Networks in the Early History of Capitalism: Merchant Practices in Renaissance Venice

We are pleased to present the book by Stefania Montemezzo, Member of our Scientific Committee.

In January 1432, the Venetian merchant and patrician Pietro Querini was shipwrecked with his crew. He and a few survivors arrived at the Lofoten Islands, in the Arctic Circle. The shipwreck and his subsequent encounter with the Norwegian people have become one of the most emblematic stories of resilience of the Middle Ages. Not only because it bears witness to the ever-present risk of navigation, but also because it reveals an essential aspect of the Venetian economy: the ability to adapt to adversity and to transform failures into commercial opportunities. While Querini’s voyage to the North Seas is well known and has created a myth that still unites the Mediterranean world with the Arctic, his return journey is less clear: an arduous journey undertaken with limited financial resources, which led Querini and the surviving crew to travel through Europe as pilgrims rather than merchants. After travelling through Norway, Sweden and England, Querini managed, after months spent in unknown lands, to get back in touch with other Venetians who provided him with the support and means necessary to finally return to Venice. This experience demonstrates how crucial the networks of fellow countrymen and merchants were, even far from the lagoon, to face crises and the unexpected.

This same spirit of resistance and adaptation to adversity is at the centre of the book by Stefania Montemezzo. Using mostly unpublished sources – account books, commercial letters and notarial deeds – the author reconstructs the reality of small and medium-sized Venetian businesses in the second half of the 15th century, highlighting how merchants found themselves facing constant challenges: wars with the Ottomans and the Italian states, trade blockades, mistakes made by overseas agents, financial crises, shipwrecks and the recovery of goods and men. In a profoundly unstable economy, success depended on the ability to create links, gather information and redistribute one’s resources according to the changing market conditions. Like Querini in London, the merchants analysed by Montemezzo – Giovanni Foscari, Alvise Michiel and Marco Bembo – relied on networks of fellow countrymen and intermediaries to overcome obstacles and reorient their investments. Through three case studies – from the state galleys to the management of family businesses, to correspondence with agents in various trading centres – the book offers a detailed picture of Venetian trade and the entrepreneurial flexibility necessary to face the risks of the time. Particular attention is paid to the Flemish and English markets, thanks also to the account books of Giovanni Foscari (published in 2012 by the same author and downloadable free of charge from the website of the publishing house, La Malcontenta), which detail the journeys of the nephew to Flanders and England of Francesco Foscari, Doge at the time of Querini’s shipwreck, which were fundamental to his return from Norway.

The book is divided into five chapters that deal with five major themes of Venetian trade. The first focuses on the Venetian family business model, highlighting how personal and family dynamics profoundly influenced business operations, in an inseparable combination for the medieval Venetian economy. The second chapter highlights the link between family businesses and state support for trade: whether it was state-run galleys or incentives for grain imports, the Venetian state, run by the same noble families engaged in international trade, offered opportunities and services that few other state entities were able to guarantee during the same period. The third chapter focuses on the difficulties and challenges that international merchants faced on a daily basis, showing how wars, closed markets and dangerous navigation were countered by the creation of alternative trade circles, the exploitation of local resources (such as wool) and the use of overseas Venetian markets to keep trade active. The fourth chapter, on the other hand, concentrates on the topic that gives the book its title: capital. The Venetians, like other merchants on the Peninsula, managed to create, in a system that was not yet capitalist, a series of tools and practices that in fact paved the way for the modern capitalist market, thanks to tools such as bills of exchange and double-entry bookkeeping, which offered advanced management control, and the idea of keeping capital mobile to keep it productive. Finally, the last section of the book focuses on the work of agents and intermediaries. The work of these professionals allowed merchants to move goods and capital without ever having to leave their city, and in fact created a system of relationships that allowed information to be circulated very easily, creating networks of contacts that were probably also fundamental for Pietro Querini who, on his way back to Venice, had to rely on these networks to obtain the help and support he needed to continue his journey.

Stefania Montemezzo’s book offers a vivid picture of late medieval Venetian commercial life, highlighting the importance of support networks and access to information. If Querini, lacking money and means, managed to return thanks to the help of generous Scandinavian benefactors and other Venetians, the book shows how survival and success in trade were linked to similar strategies: connections, trust and the ability to transform the unexpected into new opportunities.

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