Working implicitly or explicitly with reference to one or more of these theories, world historians have recently devoted considerable attention to processes of cross-cultural interaction. Among the most prominent topics of recent scholarship on world history is cross-cultural trade. Throughout history, cross-cultural trade and commercial exchanges have profoundly influenced the development of individual societies and the world as a whole by bringing about systematic interaction between sometimes distant regions. Indeed, as Philip D. Curtin has suggested, they have been “perhaps the most important external stimuli to change, leaving aside the immeasurable and less-benign influence of military conquest.”12 Thus, cross-cultural trade lends itself readily to the analysis of transregional and global integration.