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Like other “Oriental” luxuries in the Middle Ages, Asian precious stones – diamonds from India, rubies from Ceylon and Siam – mostly reached Europe through the Venetian Levant trade. By the end of the Middle Ages, Venice was sourcing most of its gemstone imports from Aleppo (Syria) and Alexandria (Egypt). Advances in processing now won the diamond notable popularity in Europe. Diamond polishers, attested from the 15th century in Venice, Bruges, Paris, and Antwerp, brought out the transparency of…

1. Introduction Before the innovations in navigation technology in the 14th and 15th centuries and the subsequent voyages of discovery, long-distance trade between global regions mostly took the land route. The arid regions of the Asian interior, the Orient, and the Sahara presented considerable obstacles here, and traders had to deal with extreme fluctuations of temperature, scarcity of food and water, and a terrain that generally offered few navigational landmarks. From Antiquity until the 20th…

1. IntroductionThe foundation of the English East India Company (EIC) and the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) around 1600 equipped the sea powers of northwestern Europe with a new type of corporation, furnished with state privileges, commercial monopolies, and sovereign rights overseas, that would develop over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries into the dominant organizational form of the European Asia trade. After 1620, a number of privileged trading companies mode…

In historical studies of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period (14th–18th centuries), the terms  trading empire and  merchant empire refer primarily to the Mediterranean world and the Indian Ocean [1]; [5]; [6]. The prototypes are the trading empires of the republics of Genoa and Venice in the Mediterranean and the Asian trading empires of Portugal in the 16th century and the East India companies of Northern and Western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. In these trading empires, direct colonial rule (Colonia…

Within a few years of the discovery of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama in 1497/98, the Portuguese had built an extensive network of bases in the Indian Ocean stretching as far as the Strait of Malacca in the east. Although word of the wealth of China and Japan had fired the imaginations of Europeans since the reports of Marco Polo, forging commercial relations with these empires initially proved difficult.When the first Portuguese arrived in Japan in 1543, the country was riven by conflicts between regional princes ( daimyo). Some of them welcomed the Portuguese as tradin…

1. The beginnings of trade-relations between native Americans and Europeans After the Spaniards had subjugated the great indigenous empires of continental Central and SouthAmerica (Conquista), they set up a colonial government and secured for themselves the control over productive land as well as the affiliated trade monopolies (Colonial empire); the trade with the native population was more or less restricted to barter in hard-to-access frontier regions. In pre-1600North America, however,  all European a…

1. Introduction The great importance of animals to humans, as food, means of transport and propulsion, and prestige objects and status symbols, was reflected in a complex animal trade in the early modern period. Distinctions can be made between the trade in animals for slaughter (Cattle, Sheep, Pig) to supply urban populations (Livestock), the trade in horses as a versatile riding, draft, and working animal (see below, 3.), and the trade in exotic animals in the context of elites’ appetite for lux…

Pearls (probably from Vulgar Latin  pernula; “haunch,” “sea-mussel”) - accretions of mother-of-pearl, generally around the size of a pea and spherical or pear-shaped, that form in response to irritation in freshwater and seawater bivalves, became exceedingly popular jewelry items and status symbols for the social elites of Europe and Asia in ancient times and have remained so ever since (cf. also Crown [symbol of sovereignty]). Until the early modern period, oriental pearls from the Gulf of Persia an…

1. DefinitionPlantations are large agricultural operations, found mostly in the tropics and subtropics, that produce commodities for trans-regional markets. In contrast to haciendas, which mostly produced grain and cattle for regional markets, early modern plantations concentrated on cash crops like sugar, tobacco, cotton, and coffee, whose production was usually highly labor-intensive; they also contributed little to self-sufficiency. Also in contrast to haciendas, it was unusual on plantations …

1. Africa In the late Middle Ages, the high material and symbolic value of gold in Europe, helped by a generally low price point, led to rising demand that the Central- and Eastern-European deposits could no longer supply. This shortage made the search for gold deposits outside of Europe attractive; the centuries-long phenomenon of African gold arriving in the Mediterranean from the Sahara via the caravan trade was an important motivation for the Portuguese voyages of discovery (see Expansionism) …

1. DefinitionThe term  enclosure denotes the allocation of agricultural land formerly worked in common to individual property owners and the associated transformation of the English countryside by the erection of fences, walls, and hedges, along with the layout of new roads and paths. Enclosure also superseded tithes;  the beneficiaries were compensated with land.Mark Häberlein2. HistoryIn England enclosure began in the late Midle Ages; in the southern Midlands, by the late 17th century a third of the agricultural land had already been enclosed.…

1. Begriff und GegenstandW. bezeichnet heute die Übervorteilung eines Marktteilnehmers bei Waren- und Kreditgeschäften sowie beim Abschluss von Arbeitsverträgen unter Ausnutzung der Notlage, des Leichtsinns oder der Marktunkenntnis des Betroffenen und wird im bürgerlichen Recht sowie im Strafrecht geahndet. Die moderne Definition geht allerdings von einer Unterscheidung zwischen W. und – prinzipiell gerechtfertigter – Zins-Nahme aus, die sich erst in der Nz. entwickelte. Im AT werden W. und Zins (= Z.) als die Ausbeutung Bedürftiger unterschiedslos abgelehn…

1. Waffentechnik1.1. Entwicklung der Feuerwaffentechnik Um 1450 verwendeten die Kriegs-Leute im Nahkampf Hieb- und Stich-W. wie Schwert und Dolch sowie Stangen-W. wie Spieß und Hellebarde. Im Fernkampf wurden noch Armbrust sowie Pfeil und Bogen benutzt, gegen Befestigungen auch mechanische Belagerungs-Maschinen. Passive W. wie Helm, Harnisch und Schild schützten vor der Wirkung aktiver W. Neben diese traditionellen Kalt-W. war seit Mitte des 14. Jh.s zunehmend die Feuer-W. (= Fw.) getreten, wobei Europa sich nicht wesentlich vom islam. Teil der Welt sowie Ind…

1. EinleitungIn Darstellungen der Entwicklung der nzl. globalen Interaktion stehen in der Regel die Handelsräume und -beziehungen im Mittelpunkt (Weltwirtschaft). Der Handel mit Rohstoffen (etwa Baumwolle, Seide, Farbstoffen oder Holz), Fertigwaren (z. B. Textilien oder Metallwaren), Kolonialwaren (v. a. Kaffee, Kakao, Tabak und Zucker) sowie Edelmetallen (Gold, Silber und Kupfer) band bestehende P. in neue kommerzielle Austauschbeziehungen ein und führte zur Entstehung neuer, aber auch zum Niedergang etablierter …

1. Terminology and subjectToday the German term  Wucher (usury) denotes the profiteering of a market participant in commodity or credit transactions or in employment contracts, exploiting the plight, carelessness, or market ignorance of the disadvantaged party; it is a punishable offence in both civil and criminal law. The modern definition assumes a distinction between usury and interest – in principle justified – that came about only in the course of the early modern period (Interest [banking]). The OT forbids both usury and interest without distinction as exploi…

1. IntroductionIn discussions of the evolution of early modern global interaction, the emphasis as a rule has been on trade territories and relationships (World economy). Trade in raw materials (e.g. cotton, silk, dye, or wood), finished goods (e.g. textiles or metalware), colonial goods (especially coffee, cocoa, tobacco, and sugar), and precious metals (gold, silver, and copper) tied existing global production into new commercial exchange relationships and led to the emergence of new global pro…

1. EuropaSch. bezeichnet den illegalen Transport von Waren über eine Grenze unter Umgehung der anfallenden Zölle, Steuern und Gebühren. Er ist in diesem Sinne eine Form des Unterschleifs, sofern man diesen als rechtswidrige Zueignung fremder beweglicher Sachen definiert. Eng verwandt mit dem Sch. ist deshalb die Unterschlagung produzierter Güter zum Zwecke der Umgehung einer Produktions- oder Verbrauchssteuer, etwa der Akzise. In Gebieten mit hoher territorialpolit. Zersplitterung wie dem Alten Reich der Frühen Nz. waren Sch.-Anreize bes. ausgeprägt. Insbes. nac…

1. EuropaDer Begriff »F.« war in Europa im hohen und späten MA wesentlich gebräuchlicher als in der Frühen Nz. Das ital. fattoria, Ursprung für das Lehnwort, das erstmals bei den großen toskanischen Handelsgesellschaften des HochMA erscheint, bezeichnete eine befestigte Außenstelle oder »Filiale« einer Handelsgesellschaft an einem auswärtigen Handelsplatz, die von einem Faktor (ital. fattore) geleitet wurde [6]. Das F.-Netz der großen süddt. Gesellschaften (Fugger; Welser) mit festen Niederlassungen an zentralen europ. Handelsplätzen (Antwerpen, Lyon, Lissabon etc.) u…

1. Weltwirtschaft 1.1. Asien bis 1800Im gesamten subtropischen und tropischen asiat. Raum wird R. seit Jahrtausenden produziert; er hatte auch in der Nz. als Grundnahrungsmittel enorme Bedeutung. Als Grundformen der Produktion sind der Anbau in natürlich überfluteten bzw. überstauten Küsten- und Flussniederungen (Sumpf- bzw. Wasser-R.), der Terrassenfeldbau mit künstlicher Bewässerung sowie der Anbau anspruchsloserer Sorten in Höhenlagen (Berg-R., Trocken-R.) zu unterscheiden. Aufgrund der Tatsache, dass Süd- und Ostasien klimatisch bed…

1. Global economy 1.1. Asia to 1800Throughout tropical and subtropical Asia, rice has been grown for millennia; in the early modern period, too, it was enormously important as a basic foodstuff. The major forms of production were growing in coastal and riverine lowlands that were naturally or artificially flooded (marsh rice or wild rice), terrace cultivation with artificial irrigation, and the cultivation of less demanding varieties at higher altitudes (upland rice, dry rice). South Asia and East Asi…