Work in Early Modern Italy, 1500–1800

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Work and Labour: Meanings and Concepts

   • Luca Mocarelli, Giulio Ongaro

   Pages 1-18

3. Population, Urbanisation, and Working People

   • Luca Mocarelli, Giulio Ongaro

   Pages 19-40

4. Technology, Markets, Specialisations, and Organisation of Production

   • Luca Mocarelli, Giulio Ongaro

   Pages 41-65

5. Labour Relations

   • Luca Mocarelli, Giulio Ongaro

   Pages 67-103

6. Labour Conditions

   • Luca Mocarelli, Giulio Ongaro

   Pages 105-129

7. Work and the Little Divergence

   • Luca Mocarelli, Giulio Ongaro

   Pages 131-142

8. Back Matter

   Pages 143-148

   PDF

Recent decades have seen many economic history books and articles published about working men and women, small and big entrepreneurs, guilds and state manufactures, farmers and journeymen, and children and citizens. Studies have been conducted both at a macro and a micro level, at a global and at a local scale and with regional and national approaches aimed at analysing cultural, social and economic phenomena associated with the world of work. Yet, there is still new ground to be covered. This book aims to fill a gap in early modern history by presenting new insights in the study of global labour history. It considers the whole Italian peninsula as one geographical unit of analysis, encompassing all of the features that characterize labour cultures during the early modern period. It details the evolution of forms of labour in both agriculture and manufacture and the role of labour as an economic, social and cultural factor in the evolution of the Italian area.

• Early Modern Italy
• Italian labour economics
• The Little Divergence
• Wage history
• Labour history
• Technology and innovation economics
• Skilled labour
• Unskilled labour
• Italian economic history
• Renaissance Italy
• Urban working class
• Mechanical work
• Farming history
• Fishery
• Lumbering sector
• Mining sector
• Economics of urbanisation

• University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

  Luca Mocarelli, Giulio Ongaro

Luca Mocarelli is Professor in Economic History at the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy. He is President of the International Association for Alpine History, Vice President of the Italian Association of Urban History and a member of the management committee of the Italian Society of Historical Demography. His research focuses on labour, environmental and markets history. 

Giulio Ongaro is Researcher in Economic History at the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy. He is a member of the management committee of the European Rural History Organisation and a coordinator of research groups within the European Labour History Network and the Italian Society of Labour History. His research focuses on the Republic of Venice and the Papal States in the early modern period.

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