An analysis of Valencia's fifteenth-century port activity functional to the study of the city's diverse maritime networks and markets based on first-hand archive research mainly focusing on the second half of the fifteenth century. The text also takes into account an assortment of further late-fourteenth to early-sixteenth century data collected and analysed by other authors.

Presented here for the first time in English, this richly detailed study--based on British, French, Greek, and Russian archival sources--tells the story of the powerful Greek trading houses that competed successfully with North America to feed the industrializing population of Western Europe. Vassilis Kardasis presents this commercial history by charting the rise of Greek merchant houses to a position of dominance over the export of trade in Russian grain. Though the Greeks would eventually cede their dominance to the competition of cheaper American grain in the second half of the nineteenth century, their influence was felt in the transformation of Southern Russia to productive agricultural land and the formation of large Black Sea port cities which would eventually encourage massive immigration. Diaspora Merchants in the Black Sea fills an important gap in our understanding of the role of the diasporic Greek community in southern Russian history, the history of Greek maritime activity, and ultimately the history of economic relations between Eastern and Western Europe.

The studies in this exceptional volume explore the challenges and opportunities presented by globalization events prior to 1950, and identify how countries around the Mediterranean responded to them. In addition to comparative assessments of regional performance, the volume offers detailed case studies of Spain, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, Israel a