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Mercantile and Religious Mobility between Byzantines, Latins and Muslims, 1200-1500: On the Theory and Practice of Social Networks

This paper combines documentary evidence with concepts and tools of historical network science and social theory in order to explore phenomena of (especially) mercantile mobility and religious conversion in the late medieval Byzantine world. The intensification of commercial exchange and the multiplication of contact zones between ethnic and religious identities in the 13th to 15th centuries, both due to the growth of the activity of Italian merchant communities as well as due to the Mongol expansion across entire Asia, facilitated the change of places of residence and/or of religious confession for elite as well as non-elite members of these societies. With the help of network analytical and sociological concepts, potential underlying mechanisms such as the »social infrastructure« for these phenomena are described. In general, the last centuries of the relationship between Byzantium and the West saw the intensification of processes of individual and community-wide religious change, which equally shaped the following early modern period of Mediterranean history.