Grain trade in Early modern Mantua and Venice: The role of Ashkenazi and Italian Jews
基于财政与公证档案，揭示阿什肯纳兹和意大利犹太人除传统借贷与旧货零售外，还通过信任网络参与跨区域谷物贸易，其活动与当地政治环境紧密交织。
The economic role of Ashkenazi and Italian Jews in early modern Italy is traditionally associated with money-lending and second-hand goods retailing. Yet, fiscal and notarial sources show how beneath the surface of the charters signed between the minority and the local authorities, their business was far more diversified. In the northern and central Peninsula Jews had built a strong network based on endogenous and exogenous trust which permitted them to also engage in (inter)regional trade. From the early sixteenth century, when the establishment of the ghettos and changes in the economic system made banking far less lucrative, trading in commodities became a profitable alternative. The case studies of Mantua and the Venetian state show how this process was also strictly intertwined with the local political environment, as Jews had to resort to different sorts of informal and formal relationships with local power structures in order to take part in the grain trade.