The Burden of Risk: Early Modern Maritime Enterprise and Varieties of Capitalism

Abstract

This essay will discuss the complex issues behind the relation between national and global economic histories, and the challenges of a comparative approach. Discussing different national approaches – Italian and English – to the management of the early modern maritime sector, it will argue that this comparison allows a privileged window into different varieties of capitalism, highlighting fundamental differences in the attitudes towards wage labour and risk management, which still today influence different approaches to economic activities.