From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa

Excellent book.

This is a very scholarly, good book. Probably best for experts than the general reader, but a fine piece of work.

Useful reference book for my friend

This book is of major importance far beyond the specialized field on which it focuses. It includes extremely perceptive observations on dispersed, diaspora, and mercantile communities in the emerging world-system of the 17th and 18th centuries. It also includes a long chapter on trust. Such communities depend on reputation and personal trust. This has been rather taken for granted in the literature, though sociologists from Weber onward have discussed it. Aslanian puts it on a new footing, with a truly superb discussion of the full ramifications and complexities of trust and reputation in a large and dispersed community where people cannot rely on face-to-face knowledge and have to trust agents for years at a time without hearing a word.Almost 40 years ago, in 1974, my wife and I walked almost every street in old Isfahan, including the main streets of New Julfa--at that time a sleepy small Armenian town. Isfahan then was a modern and open city; women usually went unveiled, everyone was friendly and hospitable, and the city was as far from today's dismal extremism as could be imagined. As a world-systems researcher, I needed to read this book, but as a lover of old Isfahan I savored every page of it. It is valuable far beyond the world of Armenian or mercantile studies.

From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean tells the story of the Julfa Armenians as the first global trade network.