Drawing upon a large number of diverse documents, this ground-breaking book explores the emergence and development of the global trade network run by Armenian silk merchants based in New Julfa, Isfahan, in the Persian empire, between 1605 and 1747. From its tiny base, this merchant network established a vast web of outposts, stretching from London to Acapulco. Aslanian's superb book gives this small community the attention it deserves and positions it firmly as an essential, insightful study of the interdisciplinary fields of trade diasporas, information networks, and world history.

Originally from the borders of the Safavid empire, this Armenian community was deported and resettled by Shah Abbas I after their town, Old Julfa, was burned down in 1604. They were relocated in a suburb of the Iranian capital, Isfahan, which they named New Julfa. Here the 300,000-strong community were granted rights and privileges – including a degree of religious and administrative autonomy – beyond the usual ones shared by the dhimmi communities of Islamic-governed lands. In 1619, the Julfans became the main exporters of Iranian silk, making this small suburb ‘one of the most important mercantile centers in Eurasia’ (p. 2), as Iranian raw silk was one of the most valuable commodities in world trade at the time; they later expanded their trade to include gems and Indian textiles. Aslanian demonstrates in detail how the Julfan Armenians built one of the most impressive trade networks of the early modern period, comprising four distinct but overlapping circuits, with New Julfa at the centre. These included the network of the Indian Ocean, a Mediterranean circuit, north-western Europe, and a Russian empire network. The author masterfully brings to light the importance of this group as the only Eurasian community of merchants to operate so extensively across all the major empires of the early modern period, exemplifying what he calls ‘transimperial cosmopolitanism’ (p. 6). Aslanian's analytical framework is to reconceptualize ‘trade diasporas’ of the period as ‘circulation societies’ (p. 13), and the Julfan case as a multimodal, monocentric network, with the vast majority of the materials circulating originating from the centre (p. 15).

The book follows on from such works as Levon Khachikian and Hakob Papazian's Accounting ledger of Hovhannes Ter Davt'yan of Julfa (1984), Shushanik Khachikian's The Armenian commerce of New Julfa and its commercial and economic ties with Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1988); Edmund Herzig's highly regarded (unpublished) thesis, ‘The Armenian merchants from New Julfa: a study in pre-modern trade’ (1991), and Ina Baghdiantz McCabe's The Shah's silk for Europe's silver: the Eurasian trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India, 1530–1750 (1999). Aslanian's work is in a different league, however, reflecting years of meticulous and determined research in absorbing documents from thirty-one archives in several languages, housed in cities including Venice, Vienna, Calcutta, Càdiz, Madras, London, Yerevan, Seville, and Isfahan. Most of these more than 10,000 documents have lain unseen for 300 years and were unearthed by Aslanian in his investigations. One of the most interesting discoveries that he made was the correspondence from the Armenian-freighted ship Santa Catharina (confiscated in India by the British army in 1748), comprising some 1700 mercantile documents from the 1740s written by Armenian merchants from their New Julfan base to their agents and relatives in India.

Taking his cue from Hyam and Henshaw (2003) that ‘History is too important to be left to stay-at-home theorists’,Footnote 3 Aslanian has embarked on journeys and travails, systematically piecing together and recreating the life of this merchant community, for which he also learned the obscure (and now extinct) mercantile dialect of Julfa in which the documents were written. It is a rare treat to see history come alive in this way – the book at times has the effect of a part-detective, part-thriller unfolding as archives and sources come together with colour, flair, and vividness, combined with theoretical sophistication and critical reflection.

The book is well structured, with seventy pages of extensive explanatory notes and references, and a definitive bibliography covering thirty-six pages. Chapters 2–4 provide an overview of the New Julfan community and a description of the development of the trade network. Chapter 5 focuses on the information network and draws on thousands of letters written by these merchants, demonstrating that the ‘Julfan trade network was built on and unified through a culture of long-distance commercial correspondence’ (p. 87). Chapter 6 looks at the circulation of the merchants and credit, and in particular at the commenda contract (an economic institution used in the Mediterranean in the medieval period) and how the commenda system helped shape Julfan society.

Chapter 7 focuses on social capital – to use its modern term – the foundation of trust, cooperation, and shared values that lay at the heart of the functioning of the network. The author examines trust as a commodity established by merchants and subject to monitoring, accountability, and a clear code of conduct. This is a particularly fascinating chapter, analysing the creation of networks of trust and cooperation between these centres through personal relationships. The partnership contract (enkeragir in Armenian) was based on the model of a sedentary businessman, usually based in Julfa, and an active agent who travelled on the business of his master. This operative mechanism was dependent on extended family networks and reputations to work efficiently, and was thus intrinsic to the organization of community life and the societal fabric of the Julfans. Conversely, it was this successful system that ultimately bred the insularity that contributed to the demise of the network, a subject that is considered in Chapter 8. The concluding chapter has a useful comparative analysis with two other long-distance trading networks operating concurrently, the Multani Indians and the Sephardic Jews. Though the analysis is dense and insightful, one possible criticism is that it could have been expanded to do greater justice to the author's commitment to placing the Julfans in a comparative context.

This book was awarded the PEN literature award for UC Press Exceptional First Book and was also chosen as the first book in the new series Author's Imprint from the California World History Library. It is indeed an outstanding work, which will be of interest to those working on world history, economic history, trade diasporas, and diaspora studies more widely.