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During the Safavid-Ottoman wars of 1603–1605, the Safavid monarch Shah 'Abbas I (r. 1587–1629) laid waste to the frontier regions of his empire, deporting up to 300,000 Armenians and others from the frontier territories, and resettling them in the interior of his realm. The Julfans were driven to the Iranian capital of Isfahan, where 'Abbas I granted them land across the Zayandarud River and permitted them to build their own suburb, named New Julfa, in memory of their abandoned home. As a result of its lucrative hold on Iran's silk exports to Europe, the small suburb of New Julfa grew throughout the seventeenth century to become one of the most important mercantile centers in Eurasia. The Julfan Armenians were able to build one of the greatest trade networks of the early modern period. This book examines the emergence and growth of this global trade network of Armenian merchants from New Julfa. It also recreates the ethos of trust and cooperation between merchants of the same community and describes the concept of “trade diaspora.”.

This chapter discusses the trade diaspora, an institution that was all but obligatory for regular, long-distance trade in the absence of third-party enforcement. Traders could do business in a foreign community because people from their homeland had moved there permanently and could vouch for them. If a promise to pay or deliver according to agreement was not fulfilled, foreign settlers could be held accountable for any debt of their fellow citizens. All members of a diaspora network—itinerant and stationary alike—ultimately faced expulsion if they behaved opportunistically. The chapter then focuses on a single diaspora: the Phoenician. Because of their centuries-long Mediterranean mercantile tradition, one can trace their interaction with public institutions through much of Greco-Roman history.

This chapter focuses on “trust” and cooperation in the Julfan trade network. It argues that the tendency to take “trust” in early modern merchant communities for granted, despite its central role in the lives of such communities, is one of the hallmarks of the trade diaspora paradigm. It considers trust as a commodity created by merchants largely through rigorous monitoring of merchant behavior, rewarding individuals upholding high ethical standards, and sanctioning those who break codes of honor and betray their fellow merchants. To explain the creation of “trust” and cooperation, this chapter relies on theoretical literature in economic sociology known as “social capital theory.” It investigates the creation and maintenance of “trust” in the Julfan network using a model that places emphasis on a centralized and centralizing semiformal legal institution in Julfa known as the Assembly of Merchants and to a lesser degree, the church and its network of priests. It embeds information flows within a detailed study of merchant correspondence and courier networks, which were vital to the proper functioning of the Julfan network.

This chapter examines long-distance traders. The trade diaspora, defined as a network of dispersed but socially highly interrelated communities, is a core concept in West African historical anthropology. The diaspora depends largely on the merchants retaining a marginal position within the host society; thus, crucially, these dispersed networks can be visible archaeologically, through a careful study of material culture and inter- and intra-site patterning. The chapter considers the evidence for their time depth in West Africa and then widens the discussion to consider the cross-cultural applicability of the trade diaspora concept.

This chapter explores the changing world of the fourth century CE, a time of social ferment heightened by the Roman emperors' adoption of Christianity as a religion of state. Although this shift followed a turn toward forced religious centralization initiated by the emperors during the crisis of the third century, the choice for Christianity represented a momentous departure from Roman tradition. The intolerance and violence it engendered upset the equilibrium of Mediterranean diaspora trade, producing an institutional shock. Indeed, religion played a prominent role in how diaspora groups operated. Through the worship of their native gods, group members remained distinct from their hosts and connected to their place of origin, both necessary ingredients for successful intercommunity trade. Equally important, acts of religious devotion signaled commitment and loyalty to the group, encouraged collective action against defectors, and fostered economic trust and collaborative behavior. However, this complex system of socioeconomic interaction came under pressure when emperors began legislating against pagan cults.

In the nineteenth century, a sizeable Chinese labor cum trade diasporic community was established in Indochina, where they occupied a dominant position in the local economy until the arrival of the French. Upon the completion of colonial conquest and pacification in the 1880s, the French embarked on the mise en valeur of their new possession by setting up a state-sponsored and state-backed “imperial diaspora.” This chapter discusses cultural practices of the Chinese and the French in Indochina, and shows that the Manichean schema not only fails to account for the complexity of the colonial reality, it has also created a form of the “White Man's Burden” that differs in an interesting way from the one eulogized by Rudyard Kipling, the British imperial bard.