Guido Alfani

Wealth Inequalities and Population Dynamics in Early Modern Northern Italy

An analysis of the wealth and population of early modern Ivreabased on the estimi, or property tax, records; the correzioni degli estimi, a continuous series of tax records rarely found elsewhere and hardly ever used before; the census of 1613, another unique and informative source; and other archival recordsfinds that the citys concentration and distribution of wealth was resilient even in face of acute demographical shocks (such as the plague of 1630) and that inequalities in property underwent a slow increase even in economically stagnant areas during the seventeenth century. The article places these findings in a European perspective, and it debates Jan van Zandens hypothesis of a positive relationship between inequality in wealth and demographical/economic growth before the Industrial Revolution.

Economic inequality in northwestern Italy: A long-term view (fourteenth to eighteenth centuries)

This article provides a comprehensive picture of economic inequality in northwestern Italy (Piedmont), focusing on the long-term developments occurring from 1300 to 1800 ca. Regional studies of this kind are rare, and none of them has as long a timescale. The new data proposed illuminate many little-known aspects of wealth distribution and general economic inequality in preindustrial times, and support the idea that during the Early Modern period, inequality grew everywhere: both in cities and in rural areas, and independently from whether the economy was growing or stagnating. This finding challenges earlier views that explained inequality growth as the consequence of economic development. The importance of demographic processes affecting inequality is underlined, and the impact of severe mortality crises, like the Black Death, is analyzed.

Households and Plague in Early Modern Italy

The remarkable Books of the Dead from early modern Milan and the parish and tax records of Nonantola during the plague of 1630 allow historians to reconstitute the patterns of family and household deaths caused by pestilence. Not only did deaths caused by this highly contagious disease cluster tightly within households; the intervals between household deaths were also extremely short. As much as one-quarter of all plague deaths were multiple household deaths that occurred on the same day. Similar to a deadly influenza, the speed and efficiency with which the late medieval and early modern plagues spread depended on unusually short periods of incubation and infectivity.

Entrepreneurs, Formalization of Social Ties, and Trustbuilding in Europe (Fourteenth to Twentieth Centuries)

The establishment of trust is a key component of economic activity and social ties can make business dealings work better. However, we do not know much about how economic actors created new social ties deliberately in order to pursue their objectives. This article analyses the way in which merchants and entrepreneurs used specific rituals to establish formal social ties, with the intent of protecting their business relationships. It focuses on relational instruments that until now had been neglected, particularly godparenthood and marriage witnessing. It shows that formalization, ritualization, and publicity of ties were used by entrepreneurs to establish trust with their business associates, for example when information was asymmetric or when institutions were perceived as inefficient in guaranteeing mutual good behaviour. The analysis covers a long period, from the late middle ages to today. It pays particular attention to the consequences of the Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and of the industrial revolution in the nineteenth. Contrary to the received wisdom, it suggests that formal social ties such as godparenthood continued to play an important role in economic activity during and after the industrial revolution. New databases on early modern Italy and nineteenth‐century France are used.

The effects of plague on the distribution of property: Ivrea, Northern Italy 1630

The demographic effects of the epidemics of plague in Early Modern Europe and their economic consequences illuminate the evolution of property structures and of wealth distribution during and after a mortality crisis. An analysis of the high-quality data available for the Italian city of Ivrea at the time of the 1630 plague shows the exceptional resilience of property structures. Like the social structures of the period, property structures were able to recover quickly, informed as they were by the lessons learnt by trial and error by the patrician families of the late Middle Ages, whose patrimonies had been badly damaged by the Black Death. In a period of recurrent catastrophes that struck European populations during the Old Demographic Regime, apparently ‘inegalitarian’ institutions seem to have had long-term ‘egalitarian’ effects.

Plague and Lethal Epidemics in the Pre-Industrial World

This article provides an overview of recent literature on plagues and other lethal epidemics, covering the period from late Antiquity to ca. 1800. We analyze the main environmental and institutional factors that shaped both the way in which a plague originated and spread and its overall demographic and socioeconomic consequences. We clarify how the same pathogen shows historically different epidemiological characteristics, and how apparently similar epidemics could have deeply different consequences. We discuss current debates about the socioeconomic consequences of the Black Death and other plagues. We conclude with historical lessons to understand modern “plagues.â€

Spiritual Kinship in Europe, 1500-1900

List of Figures and Tables Contributors Spiritual Kinship and Godparenthood: an Introduction G.Alfani & V.Gourdon PART I: THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD Immigrants and Formalisation of Social Ties in Early Modern Italy G.Alfani Ecclesiastical Godparenthood in Early Modern Murcia A.Irigoyen Godparenthood and Social Networks in an Italian Rural Community: Nonantola, Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries G.Alfani & C.Munno Godparenthood and Social Relationships in France under the Old Regime: Lyons as a Case Study E.Couriol PART II: GODPARENTHOOD FROM THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO THE AGE OF INDUSTRIALIZATION Whats in a Name? Choosing Kin Godparents in Nineteenth Century Paris V.Gourdon Spiritual Kinship, Political Mobilization and Social Cooperation: a Swiss Alpine valley in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries S.Guzzi PART III: REFORMED GODPARENTHOOD Kin, Neighbours or Prominent Persons? Godparenthood in a Finnish Rural Community in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century K-M.Piilahti Who Wants to be a Godparent? Baptisms in a Lutheran Church in Paris, 1755-1804 T.Ericsson PART IV: EASTERN EUROPE AND EUROPEANS ABROAD Godparenthood in the Russian Orthodox Tradition: Custom against the Law M.Muravyeva The French in Gold Rush San Francisco and Spiritual Kinship A.Foucrier Notes Bibliography

Long-term trends in economic inequality: the case of the Florentine state, c. 1300-1800

This article provides an overview of economic inequality, particularly of wealth, in the Florentine state (Tuscany) from the early fourteenth to the late eighteenth century. Regional studies of this kind are rare, and this is only the second‐ever attempt at covering such a long period. Consistent with recent research conducted on other European areas, during the early modern period we find clear indications of a tendency for economic inequality to grow continually, a finding that for Tuscany cannot be explained as the consequence of economic growth. Furthermore, the exceptionally old sources we use allow us to demonstrate that a phase of declining inequality, lasting about one century, was triggered by the Black Death from 1348 to 1349. This finding challenges earlier scholarship and significantly alters our understanding of the economic consequences of the Black Death.

Spiritual kinship and godparenthood: an introduction

In European societies during the Middle Ages, baptism did not merely represent a solemn and public recognition of the ‘natural’ birth of a child. Rather, it was considered a second birth, a ‘spiritual birth’ within a group of relatives normally different from that based on blood relations: the spiritual family, composed of godfathers and godmothers. In the eyes of the Church there was a tie of kinship between godfathers and godmothers on one side, and godchildren and their parents on the other, which was an impediment to marriage. The use of spiritual kinship ties did not always correspond to their religious significance. So there was no ‘coherence’ between religious thought and social practice. Although spiritual kinship and godparenthood were key factors in the functioning of European societies in the past, they have been given very limited attention until recently. As a rule, they have been mentioned only in passing in general works on the history of kinship and the family (usually for their implications regarding European systems of impediments to marriage, from an anthropological perspective).1 More specialised monographs dedicated to the topic, themselves quite rare, showed a tendency to focus on the Early Middle Ages (Lynch, 1986; Cramer, 1993; Jussen, 2000), leaving the Late Middle Ages and especially the Early Modern period virtually uncharted territory, with a few notable exceptions (Coster, 2002; Alfani, 2009a). Only the last two centuries have been the object of a greater number of studies on godparenthood and spiritual kinship, the vast majority of them being anthropological in character. The reason for this neglect is probably due to the widespread conviction that spiritual kinship was losing relevance at the end of the Middle Ages, a view held by many, especially among anthropologists, following a scholarly tradition that can be traced back to the 1950s.2 Recently, this conviction has been seen to be unfounded (Alfani, 2009a; Alfani and Gourdon, 2009, 2011), and godparenthood has been shown as vital, and notably perceived to be a very important relationship, up to the beginning of the twentieth century and beyond. The articles collected here point in the same direction.

Population Dynamics, Malthusian Crises and Boserupian Innovation in Pre-Industrial Societies: The Case Study of Northern Italy (ca. 1450-1800) in the Light of Lee’s "Dynamic Synthesis"

This article makes use of Lee’s ‘dynamic synthesis’, which aims to combine the views of Malthus and Boserup, to provide a new interpretation of population dynamics in Northern Italy from about 1450 to 1800. The article analyzes Lee’s theory and suggests that, even if it is difficult to test, it is useful both from the point of view of population theory and from that of interpretation of historical cases. Applying it to the Italian case, the article provides a new interpretation of the path that finally led the Italian population to escape long-term limits to demographic growth.