need to be understood in terms of the historical, multinational and transregional contacts that have occurred within the spaces of the former Soviet Union, as well as along the China-Russia and China-Central Asian borders. Equally, the hierarchies of trade of Uzbek merchants from Tajikistan in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood cut-across markers of identity that juxtapose the roles of Tajik and Uzbek communities in Tajikistan’s contemporary politics and economics.     

OLYNTHUS MILLSTONES IN THE SOUTHERN LEVANT: THE BACKDROP TO THE MARITIME TRADE OF OLYNTHUS MILLSTONES

Abstract

This article aims to illustrate the background behind the maritime trade of Olynthus-type millstones in the eastern Mediterranean region. A look at the distribution of southern Aegean Olynthus millstones, whose provenances were identified by Williams-Thorpe and Thorpe’s petrographic analysis, reveals that millstones were not a major import into the southern Levant, where local Olynthus millstones were produced and distributed. They were more frequent in Cyprus, where they were valued locally due to the dearth of stones appropriate for use as millstones. The analysis of Williams-Thorpe and Thorpe also suggests that southern Levantine millstones, in contrast to millstones from earlier and later periods, were not exported to other Mediterranean regions. Shipwreck remains from the eastern Mediterranean, as well as the distribution of commercial Rhodian amphorae, reveal that Rhodian merchants carried wine and millstones from the southern Aegean to Cyprus. The southern Levant, where a number of locally produced Olynthus mills were unearthed, was self-sufficient in millstones. Hence, the Rhodian merchants, who dominated eastern Mediterranean trade, used the southern Aegean millstones as saleable ballast.     

Small but powerful: networking strategies and the trade business of Habsburg-Italian merchants in Cadiz in the second half of the eighteenth century

Abstract

Lombardian merchants played an important role in long-distance trade between the Italian and the Iberian Peninsulas since the Middle Ages, in contrast to widely held beliefs and historiographical neglect. The eighteenth century witnessed the intensification of this role. Instead of being worse off after Lombardy passed from Spanish sovereignty to being ruled from Vienna, the Lombardian mercantile community in Cadiz made use of the institutional framework offered by the imperial maritime policy of the Habsburgs, which compensated for a lack of their own commercial institutional framework. Making use of different social strategies, which combined kinship, cultural and transnational co-operation, Lombardian merchants skilfully connected Spanish America with Habsburg Central Europe through the Mediterranean, despite the fact that their degree of formal integration into the Spanish trading system was limited. This occurred in the episode of growth that followed the Bourbon reforms in Spain after the 1760s. Although their business networks reached a wide geographical area, Lombardian merchants also acted as intermediaries for the incorporation of the Triestinian traders into long-distance maritime trade networks, and therefore contributed to linking both ends of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.     

The funding of the PEF in its early years,associated issues and responses

ABSTRACT

The PEF was founded as a charity, relying almost entirely on public generosity for its funding. Its insecure financial basis was at odds with its ambitious programme of surveys and excavations, which required sizeable and stable funding for periods of years. This dichotomy precipitated financial crises which occasionally brought the organisation almost to its knees. Yet, despite all the odds, it managed to chalk up impressive achievements. The financial shortcomings and the ways in which they were addressed, as well as the special factors responsible for the ultimate success of early PEF endeavours, are examined and discussed.     

The business of human trafficking: slaves and money between Western Italy and the House of Islam before the crusades (c.900–c.1100)

ABSTRACT

Before the First Crusade, the maritime cities of Italy imported precious objects from Islamic regions. The question of what they exported in return has long occupied historians. Due to the large economic disparity between Latin Italy and the wealthier House of Islam, human trafficking offered a strong profit opportunity to merchants from Amalfi, Pisa and other ports. This was because the price of a slave in Egypt or North Africa, at around 20 gold dinars, represented a large sum in the silver currency zones of Latin Europe, especially compared to low prices in Italy. Even moderate numbers of trafficked humans may therefore have provided the capital for further maritime economic expansion. Moreover, slaves offered a commodity with low infrastructure and transportation requirements, unlike bulk agricultural products, as well as unique advantages in market access, which suggests that slave trading preceded investment in other branches of commerce.     

The Rothschilds in Naples

Abstract

The Rothschild bank in Naples was founded following the Restoration of 1815, and thereafter played a major role in the financial affairs of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and other Italian states until Italy’s Unification after which its operations were transferred to Turin and Rome in 1863. This article examines the career of Karl Rothschild and his son Adolphe in Naples, and describes their close contacts with the Neapolitan government, their intervention to finance the return of Pope Plus IX to Rome following the revolution of 1848–9, and their financial dealings with Cavour and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Savoy in the early 1850s. As well as contacts with the parent Rothschild banking operations in Frankfurt and London, the article examines the Rothschilds’ relations with other foreign and local bankers in Naples. It also explores their role in Neapolitan society and their role in the re-establishment of the Jewish community in Naples in 1830, which they continued to watch with interest long after the family’s banking interests in the city had been wound up.     

The Merchant Adventurers of England: The Place of the Adventurers of York and the North in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

The 1478 complaint of the northern adventurers over their alleged ill-treatment by the governor of the Londoners is the starting point for this investigation. The Merchant Adventurers of England was the popular name for the Merchants of the Nation of England trading to the Parties of Brabant, Flanders, Holland and Zeeland. Its religious fraternity was dedicated to St Thomas Becket. Its first grant of privileges was from Brabant in 1296, and its governor was made permanent and salaried in 1421. The wool merchants, including those of York, were prominent in the company until their transfer to Calais. With the decline of the wool trade and the rise of the English cloth industry, the dominant role passed to those merchants who exported cloth to the Low Countries. In York, the Mercers, the dry-goods merchants, benefited from this change, and became the leading mercantile guild of the city, incorporated in 1430. Northern adventurers suffered from considerable competition from those of London, who were numerically always able to control decisions made at the overseas meetings, and they in their turn were dominated by the Mercers of London. The complaints of 1478, nevertheless, greatly misrepresented the situation, and all branches of the company benefited from the increased privileges acquired for the English by the governor at this date in Antwerp and elsewhere. Trading conditions had again changed by the time the York Mercers were re-incorporated as the Society of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York in 1580.     

David Evans & Co. The Last of the Old London Textile Printers

Abstract

The Glasgow 'Tobacco Lords' were the subject of a classic study, but there has been no overall survey of their successors, the Scottish cotton masters. This article draws on a rich and surprisingly underused source, the wills and probate inventories of Scottish cotton merchants and manufacturers, to give a fuller picture of a group, which played a key role in Scotland's early industrialisation. It also casts light on the early decline of the cotton industry in Scotland by demonstrating how, as profits declined, the cotton masters, who had always had diverse business interests, began to move into more lucrative areas of investment, such as coal mining, iron manufacturing, railways, shipping and overseas trade.     

Midwives as expert witnesses in the 18th-century Finnish courts of justice

ABSTRACT

In this article, I will explore how legalized Finnish midwives acted as expert witnesses in court hearings before 1809, how they worded the statements they gave in court, on what grounds they decided a woman was pregnant or had given birth, and what signs they considered as indicating a miscarriage or the birth of a full-term infant. Their work as expert witnesses relied on their midwifery training as well as their learned knowledge of the anatomy of the female body and the physiology of birth. Ultimately, their knowledge was supported by contemporary guidebooks on midwifery and forensic medicine. As expert witnesses, the trained and legalized midwives of the eighteenth century can be seen as having been legally literate women, who had a duty to provide oral or written evidence to the court and other instances who demanded it. Midwives were capable of using understandable medical and legal terminology in terms of the processing of the court case in their testimony. The forensic examinations carried out by legalized midwives and the expert witness statements they gave also demonstrate the professional skills and expertise of these women.. Their testimonies also show that they were familiar with the characteristics of infanticide referred to in the Swedish medical and forensic literature.     

The Textile Fabrics of India and Huddersfield Cloth Industry

Abstract

There was a large and rapidly expanding cloth finishing industry in London in the late fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. London merchants brought provincial cloth to the City, some of which was finished prior to export, and some was finished for the City's expanding clothing industry. The success of the London Fullers and Shearmen was reflected in their merger to form the Clothworkers' Company in 1528, and their acceptance ten years later as the last and twelfth merchant company in the City. The paper traces both the economic progress of the company and some of its principal members, and the difficulties that the Fullers and Shearmen faced as they decided to merge, and then to become accepted as one of the leading companies in the City.     

Receiving Royals in Later Medieval York: Civic Ceremony and the Municipal Elite, 1478–1503

Abstract

This article examines the later medieval royal entry ceremony in York from the perspective of the social groups that designed and produced the spectacle. Deliberations of York's civic council comprise the main body of evidence for this study. It is argued that a mercantile oligarchy controlled the production of ceremony at every level. York's merchants dominated the design of civic receptions by excluding other secular and ecclesiastical groups native to the city from the decision-making process, and by resisting external interference by groups such as the nobility. The civic council made use of the topography of the city to reinforce the mercantile dimensions of the ceremony and to create a ceremonial space where they could communicate with the royal visitor. The merchant élite also adapted the form and content of the city's nuanced Corpus Christi celebrations to the royal entry. By these means they displayed and consolidated their position at the pinnacle of urban society at a time when their dominance over the city's economic, social and political structures was weakening.     

Objects for Peaceful Disordering: Indigenous Designs and Practices of Protest

Abstract

This paper identifies a number of theoretical approaches to devices known as 'lockons': sundry objects found in builders' merchants, and some people's bodies—ie peace activists pursuing non-violent direct action. This paper raises the possibility that the transforming power of designing may be enhanced if it is acknowledged that it is most powerful when it takes place in full articulation with practices.     

‘Russian merchant’ legacies in post-Soviet trade with China: Moral economy,economic success and business innovation in Yiwu

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on Russian traders operating in China, particularly in Yiwu, the major commercial hub for the ‘small commodity’ trade, and explores the idea of the ‘Russian merchant’ prevalent in Russia today. Rather than examining the new commercial culture from the perspective of global neoliberalism, it deals with Russia’s pre-Soviet merchant estate (soslovie) and its present-day political-ideological evocations. While there is no direct cultural-professional continuity between pre-Soviet and post-Soviet merchants, some similarities have come to the fore and have been encouraged by the state and the Church. This is due to the promotion of a particular moral economy wherein the ‘Russian merchant’ figures as a positive category. Using a case study of a Russian trader in Yiwu, the article illustrates the new ways in which mistrust as well as ‘traditional’ merchant attributes such as patriotism and patriarchal authority, have been harnessed to create a successful Russian transnational business.     

A Genoese merchant and banker in the Kingdom of Naples: Ottavio Serra and his business network in the Spanish polycentric system,c.1590–1620

Abstract

The dense Genoese commercial networks – which were present in all territories under Spanish rule, fairs, commercial emporia and battlefields – were an essential factor for the survival of the crown. This raises some doubts about the dominating influence posed, according to traditional accounts, by the court in Madrid; the court was, indeed, a point of reference for the Genoese merchant families but by no means the only one. In fact, the Genoese always took care to be present in important harbours and markets, such as Naples, where they often had correspondents to look after the family’s multiple interests.

This article revolves around the crucial role played by Ottavio Serra (1570–1639), son of Giovambattista Serra, ‘signore’ of Carovigno and an active merchant and moneychanger in the viceroyalty of Naples during the first two decades of the seventeeth century. The importance of Ottavio was not limited to his participation in the economic life of Naples. The analysis of Ottavio’s activity as financial agent for his relatives and partners in Madrid, Genoa and Piacenza, among other locations, as well as the examination of his links with a great variety of economic centres in the Mezzogiorno, presents early-modern Naples as a highly ‘internationalised’ centre in the context of the polycentric Hispanic imperial system.     

The Chiming of Crack’d Bells: Recent Approaches to the Study of Artefacts in Archaeology

Abstract

CROSS PENDANTS, decorated with a ring-and-dot motif and made out of Whitby jet, have been found as far away as Norway and Greenland. This paper catalogues this unique group of artefacts and discusses their context. Their distribution is centred in Yorkshire, suggesting that they were made at Whitby Abbey in the late 12th century. Combining the power of the Christian cross with the magical properties of jet, they were likely worn as protective amulets.     

Science and society The natural–unnatural dualism

Abstract

Science provides knowledge that technology transforms into means of action. Their impact on society will depend on effective use being made of these means. The chemical and physical sciences have profoundly modified mankind's living conditions, chemistry in particular playing a central role. Its creative power has made available new materials and a range of new processes for transforming matter. As a result, the question of control of science by society has become more and more relevant. Effective control requires that the public and decision makers be provided with information for evaluating the potential impact of technology on society as well as for preserving the necessary freedom of scientific research and safeguarding the quest for knowledge.     

List of figures

Although the general historical context of Christine de Pizan's Livre du corps de policie (LCP), the Orleanist-Burgundian feud occasioned by the periodic insanity of King Charles VI, has long been recognised, the precise argument that the author wages through her unique configuration of the third part of the body politic has not been explored. This essay reads the LCP as an intervention into the escalating struggle for power between Charles VI's brother, the duke of Orleans, and his cousin, the duke of Burgundy. Christine's purpose emerges most clearly in her peculiar arrangement of the third part of her body politic, le peuple, where two points bear particular consideration: her inclusion of the University and her division of the ‘merchants’ across two separate categories, a repartition which seems to refer to the contemporary distinction between the highly-placed merchants of Paris and the butchers. Christine seems to be arguing that if the University were to make common cause with the ruling burghers and well-placed merchants, they could force into submission their more restless brothers and sisters, the butchers and their thuggish followers, whom the duke of Burgundy would finally convince to rise up in 1413 in what has become known as the Cabochian Revolt.     

Regional contrasts in the growth of Canadian cities

Summary

As a result of the growth of the last five decades, Canadian cities have advanced from a subordinate to a dominant position in the population pattern and the economic life of the Dominion. Their rates of growth, moreover, faithfully reflect major changes in the settlement of the regions of which they are a part. In addition, they are significant as measuring the progress of urbanisation on the poleward margin of the urban area of North America.