ABSTRACT
In the early decades of the sixteenth century, as in the late fifteenth century, urban economic growth was in part an outcome of attempts to create and/or consolidate territorial states centred particularly on Venice, Genoa, Milan and Florence. In the northern half of the Italian peninsula, an amalgam of beneficial and detrimental economic factors determined the timing and magnitude of urban development. The adverse effects of the Black Death on the urban population of Italy lingered on well into the sixteenth century. Urban growth was clearly associated with an increase in urbanisation. In northern Italy, where the plague had been particularly devastating, virtually all major cities had failed to make good population losses incurred over the previous 200 years. In contrast to practice in Venice, mercantilism was seen as a hindrance rather than a benefit to economic activity throughout the region, where relatively small-scale production, diversity and competition, and warfare were principal drivers of manufacturing industry.
