Crisis and Continuity: The Economy of Spanish Lombardy in the Seventeenth Century

The seventeenth century has traditionally been viewed as a time of unmitigated crisis for the Italian peninsula. A combination of savage taxation, misallocation of resources in the cities, and a resurgence of feudalism in the countryside—so it has been claimed—crippled its once prosperous economy and ushered in depression and stagnation. Domenico Sella re-examines this grim picture as it applies to one Italian state, Spanish-ruled Lombardy. Departing from the predominantly urban emphasis of earlier works on the subject and drawing on fresh archival material, the author analyzes developments in the countryside no less than in the cities. He argues that while the latter suffered irreparable losses, the former exhibited remarkable staying power and resilience both in its agriculture and in its handicraft industries. Given these contrasting trends, the seventeenth-century crisis is seen primarily as an urban phenomenon caused, first and foremost, by the inability of the urban economies, tradition-bound, overregulated, and sheltered as they were, to innovate and to compete in a rapidly changing world.