Principles and Developments of General Average: Statutory and Contractual Loss Allowances from the Lex Rhodia to the Early Modern Mediterranean

Abstract

The purpose of GA is to partition the damage of maritime transport in an equitable and proportional way among all those who took part in the expedition. The legal principle is commonly deduced from the famous Lex Rhodia de jactu contained in the Digest, which would seem to limit the right of indemnity only to those losses which have been suffered voluntarily in order to save the ship, the men and most of the cargo. This limitation, which excludes all damages of fortuitous nature, will become axiomatic in the jurisprudence of the early modern age, but in more ancient times it was not always strictly observed, and above all it leaves open a space of indecision from which derive innumerable problems of practical order.

The research for this essay was conducted thanks to funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and Innovation Programme ERC Grant agreement No. 724544: AveTransRisk—Average—Transaction Costs and Risk Management during the First Globalization (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries). I would like to thank Maria Fusaro, Jake Dyble, Daphne Penna, Guido Rossi and Monica Chojnacka for their comments and suggestions to earlier versions of this text. Translated by Monica Chojnacka.

Average and Contribution: An Etymological Question

‘Average’ is a word that has made life difficult for historians of language. Commonly used with the meaning of ‘mathematical mean’, the English word is derived from a formally identical term belonging to the narrower semantic field of maritime law.¹ Its etymology, however, remains a mystery. Lexicographers of the past have proposed numerous hypotheses, taking into consideration any word belonging to disparate linguistic stocks with whatever morphological and semantic affinities that may indicate a shared origin.² Thus, we have the Germanic word haverey, the French havre, and the English haven, whose first meaning is ‘port’, the high-German word vara, which stands for ‘risk’, and even the Persian avare, which translates to the English ‘ledger’. According to the most recent dictionaries, only a couple of possibilities remain: some scholars lean towards an Arabic origin, suggesting a derivation from the noun awār, that is ‘damage’, from which is derived awārīya, or ‘damaged goods’³; while others—and this is the most accepted hypothesis—point towards a Byzantine origin, but with certain disagreements as to the exact source of the word. Some believe the term derives from the Greek word βάρος, or ‘weight’, plus the alpha privative. In this manner one would refer to lightening a ship’s load, the immediate aim of the jettison, which is the first paradigmatic form of Average as described by the so-called Lex Rhodia, and acknowledged by the Digest.⁴ Others call attention to the adjective βαρεῖα (pronounced [varìa]), the abbreviated form of Συμβολὴ βαρεῖα (sumbolè bareîa), or ‘onerous contribution’.⁵ However, none of the most ancient texts that lay the groundwork of the elusive law of Rhodians actually use the word avaria, but rather several terms all meaning ‘contribution’ (contributio, συμβολή – simvoli – συνεισφορά – syneisforá). This is the case in Book 14, Title 2 of the Digest (sixth century), taken from the legal Sententiae of several jurists (third century CE), but also from the Νόμος Ροδίων Ναυτικός, a compilation of Rhodian, or pseudo-Rhodian, law from the seventh century, and finally from the Basilica, a late re-elaboration of Roman law from the ninth century.⁶ We must wait for the first vernacular compilations of maritime laws to discover the earliest uses of the term.

If the dating were not controversial, the Ordinamenta et consuetudo maris from the city of Trani would allow us to locate the use of the expression ‘andare a varea’ (in the sense of ‘to be refunded by contribution’) in the year 1063.⁷ Nonetheless, it is fairly certain that the text of the Ordinamenta that has come down to us is a translation into Italian from the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Therefore the first evidence of the term Average (in Italian: avaria) can be found in the Genoese notarial acts collected by Renée Doehard which date to the end of the twelfth century,⁸ while the first certain appearance in a normative text is that of the Statuta ed ordinamenta super navis from Venice in 1255. Here, chapter LXXXIX, in the section ‘De dapnis’, establishes that ‘…si alicui navi vel ligno evenerit quod Deus avertat, de arboribus antenis & timonibus dapnum, illud (non) sit in varea. Et hoc intelligimus in nave, & omni ligno de milliaris CC. & inde supra’.⁹

By the sixteenth century, the word seems to have been adopted by the majority of European languages, long after the reception of the juridical principle asserted by the Digest, and in each language with an identical ambivalence of meaning, since the word avaria can mean both the damage itself as well as its remedy, that is, the compensation by contribution, as prescribed by law.¹⁰

The Only Greek Law Handed Down to Us in Living Form?

Shifting from words to actual objects, it must be said that there is a general consensus on the antiquity of the law of Average. Some even believe that its tradition has remained substantially faithful to the original source, to the point of claiming that the redistribution of the economic damage of the jettison—the first case of General Average (GA)—is ‘the only Greek law that has come to the modern world in living form’.¹¹ In reality, we have no direct testimony about the famous lex Rhodia de Iactu, which we know in the form of the version in the Digest, where first and foremost one finds a disavowal of the mutual obligation between shippers, which became a central element of subsequent legislation. The reasons for the denial are exquisitely technical and formal. Roman law only acknowledges obligations arising from a contract or an offence, and since the contribution of jettison has to be framed within the system, the law can find no better solution than tracing it back to the locatio conductio contract.¹² In practice, nothing changes, but by attributing the ex locato action to the injured shipper against the magister navi, and the ex conducto action to the magister navi for recourse against the other shippers, it is possible to provide a logical explanation for a situation where two shippers not bound by any contract are nevertheless obliged to provide compensation on the one hand and to be compensated on the other.¹³

Regardless of the legal technique chosen, the fundamental device which has been thought unchanged over time and which is axiomatic for the modern theory of Average is the crucial distinction between General Average which is ‘voluntary’, corresponding to the damage consciously sought out with the intention of avoiding a more serious one; and Particular Average (PA) which is accidental, that is the damage from an irresistible or unforeseeable external cause. The first was declared indemnifiable for reasons of equity, the other type falls to the owner of the damaged goods on account of the maxim casum sentit dominum (accident is felt by the owner). The entire Rhodian law seems to rest on this distinction between human causality and external randomness. The principle is never formulated in the abstract, but can be deduced from the rules governing the various concrete cases, starting with D. 14.2.1, extracted from the Sententiae of the jurist Paulus, who writes that ‘the Rhodian law provides that if cargo has been jettisoned in order to lighten a ship, the sacrifice for the common good must be made good by common contribution’.¹⁴

The Digest considers the most frequent cases: the jettison of goods, the sacrifice of ship's equipment, and the ransom paid to pirates, without ever generalizing the principle. It would nevertheless have allowed the jurisprudence to include by analogy among GA all damages and all extraordinary and unforeseen expenses voluntarily borne for sake of all.¹⁵ It is a tradition that developed over time, spreading across the Mediterranean and then throughout Europe, through the statutory rules of the Italian maritime republics, the fundamental text of the Consolat de Mar of the Catalans and Aragonese (fourteenth century), the Rôles d’Oléron supposedly promulgated by Eleonor of Aquitaine towards the end of the thirteenth century,¹⁶ and the compilation of Wisby (fourteenth century), to mention only the most important texts. The voluntary nature of the damage as a theoretical principle finally reached a clear formulation in the first juridical treatise dedicated to Averages by the Zeelander jurist Quintin Weytsen. In the Tractatus de Avariis, published posthumously in Flemish in 1617, and later in Latin in the influential Leiden edition of 1651, Weytsen begins his explanation with a definition that was destined to become the classic one: ‘Average is the common contribution of the things found in the ship in order to make good the damage voluntarily inflicted upon items, whether belonging to merchants or the ship, to the end that lives, ship, and the remaining goods should escape unscathed’.¹⁷

Voluntary, Involuntary, and Mixed Acts

Average is the contribution that should compensate the damage sponte illatum (voluntarily inflicted). The problem is that while ‘voluntary’ is a straightforward idea in the abstract, it is much more complicated to establish concretely in a situation at sea. When adverse sea conditions are taken into account, any damage suffered can be described as a sacrifice, due, at least in part, to a desire to save the ship. Regardless of the extent one attributes to free will, intention, that is the faculty of conscious decisions, was already the main criterion of liability as early as Aristotle, who in the third book of the Nichomachean Ethics considered it essential to distinguish voluntary acts from involuntary ones, because, he says, from the firsts comes praise and blame, while from the latter there comes, if anything, forgiveness, and sometimes pity. Human acts are involuntary when they are caused by force (or even ignorance). In this case, one does not act, but suffers on account of an external cause, ‘for example’, says Aristotle, ‘when a ship's master is carried somewhere by the weather, or by people who have him in their power’.¹⁸ The voluntary act, on the other hand, presupposes choice and deliberation, critical but somewhat mysterious moments, which morally frame the action. Before examining the fundamentals of the voluntary act, however, the philosopher warns: ‘But there is some doubt about actions done through fear of a worse alternative, or for some noble object’.¹⁹ In fact, some actions from a certain point of view may appear forced, and from another free; and if there is a paradigmatic example of this mixed genre, it is precisely the action of jettison. ‘A somewhat similar case’, Aristotle writes, ‘is when cargo is jettisoned in a storm; apart from circumstances, no one voluntarily throws away his property, but to save his own life and that of his shipmates; any sane man would do so. Acts of this kind, then, are “mixed” or composite; but they approximate rather to the voluntary class. For at the actual time when they are done they are chosen or willed; and the end or motive of an act varies with the occasion, so that the terms “voluntary” and “involuntary”’, he concludes, “should be used with reference to the time of action”.²⁰

In the ideal world of abstract norms, the debt of voluntary sacrifice is transferred immediately and proportionally on those who have taken advantage of it, but in the real world some time elapses between the moment in which one acts, and the legal recognition of the precise obligations that arise from that same action. This would not be a problem were it not for the fact that the evidence used to establish a posteriori the historical truth of what happened at sea is necessarily imperfect, to the point that a solemn oath is necessary to make it acceptable. First of all there is the damage itself, but it is an ambiguous proof because in itself it tells us nothing about its causes: a breach in the hull may be due to the sea that pushed the ship onto the rocks without the men being able to do anything about it, but it can also be explained by the decision to beach the ship to prevent a storm from sinking it, and this is at any rate assuming the damage was truly accidental and not incurred through inexperience, negligence or malice. Choice is the main criterion that would make it possible to distinguish a General Average from a Particular one. But choice has the defect of being an internal act, at best only hinted at by the concrete evidence. The reconstruction of the factual circumstances and the range of reasonably expected behaviours can lead to moral certainty that a voluntary act has actually taken place. Nonetheless, it is necessarily an act of faith, because in the end the only custodian of truth is the master who makes the damage declaration.

Thus, the boundary between human causality and external randomness, and consequently between General and Particular Average, remain an elusive one in practice, despite all principles and distinctions of law. While it is a boundary that should be maintained in order to strengthen the seafarers’ sense of responsibility and to limit so-called moral hazard, it must always be borne in mind that it is an artificial and uncertain distinction. It should also be noted, however, that a certain tolerance of abuses works as a tacit incentive to sail, especially in a context of extreme insecurity and uncertainty. Once again, when faced with a choice between fraud and the cessation of any maritime enterprise, the lesser evil is preferred, at least as long as improvements in managing the uncertainty of navigation do not allow for a more rigorous approach. Until this point was reached, it was likely very easy, without impartial witnesses, to replace worn-out equipment by inventing fantastical storms from which it had been possible to escape only thanks to the sacrifice of masts, sails, riggings, ropes, and tenders.

Damage resulting from wear and tear and the natural deterioration of materials is expressly excluded from the Digest, but it took very little for these losses to be transferred the shoulders of the freighters. At the end of the eighteenth century, an era in which tolerance for such abuses was no longer justifiable, the Livornese lawyer Ascanio Baldasseroni could joke that, with their fraudulent depositions, masters and ship-owners repeated the miracle of the legendary ‘galley of Salamis, preserved for more than a thousand years by the Athenians, from the time of Theseus to the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which was always claimed to be the same as that with which Theseus, victor over the Minotaur, has used to return to the island of Crete’.²¹

The Scandal of Νόμος Ροδίων Ναυτικός

What in the time of Baldasseroni was considered an abuse, in more ancient and uncertain times represented standard practice, admitted and legitimized by custom. For this we need to go back about a thousand years, to the time of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian (r.717–741AD). A compilation of rules that in that period regulated navigation in the eastern Mediterranean, the Νόμος Ροδίων Ναυτικός, demonstrates that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary damage, which is supposedly central to the Lex Rhodia de iactu, was dropped for several centuries, at least in that part of the world. The pseudo-Rhodian law of the Nόμος, in fact, prescribes contribution for any damage to the ship and the cargo, with culpable or malicious damage as the only exceptions.²²

The fact that for several centuries the voluntary nature of the damage was no longer perceived as a crucial aspect—at least in much of the Mediterranean—is also suggested by medieval Italian statutes, particularly from those of the Adriatic area. As these statutes provide scanty provisions regarding Averages, they must presuppose a broader body of legislation, i.e. the Nόμος, which the statutory rules were intended to qualify.²³ This is the case, for example, for the laws of Trani, which restore the principle of voluntary action, but only for damage relating to the ship’s masts, rigging, sails, and other equipment. It is also the case for the Venetian statutes, where, without prejudicing the general stipulations of the Nόμος, certain limitations were established over time, starting with the exclusion in 1255 of the ‘damage to masts, yards and rudders’. In the same way, an order of 1428, at the time of the doge Francesco Foscari, limits contribution to two cases, jettison and robbery: ‘Average shall not be given except in the case of jettison or theft, i.e. only for such things as are under deck and recorded in the clerk's book’.²⁴

The Adriatic tradition is said to have finally surrendered to the completeness of the Catalan Llibre del Consolat de Mar in the late fifteenth century, thus remedying the departure from the principles established by the Lex Rhodia. However, in lieu of new and more in-depth research which might allow for firmer conclusions, there are indications that the tradition of Nόμος actually continued to influence Venetian-Adriatic practice well beyond the date of its presumed demise.²⁵ Even the idea of deviation from the main line of the Roman law, in my opinion, is not totally convincing. Since contribution is the common remedy for those voluntary damages covered by GA and for involuntary covered by mutual insurance, we might consider the possibility that two legal institutions initially led a confused co-existence, from which later emerged two concepts clearly distinguished from one another.

The Catalan Germinamento

The co-existence of two types of contribution, one arising directly from law and the other contractual, is demonstrated by various chapters of the Catalan Llibre del Consolat de Mar, although interpreters from at least the seventeenth century have misunderstood their meaning. Chapter 192 of the Consolat considers accidental and unavoidable damage, and stipulates contribution for that damage in situations where there had been prior agreement to that effect between the master of the ship and the merchants. The commitment to mutualise this risk can be made before the start of the voyage (Ch. 229), but also in the face of an impending danger, and even in the absence of the merchants, provided that the master receives the consent of the boatswain and other officers of the ship. This is the fateful institution of the germinamento, which has given rise to many misunderstandings for various reasons, but above all because the legal significance of the ‘consultation’, or on-deck deliberation foreseen in Ch. 192 has been confused with that of the other consultation which the Consolat required (though not strictly) before proceeding with the voluntary jettison as outlined in Ch. 97.

If the master judged that there was no other option than lightening the ship by jettison, the Consolat demanded that he make his resolution known to the concerned parties and obtain their consent (which was nevertheless not binding). The master was required to declare the following: ‘Merchants, if we do not jettison, we are in great hazard and are faced with losing both persons and property, and everything on board, and, if you merchants desire the jettison, with the will of God we would be able to save persons and a great part of our property; and if we do not jettison, we are faced with losing ourselves and all our property’.²⁶ Unless the master had lost his wits, it was unlikely that a merchant with sense would want to oppose this decision. However, the Consolat, while requiring the consultation of the merchants and other bureaucratic formalities—which in this case is called a plain or regular jettison—in Ch. 281 admits that in the event of imminent danger it is rather rare that one has the opportunity to consult the interested parties, or even to write down a list of the goods that ended up in the sea. In the midst of a storm, everyone throws whatever comes to hand first, and it is therefore not possible to deny the validity of ‘irregular’ jettisons, which are referred to as ‘quasi-shipwrecks’. The ‘irregular’ was in fact the normal procedure, so much so that at the end of the seventeenth century, the famous Genoese jurist Carlo Targa could report having encountered ‘just four or five’ cases of regular jettison ‘in sixty years of maritime practice’, ‘and in each of these cases there was criticism that the case appeared excessively premeditated’.²⁷ Since the terrifying force of a storm remained the same between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, while there was, if anything, an improvement in shipbuilding and nautical science, it is logical to think that the regular jettison was unlikely even at the time of the Consolat’s compilation. In spite of this, in 1588 the reformers of the Genoese Statutes felt the need to burden the procedure with additional formalities, impossible to carry out and bordering on the ridiculous, such as the election on board of a sort of ‘Magistracy of the Jettison’ formed by ‘three consuls, two of whom are chosen from among the officers and one from the said merchants’.²⁸

In conclusion, the obligation to consult those on board the ship remained, although it was clearly regularly disregarded. The persistence of a norm which was completely unenforceable in practice, can only be explained by the need to make the voluntary nature of sacrifice communicable and transparent. Levin Goldschmidt, who interpreted General Average as a ‘company against danger’, identified the consultation of the ship’s board as the genesis of this contract.²⁹ I rather believe, along with Antonio Lefebvre d'Ovidio, that the consultation and all the other prescriptions regarding the regular jettison do not speak to the contractual nature of General Average, but should be interpreted instead as ‘a formal act, carried out as proof of the necessity of the act, against those who may wish to contest the jettison’; and, furthermore, as a ‘guarantee of the opportunity for the jettison itself’, in case there were doubts regarding the master's expertise.³⁰

If the consultation preceding the jettison essentially performs a probative role, that is, serving to make explicit the voluntary nature of sacrifice, the germinamento presents contractual features, since it creates a reciprocal obligation that did not exist before, not regarding a voluntary loss but rather an inevitable, and therefore involuntary, one. Ch. 192 of the Consolat shows this clearly: ‘When any ship or boat has to be beached in bad weather, or in any other circumstances, the vessel’s master must say and declare the following, at that point and at that hour to the merchants in the presence of the scrivano, the boatswain, and seamen: ‘Gentlemen, we cannot hide that we have to beach the ship, and I propose to proceed as follows, that the ship cover the goods, and the goods cover the ship….’.³¹ Here we are no longer ‘in great hazard’, nor must we put hope in the ‘will of God’. The force of the sea has taken over, and the master has only one choice left: he can declare that it is ‘every man for himself’, or he can propose to the merchants to face adversity together, mutually committing to share the damage equally. Here the consent of the merchants, unlike their consent in the consultation that precedes the jettison, is crucial. It is already clear that their absence poses a problem, remediable (up until a certain point) with a legal fiction, but there is no doubt that their consent creates a new bond of mutual obligation. The contractual nature of the obligation is moreover confirmed by the variety of conditions that can be agreed, since it is clear that the obligation can be defined variously to cover different eventualities.

The situation is now clear. The legal obligation that in the Nόμος pertains to any sea risk must cede part of its domain, while the obligation to bear involuntary damage mutually remains subject to the consent of the interested parties. Yet, when we examine the history of mercantile laws, we find a curious misunderstanding. Here is how, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the great Giuseppe Casaregi felt that he had to paraphrase and explain the stipulations of Ch.192 in language accessible to his contemporaries: ‘When the Master judges that it is needful to beach the ship in order to avoid a greater evil, he is required to give notice of it to Merchants …’³² The master ‘judges’, recognizes the lesser evil, and is still able to warn the merchants of it. Sometime earlier, Carlo Targa, in his Ponderationi, was even more explicit: ‘This is nothing more than a deliberation made by the Master … to voluntarily risk a distant danger, and a lesser damage, in order to avoid a closer, worse one…’ And further: ‘The most frequent case that gives rise to this Germinamento is when your cargo is thrown overboard to lighten the ship’.³³ Even before Targa, the Neapolitan Francesco Rocco in De navibus et naulo (1655) had acknowledged the right to be compensated for the beaching of a ship, ‘ut in cap. Consulat. Maris 192’, thus connecting this to the voluntary principle of jettison.³⁴

Ch. 192 also provides for the possibility of a unilateral obligation, and it is in the passage in which it is explained that the merchants could agree to cover the damage of the ship without the master reciprocally assuming the same commitment to the cargo, that the specific name of the contract is learned. Merchants, in fact, can allow that ‘la nau vaia sobre los havers’ (the ship goes over the cargo), although ‘lo senyor de la nau no agermanara la nau ab laver’ (the shipmaster will not make the ship brother [agermanara] to the cargo).³⁵ Agermanar becomes germinare in Italian. Thus Carlo Targa, having confused this ‘deliberation’ with that of the jettison, can present to us an imaginative etymology, which at least has the advantage of unconsciously returning us to the word’s most authentic moral and economic sense. It is possible that the Genoese Targa intuited that he was tying himself up in knots, but he still felt that he could claim that the «seafaring word Germinamento» derived from the «French verb germiner» (in actual fact the verb gérmer, meaning ‘to sprout’). Just as in a tree “the various branches, and the things divided in several parts formally make up unum germen [one sprout alone]”, in the same way the several interested of a shipping venture make up ‘a union and a body, only as far as the interest is concerned, and thus a capital or holding fund, to be then shared out at lira, soldo and denaro, in proportion to each one's interest’. He concludes that through the germinamento, the relationship among the interested parties changes, and it is ‘accidentally reduced to a kind of company’.³⁶ And he’s right: it is in fact a company, more precisely a company of mutual insurance. According to Targa, who does not express a personal opinion but repeats the understanding widespread in the courts, it was a company only ‘accidentally’, founded not on the consent of the parties, but on the dangerous situation that induces the master to ‘voluntarily put himself at risk’.³⁷ The correct derivation of the term is probably from the Catalan germà (in Castilian, hermano). This suggests that the pact proposed by the master establishes a circumstantial bond among strangers (or maybe it would be fairer to say, among their property) who are nevertheless all pursuing the same aim: a brotherhood, where all members commit to bearing one another’s losses.³⁸

Conclusion

According to a strict interpretation of the Consolat, General Average and mutual insurance continued to coexist side by side into the late Middle Ages, as in the Nόμος but without its confusion. This is to say that, to limit the most predictable abuses, the Consolat established that contribution for involuntary damage was no longer required by customary law, but became a possibility through consent of the parties. It is thus rather interesting that in the modern age the literal interpretation was obliterated by humanistic jurisprudence’s sense of system, and that the germinamento was in fact absorbed by General Average and made to conform to its logic: ‘Germinamento’ writes Domenico Azuni, ‘is usually carried out at the time of a jettison designed to lighten the ship and prevent an imminent shipwreck’.³⁹ If, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the germinamento ended up being amalgamated with the consultation that preceded (or should have preceded) jettison to make clear its voluntary nature, this is because in the meantime a profound restructuring of Mediterranean trade had taken place.⁴⁰ This introduced two fundamental changes. Once the legal procedures that guaranteed the fulfilment of contracts were consolidated, it was possible to build networks of trust along commercial routes which obviated the need for merchants to travel with their goods. At same time, while commission trading developed, a new indemnity tool emerged: the modern instrument of premium insurance. This new contract promised to refund losses entirely, and was more efficient than any mutual solution, if only because it allowed for the spread of risk across a number of guarantors—the underwriters of the policies—that was incomparably wider than any consortium of directly interested shippers.⁴¹

Once the presence of the merchants on board diminished, the consultation lost its meaning, so much so as to make the master who carried it out seem suspect, as Targa noted. Above all, the germinamento, in its most original and authentic sense, now appeared problematic from several points of view, since masters would be prompted to take advantage of the uncertain boundary it introduced between voluntary and involuntary damages to seek compensation for both via General Average. After all, it didn't take much to present damages as the consequences of a voluntary sacrifice intended to escape danger. Goods soaked in the hold could be compensated by contribution if, at the point of delivery, it was claimed that the hatches had had to be opened during a storm to throw part of the cargo overboard. Even worn-out equipment which had reached the end of its usefulness, could be replaced in large part at expense of the freighters: it was enough to say that they had broken in a risky manoeuvre made necessary by an impending danger. As Ascanio Baldasseroni noted, without the presence of merchants on board, ship masters discovered the secret of the legendary Ship of Theseus. Modern insurance intervened to counterbalance these dubious practices however, at least when Averages were covered by the policy, and when the practice of insuring ship hull and equipment in addition to the cargo became standard practice. In short, the reorganization of maritime risk management that took place between the late Middle Ages and the early modern age placed the new insurance contract at the centre of the system, sweeping away the mutual company of germinamento, but leaving General Average contribution for voluntary damages intact. It was probably a slow process, common to all maritime contexts, the exact dynamics of which are still waiting to be investigated. For now, I will observe that, if it is true that the new sedentary habits of the merchants and the modern insurance contract produced the effects that we suppose, then in theory the number of Averages measured over the long-term, and the ratio between General Averages (voluntary) and Particulars ones (involuntary), should be regarded as two significant indicators of the spread of contractual insurance and the consolidation of the new maritime risk management system.