Paper short abstract:

Through the analysis of notarial deeds recorded in the Republic of Venice, this paper aims to highlight financial tools capable of constructing new economic space, in which agents from different political, economic and religious cultures reshape their individual and collective identities.

Paper long abstract:

During the XVIth century the western expansion triggered relational dynamics among distant territories and civilizations facilitaded by the development of the international trade.

This paper aims to consider the analysis of mercantile circuits to highlight the material reality of commerce, stressing the tangible and recurring dimension that finds action in defined places.

The focus is on the financial tools (insurances, companies, bills of exchange) considered as economic resources which commercial agents can have at their disposal to construct networks that shape variable spaces.

The structure of the network is perceived as a definition of a space of economic action that produces a rift from preexistent political and territorial space. The objective is to observe the commercial circuits that linked the places of action of economic agents, that, breaking up predeterminate political, economical and religious cultures, contribute to reshape individual and collective identities of the social groups or single individuals involved.

Taking the Republic of Venice as a point of observation, border region as a bridge between the West and the East - that includes also the regions of South-East Asia - and political entity different from the multi-territorial empires that surrounded it, this paper aims to understand how the space of cross-cultural trade is built and controlled by economic actors that own financial resources whose use is amply shared in their space of action. Through the analysis of notarial deeds, it aims to comprehend the dynamics of interactions that permit to tie alliances, overtake conflicts and guarantee continuity.