Resilience in times of Early Modern financial crises: the case study of Simon Ruiz network, 1553-1606

In Spanish second half of the 16th century, a merchant called Simon Ruiz had built a network of business partners which allowed him to be one of the wealthiest merchants in the Iberia Peninsula. The Spanish Empire maintained military conflicts with almost all Europe, which further contributed to the insolvency of the Spanish Crown, resulting in three different bankruptcies (1557, 1575 and 1596) and several constraints in financial and commercial activity. In such troubled periods, trust in credit affairs was at stake and directly interfered with the liquidity of commercial firms. Hence, it is no surprise that several companies in Europe, defaulted.

In this conjuncture, Simon Ruiz’s company and business network has not collapsed, maintaining its activity for 53 years. How and why did this business network resist to such contrarieties? In this paper, it is argued how the resilience of the network was fostered in two distinct, but complementary approaches: on one hand, the business strategies Ruiz used to face different economic conjunctures; on the other hand, the structural characteristics of the network, using variables of mathematical network analysis. Which strategies could prevent an Early Modern business company from collapse in an adverse economic scenario? We believe network analysis can contribute for the answer. To approach these questions, we will support our analysis on the bills of exchange and the commercial correspondence of Simon Ruiz private archive.