Markets for land, labor, and capital in northern Italy and the low countries, twelfth to seventeenth centuries

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 41, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 503-531

  van Bavel, Bas J P ^a  

^a UTRECHT UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79951874190     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/JINH_a_00201     Document Type: Article

References (117)

1. For the historiography of the debate, see Stephan R. Epstein, "Introduction," in idem (ed.), Town and Country in Europe, 1300-1800 (New York, 2001), 4-9.
2. See, for example, George W. Grantham, "Espaces privilégiés: productivité agricole et zones d'approvisionnement dans l'Europe pré-industrielle," Annales: Histoire, sciences socials, LII (1997), 697-725.
3. Bruce M. S. Campbell et al., A Medieval Capital and Its Grain Supply: Agrarian Production and Distribution in the London Region c. 1300 (London, 1993).
4. This privileging of towns has a pedigree going back to Adam Smith (ed. W. B. Todd), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations (New York, 1979), 411-417.
5. In Book III, Chapter 4, "How the Commerce of the Towns Contributed to the Improvement of the Country," Smith's list of improvements includes order and good government and the liberty and security of individuals who had before lived almost in a continual state of servile dependency on their superiors.
6. Giorgio Chittolini, "Cities, 'City-States' and Regional States in North-Central Italy," Theory and Society, XVIII (1989), 689-706.
7. Wim P. Blockmans, "Stadt, Region und Staat: ein Dreiecksverhältnis: Der Kasus der Niederlande im 15. Jahrhundert," in Ferdinand Seibt and Winfried Eberhard (eds.), Europa 1500 (Stuttgart, 1987), 211-226.
8. Giovanni Federico and Paolo Malanima, "Progress, Decline, Growth: Product and Productivity in Italian Agriculture, 1000-2000," Economic History Review, LVII (2004), 445-447.
9. David Herlihy, "Popula tion, Plague and Social Change in Rural Pistoia, 1201-1430," Economic History Review, XVIII (1965), 225-244.
10. Malanima, "Urbanisation and the Italian Economy during The Last Millennium," European Review of Economic History, IX (2005), 101-103.
11. Blockmans et al., "Tussen crisis en welvaart: Sociale veranderingen 1300-1500," Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, IV (1980), 42-86.
12. Jan de Vries, European Urbanization (London, 1984), 28-43, 271-276.
13. Federico and Malanima, "Progress, Decline, Growth," 456-458.
14. Robert C. Allen, "The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War," Explorations in Economic History, XXXVIII (2001), 427-431.
15. Jan Luiten van Zanden, "Wages and the Standard of Living in Europe, 1500-1800," European Review of Economic History, II (1999), 175-197.
16. de Vries and A. M. van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815 (New York, 1997), 619-632.
17. Van Bavel, Tine de Moor, and van Zanden, "Introduction: Factor Markets in Global Economic History," Continuity and Change, XXIV (2009), 9-21.
18. The few exceptions in systematic comparison are Rosemary L. Hopcroft and Rebecca J. Emigh, "Divergent Paths of Agrarian Change: Eastern England and Tuscany Compared," Journal of European Economic History, XXIX (2000), 9-51.
19. th Centuries," unpub. paper (Utrecht University, 2007). Other comparisons deal only with the market for goods.
20. Van Bavel, "The Organization and Rise of Land and Lease Markets in Northwestern Europe and Italy, c. 1000-1800," Continuity and Change, XXIII (2008), 13-53.
21. See the examples of land-sale records in Laurent Feller, "Quelques problèmes liés à l'étude du marché de la terre durant le Moyen Âge," in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Il mercato della terra secc. XIII-XVIII: Atti delle "Settimane di Studi" e altri convegni, XXXV (Prato, 2003), 21-45.
22. Chris Wickham, "Land Sales and Land Market in the Eleventh Century," in idem, Land and Power: Studies in Italian and European Social History, 400-1200 (London, 1994), 257-274.
23. E. Huertas, "Between Law and Economy: 'Divided Property' and Land Rent Market in Tuscany, Twelfth-Thirteenth Centuries," in Phillipp Schofield and Gérard Béaur (eds.), Property Rights, Land Market and Economic Growth (Turnhout, 2010).
24. See Duane J. Osheim, "Countrymen and the Law in Late-Medieval Tuscany," Speculum, LXIV (1989), 317-337, for the Lucca area, where the situation was relatively favorable compared to other Tuscan areas.
25. Petra Schulte, Scripturae publicae creditor: Das Vertrauen in Notariatsurkunden im kommunalen Italien des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 2003), 100-108.
26. Mathieu Scherman, "La distribuzione della ricchezza in una città: Treviso e i suoi estimi del Quattrocento (1434-1499)," in Guido Alfani and Michela Barbot (eds.), Ricchezza, valore, proprietà in età preindustriale, 1450-1800 (Venezia, 2009).
27. Van Bavel, "The Land Market in The North Sea Area from a Comparative Perspective, 13th-18th Centuries," in Cavaciocchi (ed.), Il mercato della terra, 130-131.
28. F. C. J. Ketelaar, "Van pertinent register en ordentelijk protocol: Overdracht van onroerend goed in de tijd van de Republiek," in De levering van onroerend goed (Deventer, 1985), 39-42.
29. Van Bavel, "Land Market in the North Sea Area," 137-139.
30. Samuel K. Cohn, Creating the Florentine State: Peasants and Rebellion, 1348-1434 (New York, 1999), 103.
31. Hopcroft and Emigh, "Divergent Paths of Agrarian Change," 14.
32. Philip J. Jones, "From Manor to Mezzadria: A Tuscan Case-Study in The Medieval Origins of Modern Agrarian Society," in Nicolai Rubinstein (ed.), Florentine Studies (London, 1968), 205, 220-221.
33. Van Bavel, "The Emergence and Growth of Short-Term Leasing in the Netherlands and Other Parts of Northwestern Europe (Eleventh-Seventeenth Centuries): A Chronology and a Tentative Investigation into Its Causes," in idem and Schofield (eds.), The Development of Leasehold in Northwestern Europe, c. 1200-1600 (Turnhout, 2009), 185-189.
34. Herlihy and Christine Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans et leurs familles: Une étude du catasto florentin de 1427 (Paris, 1978), 268-272 (maps on 275, 285).
35. Domenico Sella, "Household, Land Tenure and Occupation in North Italy in the Late Sixteenth Century," Journal of European Economic History, XVI (1987), 491.
36. Douglas F. Dowd, "The Economic Expansion of Lombardy, 1300-1500: A Study in Political Stimuli to Economic Change," Journal of Economic History, XXI (1961), 148-149, 154.
37. Hopcroft and Emigh, "Divergent Paths of Agrarian Change," 24-26.
38. Elmar Sabelberg, Der Zerfall der Mezzadria in der Toskana Urbana: Entstehung, Bedeutung und gegenwärtige Auflösung eines agraren Betriebssystems in Mittelitalien (Cologne, 1975), 116-146, 217-219.
39. Emigh, "The Spread of Sharecropping: The Political Economy of Transaction Costs," American Sociological Review, LXII (1997), 423-442.
40. Giovanni Cherubini, Signori, contadini, borghesi: Ricerche sulla società italiana del basso Medioevo (Florence, 1974), 295-301.
41. Cherubini, Signori, contadini, borghesi, 73-99, 278-288, 304.
42. Elio Conti, La formazione della struttura agraria moderna nel contado fiorentino (Rome, 1965), 97-102, 245, 395-411.
43. Epstein, "The Peasantries of Italy," in Tom Scott (ed.), The Peasantries of Europe from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1998), 89.
44. Michael Limberger, Sixteenth-Century Antwerp and Its Rural Surroundings: Social and Economic Changes in the Hinterland of a Commercial Metropolis, ca. 1450-ca. 1570 (Turnhout, 2008), 189-213.
45. Erik Thoen, Landbouwekonomie en bevolking in Vlaanderen gedurende de late middeleeuwen en het begin van de moderne tijden: Testregio: de kasselrijen van Oudenaarde en Aalst (eind 13de-eerste helft 16de eeuw) (Ghent, 1988), 512-527.
46. Van Bavel, "Rural Development and Landownership in Holland, c.1400-1650," in Oscar Gelderblom (ed.), The Political Economy of the Dutch Republic (Aldershot, 2009), 167-196.
47. See also de Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500-1700 (New Haven, 1974), 45-46.
48. J. A. M. Y. Bos-Rops, Graven op zoek naar geld: De inkomsten van de graven van Holland en Zeeland, 1389-1433 (Haarlem, 1993), 76, 96, 225-226, 240, 253-254.
49. See also Peter Hoppenbrouwers, "Town and Country in Holland, 1300-1550," in Epstein (ed.), Town and Country, 73.
50. Blockmans, "The Low Countries in the Middle Ages," in Richard Bonney (ed.), The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200-1815 (New York, 1999), 281-308.
51. Ferdinand Grapperhaus, Alva en de Tiende Penning (Zutphen, 1982), 42-54, 286-293.
52. Anthony Molho, Florentine Public Finance in the Early Renaissance, 1400-1433 (New York, 1971), 23-36, 81-87.
53. Cohn, Creating the Florentine State, 71-81, brings differentiation into this picture via discussion of the contado in Florence.
54. Chittolini, "Notes sur la politique fiscale de Charles Quint dans le duché de Milan: Le 'nuovo catasto' et les rapports entre ville et campagne," in Blockmans and Nicolette Mout (eds.), The World of Emperor Charles V (Amsterdam, 2004), 147-148.
55. Epstein, "Peasantries of Italy," 98-101.
56. For a more pessimistic view, Hopcroft and Emigh, "Divergent Paths of Agrarian Change," 16.
57. See also Herlihy, "Population, Plague and Social Change," 240-241.
58. Zuijderduijn, Medieval Capital Markets: Markets for Rents between State Formation and Private Investment in Holland (1300-1550) (Boston, 2009), 242-246 (Holland), 261-267 (Italy).
59. Thoen and Tim Soens, "Appauvrissement et endettement dans le monde rurale: Etude comparative du crédit dans les différentes systèmes agraires en Flandre au bas Moyen Age et au début de l'Epoque Moderne," in Cavaciocchi (ed.), Il mercato della terra, 710-711.
60. Zuijderduijn, "Assessing the Rural Economy".
61. Van Bavel, "Land and Lease Markets," 38-39.
62. Allesandra Rossini, Le campagne Bresciane nel cinquecento: Territorio, fisco, società (Milan, 1994), 33, 124, 195.
63. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans, 241-260.
64. See also Zuijderduijn, "Assessing the Rural Economy".
65. Goldsmith, Premodern Financial Systems: A Historical Comparative Study (New York, 1987), 148-154.
66. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans, 272-279.
67. For a slightly less pessimistic view because of livestock advanced by landlords to tenants, Emigh,"Loans and Livestock: Comparing Landlords' and Tenants' Declarations from the Catasto of 1427," Journal of European Economic History, XXV (1996), 705-723.
68. Frank McArdle, Altopascio: A Study in Tuscan Rural Society, 1587-1784 (New York, 1978), 72, 98-101, 109-116.
69. Zuijderduijn, "Assessing the Rural Economy.".
70. For proto-industries, see van Bavel, "Early Proto-Industrialization in the Low Countries? The Importance and Nature of Market Oriented Non-Agricultural Activities in the Countryside in Flanders and Holland, c. 1250-1570," Revue Belge de philologie et d'histoire, LXXXI (2003), 1109-1165.
71. Van Zanden, "Economic Growth in the Golden Age: The Development of the Economy of Holland, 1500-1650," in Karel Davids and Leo Noordegraaf (eds.), The Dutch Economy in the Golden Age: Nine Studies (Amsterdam, 1993), 13-16, 21-23.
72. "Tracing the Beginning of the Kuznets Curve: Western Europe during the Early Modern Period," Economic History Review, XLVIII (1995), 643-664.
73. Goldsmith, Premodern Financial Systems, 204-206.
74. Jones, "From Manor to Mezzadria," 227-234.
75. Reinhard Bentmann and Michael Müller, Die Villa als Herrschaftsarchitektur: Versuch einer kunst- und sozialgeschichtlichen Analyse (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), 18-28, 34-37.
76. Amanda Lillie, Florentine Villas in the Fifteenth Century: An Architectural and Social History (New York, 2005), 23-38, 147-154.
77. Daniel A. Ackerberg and Maristella Botticini, "The Choice of Agrarian Contracts in Early-Renaissance Tuscany: Risk Sharing, Moral Hazard, or Capital Market Imperfections?" Explorations in Economic History, XXXVII (2000), 241-257.
78. Michael Toch, "Lords and Peasants: A Reappraisal of Medieval Economic Relationships," Journal of European Economic History, XV (1986), 168-177.
79. Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics (New York, 1988), 84-85.
80. C. Siegfried Epperlein, Bauernbedrückung und Bauernwiderstand im hohen Mittelalter (Berlin, 1960), 67-75.
81. Alberto Guenzi, "L'immigration urbain au XVe siècle: Bologne," Annales de démographie historique (1982), 33-42.
82. Herlihy, Pisa in the Early Renaissance: A Study of Urban Growth (New Haven, 1958), 51,158-159.
83. Jones, Italian City-State, 383, 566-567.
84. Maria Neri, "Perugia e il suo contado nei secoli XIII e XIV, interventi urbanistici e legislazione statuaria," Storia della Città, III (1977), 28-37;.
85. Rossini, Le campagne Bresciane, 242-249, 260-264.
86. Epstein, "Town and Country: Economy and Institutions in Late-Medieval Italy," Economic History Review, XLVI (1993), 466-469.
87. Carlo M. Belfanti, "Rural Manufactures and Rural Proto-Industries in the 'Italy of the Cities' from the Sixteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries," Continuity and Change, VIII (1993), 253-280.
88. Malanima, "Industrie cittadine e industrie rurali nell'eta moderna," Rivista storica Italiana, XCIV (1982), 277.
89. Amit Bhaduri, "Cropsharing as a Labour Process, Size of Farm and Supervision Cost," Journal of Peasant Studies, X (1983), 88-93. More empirical research is needed to test the assumption often found in literature that this remuneration was below the market rate.
90. McArdle, Altopascio, 72-78.
91. Cohn, "After the Black Death: Labour Legislation and Attitudes towards Labour in Late-Medieval Western Europe," Economic History Review, LX, (2007), 468-473.
92. Jan A. van Houtte and Raymond van Uytven, "Wirtschaftspolitik und Arbeitsmarkt in den Niederlanden vom Spätmittelalter bis zur Schwelle des Industriezeitalters," in Hermann Kellenbenz (ed.), Wirtschaftspolitik und Arbeitsmarkt (Munich, 1974), 48-58.
93. Herman van der Wee, "Structural Changes and Specialization in the Industry of the Southern Netherlands, 1100-1600," Economic History Review, XXVIII (1975), 217-210.
94. David Nicholas, "Economic Reorientation and Social Change in Fourteenth Century Flanders," Past & Present, 70 (1976), 8-11.
95. Thoen, Landbouwekonomie, 1011-1014.
96. van Uytven, "Die ländliche Industrie während des Spätmittelalters in den südlichen Niederlanden," in Kellenbenz (ed.), Agrarisches Nebengewerbe und Formen der Reagrarisierung im Spätmittelalter und 19./20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1975), 65-66.
97. Nicholas, Town and Countryside: Social, Economic, and Political Tensions in Fourteenth-Century Flanders (Bruges, 1971), 99-116, 188-221.
98. van Bavel, "Proto-Industrialization," 1124-1126.
99. Bert de Munck, Piet Lourens, and Jan Lucassen, "The Establishment and Distribution of Craft Guilds in the Low Countries, 1000-1800," in Maarten Prak et al. (eds.), Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power, and Representation (Aldershot, 2006), 32-73.
100. van Bavel, "Rural Wage Labour in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries: An Assessment of the Importance and Nature of Wage Labour in the Countryside of Holland, Guelders and Flanders," Continuity and Change, XXI (2006), 65-66.
101. Erika Kuijpers, "Who Digs the Town Moat? The Emergence of a Labour Market in Late Medieval Holland," unpub. paper (Utrecht University, 2007).
102. Jean-Pierre Sosson, Les travaux publics de la ville de Bruges XIVe-XVe siècles: les matériaux, les hommes (Brussels, 1977), 167-178, 215-216.
103. Sella, "Household, Land Tenure and Occupation," 493-494. Examples of cities in Lombardy with the lowest percentage of fixed rents are San Giuliano and Inzago.
104. Van Bavel, "Rural Wage Labour in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries".
105. Lucassen, Naar de kusten van de Noordzee: Trekarbeid in Europees perspektief, 1600-1900 (Gouda, 1984), 160-171.
106. For the impact of the Black Death in Italy, see Herlihy, Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia: The Social History of a Medieval Town, 1200-1430 (New Haven, 1967), 62-77. The population of Pistoia's countryside plummeted from 31,000 to less than 9,000 between 1244 and 1401 and that of the town from 11,000 to 4,000.
107. Van Bavel and van Zanden, "Jump-Start.".
108. Zuijderduijn, Medieval Capital Markets, 111-137.
109. Belfanti, "Town and Country in Central and Northern Italy, 1400-1800," in Epstein (ed.), Town and Country, 292-314.
110. Hoppenbrouwers, "Town and Country in Holland," 77-78.
111. Epstein, "Town and Country," 456-465.
112. Chittolini, "Cities.".
113. Blockmans, "Stadt, Region und Staat".
114. Hoppenbrouwers, "Town and Country in Holland".
115. Jones, Italian City-State, 365-370.
116. Sergio Zamperetti,"'Sinedri dolosi,' La formazione e lo sviluppo dei corpi territoriali nello stato regionale Veneto tra '500 e '600," Rivista storica Italiana, XCIX (1987), 269-320.
117. The point about urbanization rates as problematical economic indicators was made by Epstein, "Introduction," 10-12, contra the (sometimes implicit) assumptions in works like Angus Maddison, The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (Paris, 2001), 229.