The long-run tendency for wealth to concentrate in a few hands

In the past 700 years inequality only declined significantly after the Black Death and the two world wars, writes Guido Alfan

Godparenthood and the Council of Trent: crisis and transformation of a social institution (Italy, XV-XVII th centuries)

En las sociedades europeas de la época moderna, a través del bautismo se establecía un particular tipo de parentesco, el parentesco espiritual, que involucraba a los padrinos, las madrinas, los recién nacidos y los progenitores. Los lazos nacidos de este tipo de parentesco eran sobre todo de naturaleza horizontal y tenían una gran importancia, al ser utilizados por los padres de los menores para establecer redes de alianza social. Hasta el Concilio de Trento fue normal que en muchas partes de Italia y Europa los pequeños tuviesen un gran número de padrinos, cuya elección venía determinada por la puesta en práctica de estrategias sociales de una cierta complejidad. El Concilio puso fin a esta costumbre al establecer un máximo de un padrino y una madrina por menor, lo que significó la estandarización y la uniformización de la enorme variedad de modelos de padrinazgo existentes hasta entonces en el continente. Sin embargo, la imposición de un nuevo modelo de padrinazgo basado en la pareja generó una serie de resistencias en las poblaciones locales no estudiadas hasta el presente, además de propiciar una rápida verticalización de las relaciones sociales asociadas al mismo. En adelante, el padrinazgo contribuiría a fomentar y a reforzar en la las relaciones de patronazgo social de las elites sobre los demás grupos que formaban parte de la sociedad. Todas estas cuestiones se abordan a partir de lo sucedido en el norte de Italia entre los siglos XV y XVII, gracias al manejo de una amplia y extensa base documental

Pandemics and asymmetric shocks: evidence from the history of plague in Europe and the Mediterranean

The history of plague suggests that severe pandemics can have extremely important and potentially permanent asymmetric economic consequences. However, these consequences depend upon the initial conditions and could not be foretold a priori. To support this view, this short article illustrates the ability of major plagues to cause asymmetric shocks. The Black Death might have been at the origin of the Great Divergence between western Europe and East Asia, but also within Europe it had quite heterogeneous consequences. The last great European plagues of the seventeenth century favoured the rise of North Europe to the detriment of the South. Additionally, within Italy, they had a differential impact allowing for the rise of the Sabaudian State and contributing to the decline of the Republic of Venice. The article argues that the implication for today societies facing COVID-19 is that given that the final demographic and economic consequences of this pandemic are impossible to predict, collective answers to the crisis, possibly coordinated by the EU, are highly advisable

A step forward toward solving the main mysteries in the history of plague?

This letter to PNAS discusses recent research on the history of plague, arguing that it holds the promise to contribute solving some of the remaining great mysteries concerning the history of plague in Europe

Chapter Economic inequality in preindustrial Europe, 1300-1800: methods and results from the EINITE project

This article provides an overview of the research done in recent years by the ERC-funded projects EINITE-Economic Inequality across Italy and Europe 1300-1800, and SMITE-Social Mobility and Inequality across Italy and Europe 1300-1800. It begins by discussing the sources available for reconstructing preindustrial economic inequality, especially in Italy, then it provides an overview of the methods which have been developed to produce reliable and homogenous information about inequality levels and trends. The method developed by EINITE to produce measures or distributions representative of broader aggregates (regions or entire states) is also discussed, as well as the techniques that can be employed to explore in a meaningful way such distributions to answer relevant historical questions

Long-term trends in economic inequality in southern Italy. The Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, 16th-18th centuries: First results

This paper uses new archival data collected by an ERC-funded research project, EINITE-Economic Inequality across Italy and Europe, 1300-1800, to study the long-term tendencies in economic inequality in preindustrial southern Italy (Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily). The paper reconstructs long-term trends in inequality, especially of wealth, for the period 1550-1800 and also produces regional estimates of overall inequality levels in Apulia, which are compared with those now available for some regions of central-northern Italy (Piedmont, Tuscany). As much of the early modern period the Kingdom of Naples was overall a stagnating economy, this is a particularly good case for exploring the relationship between economic growth and inequality change

Inequality in rural Europe (Late Middle Ages - 18th century)

This book deals with a variety of topics about inequality in the long run covering eight different countries in Europe and dealing with rural inequality before the end of the 18th century. Studies dealing with inequality in European societies have multiplied in recent years. It has now become clear that pressing questions about the historical trends showing both income and wealth inequality as well as the factors leading to an increase or drop of inequality over time, could be answered only by taking into account preindustrial times. Therefore, this book deals with inequality in the long-run, covering and comparing a very long time span, starting its investigations in the later middle ages and ending before the nineteenth century, the period that marks the beginning of most available studies. Hitherto, urban distribution of income and wealth is much better known than rural inequality. This book intends to reduce this gap in knowledge, bringing rural inequality to the fore of research. Since at least until the nineteenth century the majority of people were country men, looking at the rural areas is crucial when trying to identify the underlying causes of inequality trends in the long run of history.　 The book consists of nine original papers and deals with a variety of topics about inequality covering no less than eight different countries in Europe. The majority of the studies published in this book are the result of teamwork between European universities where a range of research centres are currently exploring different aspects of income and wealth inequality in preindustrial times

a survival analysis of the last great european plagues the case of nonantola northern italy in 1630

This paper develops the first survival analysis of a large-scale mortality crisis caused by plague. For the time-to-event analyses we used the Cox proportional hazards regression model. Our case study is the town of Nonantola during the 1630 plague, which was probably the worst to affect Italy since the Black Death. Individual risk of death did not depend on sex, grew with age (peaking at ages 40–60 and then declining), was not affected by socio-economic status, and was positively associated with household size. We discuss these findings in light of the historical–demographic and palaeo-demographic literature on medieval and early modern plagues. Our results are compatible with the debated idea that ancient plague was able to spread directly from human to human. Our methods could be replicated in other studies of European plagues to nuance and integrate the findings of recent palaeo-biological and palaeo-demographic research on plague

Wealth inequality in pre-industrial England: a long-term view (late thirteenth to sixteenth centuries)

This article provides an overview of wealth inequality in England from the late thirteenth to the seventeenth century, based on a novel database of distributions of taxable household wealth across nineteen counties plus London. To account for high thresholds of fiscal exemption, a new method is introduced to reconstruct complete distributions from left-censored observations. First we analyze inequality at the county level, finding an impressive stability across time in the relative position of the English counties, perturbed only by the tendency of the South and South-East to become relatively more inegalitarian. Then we produce an aggregate distribution representative of England as a whole, and we detect an overall tendency for inequality to grow from medieval to early modern times due largely to North-South divergence in average household wealth. We discuss our results in the light of the recent literature on historical inequality

The Famine of the 1590s in Northern Italy. An Analysis of the Greatest “System Shock” of Sixteenth Century

Italy, triggered by several consecutive years of bad weather at a time of particularly acute population pressure on the available resources. Their failure fuelled a general “system shock” for the social, economic and demographic structures of Northern Italy, leading to protest, violence and general social and economic disorder. The article recurs to a large database of demographic time series to identify the areas struck worst by the famine. It then focuses on the region Emilia-Romagna, and lastly provides a case study of the rural town of Nonantola, for which rare data about age at death during the famine are used. The article suggests that the 1590s famine was not solely the result of the combination of climate, agrarian technology and demographic density, but was a complex “human failure” than can be fully understood only by taking into account also institutions, culture, social and economic behaviour, and even psychological factors.Cet article analyse la grande famine qui s’abattit sur l’Italie du Nord dans les années 1590, à la suite de plusieurs années de mauvaises conditions climatiques, survenues dans un contexte de forte pression démographique. Cet épisode provoqua une « crise systémique » qui déstabilisa l’ensemble des structures sociales, économiques et démographiques de l’Italie du Nord et donna naissance à un ensemble de désordres économiques et sociaux. Par l’analyse de séries démographiques, appliquées notamment au cas de l’Émilie-Romagne et de la communauté rurale de Nonantola, l’article montre que la famine des années 1590 ne résulta pas seulement de la conjonction de facteurs climatiques, techniques et démographiques particuliers, mais qu’elle fut aussi la conséquence d’une faillite humaine complexe, qu’on ne peut comprendre que si l’on prend en compte les institutions, les comportements sociaux et économiques ainsi que les facteurs culturels et psychologiques