Trade contacts between Prague Jews and Northern Italy and their engagement in the Italian commodity trade in the 16th and early 17th centuries, (original) (raw)
Selective Inclusion: Integration and Isolation of Jews in Medieval Italy
Framing Jewish Culture: Boundaries, Representations, and Exhibitions of Ethnic Difference, Jewish Cultural Studies, Vol 4 , 2014
This essay presents episodes, mostly from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, that demonstrate how Jews existed within the spatial framework of Rome and elsewhere in medieval Christian Italy, straddling social, economic, and spatial boundaries. Using a variety of sources to physically locate Jews in Italian urban culture allows a better understanding of the civic space available to them in Italian cities in the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. Stretching from just before the promulgation of anti-Jewish decrees at the Fourth Lateran Council until the creation of the Venetian ghetto in 1516, this was a tumultuous but transformative period of Italian and Jewish history, in which Jewish communities settled and thrived throughout the entire peninsula.
European Business History Association - 22nd Annual Congress 6-8 September 2018 - Ancona - Session A3: A Maritime Market: Jewish Enterprises and Grain Trade in Early Modern Europe
This is the presentation of the research of the Croatian Maritime Regesta – the 18th Century as a source for Jewish History. They consist of 3 published volumes with 16.000 documents from different collections of the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Archivio di Stato di Ancona and Archivio di Stato di Fano. They tell the story of the Venetian Republic in the 18th century Adriatic. Among different researches planned in the project, this one analyzes Jewish role in the 18th century maritime trade. Analyzing these documents, we were able to find 544 documents that mention Jews of different origin and in different roles. The real life of factual 18th century Jews emerges with their names and surnames, often also with their fathers’ names. Sometimes they are specifically Jewish, sometimes not. They are subjects of Republic of Venice, the Papal State, the Austrian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Republic of Dubrovnik. They can be merchants, agents, owners of merchandize or ships (parcenevoli and paroni), bankers, public figures (sensali), sometimes even captains. When they own ships, these ships have very recognizable names. There are several levels of analysis that we applied to this data: starting, transit and final destination ports (ex, in, and versus), types and quantities of merchandise, types of ships, names of captains, and role Jews had in these enterprises. We reconstructed specific roles Jews had in the maritime trade, trade routes, trade and family networks and connections. They travel and trade within the Adriatic itself, as well as Mediterranean and in Northern seas as far as Norway or Russia. We can see that 544 new mentions of the Jews in the Regesta, add a lot of new data, therefore this project adds to our understanding of Jewish involvement in the Maritime trade. The research question for this paper was if in the 16,000 documents of the State archives of Venice, Ancona, and Fano from the 18th century collected in the Croatian Maritime Regesta vols. I-III, among the other Jewish trade and connections in the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas it is possible to find grain trade. In 544 documents about Jews, we found expressly 30 sources that refer to the grain trade. We analyzed dates, ports of import or export, type, size and capacity of ships, Jewish family names, their political subjection, their role in the grain trade (owners, merchants, forwarders), types of grain etc. The results of these crisscrossing analysis prove that in the 18th century grain trade wasn’t the main business Jews were involved in. The project of transcribing and editing further 80,000 documents (15 volumes) of the Croatian Maritime Regesta will show us more complete picture of relations between two Adriatic coasts. ---- Major research areas - Keywords: Jews; Maritime Trade; Grains; 18th Century; Adriatic Sea; Mediterranean Sea; Croatian Maritime Regesta. ---- Theoretical/conceptual framework: Maritime Jewish Trade History, 18th century. Analysis of primary sources - 16,000 documents from State Archives of Venice, Ancona, Fano.