Venetian «Averages» between East and West. Risk Management and Transaction Costs in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Abstract

Between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, Averages played an important (and neglected) role within Venetian maritime trade and shipping, as they functioned both as risk management tools and as a mechanism for the absorption of transaction costs. The essay will trace these normative developments across the phase of economic growth in the Middle Ages, and analyse how these were structurally transformed in the seventeenth century under the pressure of new maritime operators which contributed to the early modern crisis of the Venetian maritime sector. This touches on several elements of the shifting Venetian economy about which we still know very little: the internal balance of interests between different economic sectors; and within the maritime sector itself – shipowners, merchants, investors; and presents a novel interpretation of the resilience of Venetian maritime working capital well into the eighteenth century.