ABSTRACT
The state of the Italian economy, or economies, through our period has been much debated, notably whether there was a decline or shift in the seventeenth century, as part of a wider debate about the shift of economic leadership from the Mediterranean to the north-west Atlantic.1 There is the interlinked argument from Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein that world economies shifted their ‘superville’ epicentres from Venice and Antwerp in the early and mid-sixteenth century to Amsterdam at the close, and then London from the later seventeenth century. I favour the view that, while Italy (notably Venice, Genoa, Milan and Florence), in the course of the seventeenth century did lose leadership in many economic matters, such as international trade in pepper and spices, in shipbuilding and capital investment and insurance, there were some compensatory shifts and gains, and no absolute decline, economically or culturally. Standards of living, physical and of mentalité, should be more important than economic league tables; as Braudel stressed; ‘from the point of view of quality of life . . . I would certainly rather have lived in Tuscany, than in Spain under Philip II or even in France under Louis XIV’.2 Here I will outline the main trends as they affect urban and rural society, highlighting those affecting rural society’s vitality or stagnation.
