From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (California World History Library) (Volume 17)

Informative and well written book

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.

Very interesting book on the first Armenian traders trading from Iran to Asia!

Fascinating research.

What can I said that has not been said by reviews of this book? This is an amazing study drawing from an incredibly rich trove of archival sources and providing a cogent analysis. It's a first on many fronts and will probably be a classic. Really fascinating material!

Footnote leaden and burdensome prose. As a former student, I found the researchin this book highly commendable, but the task of asking large questions in smallplaces as Charles Joyner put it, largely fails here. This is a work that is more historicalsensation than historical reality: to assume one can reconstruct history through alarge number of epistolary exchanges and logs, overlooks the fact that most of micro-history (the overwhelming most) at the level of the individual actor is not even written,let alone recorded. A largely "fact"-obsessed book, lacking in analytical rigor or theoreticalinnovation. Mostly middling.

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