ABSTRACT
In order to promote a network approach of past maritime trade and shipping, the chapter presents a research program called Navigocorpus, which was financed in 2007-11 by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche. The research purpose was to create a common database structure, preserving individual efforts and producing an online tool for scholarly use. The database needs to be able to cope with a variety of sources, produced in different languages and containing all sorts of information on ships and their movements in time and space. The methodological challenge is complex, but the results are encouraging and Navigocorpus has the capacity to sustain innovative research on maritime networks. In order to illustrate the potentialities of the database and to test it, all available data have been inserted on shipping in French ports in 1787, approximately 35,000 records. The chapter also presents some of the results on French maritime networks on the eve of the French revolution.
