In the three centuries before the Industrial Revolution many measures indicate a faster pace of economic growth in northern than in southern Europe. Gains throughout Europe and especially in the north-west depended very heavily, directly and indirectly, on the success of moving goods by sea. Labour productivity in shipping grew faster from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century than virtually all other sectors of the economy.¹ The great beneficiaries of expansion were the places, the states and the people engaged in long-distance trade. The growth in shipping along with greater output of shipping services gave a unique character to the working conditions of sailors, who were becoming more productive.

There were diverse reasons for the greater efficiency of ocean shipping. Falling labour requirements per ton of the vessels; better, more durable ships that came from European shipyards or yards in the Americas and Asia that imitated European practice; better organisation of work in ports; scale economies from the growth in the total volume of trade; and a reduction in violence at sea and improved diffusion of information all contributed to the ability to move goods by sea at prices which sustained commercial expansion. Gains could be found throughout Europe from 1500 to 1800, but it was the ‘maritime states’ of the Dutch Republic² and England³ that benefited most from the growth in shipping in the seventeenth century. That was, if anything, even more the case in the eighteenth century, though by that time the expansion in seaborne commerce had a positive effect on French and German ports in northern Europe, with some centres in the Iberian peninsula enjoying a revival of fortunes after falling back from success in the decades just after 1500.⁴ Growth in shipping tonnage was most obvious in the maritime states. The Dutch merchant fleet doubled in size in the seventeenth century and the English one grew fourfold in the eighteenth. On the other hand, in the Mediterranean local shipping did not disappear by any means. Estimates dating from the 1780s put the merchant fleet in Italy at three-quarters of that of the Dutch Republic and a third of that of Britain. Venice alone had about 6 per cent of the tonnage of Britain sailing under its flag.⁵

The shift in the economic centre of Europe away from the Mediterranean after 1500 has long been a subject of discussion among historians and is often associated with changes in patterns of trade.⁶ To a certain degree the north was catching up with the south, which had enjoyed the advantages of trade for some centuries. From the fifteenth century, Iberian access to new goods from beyond Europe led to growth in Spanish and Portuguese shipping and brought foreign traders to peninsular ports.⁷ The economy of Europe became more and more open, more integrated and, even if slowly, more and more global. In the seventeenth, but even more the eighteenth, century European exchange across the Atlantic and with maritime Asia flourished. Extra-European trade had a profound influence on the urban pattern of Europe. The greatest growth in cities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was in Britain and the Netherlands. In the period from 1500 to 1700 port cities constituted, after capitals, the class of cities with the greatest growth. About 55 per cent of them doubled or even tripled their populations.⁸ Ports in the Mediterranean basin grew as well, but not as fast as those on the Atlantic, which had easier access to long-distance trades reaching outside Europe.⁹ These greater concentrations of population, talent and capital in trading centres enhanced the commercial competitiveness of the north and the employment of sailors.

In addition, northerners made inroads in the Mediterranean itself. At the close of the sixteenth century, Dutch and English skippers brought much-needed grain to Italian ports.¹⁰ The arrival of vessels from what would become the maritime states was not a single, cataclysmic event but rather a product of long-established connections which blossomed into a rapid expansion in exchange between north and south in the late sixteenth century and then long-term growth for northern European shipping over the following 200 years and more. In the seventeenth century, northerners took over part of the carrying trades within the Mediterranean as well, supplanting Italian, Greek and Muslim ships and shipping. Regional trades supplemented northerners’ original business. Not incidentally, the process was to some degree repeated in Asian waters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The pattern of change generates an impression of relative shipping decline in the Mediterranean, a decline which appeared to mirror political change. In the three centuries after 1500 there was unquestionably a shift in the political focus away from the south, but with trade, as with power politics, it is too easy to dismiss the international importance of the Mediterranean basin in this period.

The increasingly centralising states in the north were better able to mobilise financial resources for public expenditure, but the south had a number of large states while the North suffered from considerable political fragmentation. The Mediterranean was plagued by a divide along religious lines, although, despite the chasm between Christians and Muslims, followers of the two religions found ways to cooperate for mutual benefit. By the mid-seventeenth century, formal political mechanisms were in place to deal with sailors seized in conflicts across religious lines. Because of the development of a system of licences sold by European states to captains after paying bribes to rulers on the North African coast to give their ships safe passage, the tendency over time was to allow freedom of movement to all parties, at a price.¹¹ Meanwhile, the north was plagued by religion-based violence as well. Protestant–Catholic antagonism often lay near the surface of conflicts. Peacetime piracy was admittedly rare in the north, but licensed predation was a common feature of war. Northern admiralties recast their navies in the eighteenth century, concentrating more on protection against pirates and privateers, and so acknowledging the importance of predation not only in the Caribbean but also in European waters.¹² The maritime states, the Scandinavian kingdoms and France took an increasing role in ensuring safety at sea for their subjects.¹³ By the late seventeenth century, governments were requiring merchant vessels to travel in convoy and charged shippers for the cost of maintaining the naval vessels that protected the cargo ships.¹⁴ The British navy in the eighteenth century proved especially effective in stopping privateering and piracy in the New World and in European waters, except for the Mediterranean, where naval action against Barbary pirates continued into the nineteenth century. Northern European states used diplomacy as well. Naval officers, ambassadors and consuls negotiated treaties with North African states¹⁵ and consuls offered aid in various forms to Christians doing business in Muslim lands.¹⁶ They acquired information on business and political conditions and acted as commission agents and even legal representatives in court for their countrymen. They provided valuable service to trade and shipping.¹⁷

The impression that northern European states were more willing and able to use their powers to protect shipping may well be false. Mediterranean maritime republics and states also mobilised naval forces and organised convoys to protect shipping. They too made agreements with Barbary pirates, and, if anything, it was they who pioneered the practices that the maritime states and others used in making inroads into Mediterranean trade. What is more, northerners paid heavily for the protection which their governments supplied. The cost might have been borne not just by the shippers. The tax burdens that, in general, Dutch and, later, British populations sustained were far in excess of what people around the Mediterranean basin had to pay, either absolutely or as a share of income.¹⁸

Northern Europeans used more energy than their counterparts around the Mediterranean. In England coal was growing in importance as the source of heat for homes and for industry; in the Netherlands it was peat. With more energy at their disposal, northerners could produce goods more cheaply and more quickly, thereby gaining a competitive advantage in trade and ultimately in shipping. Exactly how much energy people in the Dutch Republic got out of how much peat is a subject of debate, while for England figures are more reliable. Coal in 1650 was supplying each individual in England an...