Trading Places

Trading Places is winner of the triennial Historical Research Award of Italy Studies (2012).

This book deals with the Netherlandish merchant community in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice. It examines the merchants’ commercial activities, their social and communal relations, as well as their interaction with the Venetian state, which was accustomed to protect its own trade. The Netherlandish merchants in Venice, as part of an extensive international trading network, were ideally placed to connect Mediterranean and Atlantic commerce. They quickly became the most important group of foreign merchants in the city at a time of rapid economic changes. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, this book shows how these immigrant traders used their strong commercial position to secure a place in Venice. It demonstrates how the changing balance of international commerce affected early modern Venetian society.

Maartje van Gelder, Ph.D. (2007) in History, University of Amsterdam, is lecturer in Early Modern History at the same university. She works on early modern Dutch relations with the Mediterranean, with particular interest for Venice.

AWARDS
Trading Places is winner of the triennial Historical Research Award of Italy Studies (2012).

REVIEWS
"Trading Places offers both a useful confirmation of the great diversity and cosmopolitan nature of Mediterranean cities and a starting point for further studies of Netherlandish communities in early modern Venice and the Mediterranean." – Elizabeth Horodowich, New Mexico State University, in: Journal of Modern History 84/3 (September 2012), pp. 748-750
"Van Gelder’s book represents a significant and valuable addition to the literature on commerce and society in early modern Venice." – Dennis Romano, Syracuse University, in: Renaissance Quarterly 64/1 (Spring 2011), pp. 289-291
"Trading Places is an important addition, not only to studies in Dutch commerce in Italy specifically but also to the more general research topic of Dutch merchants abroad [...] An outstanding achievement." – Henk Looijesteijn, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, in: Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 8/3 (2011), pp. 117-121
"Rijk geschakeerd en voortreffelijk onderbouwd." – F. Vermeylen, in: De Zeventiende Eeuw 27/1 (2011), pp. 112-113