The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver: The Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India, (1530-1750)

This is the first book on the Eurasian silk trade in early modern times. Most of the raw silk spun in Europe from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries was imported from Iran via the Ottoman markets. For the Eurasian silk trade, the armenian suburb of New Julfa was the hub and controlled a vast commercial network covering half the world, from Amsterdam to the Philippines. Silk was exchanged for Europe’s imported American silver. Iran was entirely dependent on these Armenian silver imports reaped from the silk trade. The cash brought in by the silk trade was used for Iran’s state building and centralization in the seventeenth century. Studying this trade as well as the administration which organized it, brings to light, for the very first time, the political economy of Safavid Iran.