Merchant organisation was a global phenomenon in the early modern era, and in the growing contacts between peoples and cultures, merchants may be seen as privileged intermediaries.

Contents: Introduction; Italian merchant organization and business relationships in early Tudor London, M. E. Bratchel; The role of the Wangara in the economic transformation of the central Sudan in the 15th and 16th centuries, Paul E. Lovejoy; Merchants without empire: the Hokkien sojourning communities, Wang Gungwu; Iranians abroad: intra-Asian elite migration and early modern state formation, Sanjay Subrahmanyam; A death in Venice (1575): Anatolian Muslim merchants trading in the Serenissima, Cemal Kafadar; The ledger of the merchant Hovhannes Joughayetsi, Levon Khatchikian; The Chulia Muslim merchants in southeast Asia, 1650-1800, Sinnappah Arasaratnam; Consuls and nations in the Levant from 1570 to 1650, Niels Steensgaard; The commerce of the Dubrovnik Republic, 1500-1700, F. W. Carter; The role of the Jews in commerce in early modern Poland-Lithuania, Gershom David Hundert; The social basis of English commercial expansion, 1550-1650, Robert Brenner; The French presence in Huronia: the structure of Franco-Huron relations in the first half of the 17th century, Bruce G. Trigger; Bahian merchants and planters in the 17th and early 18th centuries, Rae Flory and David Grant Smith; American Indians on the cotton frontier: changing economic relations with citizens and slaves in the Mississippi territory, Daniel H. Usner Jr.; Index.