The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran

Using 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.

• A full-length exploration of the silk trade and commercial enterprise/trade routes in Safavid Iran
• Links in to similar studies on related empires such as the Mughal and Ottoman empires and will thus make serious contribution to debates
• Interdisciplinary connections with European, Ottoman, South Asian history/economic history which should encourage further sales