Cultures marchandes dans l'Adriatique vénetienne: Le cas de Zadar, vers 1550 [Trading Cultures in the Venetian Adriatic: The Case of Zadar]

The present article investigates the interplay between the institutional framework of the Venetian Stato da mar and the commercial practices in the early modern Adriatic. Using the example of the city of Zadar, then known as Zadar and the capital of Venice’s dual province of Dalmatia-Albania, the following issues are discussed : In a first step the integration of the merchants into the social fabric of urban society is discussed, placing special emphasis upon the interactions between the judicial framwork as detailed in the city’s statutes and business practices. In the second part, a number of examples drawn from the protocol books of Zadar’s notaries, preserved in the Croatian State Archive in Zadar, is presented to illustrate the intricacies of commercial exchange in sixteenth-century Dalmatia