Historical Studies Program and Dean of the College Present
Cultures of Risk in Medieval Commerce: Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Online Event
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EST/GMT-5
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Sarina Kuersteiner
PhD Candidate, Department of History, Columbia University
Merchants who shipped goods across the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean in the Middle Ages faced many risks. Damage in transit was the most common. The loss of goods was another. Not knowing where and when goods would arrive was a third. Warfare and piracy were big risks too, but they occurred less often. In response, merchants employed sophisticated mechanisms to limit and cope with risk. They distributed their merchandise on several boats. They paid careful attention to packing and loading goods carefully. And they invested with various partners. But not all of these merchants—among whom we find Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Hindu traders—understood risk, the probable outcome of their undertakings, in the same way. “Cultures of Risk” examines and explains the different conceptions of risk in medieval commerce, as seen in various types of sources: Latin contracts, Arabic letters and formularies, and the rich corpus of Geniza documents, but also devotional objects, images, charms and amulets, travel accounts, histories, and biographies. These sources allow us to investigate a global commercial network that featured diverse languages, geographies, and religions. I argue that differences that I see in conceptions of risk are partly explicable by the different assumptions these traders had about divine providence and how to access it in this world. Looking at how they connected risk to the sacred will, I hope, reveal how risk appears to be shaped quite distinctly among the traders from different religious communities.PhD Candidate, Department of History, Columbia University
Combining approaches of cultural history, the history of religion, and art history with economic history, I endeavor to open up new avenues of interpretation. Through comparative studies such as “Cultures of Risk,” financial techniques that are currently explained from European perspectives only become explicable in unexpected ways.
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Meeting ID: 860 0894 6638 / Passcode: 596381
For more information, call 845-758-6822, e-mail [email protected],
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Time: 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Location: Online Event