This study seeks to ascertain the identification and origins of the commodities in trade between the Levant and Aegean during the Persian period, ca. 540-330 B.C.  Using Semitic and Greek textual sources, as well as numismatic, epigraphic and archaeological evidence, I identify and discuss nearly 200 commodities, including spices, pigments, dyes, chemicals, and manufactured items such as coinage and ceramics.  In the final chapter, a synthesis of the material is presented along with the historic and economic conclusions for Persian period trade that can be drawn from the assembled evidence.

The quest for saltpeter, the 'inestimable treasure' of Tudor and Stuart monarchs, crucial for the production of gunpowder, is the subject of David Cressy's work, which spans the reign of the first Tudor, Henry VII, to the industrialised warfare of the 20th century. Cressy boldly sets out the importance of his topic, describing it as a special commodity, vital for the national security of the nation, which pitted the needs of the state against the rights of the individual. These are issues which are pertinent to the modern era, as revealed by the recent leaks of the NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden.

Most studies of global commodities trace the flow of exotics into Europe.  Mediterranean red coral, Corallium rubrum, was one of the few European commodities to find markets in eighteenth-century Asia.  This paper reconstructs the nodes of the early-modern ‘coral network’ to Qing China (1644 - 1911), via East India Company records.  This allows us to understand the some of the mechanisms through which a sought after Chinese ‘curiosity’, reached the imperial court.  Red coral was incorporated into a range of imperial artefacts, from court necklaces to miniature landscapes.  The distance that coral travelled was one factor behind the cultural value ascribed to it.  In addition, coral’s colour, form and provenance allowed multi-layered, long-standing associations to be projected upon it. 

In China, shanhu, entered complex local tribute-giving, focused on the imperial court. Red coral was incorporated into tribute gifts crafted in Guangdong’s workshops by officials for their emperor.  Further, coralline gifts were presented by European embassies eager to secure trade advantages in the tea, silk and porcelain markets.

The ‘coral network’ connected fishermen, merchants, naval captains, officials and craftsmen with the Qing court.  Each playing a role in the transformation of red coral to precious imperial treasure.

Durante el siglo XX el café se convirtió en una importante
mercancía y, por lo tanto, en un producto capaz de interconectar
diferentes mundos. Desde mediados del siglo XIX se habían
establecido estrechas redes entre Hamburgo y Bremen, los
dos principales puertos importadores de café en Alemania,
con América Central. Esta región adquirió relevancia en
el comercio mundial del café, dado que fue la primera en
introducir el procedimiento denominado “beneficio húmedo”
en el procesamiento del grano. Su alta calidad hizo del café
centroamericano un producto bastante codiciado en el mercado
mundial. En este proceso, fueron los inmigrantes alemanes en
Centroamérica quienes consolidaron la conexión comercial
entre esa región cafetalera y las ciudades portuarias del norte
de Alemania. Ellos fundaron compañías de exportación,
adquirieron plantaciones de café y se involucraron en la
infraestructura del transporte que permitió la circulación del
producto.
Christiane Berth analiza las biografías y las redes de los
migrantes alemanes que se convirtieron en los actores centrales
del comercio cafetalero entre Alemania y América Central
(tomando como referencia los casos de Guatemala, Costa Rica
y Chiapas). Con ello, muestra cómo las redes comerciales que
se establecieron alrededor de este producto se volvieron frágiles
debido a crisis económicas y a los vaivenes de la política exterior
en tiempos turbulentos que van desde las dos guerras mundiales
hasta la Posguerra. A pesar de todas las transformaciones
sufridas en este tiempo, todavía se pueden encontrar hasta
la fecha rastros de las conexiones comerciales establecidas
alrededor del café centroamericano desde la mitad del siglo
XIX.

L'articolo si propone di ricostruire i principali meccanismi di rilevazione dei prezzi di beni dei settori produttivi primario e secondario in uso presso il sistema nazionale delle camere di commercio, a partire da un loro inquadramento storico e normativo, con una panoramica delle più aggiornate modalità borsistiche invece invalse all'estero; approfondimenti sono anche dedicati alle commissioni uniche nazionali in corso d'istituzione in Italia per la definizione dei prezzi di un numero crescente di prodotti agro-alimentari. Infine, viene formulata una proposta di applicazione diretta della normativa antitrust nei confronti di enti pubblici nei casi in cui le rispettive condotte siano assimilabili a quelle di associazioni d'impresa.

The article aims to reconstruct the main mechanisms for detecting the prices of goods of the primary and secondary sectors currently adopted in Italy through the national system of the chambers of commerce. An historical and regulatory framework is provided, together with an overview of the more updated stock exchange methods established abroad for the trading of commodities. An analysis is then dedicated to the ongoing establishment in Italy of Exclusive National Commissions (Commissioni Uniche Nazionali, CUN), in charge for defining the prices of a growing number of agro-food commodities. A proposal is also developed in order to directly apply the antitrust discipline to public bodies when their conducts might be assimilated to the ones of associations of undertakings.

Around 1500, Nuremberg merchants began to market all over Europe brass thimbles produced in this city by specialized artisans. Nuremberg thimbles quickly became THE export commodity.

Germans merchants based in Lisbon, used Lisbon, its shipping routes and trade networks to export Nuremberg thimbles to Portuguese Asia and further abroad in the Far East, as the 1533 shipwreck of the Bom Jesus nau off the Skeleton Coast in Namibia confirms. Dozens of Nuremberg thimbles were found in the excavations.

This article examines Nuremberg brass thimbles exported to Ceylon in the 16th century, and how craftsmen at the royal court of Kotte transformed European models into exclusive luxury goods made of gold and set with precious stones.

The article focuses on one such rare Ceylonese thimble to have survived - a hybrid commodity linking east and west.

The author is broadly interested in: law and history; slavery and freedom; colonialism and decolonization; cultural history; besides discussions on race, sexuality, gender, and discrimination. João Sodré has published articles, among them "Subaltern Spaces and Diasporic Imaginaries in Rio de Janeiro's Valongo Wharf" (Tinta Journal,

This is the syllabus for my entry level survey course, "Global History to 1500." This is the online version of the course (which runs for 7.5 weeks), which has been much modified from the original face-to-face, 15-week version. -- The course employs three major concepts: (1) that humans are indeed distinctive in being a global species; (2) that all members of our species, throughout the planet, share seven basic traits (e.g., use of tools & efforts to harness various energy sources) that can be used to classify different modes of adapting to various climates and circumstances; and (3) that using the notion of *scale* (local, regional, hemispheric, global) can offer a means to frame and understand human history up to the point of sustained global connections ca. 1500. --  Themes include human migrations; domestication of both plants & animals; urbanization & empire-building; trade & commodity history; slavery; climate change; and major infectious diseases. The syllabus includes topical headings and lists all assigned Study Materials, as well as suggestions for Further Reading. Information on individual assignments can be requested directly from the author/instructor of record: monica.h.green@gmail.com.

Following the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the Levant in 1516-17, administrators of the empire began to experiment with several innovative strategies to increase the total volume of the spice trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, and to maximize the state's share of its revenues. These became progressively more sophisticated over time, until by the end of the 1560s a comprehensive infrastructure was in place, including a rationalized empire-wide tax regime for regulating private trade, a network of "imperial factors" who bought spices for the sultan in overseas emporiums, and an annual convoy of spice galleys that shipped cargoes of state-owned pepper from the Yemen to the markets of Egypt and Istanbul. All of this, combined with natural advantages of geography and the goodwill of Muslim traders in the Indian Ocean, enabled the Ottomans to mount a formidable challenge to the "pepper monopoly" of the Portuguese Estado da India.

The essay aims to «spatialize» microhistory, that is, it proposes a microhistory sensitive to spatiality. I therefore seek to outline a historiographical approach capable of deconstructing the alleged universality of the macro-analytical categories used to describe historical phenomena that at the same time addresses the dialectics between the singularity of each site and the connections produced among sites by the circulation of individuals, objects, ideas, and representations. The essay is divided into four parts. The first section focuses on the way distinct microhistorical approaches have related to the issue of space. The second investigates research strategies that have emerged in the past decade in order to write «global microhistories». In the third section I highlight the key elements of a trans-local microhistory (or "micro-spatial history") through examples drawn from my research in the fields of convict labour and the history of psychiatry. The final section contends that trans-local microhistory is part of global history, and I draw out broader implications for the field.

From the death of his father in 1532, to his own demise in 1563, Teodósio I led the wealthiest, most prominent and powerful family of the Portuguese nobility as the 5th Duke of Bragança ( .1). 1 He married twice, fi rst to Isabel, who bore him his fi rst son and heir, John, and later to Beatrice with whom he had two more children, James and Isabel. Thus when he died, survived by four heirs, his estate had to be divided in unequal parts which were very diffi cult to determine, a delicate and diffi cult task that, we know now, was never really completed. 2 In order to solve this problem, an extraordinary inventory was made listing the contents of the family's main palace, in Vila Viçosa, in the southeast of Portugal ( .2). 3 Its making involved almost thirty men and women of various professional specialties, some recruited from the service of the ducal house, others brought all the way from Lisbon, and it took them the better part of four years to put together over 650 folios (1,300-plus pages), collecting 6,000-plus entries, several of which are very detailed and encompass many objects. It is the largest inventory to have survived from sixteenth-century Portugal and one of the largest of the same period in Europe. It lists everything that could be found inside the ducal palace at the time of the duke's death, 4 from the duchess's dresses to the duke's cuffl inks, from the pots and pans in the kitchen to the eucharistic vessels in the chapel, from the shields and daggers kept in the duke's armory to the silver and gold objects he displayed at his table.

Esta investigación busca analizar las transformaciones y permanencias en los procesos de extracción, circulación y consumo del palo de Brasil procedente de la Nueva Granada en los siglos XVIII y XIX. Se hace énfasis en el palo de Brasil extraído en la provincia colonial de Santa Marta y distribuido hacia Europa y Estados Unidos entre 1770 y 1850. Aunque el objetivo central de esta investigación es hacer un acercamiento general a una materia prima poco estudiada, hay cuatro hipótesis generales que le sirven de guía. Primero, se propone que las rutas ilegales del palo de Brasil tienden a la persistencia a lo largo del periodo estudiado y representan la diversidad pero al mismo tiempo la continuidad de las conexiones comerciales atlánticas; mientras que las legales, más dependientes de la política oficial, tienden al cambio y la ruptura. Segundo, se busca mostrar que el palo de Brasil representó la percepción que se tuvo en los siglos XVIII y XIX sobre la provincia de Santa Marta como una “promesa no cumplida”, es decir, como un lugar con un gran potencial por su naturaleza y ubicación, pero que se mantuvo en la pobreza debido a diferentes “obstáculos” económicos, políticos y demográficos. Tercero, se propone que el comercio del palo de Brasil ayudó a los guajiros a mantener su autonomía frente al poder central de la Nueva Granada. Por último, se argumenta que, en general, en Europa el palo de Brasil fue visto como un tinte de segunda categoría; y que, en particular, en España se vio como una materia prima extranjera a pesar provenir de las colonias españolas. De esta manera, se busca hacer un aporte a la Historia Atlántica y del Caribe, desde la perspectiva de la historia de las mercancías.


"This research aims to analyze the changes and continuities in the processes of extraction, distribution and consumption of New Granada's brazilwood  in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Emphasis is placed on brazilwood  extracted from the colonial province of Santa Martha and distributed to Europe and the United States between 1770 and 1850. Although the main objective of this research is to make a general approach to a scarcely studied raw material, there are four general hypotheses guiding it. First it is proposed that illegal  brazilwood trade routes tend to persistence throughout the period studied and represent the diversity but also the continuity of transatlantic commercial connections; while legal, more dependent on government policy, tend to change and rupture. Secondly, seeks to show that the brazilwood represented the eighteenth and nineteenth century perception of the province of Santa Marta as a "broken promise", that is, as a place with great natural potential that remained in poverty due to different economic, political and demographic "obstacles". Thirdly, it is proposed that the brazilwood trade helped the guajiros to maintain their autonomy from the central government of New Granada. Finally, is argued that, in general, in Europe brazilwood  was seen as a second class dye, and that, in particular, in Spain it was seen as a foreign raw material despite its american origin. Consequently, this investigation seeks to make a contribution to Atlantic and Caribbean history, through the perspective of commodity history. "

Klemens KAPS / Miroslav LACKO: Sixth European Congress on World and Global History – Double Panel: Mining and its Commodities as Wheels of the Early-Modern Global Economy, online 18. Juni 2021 [Tagungsbericht], in: Der Anschnitt - Zeitschrift für Montangeschichte 74/1 (2022), pp. 58-61. ISSN 0003-5238.

LACKO, Miroslav. Protoglobalisierung im oberungarischen Metallhandel: Göllnitzer Bergbaurevier im ‚langen‘ 16. Jahrhundert [Proto-Globalization in the Upper Hungarian Metal Trade: Mining District of Gelnica in the 'long' 16th Century]. In: Montánna história 10 (2017-2018), pp. 34-89. ISSN 1338-5984. ISBN 978-80-970973-7-0.

A era moderna foi marcada por fluxos de pessoas, ideias e bens em proporções inéditas -fluxos que conectaram os destinos das Américas, da África e da Europa e formaram o que historiadores descrevem como um "mundo Atlântico". A história das principais mercadorias que constituíram esse mundo estará no centro da presente disciplina. Como era produzido o café adoçado que se bebia nas casas especializadas (espaços que, se seguirmos o argumento de Jurgen Habermas, estiveram no centro da formação de uma esfera pública europeia)? Qual foi o impacto humano e ecológico dos novos padrões de moda e consumo possibilitados pela formação desse novo mundo Atlântico? Com discussões em torno das trajetórias de mercadorias específicas -da produção ao consumo -, serão abordados temas como formas de trabalho, expansão comercial, rivalidades inter-imperiais, padrões de consumo e a formação de novas identidades e hierarquias.

The landscapes of the Greater Caribbean have been undergoing a process of ecological globalization since the arrival of European explorers and settlers in the late fifteenth century. The character of this ecological globalization has changed over time. Models of commodity-led economic development drove, directly or indirectly, the neo-Columbian exchanges of the long nineteenth century (roughly 1720-1930). The neo-Columbian exchanges differed from the Columbian exchanges of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in several key ways: They were increasingly mediated by imperial and transnational scientific institutions. The geographical scope of the exchanges grew, and the Greater Caribbean saw many new direct introductions of people, plants, and animals from Asia and the Pacific, as well as from the eastern part of the Atlantic World. A parallel movement of pathogens from Asia and the Pacific also introduced new epidemic diseases—especially crop diseases—to the Greater Caribbean. The neo-Columbian exchange drove the region's dramatic expansion in agricultural production, but this constructed abundance came at the expense of ecological impoverishment and fragility.
Resumen:
El medio ambiente en el Caribe ha experimentado un proceso creciente de globalización desde la llegada de los exploradores y colonos europeos a finales del siglo XV. El carácter de esta globalizacóin ecológica ha ido cambiando a lo largo del tiempo. Los intercambios que se produjeron durante lo que se puede llamar el largo siglo XIX (aproximadamente 1720–1930) fueron consecuencia directa o indirecta de un modelo de desarrollo económico basado en determinados bienes y productos. Dichos intercambios, denominados en el artóículo "The Neo-Columbian Exchange", se diferencian de los que ocurrieron en el siglo XVI y XVII, conocidos en inglés por "the Columbian Exchange", en aspectos claves. Por un lado, estuvieron cada vez más mediados por instituciones cientí: cas de carácter imperial y trasnacional. Por otro, el ámbito geográfico en el que se llevaron a cabo dichos intercambios creció considerablemente y el Caribe asistió a la introducción directa de nuevas poblaciones, plantas y animales provenientes de Asia y el Pacífico así como de la parte oriental del mundo atlántico. Todo ello fue acompañado por un movimiento paralelo de patógenos provenientes de las regiones mencionadas que introdujeron nuevas enfermedades, principalmente en las cosechas. Dichos intercambios constituyeron agentes fundamentales en la dramática expansión de producción agrícola que experimentó la región, pero la abundancia se produjo a costa de una mayor fragilidad y empobrecimiento ecológico.

Nearly all discussion in historical archaeology exploring issues of consumption and commodities is focused on the Euro-American world. This paper contributes data from archaeological investigations in the Middle East for exploring modern consumption. Commodities of pleasure, such as tobacco and coffee, entered Middle Eastern social life after the fifteenth century and greatly impacted the cultural landscape of the Middle East, entangling the peoples of the region into larger socio-political arenas. Examples from provincial corners of the Ottoman Empire illustrate the potential of historical archaeology for uncovering the material self-definition of peoples in the Middle East and for breaking down perceived divisions between components of the modern world.

The study of the movement of ‘things’ — the exchange of objects as gifts or through trade, the itineraries that they followed when on the move, and their changing importance from location to location — can offer unique insights into our understanding of past societies; and archaeology plays a vital role in allowing such movements to be traced. Nonetheless the circulation of objects across time, and between peoples and places, has long been neglected as a field of research in its own right. This volume aims to address this gap in scholarship by drawing on recent archaeological research to provide a detailed study of the moment of objects across Europe in the late medieval and early modern period. The contributions gathered here trace the interactions between peoples, ideas, and objects in order to explore the impact of movement both on the material things themselves, and on the people who manufactured, exchanged, or used such goods. The volume draws on a wide range of archaeological evidence to explore subjects as varied as production and transport, modes of trade, the connections between trade and religion, and the emotional connections between things and people. Together, they offer a pioneering approach to our understanding of objects and their movement in the past.

During the premodern era, folding fans were among the few handicrafts that China imported from Japan. The availability of Japanese folding fans in China changed along with Sino-Japanese relations. They were rare during the Northern Song due to the suspension of diplomatic relations, but after the Ming court reestablished a tributary relationship with the Ashikaga shogunate in the early fifteenth century, many more Japanese folding fans entered China via tribute trade. The scholar-officials, who generally admired the delicate Japanese-made folding fans, chose to emphasize different values of the fans in different contexts. The Japanese folding fans were “useless tribute” in the scholar-officials' public writings, but in reality the “Japan” brand actually increased the commercial value of the fans in the market.

This paper aims at presenting the forthcoming school textbook 'A Global History of Humanity' that spans from 70.000 BCE till the 21 st century and narrates a global history of our world assuming a non-Eurocentric and non-nationalist perspective. The textbook covers the history of humanity through three volumes, combining a chronological and a thematic approach. Each volume is divided into three chronological chapters. Each chapter presents the four themes in which the textbook is structured: humans change nature; humans on the move; social organization and inequality; worldviews. The last part of this paper ties the long history of humanity narrated through the textbook to today's central questions, discussing the conditions in which we find ourselves today and the challenges we are facing in the coming years.

This material was presented at two conferences in October 2017: the "Indian Ocean World Centre Graduate Conference" at McGill University and "South-South II: Materiality and Embodiment in Greater Asia and Africa" at Columbia University. It was developed further at the Natural Things conference in April 2019. I am indebted to the organizers and attendees for their formative feedback.

Historians have traced changes in early modern trade networks in the South Mediterranean and Indian Ocean World by focusing on certain commodities: coffee, tea, tobacco, chocolate, and more recently, China Root. I propose to examine the way the dominant system of medicine across much of Eurasia - known as Graeco-Arabic or Unani medicine - appropriated and naturalized new substances, especially China Root. In this presentation, I will focus on unpublished Persian treatises on the China Root, coffee and tea, which circulated between Iran and South Asia in the 16th-18th centuries. I will augment this with analyses of compendia of materia medica, like Nūr al-Dīn al- Shīrāzī’s (fl. 1650) Alfāẓ Adwiyya and Muḥammad Akbar Arzānī’s (d. 1722) Qarābādhīn-i- Qādirī. China Root, known as Chūp Chīnī or Old World smilax, was used as a food source in China before it was used as a medicine for syphilis in the sixteenth century. Though it was eventually overshadowed by American guaiacum/sarsaparilla in trans-Atlantic markets, recent scholarship on the topic demonstrates its continued prominence among practitioners of Ayurvedic and Unani medicine. How did physicians at the Mughal court, like Ḥakīm Mirzā Qāḍī Yazdī, adapt the novel substance to suit the particularities of their localities, climates and bodily constitutions? Why was a treatise on this topic by Persian physician ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī so widely copied and circulated in South Asia? Finally, why are China Root, coffee and tea grouped together in many of these treatises? In exploring the answers to these questions, the presentation will also engage with the statement made in each treatise that no earlier generations of physicians had written about China Root or syphilis. How did this admission of novelty affect each physician’s view of his individual role in relation to the broader medical tradition?

En el presente ensayo se estudian las percepciones y diálogos entre China y Europa mediante el análisis de áreas geopolíticas estratégicas que fomentaron el comercio, las relaciones internacionales y redes socio-económicas entre China y Europa. Nos centramos en un particular caso de estudio comparativo: Macao, como puerto que conecta con el sur de China y las rutas del galeón Manila-Acapulco, siendo eje vertebrador de una temprana globalización que integraba los mercados de Occidente y Oriente; y Marsella, como enclave portuario en el Mediterráneo que enlaza con las rutas de comercio oriental. Tal comparación puede ayudar a enriquecer el debate sobre la gran divergencia mediante un caso de estudio concreto con el fin de observar los asimétricos modelos de crecimiento económico de China y Europa a través del análisis de redes de comercio y cambios en el consumo.

Using data from little known eighteenth-century Dutch, Swedish and Danish documents, this article reveals the important, but previously obscured, commercial connections between eighteenth-century Canton and Nanyang Chinese and Southeast Asian commodity producers at the time. Southeast Asian imports – tin, sago and rattan – were integral to the growth of Canton’s premier export trade, tea, as well as to other
manufactures prized by Europeans, diasporic Chinese, and local peoples in the Nanyang. This article examines the new data and shows how it sheds new light on the complex interplay between trade, economic growth, economic growth, and 18th century socio-economic change as it occurred simultaneously on different shores of the South China Sea.

This year's annual Commodities of Empire international workshop will take place from 14 to 15 July 2022 at the Freie Universität Berlin, in collaboration with the DFG funded project Commodifying Cattle. It investigates livestock commodities and commodification processes in global and imperial history. Deadline for the submission of paper proposals is 31st of January.
https://commoditiesofempire.org.uk/events/workshop-2022/

For several centuries, salt cod have been a staple food in Spain and Portugal. We tend today to forget that the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula also ate stockfish during the same period. This
paper will review issues and historical evidence related to the air-dried unsalted cod consumption in these two countries, from the beginning of the Middle Ages to the present days. The goal is to re-evaluate the rewriting of the Iberian cod saga in the context of the ongoing attempt to revaluing the Catalan cuisine as an intangible cultural heritage and to promoting food tourism in the ports of the Costa Brava

The word livestock itself suggests the reduction of animals as living things to animals as economic goods. Disaggregating the term into its component parts-live and stock-also suggest the difficulty of rendering things that are alive into things that are stocked, especially on large or predicable scales. The be alive is biological; living things breathe, eat, defecate, move, sleep, grow, reproduce, connect with others, get sick, die. To be stock, on the other hand, is economic; stocks are things held and exchanged. In capitalist relations specifically, livestock (and livestock parts) are owned, quantified, rationalized, commodified, specialized, simplified, contracted, accumulated, speculated upon, traded, sold.

Title:  Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550-1800
Volume Editor: Tamara H. Bentley
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Series: Visual & Material Culture, 1300-1700

Combining strikingly new scholarship by art historians, historians, and ethnomusicologists, this interdisciplinary volume illuminates trade ties within East Asia, and from East Asia outwards, in the years 1550 to 1800. While not encyclopedic, the selected topics greatly advance our sense of this trade picture. Throughout the book, multi-part trade structures are excavated; the presence of European powers within the Asian trade nexus features as part of this narrative. Visual goods are highlighted, including lacquerwares, paintings, prints, musical instruments, textiles, ivory sculptures, unfired ceramic portrait figurines, and Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Southeast Asian ceramic vessels. These essays underscore the significance of Asian industries producing multiples, and the rhetorical charge of these goods, shifting in meaning as they move. Everyday commodities are treated as well; for example, the trans-Pacific trade in contraband mercury, used in silver refinement, is spelled out in detail. Building reverberations between merchant networks, trade goods, and the look of the objects themselves, this richly-illustrated book brings to light the Asian trade engine powering the early modern visual cultures of East and Southeast Asia, the American colonies, and Europe.

Table of contents:
Chapter One:  People and Things in Motion: The View from the East
by Tamara H. Bentley


I: CIRCUITS AND EXCHANGES

Chapter Two:  The Maritime Trading World of East Asia from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries by Richard von Glahn

Chapter Three:  The Junk Trade and Hokkien Merchant Networks
in Maritime Asia: 1570—1760 by James K. Chin

Chapter Four:  The Trade Activities of 16th century Christian Daimyo Otomo Sorin
by Hiroko Nishida


II: COMMODITIES

Chapter Five:  From Global to Local: The Diaspora of Asian Decorative Arts
in Colonial Latin America by Donna Pierce

Chapter Six: Trans-Pacific Connections: Contraband Mercury Trade in the 16th to early 18th Century by Angela Schottenhammer

Chapter Seven:  “the Features are Esteem’d very just”: Chinese Unfired Clay Portrait Figures of Westerners by William R. Sargent


III: HYBRID AESTHETICS

Chapter Eight:  The Global Keyboard: Music, Visual Forms,
and Maritime Trade in the Early Modern Era by Victoria Levine

Chapter Nine  Barbarian Tropes Framed Anew: Three Qing Dynasty Chinese Lacquer Screens of Europeans Hunting by Tamara H. Bentley

Chapter Ten:  Chinese Porcelain, the East India Company and British Cultural Identity, 1600-1800 by Stacey Pierson

Index