This book examines the development of social support systems in the Modern age in the rural areas of the city-states of Northern Italy. This investigation achieves two main purposes: first, it allows researchers to understand the role occupied concretely by welfare and micro-credit activities in the political and socio-economic panorama of rural Northern Italy; secondly, it verifies to what extent the formation of a more or less structured support system influenced the establishment of local identity and the rooting of individuals. The book brings together perspectives from different fields of research ranging from economic and political history to the study of the history of ecclesiastical institutions, as well as integrating recent research on the anthropological value of welfare actions and the use of multiple historical sources. It considers how the retreat of the welfare activity of the State, associated with a depopulation of the rural areas of the peninsula and a steady increase of poverty into social fringes that were previously not affected by economic problems, pushes us to investigate more carefully the dynamics that in the Ancien Régime gave shape to the support activities against indigence and poverty. This book will be of interest to academics and students working in economic history and social history.

Examines the development of social support systems in the rural areas of the city-states of Northern Italy Highlights welfare and micro-credit activities in the political and socio-economic panorama in rural Italy Verifies the structured support system influenced the establishment of local identity of individuals

Autorentext

Giovanni Gregorini is Full Professor of Economic History and head of the Department of History and Philology at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy, where he teaches Economic History and Business History.

Luciano Maffi is a Lecturer in Economic and Global History at the University of Parma, Italy. He also teaches Economic History at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy.

Marco Rochini is a Research Fellow at the Institute for History of Mediterranean Europe (National Research Council, Italy) and Adjunct Professor in Hagiography at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy.

Inhalt

1. Between formality and informality: aiding strategies for the needy. The social support systems in Northern Italy.- 2. Between social support and establishment of social identities: the system of giving in the diocese of Tortona in the XVIII century.- 3. Social support systems in medieval Piedmont: The farming system of the hospital Sant'Andrea di Vercelli.- 4. Organising charity. Social support structures in the Genoese Domain during the Modern age.- 5. The ritual capital. Supporting economy in Spanish Lombardy countryside.- 6. Social support systems in imperial fiefs.- 7. Rural microcredit in the sharecropping northern provinces of the papal states (XVI-XIX cent.).- 8. Instruments and strategies of the social support system in the Brescia rural area during the XVIII century.- 9. Charity, healthcare and brotherhoods. Cases from the Venetian Terraferma in the Renaissance period.- 10. At a distance. Forms of social support in Friuli during the Modern age.- 11. Collective charities in the rural communities of Trentino (XVII-XVIII centuries).- 12. The role of Italian parishes in the Modern age systems of giving.