Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000–1900 ed. by Francesca Trivellato, Leor Halevi, and Cátia Antunes (review)

This book deals with a variety of loosely connected subjects under the rubric of trade among peoples of different cultures. It covers medieval and early modern Mediterranean Christian–Muslim trade, kinship and religion–based trade in France and Holland, the politics of state–church–merchant relations in Portugal, the production of African sculptures for European consumption, and Muslim pilgrimage in the Indian Ocean. The strengths of the book are its deeply documented historical-anthropological studies, but the individual articles do not lend themselves to broad generalizations about methodology nor about the global development of trade, economies, and empires. Nor does the book consider, except in one chapter about African sculptures, the impact of trade on the economies, societies, and cultures of the participants.

The book suggests that despite cultural barriers, trade was not difficult to arrange. British trade with the indigenous peoples of Newfoundland worked perfectly well without any common language or culture due to an implied shared understanding of gift-giving rituals. Each side offered its goods; the other side indicated either acceptance by taking them or refusal by leaving them.

In the Mediterranean, even in the midst of Christian—Muslim hostilities, the ransoming of prisoners and trade was routine. Ordinarily trade took place in fondacos, warehouses, and residences for foreign merchants to facilitate taxation and control of markets, to inhibit foreigners from entering freely into general society, and to protect them from local hostility or criminality. Exchanges were facilitated by experienced middlemen, bilateral treaties, shared customary, and legal norms, as well as, presumably, common ideas of fairness, reciprocity, and trust. For example, a Muslim legal decree (fatwa) from Granada defended the ransom of Christian prisoners as necessary for assuring the well-being of captive Muslims, for honoring contracts, and for creating moral obligations. Trade was often facilitated by resident foreigners, diaspora and hybrid populations, renegades, Jewish converts to Christianity, and other marginalized people who served as intermediaries.

The collected articles show that although some traders operated within kinship networks and religious communities—such as Jews, Armenians, and Parsees—minorities often participated in larger trading networks. Religious strictures were often relaxed, mitigated, and bypassed. Rabbis in medieval Europe allowed Jews to deal lawfully with non-Jews. In Morocco, Jews and Muslims mixed in the bazaars. In seventeenth-century Bordeaux, business connections among people of different religions were ordinary. By the end of the eighteenth century, Jews and Christians in Amsterdam, London, and Livorno had merged in finance and other joint ventures on a purely capitalist basis. Law, local administration, and reputation in the same city replaced intra-group solidarity as assurances of reliability.

The biggest problem in cross-cultural trade was not negotiating among merchants of different cultures but overcoming non-merchant prejudices, religious laws, and the political interests of rulers. Religious restrictions on certain goods—especially foods, clothes, and weapons— helped to prevent contamination and to maintain the boundaries between peoples. For example, Muslim authorities forbade sales of the Qur’an, candles, spices, slaves, and weapons to Christians.

The story of Portuguese trade in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans affords a particularly rich example of the complications that attended trade, religion, and politics. Portuguese trade was tied to conversion and conquest. The Portuguese Crown created its own council of lawyers and theologians to make the king independent of the papacy, and to use royal authority to enhance political and economic control over merchants.

In all of the cases studied in the book, traders had the upper hand. Making money trumped the cultural and political goals of non-traders.