Daniel Strum
Daniel Strum holds a BA in Economics from the University of São Paulo (USP), and an MA and PhD in Jewish History from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His studies focus on the judicial and reputational mechanisms that supported the expansion of markets in the trans-Atlantic trade during early modern times. He was a visiting scholar at Stanford and Yale universities, and was granted the Clarival do Prado Valladares prize in Brazilian History, the Hanadiv Fellowship in European History, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Rector and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology doctoral fellowships among other distinctions. His book The Sugar Trade: Brazil, Portugal and the Netherlands (1595–1630) was published by Stanford University Press in 2013. He has published in prestigious journals, such as the Economic History Review. He is currently a professor in the History Department at the University of São Paulo, and was a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute of Advanced Study last Spring (2020).
Supervisors: Yosef Kaplan and Avner Greif
Supervisors: Yosef Kaplan and Avner Greif
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To make this trade feasible and profitable, merchants developed of a wide range of maritime transportation strategies, risk mitigation methods, and payment and credit practices. The organization of shipping sought to make the most of the supply and demand along the route and reduce transportation costs with idle cargo space. By mixing more expensive goods along with cheaper products, merchants tried to keep many vessels sailing between those ports to increase the flow of information, to profit from arbitrage, and to spread the risk. Being a semi-luxury item, the value sugar in absolute terms afforded insurance premiums more than the products with lower value per volume traditionally traded by the Dutch. Yet the value of sugar was not as high as Asian spices or Spanish American bullion, therefore, the costs of concentrating shipping in convoys protected by well-armed vessels was burdensome to the sugar trade. Attempts to coerce sailing in convoys and establish monopolies on certain exports (and imports) to Brazil by the Dutch and the Portuguese found fierce opposition among most traders, particularly modest ones. Being quite fungible, easily priced, and widely traded, sugar roughly fit the modern concept of a commodity. As such, it was convenient means of payment and also functioned as commodity money in Brazil, where it was the main merchandise sourced in the colony. As planters grew increasingly indebted, they secured various legal hindrances to their properties’ foreclosure and compulsory acceptance of sugar as payment at officially tariffed prices unless otherwise stipulated, which increased merchants’ credit risk while reducing their gains.
At the beginning of the early modern period, mercantile customs became progressively standardized, universalized and enforceable in Europe and its colonies. This process facilitated the relations between merchants and their overseas agents being governed by a private mechanism based on economic incentives and the parties’ professional reputation across different marketplaces and diasporas. Although not a requisite, in transactions that involved larger amounts and lower verifiability, merchants preferred to reinforce the former with an intradiasporic reputation mechanism, in which social incentives underpinned economic ones, and information flowed at greater volume and speed. Both private mechanisms were supplemented by litigation.
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We are also planning a follow-up workshop at the University of Bremen with more participants.
To make this trade feasible and profitable, merchants developed of a wide range of maritime transportation strategies, risk mitigation methods, and payment and credit practices. The organization of shipping sought to make the most of the supply and demand along the route and reduce transportation costs with idle cargo space. By mixing more expensive goods along with cheaper products, merchants tried to keep many vessels sailing between those ports to increase the flow of information, to profit from arbitrage, and to spread the risk. Being a semi-luxury item, the value sugar in absolute terms afforded insurance premiums more than the products with lower value per volume traditionally traded by the Dutch. Yet the value of sugar was not as high as Asian spices or Spanish American bullion, therefore, the costs of concentrating shipping in convoys protected by well-armed vessels was burdensome to the sugar trade. Attempts to coerce sailing in convoys and establish monopolies on certain exports (and imports) to Brazil by the Dutch and the Portuguese found fierce opposition among most traders, particularly modest ones. Being quite fungible, easily priced, and widely traded, sugar roughly fit the modern concept of a commodity. As such, it was convenient means of payment and also functioned as commodity money in Brazil, where it was the main merchandise sourced in the colony. As planters grew increasingly indebted, they secured various legal hindrances to their properties’ foreclosure and compulsory acceptance of sugar as payment at officially tariffed prices unless otherwise stipulated, which increased merchants’ credit risk while reducing their gains.
At the beginning of the early modern period, mercantile customs became progressively standardized, universalized and enforceable in Europe and its colonies. This process facilitated the relations between merchants and their overseas agents being governed by a private mechanism based on economic incentives and the parties’ professional reputation across different marketplaces and diasporas. Although not a requisite, in transactions that involved larger amounts and lower verifiability, merchants preferred to reinforce the former with an intradiasporic reputation mechanism, in which social incentives underpinned economic ones, and information flowed at greater volume and speed. Both private mechanisms were supplemented by litigation.
We are also planning a follow-up workshop at the University of Bremen with more participants.