Call for Papers. 

Special Issue: Agents of Integration: Mercantile Networks, Financial Innovation, and the Origins of Globalization (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)

Recent scholarship on early globalisation has shifted away from macro-structural narratives towards the agents who built long-distance markets: merchants, brokers, and financiers operating across fragmented legal and monetary systems. Investigaciones de Historia Económica – Economic History Research (IHE-EHR) is preparing a special issue devoted to this bottom-up reconstruction of early globalisation, examining how mercantile networks and financial innovation shaped market integration across the Hispanic Monarchy, the Habsburg domains of Europe, and their Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Asian connections between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The editors invite new research on the causes, mechanisms, and consequences of this process.

Contributions may address a broad range of topics, including (among others) the following:

• The role of mercantile networks and merchant diasporas (Genoese, Flemish, Iberian, Central European, and others) in building trust and contractual infrastructure for long-distance
• Financial innovation and the development of private and public debt markets, including debt transfers, credit chains, bills of exchange, sea loans, and galley contracts.
• Business history case studies of companies, brokers, and commercial intermediaries whose organisation reveals how institutional fragmentation could become a competitive advantage for transnational mercantile
• Commercial and financial connections linking Atlantic, Mediterranean, Central European, and Asian market spaces (e.g., Seville, Genoa, Antwerp, Naples, Mexico, Lima, Manila, Trieste, Vienna).

Comparative approaches and case studies centred on specific places, sectors, or companies will both be considered. Papers should be written in English or Spanish.

The deadline for paper submission is 31 March 2027. Manuscripts should be submitted via ihe@aehe.es, following the journal’s standard submission process and indicating that the manuscript is intended for this special issue. Submissions will be peer-reviewed in accordance with the journal’s regular practice. For further information on submission guidelines, see: https://iheehr.es/author-guidelines/   

The editors of the special issue are:

• María del Carmen Pérez Artés (Universidad de Almería), mcarmenartes@ual.es
• Montserrat Cachero Vinuesa (Universidad Pablo de Olavide), mcacvin@upo.es
• Manuel Herrero Sánchez (Universidad Pablo de Olavide), mahersan@upo.es