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The Response of Elite European Merchant Companies to European Expansion Into Asia and the Americas, C.1492-C.1530

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The Response of Elite European Merchant Companies to European Expansion Into Asia and the Americas, C.1492-C.1530 The Response of Elite European Merchant Companies to European Expansion into Asia and the Americas, c.1492-c.1530 Eleanor Marie Russell Pembroke College November 2019 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Declaration This thesis is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my thesis has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit for the relevant Degree Committee. 2 Abstract The Response of Elite European Merchant Companies to European Expansion into Asia and the Americas, c.1492-c.1530 Eleanor Marie Russell This thesis analyses the multi-national European merchant-banking companies who dominated European commerce at the beginning of European engagement with the Americas and with Asia via the Cape Route, focusing upon how they responded to these changes. In the first decades of the sixteenth century, it was these companies, mostly from southern Germany and the Italian city-states, who dominated the European trade in Asian and American goods, whose capital funded Spanish and Portuguese royal policies overseas, and whose agents played crucial roles in establishing the Spanish and Portuguese empires and colonial trade. Using their correspondence as its main source material, it analyses their participation in overseas trade and the networks which they used to participate; their specifically mercantile perception of the New World and Asia; and their exploitation of the opportunities newly made available, particularly through the use of luxury exotica, for political, social, and commercial advantage. It examines how their position changed in response to political and economic shifts, highlighting their cultural and economic flexibility that allowed them to adapt to overseas activity and to the decline of their near-hegemonic position when the growing centralisation and power of the states in the 1530s caused their previous authority to wane. It re-examines the traditional quantitative, statistical approach to economic history and the general separation of economic and cultural history, instead prioritising the choices and motivations of these powerful individuals and groups in their political, cultural, and economic contexts, with the broader political and economic changes as background to the questions of who these merchants thought that they were, and what they thought that they were doing. This dissertation considers how merchants sought to increase their status, their wealth, their political connections, their power, and their commercial success through their trade in and conspicuous consumption of luxury items and their facilitation luxury consumption for the princes with whom they sought economic relations. 3 Contents Declaration ................................................................................................................................. 2 Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 5 Preface........................................................................................................................................ 6 Dramatis Personae ..................................................................................................................... 8 German Companies ................................................................................................................ 8 The Italians ........................................................................................................................... 10 The Sources .............................................................................................................................. 13 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 14 1492: Before and After ............................................................................................................ 21 Chapter One: The Great Companies Before 1492 ............................................................... 22 Chapter Two: Merchants in the Aftermath of the European Overseas Discoveries ............ 43 Merchants and News ................................................................................................................ 68 Chapter Three: Merchants, News, and News Networks c.1490 – c.1525 ............................ 69 Chapter Four: News as Socio-Political Capital .................................................................... 90 Chapter Five: Merchant Attitudes to and Interest in the Americas and Asia ..................... 122 Chapter Six: News Media in the Early Sixteenth Century ................................................. 146 The Emperor’s New Clothes: Soft Power and Cultural Capital ............................................ 159 Chapter Seven: Gifts and Exotica ...................................................................................... 160 Repercussions ........................................................................................................................ 196 Chapter Eight: Going Solo: Agents and the Impact of Globalisation upon Multi-National European Firms .................................................................................................................. 197 Chapter Nine: Ennoblement and Transition ....................................................................... 221 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 235 Appendices ............................................................................................................................. 242 Appendix I: List of Voyages .............................................................................................. 243 Appendix II: Chronological List of Letters Analysed, 1486-1530 .................................... 246 Appendix III: List of Printed Newsletters Relating to Asia and the Americas until 1560 . 255 Printed in Italy ................................................................................................................ 255 Printed in the Holy Roman Empire ................................................................................ 259 Archives ................................................................................................................................. 262 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 263 Primary Sources ................................................................................................................. 263 Manuscript ...................................................................................................................... 263 Printed ............................................................................................................................. 266 Secondary Sources ............................................................................................................. 275 4 Acknowledgements My chief thanks go to my supervisor, Professor David Abulafia, for providing wonderful advice, clarity, and patience. I also thank my advisor, Dr Chris Briggs; the History Faculty of Cambridge and its graduate students; and the fellows and staff of Pembroke College. I thank the Medici Archive Project and Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library for providing visiting fellowships and the University of Sydney for providing funding. I thank my parents, sister, and grandmother for their love and encouragement. Last, but not least, I thank my friends in Australia and, especially, those of the Pembroke Graduate Parlour. I dedicate this thesis to the memory of my uncle Dr Ken Russell, who sadly did not live to see me become the next Dr Russell. 5 Preface This dissertation uses a synthesis of cultural and economic historical approaches to emphasise the interplay between merchants’ commerce from their political, social, and, especially, cultural activities.1 It uses a trans-regional approach to emphasise both the connections and the variations between them and variations between merchants of different areas of Europe, challenging the limits of ‘nationalist’ or monolingual frameworks that underemphasise the importance of cross-border networks. It avoids the use of network theory, which, although it highlights the importance of merchant networks, does not provide any more insights into the operation of networks than do other approaches. * The terms ‘Germany’, ‘Italy’, and ‘Spain’ have been used to refer to the regions now covered by the modern states and the associated adjectives have been used to refer to people from
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