Navegación institucional y navegación privada en el Mediterráneo medieval

Institutional and privet navigation in the medieval Mediterranean is a matter with problematic issues that go beyond the specific sphere of navigation and economic history to plunge into institutional history. The first thing to do was to delimit terms –public and privet navigation, navigation line– that, to begin with, respond more to a contemporary treating than to a medieval sense. On the other hand, the equation that identified public navigation with state patronage was revealed simplistic because it is reductive and does not respond to the reality of navigation systems practised by the maritime powers of the medieval Mediterranean. Besides, a profound discussion that carried out the breakup with the Italian-centrism that has monopolised the question was necessary because of the difficulty that involves to take Italian models –and the Venetian one in particular– as an absolute reference in matters of public intervention in navigation. To sum up, the present volume is born with the vocation that it will be a relevant contribution to a complex matter, in which new sources and new perspectives are changing models that are obsolete and, above all, have revealed themselves unsuitable to analyze the reality of the institutional involvement and its interaction with privet initiative in the navigation that characterized the medieval Mediterranean.