Naviguer, commercer, gouverner

The strength of Venice's trading position between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries depended on many factors. Central to these was state support for a system of official galley convoys which carried low-volume high-value cargoes to destinations ranging from Southampton and Bruges to Alexandria and the Black Sea, and which also doubled as a highly effective naval reserve. The successful operation of the convoy system has been explored extensively in print by Frederic Lane, and, more recently, by Doris Stöckly. Claire Judde de Larivière's book is more concerned with the failure of the convoy system than with its success. At the turn of the fifteenth century, Venice had been sending around 3.6 convoys per year. By the second third of the sixteenth century, this had dropped to less than one per year. In this, her first book, she traces their decline, not in order to resurrect the old arguments about whether Venice experienced absolute economic decline but to examine the profound changes which were taking place in the commercial economy, and in the attitudes of the key actors who operated it. The author argues that there was a sharp distinction between public and private trading interests in medieval Venice. The same individuals could be (and often were) engaged in both spheres, but patricians engaged financially in state galleys not only out of personal interest but also because they were participating in a public enterprise underpinned by rhetoric and ceremony. Her central thesis is that, once commercial conditions no longer corresponded to the public good, patricians did not turn their backs on the convoy system, but, by changing their behaviour to compensate for deteriorating trading opportunities, they weakened a system which was already under strain. Her argument is of particular interest because these changes in behaviour, such as the use of litigation between partners in individual galleys in order to delay the payment of taxes to the Venetian government, manipulating the convoy rules over the time a ship stopped at an individual port, or trading in forbidden goods, are presented as more than pragmatic decisions. They represented a major change in the balance between perceptions of the public good and private benefits, which, she suggests, brought about a change in the relationship between the state and the ruling patriciate

Ancient history · Archaeology · Ceremony · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Fifteenth · Political science · Rhetoric · State (computer science · Theology · Historical Studies on Spain · History · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology