Launching INTRECCI

INTRECCI has been many years in the making, both in terms of the ideas and the application that sit behind it, but also the pilot project work that I completed with Mariana Boscariol and Lisa Hellman between 2019 and 2021. At it sets out to explore how networks and institutions shaped globalisation in the past, I would like to acknowledge all the people who helped this project in its development and the vital networks that we depend on in academia today to generate new ideas and improve our shared understanding of the world.

The aim of the INTRECCI project is to offer a radical new understanding of how ‘globalised’ institutions were generated through the entanglement of commercial cultures from across the world. To do so, it will set about answering one distinctive question: why did global actors adapt, adopt or oppose institutions and how did these processes shape and reshape the common institutions of global international trade?

Within this broader objective, the project sets out to tackle the following questions to re-assess the economic relationships that contributed to the making of the modern, globalised world:

1. Who were early modern traders and how did participation in international trade change between 1450 and 1750? What experience, training, education or relationships did traders draw up when making decisions? From where did traders originate and did they migrate to participate in global trading opportunities? How did traders break down by occupation, gender, religion, or political affiliation – and how did it affect their commercial practices?

2. How did traders in local markets interact with global trading networks? Why did people choose to take part in risky, cross-cultural trade? How was information and best practice transmitted across entangled commercial communities? What compromises did traders make to ease cross-cultural, global exchange? How did porous, flexible boundaries between empires and other polities affect the volume and direction of trade? Did strong states facilitate or stymie commercial innovation?

3. How did entanglement generate new institutional practices? In what ways did traders impose, adopt or adapt their institutions in response to global experiences? How did growing connectivity between regions contribute to institutional transformation and the development of a global commercial culture? How did the creation of new ways of doing business in local spaces and the profound alteration of global economic structures – influence one another?

4. What roles did states and empires play in shaping institutional practice? What were the limits of imperial control in organising commercial activity? When were states and organisations able to project a specific institutional structure onto a specific market, region or commodity? What does this tell us about early modern states and empires? How did diasporic and trans-imperial actors navigate and influence the commercial practices of the state?