The Art of Distrust: Governance in Long-Distance Trade and the Making of Impersonal Power, 1400–1800

This article reframes late medieval and early modern merchant governance through the lens of distrust, conceived as a structured and productive force for sustaining order amid uncertainty. Drawing on insights from economic sociology and organizational studies, and grounded in archival documents from across Europe, it introduces the art of distrust as a framework for understanding how merchants navigated both foreseeable risks and deeper, more pervasive forms of the unknown. Distrust operated as a discipline embedded in recursive documentation, distributed surveillance, rhetorical restraint, and tactical conflict management. These practices were not merely technical responses to risk but part of a broader normative tradition honed over centuries of mercantile life and codified in manuals guiding merchants in observing others and managing their own conduct. The protocols of vigilance articulated in this literature treated opacity as a terrain to be strategically navigated in the name of the common good. Their echoes in courtly and political writings invite reflection on how mercantile practices of surveillance and self-discipline contributed to shaping impersonal rule as a defining logic of modern institutional life.