RiskCraft: Merchants Against Uncertainty and Some ‘FinTechs’ in the Late Middle Ages

What did it take to do business when information was scarce, enforcement imperfect, and ambiguity structural? My research examines how economic actors in the late medieval Mediterranean (fourteenth to sixteenthceturies) developed practices and institutions [above all informal, but also formal] that made exchange possible unde such conditions. From accounting and marine insurance to credit, reputation, and commercial networks, I explore h merchants organized and used information, managed risk, built trust, and made decisions in uncertain markets Drawing on merchant account books, notarial records, and other archival sources, I combine historical inquiry with economic analysis to reconsider these practices notsimply as responses to uncertainty, but as technologies through which medieval merchants actively organized economic life.