Through the water and the storm: Maritime averages and seaborne trade in early modern Genoa, 1590-1700

A storm is looming on the horizon. The hold is full of wheat and the shipmaster decides to throw part of it overboard. The jettison – a voluntary sacrifice – lightens the vessel, which manage to escape the imminent danger. Once in Genoa, the jettison and all other unexpected damages are shared among the ship and cargo owners, according to a mutual principle of reciprocity that partially escapes market logic. This was, and still is, a common General Average act. The General Average was an ancient tool to manage the financial risk of maritime trade that predates Roman Law, which nowadays follows the York-Antwerp Rules. Drawing on quantitative, socio-economic and legal methodologies, this book examines the features of Genoese seaborne trade through hundreds of Averages procedures drafted or sent to Genoa between 1590 and 1700, the period of the so-called “first globalization”. The port of Genoa is a privileged observation point because of its role as a redistributive emporium in the early modern Mediterranean and as a hub for the regional economy. The Genoese oligarchic Republic in the early modern period adopted neutrality policies to survive the expansionism of nearby Mediterranean powers, reflected in their Average rules, thus creating the context for a “competitive market” that welcomed ships of all nationalities. The book is two-pronged. The first prong concerns Genoese regulations governing Average and their development from the medieval to the early modern period, with a particular emphasis on the specificities of Genoese legislation and the legal convergence that occurred at the end of the seventeenth century. The second prong is based on the elaboration of the data drawn from Average procedures to further shed light on features such as the flows of goods in the Western Mediterranean, the nationalities of ships arriving in Genoa, the routes they followed, the dangers faced by shipmasters and the different solutions they adopted to avoid them.