Success, Failure, and Networks: How and Why Historians Write about the Sephardim

Through a case study of the Sephardic Jews, one of the best known trading networks in the Early Modern period, this paper will examine why historians have become interested in networks and how they write about them. In any discussion of networks during the Early Modern period, the word “success” appears repeatedly. The majority of scholars seems to agree that networks were a successful commercial strategy. It could be, therefore, that networks are written about so frequently due to their perceived economic success. For example, it is often assumed that a sort of familial and kinship conspiracy was formed among Sephardi traders in the Early Modern period. Family ties, shared socio-ethnic background, and religion are viewed as the basis of the formation of efficient, successful trade networks during this time, rather than a source of contention and enmity. This paper argues that the historiography of Sephardic networks, specifically, but also of trade networks, in general, depicts networks as inevitable purveyors of success, while ignoring the economic failures. Furthermore, the possibility for the integration of multiple regional or national histories via the study of trading networks such as the Sephardim is often ignored in the historiography. These trading networks transcended geographical boundaries, as well as the borders of the emergent nation-state. The historiography often makes mention of this geographical dispersion, of course, but tends to study the Sephardim in isolation from the regions and nations, in which they lived. Therefore, historians have missed an important opportunity to view history through a more global lens – an oversight this paper hopes to remedy by focusing on the fluid, porous, and integrative nature of Sephardi economic and social networks. This paper will look at the Sephardi networks in the early modern period not as coherent wholes, but as open, integrative, and often divisive.