Jews and converts in Barcelona’s international trade in the late Middle Ages (1349-1450)

Authors

  • Gloria Polonio Luque

Keywords:

trade, Jews, converts, Middle Ages, maritime contracts, Barcelona, Barcelona’s Jews

Abstract

We still know very little about the role of Jews and converts in Barcelona’s international trade in the Late Middle Ages, despite their clear, undisputable importance in that regard. The commercial activity of Jews and converts is reflected in a significant number of maritime contracts (comandes marítimes). The documents in question are a source of valuable, important information on social relations and exchanges, not only of the Hebrew community, before and after the attacks of 1391, but also of the converts of the time. They show that there were strong ties between the two groups, as well as that the city of Barcelona had a Jewish population after 1391, giving the
lie to claims it had vanished or ceased to exist. Today, within historiography, there is an evident need to remedy the lack of
knowledge of the role of Jews and converts in Mediterranean maritime trade in the Late Middle Ages. This article is intended to help do just that.

Keywords: trade, Jews, converts, Middle Ages, maritime contracts, Barcelona, Barcelona’s Jews

Downloads

Downloads

Published

2013-05-20

Issue

Vol. 9 (2013)

Section

Articles

License

The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors.

On submitting articles for publication to the journal TAMID. Revista Catalana Anual d’Estudis Hebraics, authors accept the following terms:
  1. Authors assign to Societat Catalana d’Estudis Hebraics (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to TAMID. Revista Catalana Anual d’Estudis Hebraics.
  2. Authors answer to Societat Catalana d’Estudis Hebraics for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.
  3. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.
  4. Societat Catalana d’Estudis Hebraics declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.
  5. The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.
  6. The journal is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.