The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730Using a wide range of archival and written sources, Rudi Matthee considers the economic, social and political networks established between Iran, its neighbours and the world at large, through the prism of the late Safavid silk trade. In so doing, he demonstrates how silk, a resource crucial to state revenue and the only commodity to span Iran's entire economic activity, was integral to aspects of late Safavid society, including its approach to commerce, export routes and, importantly, to the political and economic problems which contributed to its collapse in the early 1700s. In a challenge to traditional scholarship, the author argues that despite the introduction of a maritime, western-dominated channel, Iran's traditional land-based silk export continued to expand right up to the end of the seventeenth century. The book makes a major theoretical contribution to the debates on the social and economic history of the pre-modern world. |
Contents
from the Silk Road to the Safavids 135 | 15 |
Procedures logistics and finances | 33 |
territorial | 61 |
the silk export 16 | 91 |
from the abolition of the 691 | 119 |
silk to silver 16401667 | 147 |
Other editions - View all
The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 Rudolph P. Matthee No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
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