Lecture: Trust and Credit. The Mercantile Culture of Risk in Renaissance Italy
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò (NYU) 24 West 12th Street, New York CityA lecture by Nicholas Baker, Macquarie University Renaissance Italy was a society in which the problems of how to trust and whom to trust presented perennial challenges; yet it also housed a vibrant, transcontinental, proto-capitalist economy that relied on trust for its functioning. This lecture explores how Renaissance Italian merchants confronted and attempted to manage the problems of trust and the…