This book has attempted to answer two questions. The first one is a specific historical question: How did international, cross-cultural commerce take place in the first half of the eighteenth century? The second question is more general: How did a growing evolution of international and cross-cultural trade contribute to globalizing movements? If many of the claims about global trade made in large-scale histories are to be taken seriously, two questions need to be addressed regarding the concrete and durable organization of trade and the best methodology of analysis.

This book has departed from a concrete case study, that of a cross-cultural commercial network active in the diamond business, and it has advocated the use of network analysis as a good methodological tool to study commercial history. In such analysis, the point of departure is micro-historical, and focuses on the organization of horizontal human relationships. In this focus, relationships within mono-cultural groups or trade diasporas have not been at the centre of analysis. All too often, large-scale histories have remained limited to a comparison between different groups, different regions or different cultures, especially when trying to answer the question of differing paths towards modernity or economic progress.

In focusing instead on cross-cultural relationships, human interaction becomes fundamental in explaining the world. This avoids a history of early globalization that is built on a comparison of difference and inequality.