Book Description

This lavishly illustrated book collects papers delivered at the third Gingko conference: “The Mercantile Effect: On Art and Exchange in the Islamicate World During 17th–18th Centuries.” Held in Berlin, this meeting brought together a group of established and early-career scholars to discuss how the movement of Armenian, Indian, Chinese, Persian, Turkish, and European merchants and their trade goods spread new ideas and new technologies across Western Asia in the early modern era. Through the newly-established Dutch, English, and French East India companies, as well as much older mercantile networks, prestigious exotic commodities – silk, ivory, books, glazed porcelains – were transported east and west. The collected essays in this volume introduce a fascinating array of not only trade objects but also customs and traditions that bring this period of intense cultural interplay to life.

Michael Hornsby describes the event behind this remarkable volume in A toast to the East-West Divan