This book provides a comprehensive picture of Venice’s shipping industry from the days of glory to its definitive decline, challenging the accepted hierarchy of the political, economic, and environmental factors impacting the history of the maritime republic.

Venice, one of the world's most storied cities, has a long and remarkable history, told here in its full scope from its founding in the early Middle Ages to the present day. A place whose fortunes and livelihoods have been shaped to a large degree by its relationship with water, Venice is seen in Dennis Romano's account as a terrestrial and maritime power, whose religious, social, architectural, economic, and political histories have been determined by its unique geography.

Drawing on a detailed examination of Venetian commerce in the Middle Ages, this book explores the business practices and structures that enabled merchants to compete in a challenging international market. Contributing to the literature on the early history of capitalism, this book demonstrates how Venetian merchants combined innovation with traditional methods to maintain their edge in a competitive world, providing valuable lessons on resilience and strategic planning in commerce. Small- and mid-sized commercial companies operating across borders and geographies in the early Renaissance period faced numerous challenges, including identifying profitable sectors and businesses, developing effective business strategies, dealing with peers and subordinates, managing the flow of information, and assessing risks and potential rewards. The chapters explore a range of topics in this context, including the roles of family-based firms, the strategic deployment of agents, and the impact of state policies on private enterprise. Readers are introduced to the ways Venetian merchants managed capital, adapted to market demands, and overcame obstacles like wars and resource shortages. This book will be of significant interest to historians and social scientists researching economic history, the history of trade, the history of capitalism, medieval and Renaissance history, and historical network analysis.

A captivating journey of the expansive world of medieval travel, from London to Constantinople to the court of China and beyond. Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites readers on an odyssey across the medieval world, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens. He takes us from the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and tours of the Khan’s court in Beijing to Mamluk-controlled Jerusalem, where we ride asses across the holy terrain, and bustling bazaars of Tabriz. We also learn of rumored fantastical places, like ones where lambs grow on trees and giant canes grow fruit made of gems. And we are offered a glimpse of what non-European travelers thought of the West on their own travels. Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers, and from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is a witty and unforgettable exploration of how Europeans understood—and often misunderstood—the larger world.

Volume I documents the lives and experiences of everyday people through the lens of human movement and mobility from 1400–1800. Focusing on the most important typologies of pre-industrial global migrations, this volume reveals how these movements transformed global paths of mobility, the impacts of which we still see in societies today. Case studies include those that arose from the demand of free, forced and unfree labour, long and short distance trade, rural/urban displacement, religious mobility and the rise of the number of refugees worldwide. With thirty chapters from leading experts in the field, this authoritative volume is an essential and detailed study of how migration shaped the nature of global human interactions before the age of modern globalization.

This book explores the careers of Dutch colonial governors in the 17th century with a focus on two case-studies: Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, governor of Dutch Brazil (1636-1644) and Rijckloff Volckertsz van Goens, Governor-General in Batavia in the 1670s.