Whales, Logbooks, and DNA

Abstract

Sixteenth-century Venice was a fascinating place. The glitterati of the Italian Renaissance were close by. The canali (the sewage system) were the best in Europe. The economy was booming. Although comings and goings of the wealthy and powerful are well recorded almost everywhere, the history of common commerce is particularly clear in Venice, a center of the European merchant class. “I can without exaggeration claim to see the dealers, merchants and traders on the Rialto of the Venice of 1530 …,” assures Fernand Braudel in his extensive economic history of Europe. This claim is abundantly documented in a superb written record of the ins and outs of Venetian market commerce—but there is a danger in using these data to answer questions for which they were not designed.