This volume brings together a series of studies by Professor Blomquist on the evolution of banking in Lucca from the 12th and 13th centuries. They describe how the leading bankers operated, how they invested, and how they pursued their family interests. In particular, they trace the transformation of money changers, or campsores, into deposit and transfer bankers, who deployed their capital in trading ventures as well as in banking. Moreover, the author shows how Lucchese merchant-bankers expanded their operations from Italy, first to the fairs of Champagne and ultimately to all of Europe's major commercial centres. Special attention is given to the use of the exchange contract, or cambium, as an instrument of credit and of transfer. Problems of coinage and foreign exchange are also treated extensively, including the origins of the Tuscan grossi and the Lucchese gold groat. The collection concludes with a study of the cloth trade and another concerning the first consuls in Lucca.

A dynamic framework for studying social emergence The social sciences have sophisticated models of choice and equilibrium but little understanding of the emergence of novelty. Where do new alternatives, new organizational forms, and new types of people come from? Combining biochemical insights about the origin of life with innovative and historically oriented social network analyses, John Padgett and Walter Powell develop a theory about the emergence of organizational, market, and biographical novelty from the coevolution of multiple social networks. They demonstrate that novelty arises from spillovers across intertwined networks in different domains. In the short run actors make relations, but in the long run relations make actors. This theory of novelty emerging from intersecting production and biographical flows is developed through formal deductive modeling and through a wide range of original historical case studies. Padgett and Powell build on the biochemical concept of autocatalysis—the chemical definition of life—and then extend this autocatalytic reasoning to social processes of production and communication. Padgett and Powell, along with other colleagues, analyze a very wide range of cases of emergence. They look at the emergence of organizational novelty in early capitalism and state formation; they examine the transformation of communism; and they analyze with detailed network data contemporary science-based capitalism: the biotechnology industry, regional high-tech clusters, and the open source community.

The Middle Ages (800–1400) were a rich and vibrant period in the history of European culture, society, and intellectual thought. Emerging state powers, economic expansion and contraction, the growing influence of the Christian Church, and demographic change all influenced the ideals and realities of childhood and family life. Movements for Church reform brought the spiritual and moral concerns of the laity into sharper focus, profoundly shaping attitudes towards gender and sexuality and how these might be applied to family roles. At the same time, the growth of trade, the spread of literacy and learning, shifting patterns of settlement, and the process of urbanization transformed childhood. This volume explores the ideas and practices which underpinned contemporary perceptions of childhood in the medieval West, and illuminates the enduring importance of the family as a dynamic economic, political, and social unit. A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in the Middle Ages presents essays on family relationships, community, economy, geography and the environment, education, life cycle, the state, faith and religion, health and science, and world contexts.

Money is usually understood as a valuable object, the value of which is attributed to it by its users and which other users recognize. It serves to link disparate institutions, providing a disguised whole and prime tool for the “invisible hand” of the market. This book offers an interpretation of money as a social institution. Money provides the link between the household and the firm, the worker and his product, making that very division seem natural and money as imminently practical. Money as a Social Institution begins in the medieval period and traces the evolution of money alongside consequent implications for the changing models of the corporation and the state. This is then followed with double-entry accounting as a tool of long-distance merchants and bankers, then the monitoring of the process of production by professional corporate managers. Davis provides a framework of analysis for examining money historically, beyond the operation of those particular institutions, which includes the possibility of conceptualizing and organizing the world differently. This volume is of great importance to academics and students who are interested in economic history and history of economic thought, as well as international political economics and critique of political economy.

This book examines the forms of estate management in the countryside of Florence and Lucca between the eleventh and the middle of the thirteenth centuries. It argues that their change reflects wider transformations of medieval economic patterns, and specifically the surge in overall demand that occurred in the decades bridging the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. The reasons for a comparison between the Florentine and the Lucchese countryside lie in the alleged differences of their historical evolution—as it has been outlined by scholars so far. The so-called manorial system (sistema curtense) is believed to have ceased to exist in the Lucchesia around the beginning of the tenth century, whereas in the Fiorentino its disappearance can be dated to the early thirteenth century. Similarly, the Florentine countryside is generally regarded as the birthplace of a particular type of sharecropping regime, the mezzadria poderale, which spread over much of central Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and would later become an essential component of Italian agrarian identity. On the contrary, the mezzadria poderale is thought to have never developed at any point in the history of medieval and early modern Lucchesia—and this was indeed the case with all the coastal areas of Tuscany. The book endeavours to examine the characteristics of estate management in the central Middle Ages in their own right; that is to say, by detaching those transformations from any teleological view, and by placing them within the economic and sociopolitical context of the period 1000-1250.

This book illuminates the connections and interaction among women and between women and men during the medieval period. To do this, Kathryn L. Reyerson focuses specifically on the experiences of Agnes de Bossones, widow of a changer of the mercantile elite of Montpellier. Agnes was a real estate mogul and a patron of philanthropic institutions that permitted lower strata women to survive and thrive in a mature urban economy of the period before 1350. Notably, Montpellier was a large urban center in southern France. Linkages stretched horizontally and vertically in this robust urban environment, mitigating the restrictions of patriarchy and the constraints of gender. Using the story of Agnes de Bossones as a vehicle to larger discussions about gender, this book highlights the undeniable impact that networks had on women’s mobility and navigation within a restrictive medieval society.

Now in its fifth edition, The Italian City Republics illustrates how, from the eleventh century onwards, many Italian towns achieved independence as political entities, unhindered by any centralising power. Until the fourteenth century, when the regimes of individual ‘tyrants’ took over in most towns, these communes were the scene of a precocious, and very well-documented, experiment in republican self-government. In this new edition, Trevor Dean has expanded the book’s treatment of women and gender, the early history of the communes and the lives of non-élites. Focusing on the typical medium-sized towns rather than the better-known cities, the authors draw on a rich variety of contemporary material, both documentary and literary, to portray the world of the communes, illustrating the patriotism and public spirit as well as the equally characteristic factional strife which was to tear them apart. Discussion of the artistic and social lives of the inhabitants shows how these towns were the seedbed of the cultural achievements of the early Renaissance. The Bibliography has been updated to a list of Further Reading with the latest scholarship for students to continue their studies. Both students and the general reader interested in Italian history, literature and art will find this accessible book a rewarding and fascinating read.

Winner, 2010 Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize, the Renaissance Society of America2009 Outstanding Academic Title, ChoiceHonorable Mention, Economics, 2009 PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers Richard A. Goldthwaite, a leading economic historian of the Italian Renaissance, has spent his career studying the Florentine economy. In this magisterial work, Goldthwaite brings together a lifetime of research and insight on the subject, clarifying and explaining the complex workings of Florence’s commercial, banking, and artisan sectors. Florence was one of the most industrialized cities in medieval Europe, thanks to its thriving textile industries. The importation of raw materials and the exportation of finished cloth necessitated the creation of commercial and banking practices that extended far beyond Florence’s boundaries. Part I situates Florence within this wider international context and describes the commercial and banking networks through which the city's merchant-bankers operated. Part II focuses on the urban economy of Florence itself, including various industries, merchants, artisans, and investors. It also evaluates the role of government in the economy, the relationship of the urban economy to the region, and the distribution of wealth throughout the society. While political, social, and cultural histories of Florence abound, none focuses solely on the economic history of the city. The Economy of Renaissance Florence offers both a systematic description of the city's major economic activities and a comprehensive overview of its economic development from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance to 1600.

Ideal for high school and college students studying history through the everyday lives of men and women, this book offers intriguing information about the jobs that people have held, from ancient times to the 21st century. This unique book provides detailed studies of more than 300 occupations as they were practiced in 21 historical time periods, ranging from prehistory to the present day. Each profession is examined in a compelling essay that is specifically written to inform readers about career choices in different times and cultures, and is accompanied by a bibliography of additional sources of information, sidebars that relate historical issues to present-day concerns, as well as related historical documents. Readers of this work will learn what each profession entailed or entails on a daily basis, how one gained entry to the vocation, training methods, and typical compensation levels for the job. The book provides sufficient specific detail to convey a comprehensive understanding of the experiences, benefits, and downsides of a given profession. Selected accompanying documents further bring history to life by offering honest testimonies from people who actually worked in these occupations or interacted with those in that field.

The book analyses the role of private bankers who were pivotal in modernizing the economic and financial system of Italy in the XIX century. To achieve this they needed to interact with the international haute banque to organize and place the public loans and the large investments associated with the joint-stock companies. The theme of reputation, which is currently at the centre of the historiographical debate, is fundamental for the study of the private banker figures, whose professional success is linked to the limitless trust accorded to them by their circle of personal contacts. Historiography has studied the role of Italian bankers in the trade, credit and international finance during the modern age (XVI-XVIII centuries), but it has not analysed the banking system in the XIX century and its national and international relations. The case study of Banca Parodi of Genova fills the historiographical gap concerning the role of private bankers and banking institutions in Italy, highlighting the network between the Parodi family and the international haute banque; one of the most emblematic cases is the Rothschild family. The book presents a re-elaborates series of unpublished data, placing them at the disposal of the scientific community and analyses the role of private bankers in the development of Italian banking institutions in the XIX century to launch a scientific debate.