Afterword

Abstract

This volume is one of the outcomes of the European Research Council-funded project ‘Sailing into Modernity: Comparative Perspectives on the Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century European Economic Transition’. The primary goal of this collaborative and comparative project has been to investigate the legal and economic status of seafarers in the Mediterranean during the ‘long’ seventeenth century (1570–1730). Through a study of the contractual conditions and economic treatment of sailors active in the Mediterranean, the project has been testing the hypothesis that differences in this regard were one of the factors in the ultimate success of northern European economies in their commercial penetration of the Mediterranean. This volume encompasses a much wider scope, as its goal is to present the current state of the art on these issues on a global stage. Essays by established academics and early-career scholars from three continents present research on three maritime regions — the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean — over three centuries, with some of the contributions extending this chronological range even further.