Average-Transaction Costs and Risk Management during the First Globalization (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries)

Further Activities

The Mediterranean Seminar is proud to announce the January 2023 Article of the Month: Jake Dyble, “General Average, Human Jettison, and the Status of Slaves in Early Modern Europe", more details at this link: 

mediterraneanseminar.squarespace.com/2023-january-article-of-the-month

Jake Dyble, AveTransRisk project members, developed his research on these issues during his time in the project.

Digital Innovation Prize

The AveTransRisk Database has won (ex aequo) the Digital Innovation Prize which was awarded at the 2022 World Economic History Congress which took place in Paris at the end of July. the prize, organised and funded by the Association Française d’Histoire Économique (AFHE) under the patronage of the International Economic History Association, was set up to reward digital humanities projects in the field of economic history and promote ongoing and achieved projects involving new technologies in economic history.

The whole team thanks Antonio Iodice who prepared the material for the submission and successfully presented the Database in a special session during the 2022 WEHC.

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Here follows the transcription of the motivation

The committee has awarded this prize ex aequo to this project because the committee recognizes the ambition of the project making complex premodern data about international trade available online, with all the information necessary for researchers to use them. The data was broken down into relevant categories. We can build queries easily and locate them on a map in a simple, efficient, and robust interface. In particular, lies the fact that the origin of the data was well documented, as the database could be downloaded freely with opened and wide range of analysis for research. The concern for cooperation and integration with other existing projects, like Navigo for example, was also a model for the sustainability of the project in a changing academic world.

Other Activity

Lewis Wade’s PhD thesis - Privilege at a Premium: Insurance, Maritime Law and Political Economy in Early Modern France, 1664-c. 1710 – is the winner of the 2021 British Commission for Maritime History 2021 Doctoral Prize, further details here.

Sabine Go, Giovanni Ceccarelli and Guido Rossi have received a grant from the Cooperating Maritime Funds (Samenwerkende Maritieme Fondsen) to expand their project “Risky Business: pricing, governance, and integration in European insurance markets (c. 1400-1870)”. This projects objective is to advance, through international cooperation, the historical study of marine insurance. A multination, public database of recorded marine insurance prices from the earliest records (15^th century) to the end of the 19^th century database has been designed and created. Simultaneously, the researchers have located and collected existing private databases (data that had already been compiled which otherwise may be lost), and have added new data gathered from primary sources in various archives. The project is also supported by the Dutch government (NWO Internationalisering in de Geesteswetenschappen), by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Universita degli studi di Parma and by the Fondazione Mansutti in Milan. The current funding will be used for data entry, particular data from archives in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, which has not been processed before. The researchers of the project team, which, apart from Go, Ceccarelli and Rossi, includes Adrian Leonard, have met as members of the Average-Transaction Cost and Risk Management during the First Globalization (Sixteenth- Eighteenth Centuries) to which they remain associated.

Media

Blogs

Gijs Dreijer’s in the Economic and History Society blog (2021).

Gijs Dreijer's in the Maritiem Portal.

Videos

General Average - Transaction Costs and Risk Management during the First Globalization

A video on the project prepared for the European Humanities Conference (May 5th to 7th, 2021)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-a_cFo0yGc

Communities of Risk: Dealing with the Unpredictable in the Age of Sail (Exeter 3MT Winner 2021)

Jake Dyble's winning 3 minute You Tube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YnPkwxQ_BM

And the explainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKgSOniwMQw

Marta García Garralón discussed Riesgos y echazón en la Carrera de Indias. La avería gruesa y el principio de equidad (Risk and jettison in the Carrera de Indias. General average and the principle of equity) at the Online Seminar Research Project IBEROT@C (PID2019-111054GBI00)

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EBOwBkkTvg

Interviews

Marta García Garralón is interviewed by Spanish National Radio on the importance of jettison and General Average in the Carrera de Indias:  https://canal.uned.es/video/6343b475b9130f013e3fcef2

Dr. Gijs Dreijer is interviewd by VRT and talks about the 'Ever Given' and the effect of age old maritime law.

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2021/07/29/ever-given-aangekomen-in-nederland-eeuwenoud-principe-averij-gr/ (original in flemish)

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2021/07/29/ever-given-aangekomen-in-nederland-eeuwenoud-principe-averij-gr/ (translated into English)

Podcasts

For the podcast series 'What is wrong with maritime trade?' Maria Fusaro discusses the importance of the mutual element underpinning GA in the context of ‘Solidarity in Trade?’, available at https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ylIuGRkOir2u1n8cpLVP1

Gijs Dreijer was interviewed as part of CIMSEC's Sea Control Podcasts to discuss his book on General Averages in the Low Countries, you can access this at: https://cimsec.org/sea-control-454-maritime-trade-averages-and-institutional-development-in-the-low-countries-with-dr-gijs-dreijer/