Under Uncertainty. Coping with Risks in the Mediterranean Maritime Business (Italy, 16th-19th centuries)

This project proposes to examine uncertainty in a new light, a theme which has returned to the centre of debate with the pandemic, the global trade crisis, and the recent Russian-Ukraine war, all of which invites comparison with a premodern scenario. The team, which is made up of experts in the international history of risk and the maritime economy, proposes a step change in approach for a field of considerable interest which seems to have exhausted its potential. We suggest reducing the weight given to risk and insurance in the study of the early modern maritime economy and focusing on a wider conception of uncertainty and the instruments used to manage it in the Mediterranean with a comparative perspective between different markets.