Patrimony, Property, and Public Finance in Late Medieval Genoa

The commune of Genoa carried a substantial and growing amount of long-term debt continuously from the late thirteenth century well into the modern period. This standing debt was first studied seriously by historians because it appeared to fit neatly into long-term historical narratives of state formation and the emergence of capitalism in Europe. The endurance of this debt in the face of social tensions and political revolutions was explained by positing a powerful capitalist class that thus usurped the state’s resources for their own profit.

This paper challenges that view, suggesting that profit-seeking and price-making markets were an unintentional byproduct of expanding communal debt, not the reason for its existence. It puts fourteenth-century sources like account books and notarial records into conversation with poetry and theological treatises. This examination shows that, although price-making markets for financial instruments did exist, Genoa’s long-term debts were actually sustained by patrimonial property logics and cultural expectations about gender, wealth, and family. It suggests that practices of financial speculation (making money from money, trading in pieces of paper) must be placed in a cultural and historical context to be properly understood. The paper argues, most broadly, for a history of finance in which quantitative and cultural analyses are mutually-informing.