Resumen de Notes on Venice’s Ship-Breaking Industry and the Scrap Market in the Sixteenth Century

Renard Gluzman

• In the past few decades the infamous business of ship demolition has gradually moved eastward from the less industrial parts of Europe to developing countries like India and Bangladesh. In the sixteenth century, this profitable industry thrived alongside shipbuilding at the very heart of Europe’s maritime powers. The rare discovery of two contracts with ship-breakers from Venice sheds valuable light on a largely obscure yet crucial practice that ensured the Republic a steady supply of reusable materials for building new ships, edifices, and infrastructures in a period of general depletion of sources of timber in northern Italy and Istria.