PRESS RELEASE
For further information, please contact:
Gloria Caudill, Administrator
Armenian Studies Program
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
[email protected]
(734) 763-0622
DR. SEBOUH ASLANIAN TO DISCUSS JULFAN ARMENIAN TRADE AT THE UNIVERSITY
OF MICHIGAN
The Armenian Studies Program announces an upcoming public lecture by
Dr. Sebouh Aslanian, who is a Manoogian Simone Foundation
Post-Doctoral Fellow this year. The lecture is titled "Trust in Gossip
but Bastinado when Needed: Policing long-distance ‘Trust relations’
among Julfan Merchants during the Early Modern Period."
The lecture will be held on Tuesday, March 3 at 5 p.m. in Room 1636 of
the International Institute.
In his presentation, Dr. Aslanian will examine the role of "trust" and
cooperation in early modern long-distance trade. He will focus on the
history of Armenian merchants from New Julfa, Isfahan in the 17th and
18th centuries, but he will also compare Julfan methods of policing
trust to those of two contemporaneous long-distance communities,
namely the Multani Indians and Sephardic Jews. While most literature
on the subject posits trust as a given attribute of long-distance
merchant communities and not as a factor in need of historical
explanation or analysis, Dr. Aslanian provides a historical
explanation for the creation and role of trust in such communities.
Dr. Aslanian’s talk is related to his upcoming book publication, From
the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: Circulation and the Global
Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa/Isfahan, 1606-1747
(University of California Press, forthcoming 2010). This manuscript is
based on his Ph.D. dissertation, which was selected by the Graduate
School as the best dissertation in the humanities at Columbia
University (2007). He is also the author of Dispersion History and the
Polycentric Nation: The Role of Simeon Yerevantsi’s Girk or Kochi
Partavjar in the Armenian National Revival of the 18th Century (2004),
and numerous articles about Indian Ocean trade and Armenian merchants
from New Julfa.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
