Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

FOREWORD
The present volume is the outcome of an international workshop
held at the German Historical Institute London in December 2007.
The workshop focused on the study of economic and social networks
which contributed to the interconnecting of distant regions. From the
late Middle Ages, European merchants of different ethnic origins
engaged in international trade, settled in the leading port cities of the
time, and frequently mixed with the local elites, not only in Europe,
but increasingly worldwide. The networks they created soon became
global in their geographical dimension. Whether they were cosmopolitan
in quality, that is, whether they not only connected distant
places, but also initiated a process of mediating various cultures
through the encounter of people of diverse ethnic origins and cultural
backgrounds, was one of the questions asked by this workshop.
This focus on the quality of network relations and interactions rather
than their quantitative dimensions sets this workshop apart from the
growing number of conferences and volumes on merchants’ networks
in general.
In the process of preparing this book for publication the editors
have incurred many debts. Apart from the authors, we would like to
thank all the other participants in the workshop for their contributions
and comments, in particular, Thomas Biskup, John Davis,
Dorothée Marie-Louise Doepfer, Mark Häberlein, Albane Forestier,
Roger Knight, Rainer Liedtke, Ulrich Pfister, and Thomas Weller. We
would also like to thank the authors whose papers are included in
this volume for revising their essays, and for their patience in bearing
with us through the slow process of editing this volume.
Jonathan Uhlaner, Berlin, translated and copy-edited several of the
essays. However, most of all the editors are indebted to Angela
Davies of the German Historical Institute, who prepared the publication
with her usual care and took on the task of typesetting. Her experience
and help proved invaluable at all stages of the production of
this volume.
Düsseldorf and London,
December 2010
Andreas Gestrich and
Margrit Schulte Beerbühl