DuPlessis, Robert S.

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Review Of  The Economy Of Renaissance Florence  By R. A. Goldthwaite

Swarthmore College Works History Faculty Works History Winter 2009 Review Of "The Economy Of Renaissance Florence" By R. A. Goldthwaite Robert S. DuPlessis Swarthmore College, rduples1@swarthmore.edu This work is brought to you for free and open access by . It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-history  Part of the History Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits you  Recommended Citation Robert S. DuPlessis. (2009). "Review Of "The Economy Of Renaissance Florence" By R. A. Goldthwaite". Renaissance Quarterly. Volume 62, Issue 4. 1291-1293. DOI: 10.1086/650080 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-history/248 Richard A. Goldthwaite. The Economy of Renaissance FlorenceThe Economy of Renaissance Florence by Richard A GoldthwaiteReview by: Robert S . DuPlessisRenaissance Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter 2009), pp. 1291-1293Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/650080 .Accessed: 11/06/2015 15:02Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp .JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. .The University of Chicago Press and Renaissance Society of America are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Renaissance Quarterly.http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 15:02:49 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsRichard A. Goldthwaite. The Economy of Renaissance Florence.Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. xviii + 649 pp. index. illus. tbls. map.$55. ISBN: 978–0–8018–8982–0.Economic history has always been the poor relation in the Italian Renaissanceclan. Neglected by humanists and their successors, its marginality continues to thisday. Equally cause and effect of this situation, the mass of documentation has beenlittle explored, so even many basic issues remain unresolved. In some respects, as the1291REVIEWSThis content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 15:02:49 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditionsnotes to Richard Goldthwaite’s superb The Economy of Renaissance Florencedemonstrate, Florence has been more fortunate than elsewhere. They citea multitude of detailed studies by both long-acknowledged authorities andnumerous fine scholars currently at work, including, of course, the author himself.Still, Goldthwaite, too, more than once laments ‘‘the precarious discrepancy,’’ inFlorentine economic history, ‘‘between the rich archival sources and the scanthistoriography’’ (409–10), not to mention the absence of any overview or synthesis.It is this lack that Goldthwaite has sought to remedy, and with this big, wide-ranging, richly detailed book he has succeeded splendidly. The Economy ofRenaissance Florence is at once a compendium of an enormous amount ofinformation, an incisive interpretive synthesis of classic and cutting-edgescholarship, and a necessary status quaestionae that signals not just areas needingfurther research but the materials available. It is indispensable, indeed requiredreading for all Renaissance scholars, no matter what their discipline, not leastbecause Goldthwaite attends to cultural, social, and political effects of the economicdevelopments he traces. It will also quickly become a standard work for students ofthe economic history of preindustrial Europe. The summaries provided at the endof sections and chapters make it particularly useful for teachers. For all its length,moreover, its clarity, systematic presentation, and reasonable price will win it lessspecialized readers within and outside academia.Though devoting most attention to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, thebook, like John Najemy’s recent A History of Florence, 1200 –1575 (2006), goes wellbeyond the traditional 1530 cut-off date for studies of the Florentine Renaissance.Besides providing a nice narrative arc — Florence goes from peripheral to theTuscan economy to Continental economic leadership to peripheral to the Europeaneconomy — extension into the principate period enables Goldthwaite todistinguish the features specific to the republican era.Analyzing structures and surveying short- and long-term trends, The Economyof Renaissance Florence closely examines the major sectors of the Florentineeconomy, while also placing the urban economy within the larger Italian andEuropean economies of the late medieval to Renaissance periods. The book isdivided into two main sections. In part 1, the international context, three chaptersexamine foreign trade, the financial activities built on that far-flung commerce, andFlorentines’ adoption and refinement of new business techniques. The fourchapters in part 2 — the woolens and silk industries; the artisan sector; localbanking and credit; and political, regional, and social contexts — are concernedwith the urban economy. Each chapter presents narrative exposition and outlinesdevelopments over time in the sector under consideration. The activities ofentrepreneurs and their firms are emphasized throughout; and though no singleindividual or partnership is followed consistently, certain ones reappear —Francesco Datini, not surprisingly, but also less well-known men like the silkweaver Iacopo di Tedesco.Before turning to the chapters of greatest interest to them, most readers will dowell to orient themselves with the introduction and conclusion, a reading strategyRENAISSANCE QUARTERLY1292This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 15:02:49 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditionssuggested by Goldthwaite himself (xvi). The introduction sketches developments toca. 1300, zooming in from broad changes across continent, peninsula, and region tofocus on how the unpromising latecomer Florence became, by the early Trecento,Tuscan economic leader, not to mention one of Europe’s largest cities. Theconclusion recapitulates structural change under the rubric of ‘‘economic culture’’and puts forth a nuanced but generally positive evaluation of both the short-run andthe long-run performance of the city’s economy.The Economy of Renaissance Florence advances many provocativeinterpretations. To take just one, Goldthwaite reevaluates the development ofinstitutions and practices that provided credit to the urban masses. In his view, theseshould be viewed not as markers of desperation — they did not mainly offer‘‘distress’’ loans, he contends — but of prosperity, of sophistication in economicmatters, and especially of the intrinsic nature of the economic system, whichgenerated frequent liquidity crises to which loans responded.Three central themes unite the volume. Probably least contentious isGoldthwaite’s assessment of the significance of the dominant sectors of theurban economy: international trade and banking, woolen and silk textiles, andskilled artisan crafts. Broadly, for each he proposes a leading, even primary,position through the Quattrocento that subsequently but slowly waned. Morecontroversial is his upbeat judgment of both the short- and long-termperformance of the economy. For one thing, he gives short shrift to the alleged‘‘economic depression of the Renaissance,’’ which for more than a half century hasbeen a staple of Renaissance economic history. Instead, he proposes, a shortdownturn in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death was followed by‘‘substantial and sustained growth resulting from a series of new initiatives’’ (602)lasting until the early sixteenth century. More generally, he plays down problemssuch as repeated crises and mass impoverishment that dominate most accounts.His optimistic judgment may not convince all skeptics, defined as it is by thesuccessful maintenance of stability and prosperity over time rather than by growthbased on technological innovation. Finally, Goldthwaite ventures into the long-running debate over the nature of the Renaissance economy and thereby into thepolemics about the rise of capitalism. Though the discussion is not always entirelyclear (any more than the phenomena under consideration), ultimately heconcludes that Florence’s entrepreneurs, largely freed from corporaterestrictions, pursued some market-oriented practices commonly consideredcapitalist while eschewing others; furthermore, they exhibited virtually no signof a capitalist mentality.Johns Hopkins University Press deserves praise for having so ably edited andpublished such a big book in this age of contraction and cost-cutting, It and theauthor have given us one of the most important books in Renaissance history tohave appeared in many years: not simply a long-needed synthesis but a stimulating,insightful work that will guide research for a long time to come.ROBERT S. DUPLESSISSwarthmore College1293REVIEWSThis content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 15:02:49 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Review Of The Economy Of Renaissance Florence By R. A. Goldthwaite

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