Introduction / Andrea Caracausi and Christof Jeggle -- pt. I. Approaches. Networks as social structures in late medieval and early modern towns : a theoretical approach to historical network analysis / Mike Burkhardt -- Interactions, networks, discourses and markets / Christof Jeggle -- pt. II. Merchants. Creating networks through languages : Italian merchants in late medieval and early modern Europe / Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli -- Networks and commercial penetration models in the late medieval Mediterranean : revisiting the Datini / Angela Orlandi -- Networks and merchant diasporas : Florentine bankers in Lyon and Antwerp in the sixteenth century / Heinrich Lang -- The Astudillo partnership and the Spanish 'nation' in sixteenth-century Florence / Francesco Ammannati and Blanca González Talavera -- pt. III. Markets and institutions. Merchant networks in the cities of the crown of Castile / David Carvajal de la Vega -- Galley routes and merchant networks between Venice and the North Sea in the fifteenth century / Stefania Montemezzo -- Network takers or network makers? : the Portuguese traders in the medieval west / Flávio Miranda -- pt. IV. Products. Pepper and silver between Milan and Lisbon in the second half of the sixteenth century / Benedetta Crivelli -- The wool trade, Venice and the Mediterranean cities at the end of the sixteenth century / Andrea Caracausi -- The Scerimans and cross-cultural trade in gems : the Armenian diaspora in Venice and its trading networks in the first half of the eighteenth century / Evelyn Korsch.