Frederic C. Lane

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Frederic C. Lane (born November 23, 1900 in Lansing , Michigan ; † October 14, 1984 ; full name: Frederic Chapin Lane ) was one of the most important historians in the field of Venetian economic history . In addition to Gino Luzzatto, he is almost considered to be its founder. Like his friend and colleague, Lane examined economic history using sources from the economic sphere rather than just viewing it as a subsidiary area of legal history or political history.

life and work

Lane's parents, who were from Boston , were Alfred Church Lane and Susanne Lauriat. His father, a geologist, was called to Tufts College in Cambridge , Massachusetts . His mother came from a publishing family.

After graduating from Cambridge High and Latin School , he moved to Cornell University , where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1921 . A year later, the Master of Arts followed at Tufts College with A. I. Angers . In 1922 he returned to Cornell University , where he dealt with Lyon during the Reformation period . During this time he was heavily influenced by George L. Burr, William I. Hull and Carl Becker. However, methodologically and with regard to his research focus, William L. Westermann was of the greatest importance. Later he was also influenced by German historians such as Alfons Dopsch , but he also treated Max Weber and Karl Marx in his later lessons as important scientists who had a strong influence on economic history as a discipline.

From 1923 to 1924 Lane lived on a scholarship in Bordeaux and studied at the University of Bordeaux . In 1924 he presented an investigation into Colbert's ambitious program in connection with the port of Bordeaux, entitled Colbert et le commerce de Bordeaux e L'Eglise reformée de Begles de 1660 à 1670 . In 1924 he spent a trimester at the University of Vienna . There he learned from Alfons Dopsch and, on the advice of Abbot P. Usher, concentrated from 1927 on the Venice of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance .

In 1925 he returned to the USA and went to Harvard University , where he worked as an assistant to Robert H. Lord after a stay in Italy . On Usher's advice, he prepared a doctoral thesis on the Diarii of Marin Sanudo . From 1926 to 1927 he was an instructor in history at the University of Minnesota , and from the spring of 1927 Kirkland Fellow at Harvard. Accompanied by his wife Harriet Whitney Mirick, he visited Venice for the first time in the autumn of 1927 in order to prepare archivally for his outstanding doctoral thesis Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance . In 1928 he became an instructor in history at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and received his PhD from Harvard in 1930.

Lane taught on the "Occidental Civilizations". Together with Eric F. Goldman and Erling M. Hunt he wrote The World's History , a textbook that covered the entire story, until 1947 . He also taught this enormous thematic spectrum at the university, as his estate shows. This included research results, such as the fact that the role of the new trade routes, for example the route around Africa to Indian, and thus the relocation of trade to the Atlantic, had been significantly overestimated. He had already shown this in two essays from 1933 and 1940. Venice imported more pepper around 1560 than at the end of the 15th century, so that one could speak of a revival of the Levant trade.

In 1932 he published for the first time on the rope works , the Tana , under the title The Rope Factory and Hemp Trade of Venice in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries . In 1934 a first monograph, Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance , was published, which is most often cited as his masterpiece.

Individual examinations followed, then again as a monograph by Andrea Barbarigo. Merchant of Venice 1418-1449 , published in 1944. In many cases he followed economic history down to the smallest ramifications, such as with The Economic Consequences of Organized Violence . Many of the smaller writings appeared in Venice and History in 1966 . Towards the end of the Second World War , Lane wrote pamphlets on trading companies in Venice.

In 1946 he was appointed professor. Lane became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1955), the Medieval Academy , the Economic History Association , the Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Venezie (1961). For them he edited the Journal of Economic History between 1943 and 1951 and became president in 1955. The latter he was president from 1966 to 1968. He was also a member of the American Philosophical Society , the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (1963) and the International Commission of Economic History (until 1968).

He was friends with Gino Luzzatto, and so he dedicated an article to him in his festschrift in 1949. After Luzzatto's death, he published an obituary in the Nuova Rivista Storica in 1965 , in which he referred to the friend's contributions to the history of the Republic of Venice .

From 1951 to 1953 Lane was in Paris at the Rockefeller Foundation , with a Guggenheim grant he prepared major projects from 1959 to 1961. Lane dealt with the Venice financial center with Le vecchie monete di conto veneziane ed il ritorno all'oro Together with his friend and colleague Gino Luzzatto, he published a treatise on the “public guilt” of Venice: Il debito pubblico della Repubblica di Venezia. Dagli ultimi decenni del XII secolo alla fine del XV. Con una appendice del Prof. FC Lane In 1964 Lane was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1966 he was retired.

He used the time that was now available to him as he was freed from academic constraints to advance his research and publication activities. In 1973 he provided a further overview work with Venice, a maritime Republic , which was translated into Italian five years later and also into German in 1980, as well as Venetian Seamen in the Nautical Revolution of the Middle Ages and Public Debt and private Wealth particularly in Sixeenth century Venice . In addition, he taught once a week at Brandeis University until 1970 .

In the years around 1970, Lane dealt with the relationship between investment and usury, technical innovations, but also with the interaction of social upheavals and the organization of the fleet. In 1973 he summarized his results under the title Venice. A Maritime Republic together.

After further studies on double-entry bookkeeping, the Alexandria convoys and the wage system for the sailors, another monograph followed in 1983: Le navi di Venezia .

In 1980 he received the international Galileo Galilei Prize from the Italian Rotary Club for his services , and four years later a prize from the Fondazione Francesco Saverio Nitti . The latter was an unusual award, given that an award was given to a historian for achievement in the economic field.

Lane's initial interest, as he himself noted, was typically American. He dealt with Italy's share in the discovery of America , especially with that of the navy and the trade organization in early capitalism. In doing so, he soon turned away from individualistic ideas in order to look for comprehensive explanations for why the Mediterranean region was increasingly sidelined economically in the 16th and 17th centuries. He was primarily drawn to the explanatory models that Gino Luzzatto developed. Lane turned to the shipbuilders, the arsenal workers. Unlike Luigi Einaudi , Armando Sapori and Federigo Melis , who worked out the role of the merchants, and whom Lane followed to some extent with regard to money and banking history, he put his emphasis on work. He followed less the sources of legal history, but checked the implementation of laws, statutes and regulations in reality. He used paintings to analyze the extent to which details of the shipping laws, statutes or trading books were depicted. He also found that not only technical motives ensured that rowing ships were preferred to sailors, or vice versa, but that these decisions were based on social motives. The techniques and decisions on her part influenced life on board. The size and scope of the companies and the necessary production facilities changed not only the work processes, but also the methods of social control. The largest factory - along with the large cloth companies - was the Venetian arsenal.

In the Arsenal , which practically represented a separate district in the east of Venice and in which several thousand people were employed, complex work processes, multi-layered contract systems and subcontracting, and above all a kind of factory discipline were developed - long before proto-industrialization . Lane's work emerged in a climate of increasing tension between idealistic and materialistic currents in European society. With Ships for Victory , he presented a paper on contemporary history towards the end of the Second World War on the British Navy.

Together with his pupil Reinhold C. Mueller , he presented the most extensive work on the Venetian banking system, published posthumously in 1985 and a standard work in this sector: Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, 1: Coins and Moneys of Account . The publication of this volume - Lane created the index before his death - Lane did not live to see. The completion of the second volume, The Venetian Money Market. Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200-1500, concerned Mueller.

Lane shaped the methodology and focus of numerous historians, including German, such as Hermann Kellenbenz .

Major works

  • Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance , Baltimore 1934.
  • Andrea Barbarigo, Merchant of Venice 1418-1449 , Baltimore 1944.
  • With Eric F. Goldman, Erling Hunt: The World's History , New York 1947.
  • Venice and History. The Collected Papers of Frederic C. Lane , Baltimore 1966.
  • Venice. A Maritime Republic , Baltimore, London 1973.
  • Profits from Power: Readings in Protection Rent and Violence Controlling Enterprises , Albany: State University of New York Press 1979.
  • Le navi di Venezia , Turin 1983.
  • with Reinhold C. Mueller: Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice , Vol. 1: Coins and Money of Account , Baltimore, London 1985.

literature

  • Giuliana Gemelli: Leadership and Mind: Frederic C. Lane as Cultural Entrepreneur and Diplomat . In: Minerva 41,2, June 2003, pp. 115–132 (on the years 1951–1954)
  • Eric Cochrane, Julius Kirshner: Deconstructing Lane's Venice . In: The Journal of Modern History 47.2, June 1975, pp. 321-334
  • Who's Who in America. A biographical dictionary of notable living men and women. : volume 33 (1964-1965), Marquis Who's Who, Chicago, Illinois 1964, p. 1153.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Richard Goldthwaite and Moses Abramovitz: In Memoriam: Frederic C. Lane 1900-1984 . In: The Journal of Economic History 46.1 (March 1986) 239-246, here: p. 239.
  2. ^ Venetian shipping during the commercial revolution . In: American Historical Review, 38 (1933) 228-229 and The Mediterranean spice trade, further evidence on its revival in the sixteenth century . In: American Historical Review 45 (1940) 586.
  3. Last: Pepper prices before Da Gama . In: The Journal of Economic History 28 (1968) 590-597.
  4. The rope factory and hemp trade of Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries . In: Journal of Economic and Business History 4 (1931/32) 830-847.
  5. ^ About Venetian Bankers, 1496-1533: A Study in the Early Stages of Deposit Banking . In: Journal of Political Economy 45 (1937) 187-206.
  6. Andrea Barbarigo: Merchant of Venice 1418-1449 , Baltimore 1944.
  7. ^ Journal of Economic History , December 18, 1958, 401-417.
  8. ^ Family partnerships and joint ventures in the Venetian Republic . In: The Journal of Economic History 4 (1944) 178-196 and Venture accounting in medieval business management . In: Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 19 (1945) 164-173.
  9. Ritmo e rapidità di giro d'affari nel commercio veneziano del quattrocento . In: Studi Gino Luzzatto, 1949, Vol. 1, pp. 254-273.
  10. Gino Luzzatto's contributions to the history of Venice: an appraisal and a tribute . In: Nuova rivista storica 49 (1965) 49-80.
  11. Published in: Atti dell'Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Classe di Scienze Morali e Lettere 117 (1959) 49-78.
  12. Published in Milan - Varese, Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino 1963. It was more of a "pending debt" called Monte , which was fed from compulsory and voluntary loans.
  13. Investment and Usury . In: Social and economic foundations of the Italian Renaissance, 1969, pp. 41-52.
  14. The crossbow in the nautical revolution of the Middle Ages . In: Essays Robert L. Reynolds, 1970, pp. 161-171.
  15. The Enlargement of the Great Council of Venice . In: Essays WK Ferguson, 1971, pp. 237-274 and Naval actions and fleet organization, 1499-1502 . In: Renaissance Venice , 1973, pp. 146–173 and Venetian seamen in the nautical revolution of the Middle Ages . In: Venezia e il Levante fino al secolo XV, 1973, vol. 1, pp. 403-429.
  16. Baltimore, London 1973
  17. For example, double entry bookkeeping and resident merchants . In: The Journal of European Economic History 6 (1977) 177-191, Some features of the Barbarigo Accounting system . In: The historical development of accounting. A selection of papers, 1978, pp. 163-181, The Venetian galleys to Alexandria, 1344 . In: Festschrift Hermann Kellenbenz, 1978, vol. 1 pp. 431-440 or Wages and Recruitment of Venetian Galeotti, 1470-1580 . In: Studi Veneziani , NS, 6 (1982) 15-44
  18. Turin 1983
  19. This extends to fundamental questions, such as Erica Schoenberge: The Origins of the Market Economy: State Power, Territorial Control, and Modes of War Fighting . In: Comparative Studies in Society and History 50 (2008) 663-691.
  20. Hence his contribution to the Festschrift: Frederic C. Lane: The Venetian Galleys to Alexandria, 1344 . In: Jürgen Schneider (Hrsg.): Economic forces and economic routes. Vol. I: Mediterranean and Continent , Festschrift for Hermann Kellenbenz, Stuttgart 1978, pp. 431–440.