From “Share” to Salary: Labour, Remuneration, and Social Change in the Ligurian Seafaring Community of Camogli (1830–1914)

Abstract

Abstract This article reconstructs how a Ligurian seafaring community moved from communal, profit-sharing forms of maritime enterprise to salaried and increasingly stratified labour during the transition from sail to steam. It traces Camogli’s trajectory from locally crewed vessels in cabotage and Black Sea grain trades to late-century oceanic tramping. Three shifts stand out. First, manning practices widened from highly endogenous crews to nationally and internationally composed ones as routes globalized and desertion/migration reshaped labour supply. Second, officer professionalization – driven by nautical schooling and licensing – reallocated authority from owner-captains afloat to managers ashore, while narrowing vertical mobility for common seamen. Third, remuneration moved from alla parte (voyage profit-sharing) to monthly wages, breaking seafarers’ direct participation in returns and raising skill-premia at the top. Comparative wage evidence suggests a declining differential vis-à-vis local industrial workers and persistent gaps with Atlantic labour markets. Camogli’s experience illuminates the proletarianization of maritime labour not as a linear consequence of technology alone, but as the combined outcome of institutional reform, ownership reorganization, and market integration.