Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal: Workers and Workplace in the Preindustrial City

The master ship builders of seventeenth-century Venice formed part of what was arguably the greatest manufacturing complex in early modern Europe. As many as three thousand masters, apprentices, and laborers regularly worked in the city's enormous shipyards. This is the social history of the men and women who helped maintain not only the city's dominion over the sea but also its stability and peace.

Drawing on a variety of documents that include nearly a thousand petitions from the shi…