Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:39:18.026Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - The Mercantile Vocabulary of Futurity in Sixteenth-Century Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2021

Nicholas Scott Baker
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
Get access

Summary

Like the authors on games examined in Chapter 1, sixteenth-century merchants also constructed an identity based on expertise in futurity. This chapter examines how they did so through the deployment of rich, varied, and precise vocabulary for discussing the opportunities and risk of speculating on future profits. It traces the fine-grained way that merchants discussed the passing of time, demonstrating the ways in which they thought about time and risk as commodities that could be weighed and priced. It develops on Chapter 3, however, by showing these same merchants continued to think about the future and nature of the world in profoundly religious ways, complicating notions of straightforward linear progression for medieval to modern notions of temporality.

Type
Chapter
Information
In Fortune's Theater
Financial Risk and the Future in Renaissance Italy
, pp. 89 - 111
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×