TRADE AND POWER. GENOVESE MERCHANTS IN SOUTHEASTERN CASTILE DURING THE 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES (1550-1700)

The book before the reader is about a hundred Genoese merchant families who formed part of trading companies operating in the kingdoms of Granada, Jaén, Córdoba, and Murcia between the 16th and 17th centuries. Despite the vast territory, which we will henceforth call the Southeast, the main companies were located in the city of Granada and, from this location, they wove the trade networks that extended throughout the region and connected it with the rest of an increasingly globalized world. They were by no means the only Genoese who arrived in this area. Along with the aforementioned, thousands of Ligurians and other Italians participated in trade as small, independent merchants, simple factors, or servants for other merchants. And even more individuals did so as artisans, artists, or simple laborers, dazzled, like many others, by the riches and opportunities that the Spanish Monarchy and, within it, the Southeast, offered them. A New World that they perhaps imagined as their Indies, as the Indies of Genoa. The Genoese merchants were in the right place at the right time. That period was known as "The Century of the Genoese," a term popularized by Felipe Ruiz Martín, which spanned the period from 1528 to 1627.