From feudal to modern: Social dynamics and commercial agreements in medieval Genoa

This thesis is a long term empirical study of medieval long-distance trade agreements and the surrounding social dynamics that transformed the pre-existing feudal organization of men-of-arms into the world of Renaissance merchants.;Making use of an unprecedented number of medieval records, I built a data set to trace the commercial partnerships of thousands of people over a 300-year period in Genoa. As in other Italian town, in the absence of a large routinized mercantile class, a large proportion of the population directly participated in the 12 and 13th centuries expansion of trade and I am able to report early social activity, on a scale that is unattainable for other European cities.;The thesis describes long distance contracts that organized the rules of commercial encounters while systematically examining relational data. In employing network analysis methods, I assert the social foundation of economic dynamic and challenge the prevailing western centric view of development by showing that the history of the three main medieval economic frameworks that brought about the European capitalism - equity, credit and insurance - were not driven by economic optimization or strategic merchants but by a change in partners' selections which reflected the dynamic of the Genoese social structure as a whole.;By tracing the feudal origin of Genoese social organization around the time of the first Crusade (1097-99), I show that, at first, commenda contracts (a temporary equity partnership that organized most early trading ventures) fostered heterogeneous ties with respect to status and wealth which over time enabled commoners to compete for control of Genoa. Over time, the traditional elite switched to credit and insurance when defining their relational ties to reorganize and consolidate their command of the city through the routinized form of economic activity that ultimately gave rise to the new world of merchants.