Cosmopolitan immigrant merchant groups dominated early European finance and mining

Evidence

For Spain under Charles V (1516–56) and Philip II (1556–98), the German Fuggers, the Genoese, and other “international merchant firms” organized the state revenues, exploited mines, and administered many of the most important estates. And at Constantinople, Genoese, Venetian, and Ragusan bankers and merchants shepherded the trade and financial relations between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. For the Mediterranean towns of the sixteenth century, Braudel has observed the functions of the “indispensable immigrant.” To Salonica, Constantinople and Valona, Italian and Spanish Jews, as merchants and artisans, brought new trades to further broaden an already multicultured bourgeoisie. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 201

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ethnic/outsider mercantile specialization patterns seen in later chapters on the Jewish commercial role in Europe.