Community cosmopolitanism
We meet again today for a new series of Débats d'histoire, the recordings of which can be found under my name, Roger Chartier, on the Collège de France website. All six of last year's debates are available there. My intention is to present and discuss recently published books whose original contributions force us to look back at important historical issues. This will be the case in this first Debate of the 2016-17 academic year devoted to a book by an Italian historian who is a professor in the United States, at Yale University, Francesca Trivellato. The book, published in the L'Univers historique collection by Editions du Seuil, is entitled : Corail contre diamants. Réseaux marchands, diaspora sépharade et commerce lointain. From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, 18thcentury . It has been translated by Guillaume Calafat, lecturer at the Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, and opens with a preface by Romain Bertrand, professor at Sciences Po. In the absence of Francesca Trivellato, it is with them that I shall present this book, which aims to combine global history and micro-history in an original way. Romain Bertrand was our guest for his recent book Le long remords de la Conquête : Manille-Mexico-Madrid. L'affaire Diogo de Avila 1577-1580. In 2011, he published L'histoire à parts égales. Récits d'une rencontre Orient-Occident (XVIe-XVIIe siècle) - in this case the arrival of the Dutch in Java. We talked about this in feux les Lundis de l'histoire on France-Culture. Guillaume Calafat specializes in the legal and social history of trade relations and merchant and maritime cultures in the Mediterranean in the 17th and 18th centuries. His 2013 thesis is entitled Une mer jalousée. Maritime jurisdictions, free ports and the regulation of trade in the Mediterranean (1590-1740), and in 2011 he published a lengthy discussion of Francesca Trivellato's book in the journal Annales, when it appeared in English.
Francesca Trivellato describes her book as " a global history on a reduced scale ". A global history, indeed, since its subject is the very long-distance trade which, between the 16th and 18th centuries, linked the Mediterranean world, from Lisbon to Aleppo, and the Indian continent. The French title, corail contre diamants (coral against diamonds), immediately indicates these very long-distance exchanges that sent coral from Mediterranean fisheries to India and imported diamonds from the Indian mines of Golconde to the West. Global history, connected histories, which presuppose respect for shared conventions, the use of common languages, trust and credibility.
But, for Francesca Trivellato, the most appropriate scale on which to enter into such a history is given, and can only be given, by the dense and documented study of the actors who play an essential role in it. Hence the focus on a city, Livorno, on a community, the Sephardic Jews, who enjoyed opportunities and freedoms denied them elsewhere, and on a particular trading company, that of the Ergas and Silva families, which left 13 670 letters intensely analyzed by Francesca Trivellato.
To articulate the two dimensions of the analysis, global and micro-historical, she proposes the notion of " community cosmopolitanism ", which shows " how a global merchant culture (with its laws and customs) can coexist with social and legal realities fully rooted in a locality ". This demonstration calls for a profound revision of two all-too-common ideas : that diasporas form homogeneous, closed communities, and that long-distance commercial cooperation presupposes the existence of legal and judicial institutions capable of enunciating rights and arbitrating conflicts.
A study of Livorno's Jewish trading community shows that this was not the case. On the one hand, informal arrangements, such as the sharing of common standards or reciprocal information, can settle commercial relations and disputes without recourse to notaries or the courts. On the other hand, there is not opposition but association between family and community capitalism (illustrated by the importance of dowries in the constitution and preservation of capital in the general partnerships owned by the Jews of Livorno) and the trust placed in foreign commission agents, whether Christians or Hindus.
This observation gives the book its fundamental theme, which is that of difference in collaboration or, conversely, the possibility of joint ventures without the disappearance of hierarchies and prejudices. Better still, as Francesca Trivellato states, " the clear demarcation of borders between Jews and Christians can facilitate, rather than hinder, the development of international trade ".