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Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders: Early Fifteenth–Early Eighteenth Centuries

represented until then an essential financial support. The beginning of another war with the Ottomans in 1569 finally resulted in the collapse of the Venetian galley system. The central section of the book, which is dedicated to the prosopography of the protagonists behind the galley system, is particularly interesting and provides good material not only for specialists of Venice, but also for historians of late medieval trade. The progressive concentration of trading capital in the hands of a smaller number of merchants is the most striking – although not surprising – find. In addition to the patroni, Judde provides details on the people investing in these trades behind the scenes, and through this analysis family networks and economic strategies vividly emerge, allowing her to trace the rise of the involvement of cittadini, and how the growing participation of non-patricians strengthened ‘‘private’’ shipping at the expense of the galley system. There are inconsistencies in the footnote references, such as a frequent lack of detailed page references for the secondary literature. There is also a certain unevenness of style as some statements are then not followed up in the analysis or properly supported through precise references in the primary evidence, which leads to some contradictions in the text. The text in general would have benefitted from a tighter editorial hand. Nonetheless, this is an important volume which increases of our knowledge of late medieval maritime trade and of its transformation on the eve of the early modern period.