Merchants At Work: Opportunity, Integration, And Innovation

In this chapter the author chooses Rodrigues Vega, Carvalho, and Osorio to study in-depth because they exemplified many characteristics of elite new Christian merchants of the time. Such merchants were cross-community migrants and were also global, innovative, and integrative. Integration, in general, means to put or bring together parts or elements to form one whole, and this is what merchants such as Rodrigues Vega, Carvalho, and Osorio did. The chapter shows how Rodrigues Vega, Carvalho, and Osorio participated in many regions of the world in their business dealings, making them truly global merchants from a purely geographical perspective. The ability to integrate was key for global merchants, as they not only needed to integrate associates from other groups into their own personal networks and integrate themselves into other networks; they also had to integrate geographies, trade routes, capital, and products.Keywords: Carvalho; cross-community migrants; global merchants; new Christian merchants; Osorio; Rodrigues Vega; trade routes