What impact did the cultural origins and religious backgrounds of the merchants in the early modern period have on their business activities? How did these people manage to integrate themselves into the foreign societies within which they lived and worked? In this book Jorun Poettering examines the circumstances of the merchants who traded between Hamburg and Portugal in the seventeenth century. Her study offers new insights into the history of migration and intercultural encounter as world became more interconnected.

• Contents 6
• Figures and Tables 8
• Introduction 10
• Part I: The Political and Legal Context 22
• 1. Economic and Political Trends 22
• 2. Alien Merchandise, Alien Merchants 40
• 3. Legal Provisions and the Formation of Nations 53
• 4. Consulates and Residencies 71
• 5. The Inquisition and the State 91
• 6. Diaspora, Migration, and Mobility 112
• Part II: Migration, Life, and Trade 112
• 7. Social Origins and Social Advancement 130
• 8. Turnovers and Assets 144
• 9. Grain, Sugar, Wax, and Tobacco 161
• 10. The Cross-Border Infrastructure 177