Andrea Caracausi

The Just Wage in Early Modern Italy: A Reflection on Zacchia's De Salario seu Operariorum Mercede

This article aims to understand norms and values pertaining to the definition of just wages in early modern Italy. The starting point is the treatise by the jurist Lanfranco Zacchia, De Salario seu Operariorum Mercede , which appeared in the mid-seventeenth century and represented the first attempt to collate a set of rules on wages based on the traditions of Roman and canon law. After a brief presentation of the treatise, I shall analyse the meanings and concepts of wages, and then consider the elements that determined the just wage. To understand how prescriptions were seen by individuals, I shall also compare them with information about court cases and rulings compiled by Zacchia in another book, the Centuria decisionum ad materiam Tractatus de Salario , and with the rest of the existing literature. Evidence from my comparison will allow us to understand the interaction and reciprocal influences between juridical thought and daily work practice, and underline the fact that wages were based on a complex system of norms and values where individuals, their social positions, skills, and experience determined the recognition of the just wage with reference to the local context.

Woollen Manufacturing in the Early Modern Mediterranean (1550–1630): Changing Labour Relations in a Commodity Chain

Caracausi investigates changes in labour relations using a micro-historical perspective and testing the heuristic tool of the commodity chain approach. The chapter shows the potential of this combined approach for global labour history, especially when it does not use pre-ordinate categories, but instead ‘spatialises’ the commodity chain under investigation, reconstructing units of analysis, historical periodisations and unveiling questions that would remain hidden if a macro-perspective were taken. Focusing on the woollen manufacturing of early modern Padua, Caracausi shows how the trajectories in labour relations depended on the interweaving of manufacturing, trade and consumption within the industry and on dynamics that link together free and unfree labour, within and outside the commodity change.

Information Asymmetries and Craft Guilds in Pre‐Modern Markets: Evidence from Italian Proto‐Industry

This article analyses the relationship between guilds and information asymmetries using a large database of quality disputes from early modern Italy. It finds that a high-quality urban textile industry was able to solve externalities using a range of ex ante and ex post monitoring mechanisms based on private market relationships and fair sanctions which effectively reduced adverse selection and information asymmetries. Instead, when guilds did use their quality regulations, the effect of the guild on information asymmetries and the industry as a whole was generally negative, by providing mechanisms that could be manipulated by entrenched interest groups for rent-seeking purposes.

A reassessment of the role of guild courts in disputes over apprenticeship contracts: a case study from early modern Italy

This article analyses the mechanisms of conflict resolution in apprenticeship contracts using a large database of disputes from early modern Italy. It finds that the guild court under investigation (the Padua Woollen Guild court) did not enforce training contracts, but rather sought to improve on incomplete contracts by adding clauses, thereby helping individuals renegotiate and redefine the contractual arrangements into which they had decided to enter. However, power relations within the court operated largely in favour of employers, both merchants and master craftsmen. The article concludes that alternative contract enforcement systems, such as municipal or state courts, were probably better suited than corporative systems for resolving disputes surrounding apprenticeship.