Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2019

 

Trade Networks among Jews in Port Cities and the Modern Transition of Jewish Society

(Abstract)

 

Zhang Qianhong and Ai Rengui

 

In the early modern time, many Sephardi Jews and their descendants carried on trans-regional business at many port cities. These Jews in port cities involved in colonial expansion and trans-Atlantics trade, which formed global trade networks connecting Mediterranean, the Atlantics, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean. They gained recognition from mainstream society due to their commercial status, and gained unprecedented civil rights. This group bore many characteristics of modern commercial society: unparalleled fluidity and kinship networks, global trans-cultural attribute, the dominance of commercial value, modern means of management and the usage of modern creditability, confrontation to the traditional religious authorities, and the raising of legal and social position. This group of Jews who were active for more than three centuries and their trade networks are of great significance. They had not only contributed to the expansion of global economic connections in early modern, but also promoted the modern transition of the Jewish society, and stand for another path of modernity within the Jewish society.