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This book illustrates the complexity and variety of victualling systems in early modern Italy. For a long time, the historiography of urban provisioning systems in late medieval and early modern times featured a conceptual opposition between victualling administration and the market. In this book, on the contrary, the term 'victualling system' (sistema annonario) is employed according to its historical meaning, designating an organised set of public and private channels, evolved typically in urban contexts, for the procurement and distribution of the goods essential for the daily life of common people. According to this definition, specifically, a victualling system included also the market, as one of the different channels for the procurement and distribution of goods. What characterises the Italian case in the European context are both the earliness of these institutions and the long-lasting political and economic fragmentation of the peninsula: these factors determined thegreat variety and complexity of the solutions adopted. In order to show these features, the analysis focuses on four central issues: the configuration of systems, institutional pragmatism and variety, articulation of circuits, and plurality of actors. The seven relevant case-studies included in this book, all based on direct archival research, cover a wide range of geographical contexts and institutional arrangements, from the North to the South of the peninsula, and include both large-sized cities (Milan and Rome), medium-sized cities (Bergamo, Vicenza, and Ferrara), and entire regions (the March of Ancona, and Sicily). This allows the reader to appreciate regional and local differences in detail, making this book of interest for academics and scholars in economic, social, and urban history.
List of contents
1. Italian victualling systems in the early modern age: an overview and a critical assessment; Luca Clerici.- 2. Complexity and efficiency: Milan in the 17th and 18th centuries; Luciano Maffi and Luca Mocarelli.- 3. One city, two economic areas: wheat and olive oil trade in Bergamo between Venice and Milan; Fabrizio Costantini.- 4. Provisioning a medium-sized town in a polycentric state: Vicenza and Venice, 1516-1629; Luca Clerici.- 5. Managing abundance: victualling offices and cereals merchants in 18th century Ferrara; Giulio Ongaro.- 6. The wealth of periphery? Food provisioning, merchants, and cereals in the Papal States: the case of the March of Ancona; Luca Andreoni and Marco Moroni.- 7. The Roman Annona and its market in the 18th century; Donatella Strangio.- 8. A two-sided kingdom: a Sicily of export and urban wheat supply; Ida Fazio.
About the author
Luca Clerici (Milan 1968) is a fellow at the University of Padua, Italy, and attached to the École Normale Supérieure of Paris, France. After having attained his Diplôme d'Études Approfondies in History and civilisations at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris, and his PhD in Economic and social history at the Bocconi University of Milan, he obtained the qualification as maître de conférences in Early modern and modern history in France. He has taught Economic history at the Bocconi University, and Early modern history and Principles of economics at the University of Padua. He has authored several publications in economic and social history and in the history of economic thought.
