Ressources politiques et action économique : les conduites stratégiques des patriciens vénitiens face à la crise de la navigation publique (fin XVe-début XVIe siècle)

The Venetian patricians of the late Middle Ages have been traditionally considered as the members of the ruling class as well as an economic elite. Thereby, it is particularly interesting to analyse the political and economic strategies as well as the individual and collective resources used by the economic actors in period of crisis and difficulties. This article begins giving a more complex definition of the economic power, and then describes the management practices and the political actions of the patricians in the field of the public navigation, a commercial organisation in crisis at the beginning of the 16th Century