Global Trade and Early Modern Women

Abstract

During the expansion of global trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, driven primarily by new European companies, women from across multiple geographies contributed in fundamental ways as consumers, mediators, and even as financiers of the emergent economic networks. For instance, women from Mughal, Ottoman, and English royal households used their political influence to help further the actives of new mercantile entities such as the East India and Levant Companies. Queen Elizabeth I corresponded with the Ottoman Sultan Murad III and his principal consort Safiye Sultan in order to facilitate the Levant Company. Safiye would continue to communicate with Elizabeth even after her son Mehmed III ascended the throne. Her letters to Elizabeth and that of her Jewish intermediary Esperanza Malchi reveal the importance of women within Ottoman polity. Similarly, the account of princess Gulbadan Begum represents Mughal women as consumers of European imports. Later, Nur Jahan, the influential wife of Jahangir, would negotiate with the Portuguese as well as the English East India Company. At the same time, ordinary English women petitioned the East India Company for the wages or share of goods of their husbands, and sons. Despite the dearth of travel narratives by English or Asian women during this period, their surviving letters, memoirs, and even petitions provide useful information on how they rose to confront changing global economic scenarios.