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Long-Distance Trade in Greco-Roman and Premodern European and Muslim Eurasia and Mediterranean - 15-


Economic History began its engagement with the social sciences nearly a century ago, initiated by German scholarship and by the likes of the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne. The subject was hesitantly taken over by the French school of the Annales, which was always more interested in societal developments. The past 50 years, however, have been a bumpy ride: Marxism declined as a central paradigm (although its shadow still lingers on, in particular in rural and labour history), while neo-Smithian approaches and above all New Institutional Economics became unstoppable and new approaches like Environmental History outgrew their own particular niche. More recently, new methods like Social Network Analysis and Social Capital Theory changed our views on the social organisation of trade in particular. All these theories and models have sparked fierce debates, but it cannot be denied that the engagement with social sciences has enriched our research field. Besides giving us conceptual tools and models to interpret and analyse historical data, they made it possible to detect patterns in historical societies that provide the basis for meaningful comparative historical studies across the traditional temporal and geographical divides.


FECHA/DATE/DATA: 15-16-17/09/2016

ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Koenraad Verboven; Wim Broekaert (Ghent University); Peter Stabel and Jeroen Puttevils (University of Antwerp)

INFO: web - Koen.Verboven@ugent.be - Jeroen.Puttevils@uantwerpen.be.

INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: gratis pero obligatoria / free but mandatory / gratuito ma obligattorio: Koen.Verboven@ugent.be - Jeroen.Puttevils@uantwerpen.be.

PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:

Antwerp, Thursday, 15th Sept.

City Campus, room D015 Grote Kauwenberg, 21, 2000, Antwerpen


10:00 K. Verboven and P. Stabel, Welcome and introduction

Institutions and Institutional Change
  • 10:15 Alain Bresson, Transacting in the Ancient Greek World

  • 10:45 Kai Ruffing, Market Systems in the Roman Empire

  • 11:15 Discussion

11:45 coffee break

  • 12:15 Jean-Jacques Aubert, The Roman jurists on long-distance trade

  • 12:45 Discussion

13:00 lunch

  • 14:00 Ulf Christian Ewert, Simple, but efficacious: Institutions of trade at the periphery of late medieval Europe

  • 14:30 Lars Boerner and Battista Severgnini, Epidemic Trade

  • 15:00 Discussion

15:30 coffee break

  • 16:00 Jessica Goldberg, Business organization and the economy in the Medieval Mediterranean

  • 16:30 Discussion

Ghent, Friday, 16th Sept.

Plateauzaal Joseph Plateaustraat, 9000 Gent

Mercantile Communities, Networks and Organisations
  • 10:00 Wim Broekaert, Occupational associations and monopolies in the Roman economy

  • 10:30 Jeroen Puttevils and Peter Stabel, Florentine Traders in Bruges and Antwerp

  • 11:00 Discussion

11:30 coffee break

  • 12:00 Travis Bruce, Translating the Divide: Dragomans as Cultural Mediators in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean

  • 12:30 Discussion

13:00 lunch

  • 14:00 Francisco Apellaniz, Malacca to Antwerp : Late Mamluk-Venetian Networks and the Twilight of Medieval Eurasian Trade, c.1500

  • 14:30 Roxani Margariti, Wakil al-tujjar: Go-Betweens in the maritime trade of the medieval Indian Ocean

15:00 coffee break

  • 15:30 Discussion

Ghent, Saturday, 17th

Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde Koningstraat 18, 9000 Gent

Information Tools and Management
  • 10:00 Koenraad Verboven, Bankers and other financial intermediaries as information trustees and managers in the Roman world

  • 10:30 Yadira Gonzalez de Lara, The Impact of Formal Monitoring on Financial Development: From Debt to Equity in Late Medieval Venice

  • 11:00 Discussion

11:30 coffee break

  • 12:00 General Discussion with

  • Peter Fibiger Bang

  • Oscar Gelderblom

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