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SUMMARY:Business and politics in late medieval Iberia: mercantile elites i
 n the Kingdom of Aragon (1380-1430) - Sandra de la Torre Gonzalo (Universi
 ty of Zaragoza)
DTSTART:20120528T114500Z
DTEND:20120528T130000Z
UID:TALK38334@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:25346
DESCRIPTION:Recent works on late-medieval commerce in the Crown of Aragon 
 have made clear the importance of a group of businessmen settled in Zarago
 za\, the capital of the kingdom of Aragon. At the end of the fourteenth ce
 ntury and beginning of the fifteenth\, this small group of businessmen int
 ervened on a large scale in the financing of the state\, principally throu
 gh the market of the institutional public debt and hiring the commercial t
 axes of the kingdom. Their important businesses suppose the mobilization o
 f very high sums of money and the formation of leading commercial companie
 s that promote mercantile and family connections that spread over the whol
 e kingdom and the Crown from the interior of the Peninsula and the south o
 f France towards the Mediterranean Sea.\nThe aim of this paper is to provi
 de an overview and an analysis of the political role of this financial and
  commercial elite. Therefore\, we are interested in the targets and the st
 rategies of these people\, and their capacity for political performance\, 
 expressed in their patrimonies (financial\, mercantile\, territorial)\, pr
 ofessional activities\, family behaviors and the construction of social ne
 tworks.\nMy prosopographical research offers an intermediate approach betw
 een the studies on the individual protagonists and the large social groups
 \, and has proved its efficiency in analyzing dispersed and fragmentary so
 urces like the ones we have at our disposal.\n
LOCATION:Room 101\, Sir William Hardy Building\, Downing Site
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