Trading Cultures The Worlds of Western Merchants : Essays on Authority, Objectivity, and Evidence

The essays in this volume confront stereotypical images of merchants as men, and sometimes women, who stood outside their cultures, beyond history. Ranging across eras, from medieval business practices to modern hucksterism of autobiographical morality tales, the authors of this volume find that merchants cannot be separated from their times. From the (Ottoman) Middle East to the (American) Midwest, the contributors to Trading Cultures emphasize the embeddedness of merchants in geographically and culturally specific contexts. The trading careers reconstructed in this book dwell on mercantile concerns with honor as much as profit, trust as much as truck, and, above all, familial connections as much as individuated enterprise.