Merchants in Spite of Themselves: The Incidental Building of a Genoese Merchant Network, 1514-1557

"Merchants in Spite of Themselves: The Incidental Building of a Genoese Merchant Network, 1514-1557." This study traces Giovanni Brignole's textile manufacturing enterprise as it branched out to acquire a steady source of supplies, evolving into a firm increasingly based on long-distance commerce. By tracing the evolution of Giovanni Brignole's trades some observations not predicted by the extant business literature become apparent. Long distance trade does not seem to be dependant on closely-knit coalitions of traders working in concert with each other; neither does it seem to be reliant on infinite series of trades, such that the risk of the loss of the aggregate gain discourages the marginal gain from fraud. Sixteenth-century traders relied on a combination of long-term and short-term partners, and both were crucial to the flexibility and therefore the viability of trading networks. Giovanni begins his career as a junior associate of older relatives; his network evolves utilizing a majority of transient traders. Giovanni then sets his sights on creating a tight core of closely-knit associates. The author speculates that the economic environment of Mediterranean trade in the first half of the sixteenth century is characterized by scores, if not hundreds, of similar cores of traders interacting with each other through temporary self-regulating associations over the breadth of the western Mediterranean.