Grain trade in Early modern Mantua and Venice

The role of Ashkenazi and Italian Jews

Bibliographic Data

ID8418397
AuthorsMarina Romani (0000-0003-3229-5280, Dipartimento di Economia, Università degli Studi di Genova, Genova, Italy, corresponding author), Rachele Scuro (0000-0002-0039-2660, Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Venezia, Italy)
Year2024
Volume66
Issue3
Pages551-579
Publication date2024-04-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueBusiness History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-6791 • E-ISSN: 1743-7938
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00076791.2022.2103543
OpenAlexW4293797734
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited25

The economic role of Ashkenazi and Italian Jews in early modern Italy is traditionally associated with money-lending and second-hand goods retailing. Yet, fiscal and notarial sources show how beneath the surface of the charters signed between the minority and the local authorities, their business was far more diversified. In the northern and central Peninsula Jews had built a strong network based on endogenous and exogenous trust which permitted them to also engage in (inter)regional trade. From the early sixteenth century, when the establishment of the ghettos and changes in the economic system made banking far less lucrative, trading in commodities became a profitable alternative. The case studies of Mantua and the Venetian state show how this process was also strictly intertwined with the local political environment, as Jews had to resort to different sorts of informal and formal relationships with local power structures in order to take part in the grain trade

Archaeology · Economic history · Economic power · Economics · Economy · Order (exchange · Peninsula · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · State (computer science · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Finance · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law

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