Francesca Trivellato Yale University
[email protected] Family Structure and Business Organization: Sephardic Merchants in Livorno and the Mediterranean, 17 th and 18 th Centuries Utrecht University, ESG Seminar 25 October 2007 A version of this paper will appear as Chapter 5 in my The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, forthcoming in 2008). Please do not cite or circulate without permission. Draft – Not for circulation without permission Chapter 5 Kinship Structures and Business Organization The characteristics of long-distance trade in the early modern Mediterranean that we examined in the previous chapter go a long way towards explaining the active presence of Jewish merchants in certain branches of the exchanges between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. With the exception of the English Levant Company (1581-1825), few European chartered and monopolistic companies operated in the Mediterranean until the French Compagnie Royale d’Afrique was created (1741-93), and even this Compagnie only controlled exchanges with North Africa rather the entire French commerce in the Mediterranean. 1 The world of Mediterranean trade was populated by countless private partnerships (most, but not all, formed by merchants of the same religious or national group). This was the case of the Radcliffe of London, an English firm with a branch in Aleppo from the 1730s to the 1760s, as well as a myriad of French partnerships with a principal investor ( majeur ) in Marseille and a subsidiary branch in the Ottoman Empire, which was usually run by a younger relative ( régisseur ).