DOI: 10.20350/digitalcsic/212
title: CrespoDynCoopNet DATA Collections
title: CrespoDATABASEAtlanticTrade

description: The collected data are stored into a Microsoft Access® database that has been designed to be physically integrated into a GIS system. The main structure of this initial database is built around the main table, named ‘AGENTS’, in which all biographic data related to the individual agents are entered taking into account the various ‘worlds’ each agent belongs to – social, economic etc. An individual study and classification has been carried out for each agent; then an attempt has been made to understand the collectivity as the sum total of all these individuals since all of these are related, as can be observed in the database. In relation to the agents, what is new about this initial database is that the investigation is not limited to agents who are merchants by profession. Instead, any relevant data has been collected related to any agent that takes part in cooperation: representatives, corsairs and pirates, capitalist partners, agents, consignees, etc. All of the latter are agents taking part in cooperation and are part of a global network of trade, smuggling, looting or any other type of cooperation or commercial operation. Format: It is a Database in Access® with 30 tables. It contains several queries about actions, agents, cooperation, fleets and ships. All data have identifiers that relate tables. It has 21 full forms that give information on cooperation among agents while identifying partners. Lists with goods and ships are included. A table named ‘COOPERATIONS’ is also defined, in which all forms of commercial relationships – business, Company, Society, etc. -are represented which take place between agents. This again is new as the study is not limited to a specific type of commercial operation but has been extended to all types of goods transactions in which two or more agents are involved, be it legal or illegal, be the goods slaves or metals. The objective is to identify all types of commercial networks. In fact, as agents we have people, Societies, Companies, Institutions, etc. There is also a table named ‘ACTIONS’ where all activities or actions are entered, such as money lending, job commissioning, etc., that occurred within cooperation and were quoted by the sourced used. This table is related to another, very important one – ‘SHIPS’. Many of the remaining tables in the initial Access® database store typologies - places, professions, etc. Having chosen the previously described tables as primary (Agents, Cooperation, Actions and Ships) allows us to analyze the various commercial, professional and interpersonal relationships between the various agents, laying the emphasis on their geographic location, chronologic moment and degree of kinship; in short, the cooperation networks they built. (e.g. the importance of Nicholas Magens as a merchant, or that of the Roo or the Amsick families, whose range of action could spread from Alicante to Elche in Spain or from Cadiz to Manila via Mexico. A Spanish-English glossary is attached to facilitate the understanding of the terminology on the data set. Publications: Crespo Solana, Ana y Owens, Jack J. B. “Dynamic Complexity of Cooperation-Based Self-Organising Networks in the First Global Age (DynCoopNet)” The Evolution of Cooperation and Trading”, By Ronald Noë, Rüdiger Klein, Julia Boman, Claire Rustat-Flinton, eds., Strasbourg, European Science Foundation, 2008, pp. 23-35. http://www.esf.org/activities/eurocores/programmes/tect.html Alonso García, David & Crespo Solana, Ana (coords.) Self-Organising Networks and Trading Cooperation: GIS tools in the visualization of the Atlantic Economic Expansion (1400-1800), 2011 (forthcoming). Contents License: This data set is made available under the Open Database License http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/dbcl/1.0/. Users of the dataset are free to share, create and adapt under the conditions of attribution and share-alike.
description: This database contains information on Atlantic trade with data on agents, commercial activities, maritime routes, freights, ships, monopolistic commercial companies, businesses, goods, and, above all, events, actions and relationships of cooperation among trade networks. These data fall within the chronological framework between 1648 and 1778 and a wide geographic expanse with place names and cartographic data from Africa, Europe and America during the First Global Age – 16th-18th centuries. This database has been adapted to a GIS-oriented conceptual model (GIS – Geographic Information System). The right choice of sources for the immense amount of information collected by the database has been crucial. As we were conscious that not all the information from the sources could be gathered, especially from archival sources, only the information that is relevant to this investigation has been selected – here quantity does not necessarily mean quality. Information has been harvested from a great variety of sources, whether bibliographic and archival. The common ground of all this information is that it refers to commercial agents and their activities along the maritime routes that were linked to the European Atlantic System during the above mentioned chronological period. The information contained is on legal trade, commercial monopolies, smuggling, illicit trade, trade undertaken by European commercial companies operating under on behalf of merchant nations such as Holland, France or England, and, above all, information on the shipping carried out within the Spanish commercial system with America or Indies Trade, i.e. registers of the outbound and inbound fleets, passenger lists bound for the Indies, traders’ licences, dictionaries on seafaring and shipping, etc. In order to select the sources to be used, advice was sought from specialists in this field. Also the NACOM bibliographic catalogue was consulted. This catalogue consists of a bibliographical list on merchant communities in the Modern Age and is regularly updated. It has been compiled as part of the project MICINN (2006-HUM-01679) under the Spanish Plan Nacional de Investigación programme. The criterion for the selection of sources was, firstly, that they contain information on relationships between merchant networks and communities, and secondly, that the data contained was either biographical or professional of the agents that were part of those communities or were otherwise related to them. A part of information has been sourced on other databases available on the internet.
description: This data set has been elaborated within the project: Dynamic Complexity of Cooperation-Based Self-Organizing Commercial Networks in the First Global Age (Acrónim: DynCoopNet). Funding by EUROCORES Programme, European Science Foundation TECT call: “The Evolution of Cooperation and Trading”, and by the MICINN (Acciones Complementarias: SEJ2007-29226).
description: Peer reviewed