What explains worldwide, historical patterns of trade diaspora dispersal? In the premodern period, trade diasporas were among the most important communities facilitating cross-cultural exchange over long distances. We argue that two general principles explain the proliferation of premodern trade diasporas. First, diaspora merchants were drawn to wealthy societies with the goal of obtaining access to high-value luxury goods produced through the development of complex supply chains. Second, traders sought to establish diaspora communities in locations that exhibited bioclimatic complementarities to the merchant’s home region, thereby assisting the procurement of relatively uncommon natural resources. To empirically assess these arguments, we examine the historical record for information about the product composition of historical trade; collect data on the locations of trade diaspora communities across Eurasia between 600 and 1600 AD; and develop an agent-based model that specifies the agents’ (i.e., traders’) rule-based decisions to migrate in a wealth and resource-differentiated geographic space that represents Eurasia. Taken together, our findings describe the conditions that facilitated diaspora creation and historical cross-cultural exchange — a topic of rich exploration in the fields of global historical sociology and international political economy.

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如何解释世界范围内贸易侨民分散的历史模式？在前现代时期，贸易侨民是促进远距离跨文化交流的最重要社区之一。我们认为，有两个一般原则可以解释前现代贸易侨民的激增。首先，侨民商人被富裕社会所吸引，目的是获得通过复杂供应链的发展生产的高价值奢侈品。其次，商人寻求在与商人家乡具有生物气候互补性的地点建立侨民社区，从而帮助采购相对罕见的自然资源。为了对这些论点进行实证评估，我们检查了有关历史贸易产品构成信息的历史记录；收集公元 600 年至 1600 年欧亚大陆贸易侨民社区位置的数据；并开发一个基于代理的模型，指定代理（即交易者）基于规则的决策，以在代表欧亚大陆的财富和资源差异化的地理空间中迁移。总而言之，我们的研究结果描述了促进侨民创造和历史跨文化交流的条件——这是全球历史社会学和国际政治经济学领域丰富探索的主题。

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