"Hans Holbein's Triumphs (1532-1534), commissioned for the headquarters of the Hanseatic League in London and Kano Naizen's The Portuguese namban ('foreigners') painted in Japan in 1543 are representations of worlds of trade, where wealth, speculation, exploitation, poverty, curiosity,...

Trading Worlds is an anthropological study of a little understood yet rapidly expanding global trading diaspora, namely the Afghan merchants of Afghanistan, Central Asia and Europe. It contests one-sided images that depict traders from this and other conflict regions as immoral profiteers, the...