Merchants, corsairs, and pirates. Mercantile resilience to piracy in late medieval Venice

Abstract

This article investigates how merchants perceived piracy and reacted to it in the Rialto market between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. To do so, this work analysed references to the risk of piracy found in the correspondence written by the Florentine merchant Bindo di Gherardo Piaciti and the Venetian patrician Antonio di Marino Contarini, preserved in the Datini archive in Prato. By studying the individual perspectives on trade and risk offered by these two merchants, we can understand how Italian merchants recognised and described the identity of pirates and privateers, and how they employed specific commercial practices to mitigate the risk posed by piracy. This study is based on the analysis of references to the resilience of the Venetian merchant society and a comparison of the practices of local and foreign economic actors. This work is an ideal starting point for understanding how adopting an individual perspective on medieval merchants’ risk perception can expand the possibilities of historiography interested in pre-modern risk.