Socio-economic inequalities in fifteenth-century Tuscany : the role of the mezzadria system

The past and recent research on the florentine fiscal surveys from 14th to 18th c. has highly contributed to the current debate on economic inequality in pre-industrial times. Showing an increasing unequal wealth distribution also for rural and urban Tuscany, characterised by economic stagnation in Early Modern times, it has allowed us to disentangle the effect of economic growth on inequality. However, a wide set of explanatory hypotheses of the increase of wealth concentration in the long-run still need to be verified: among the others, the role of institutions. This paper, presenting the first result of an ongoing research (GINI project), studies through a quantitative analysis at micro-scale (the pieve of San Giovanni in Petroio in Mugello) in 1427 the relation between the growing economic inequality of the Florentine rural society and its specific social-agro system. This system was based on a class of city-dwellers landowners and on a peculiar share-cropping system, the mezzadria. The paper, focusing on the mechanisms of wealth redistribution of this system, suggests its role whether in maintaining and increasing in the long-run the concentration of land property, and providing for, at the same time, the poorest social layers of rural population at subsistence level.

ISBN:9782503590523

Publication year:2020

Accessibility:Closed