How did economic agents manage ‘risk’ in an age when outcomes were held to be unpredictable and measuring their likelihood was impossible? Their assessments of uncertainty relied on the long-term, hard-won experience of business practice. This paper examines the entanglement of the uncertainties confronted by state, capital and labor as they existed at the mercury mine in Idrija, Slovenia. The conflicts, negotiations and bankruptcies that arose there during the sixteenth century reveal the measures taken by each to hedge their uncertainties.
University of Pennsylvania, United States
Titolo del capitolo
Understanding uncertainty: Reflections on insolvency, bankruptcy and ‘risk’ and the entanglement of state, capital and labor in the sixteenth century
Autori
Thomas Max Safley
Lingua
Inglese
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0963-2.04
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2026
Copyright
© 2026 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Gestione del rischio, insolvenza e bancarotta nel mondo premoderno (secc. XIII-XVIII) / Risk management, insolvency, and bankruptcy in the pre-modern world (13th-18th centuries)
Curatori
Angela Orlandi
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
568
Anno di pubblicazione
2026
Copyright
© 2026 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0963-2
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0962-5
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0963-2
eISBN (xml)
979-12-215-0964-9
Collana
Datini Studies in Economic History
ISSN della collana
2975-1241
e-ISSN della collana
2975-1195