ABSTRACT
The data compiled and illustrated in the rst chapter present a particularly clear picture of the relationship between local nances and military costs in the seventeenth century. In this chapter, we will compare and contrast the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating specically on changes in the character of military costs. This comparison will allow us to establish – in the next chapter – why there was a concomitant change in how those costs were managed, at both the local and state levels. The general expenditure of rural communities increased very little, albeit with heightened peaks in the 1620s and 1630s and during the War of Candia (1645−1669). There was a stabilisation, then, if not a reduction, of military requests, the impact of which was gradual and localised, rather than uniform. It affected different parts of the Mainland Dominion at different points during the wars (when the impact of costs was accentuated) and in different ways. The graph below, based in this instance on data collected from the books of expenditure of Magrè (Figure 3.1), conrms this hypothesis.
