Session: Early Modern Trading Networks: new theoretic and methodological approaches in Portuguese historiography.

This session aims to present new approaches in the Portuguese historiography regarding trading networks in the Early Modern period. The beginning of European expansion and the geographic widening of business possibilities engendered an increasing complexity in trade and finance organization. In a new global scale, networks tied together agents from different social, religious and ethnic backgrounds. Those self organized networks were not formally engaged and controlled by a central authority or institution. In this world without formal boundaries, Portuguese businessmen also participated.

The most recent Portuguese historiography has reborn a particular approach in the individual agent, more than in central politics which supposedly conditioned mercantile practices. Many authors have been giving important new theoretic and methodologic contributions contextualizing this problematic in a comparative and international scale, as well as developing interdisciplinary questionnaires and analytical insights for a better understanding of the way these individuals associated with other agents and how they moved in a social space which forced partnerships to profit increasing. In this sense, the present session aims to unite different perspectives on this topic, regarding a chronological period between 1500 and 1800. Thus, paper proposals are welcome. An abstract no larger than 500 words, followed by 3 or 4 key words and a short cv note (about one paragraph) should be submitted until May 15th 2012 to the e-mail address asvribeiro@gmail.com.