Letras de câmbio e correspondência comercial como materiais da história : o acto de cooperar sob olhares distintos

Abstract

Economic history has been made of prices, wages, weights and measures, but also of individuals. Agents who, in the past, had to establish relations with others to produce and to trade. In the sixteenth century, with a global intensification of exchange, these agents aspired to cooperate, sporadically or permanently, in pursuit of profit to accomplish a common goal. Bills of exchange and commercial correspondence are historical materials, which have here been chosen as the basis to study the mechanisms of cooperation among the merchants of the 1500s and the factors that influenced them, like risk, trust or reputation. This article aims to compare them in their form and content, as two faces of the same coin, understanding their complementarities in the different historical dynamics they translate.