Overview. Trades, Ports and Ships: The Roots of Difference in Sailors’ Lives

Abstract

Shipping was a major source of increased efficiency and, ultimately, of economic growth in Europe from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century. People who worked in the maritime sector made a significant contribution to the economy and society during the period. The conditions which framed the working lives of those sailors and dockworkers were generated and constrained by factors external to shipping. The general framework, the gross differences between the maritime states in the north-west of the continent and the lands surrounding the Mediterranean, dictated long-run competitive advantages constraining the scope of workers’ actions. More immediate circumstances shaped daily labour in the maritime sector. Workers were not silent tools of external, powerful impersonal forces. There were factors which framed workers’ lives, but the actions taken by workers contributed significantly to the frame. The interaction, the feedback from market forces and technology and the choices made by the men and women active in the maritime sector created a circularity of causation. Any discussion of labour and shipping must take account of the choices people on board and in ports made. There were matters beyond sailors’ and dockwork-ers’ and merchants’ control which dictated many features of what they had to do. But there were things which they did on board, on the quay and in the counting house which dictated long-term developments in Europe and beyond.