Local and Global Economies in Dialogue: The Kingdom of Naples in Transition

This paper will challenge the paradigm of southern Italy as a stagnant economic backwater in an uneven exchange with its urban northern neighbors and with the Spanish Empire to which it was amalgamated.  This now outdated view of the southern economy in the Mediterranean context has been undermined by closer study of the dynamics of the local southern economy.  Placing Neapolitan economic reality in the context of late medieval and early modern Italy and Europe shows that there was substantial change in this period: in the organization of the domestic market, in the volume of local and regional trade, in the production and commercialization of grain, wool, livestock, wine and olive oil, in the sector of textile manufacture. This paper will explore local economic agents, whose names and activities appear everywhere, but only briefly in the historical records.  This careful prosopographical analysis, relies upon the identification of individuals: their occupations, wealth, political status, social affiliations, commercial and other economic activities, and place of residence. Below the shine of royal dynasties, international politics, trade and banking, there is an entire world of economic activity and social interaction, which still remains unexplored. As John Marino's fine historical analysis has shown, the late medieval and Renaissance kingdom of Naples embraced the dynamics of the local, and engaged in diverse interactions with the north and the Spanish empire.