Recent decades have seen many economic history books and articles published about working men and women, small and big entrepreneurs, guilds and state manufactures, farmers and journeymen, and children and citizens. Studies have been conducted both at a macro and a micro level, at a global and at a local scale and with regional and national approaches aimed at analysing cultural, social and economic phenomena associated with the world of work. Yet, there is still new ground to be covered. This book aims to fill a gap in early modern history by presenting new insights in the study of global labour history. It considers the whole Italian peninsula as one geographical unit of analysis, encompassing all of the features that characterize labour cultures during the early modern period. It details the evolution of forms of labour in both agriculture and manufacture and the role of labour as an economic, social and cultural factor in the evolution of the Italian area.

Interest in the history of ownership rights is growing and spreading to different disciplines. Historians are turning their attention mainly to the rise of private and individual ownership as it was codified in 19th-century liberal Europe. In writing this history, however, their perspective has too often ignored the other side of the coin, namely the restrictions which the sovereign imposed on such rights, allegedly in the interest of the community. The papers collected in the present volume suggest that private property is not necessarily the most safeguarded legal model, hence it is not less vulnerable to violation. They construct a close analysis of the most common forms of abuse of private property on record - expropriation, seizure, and confiscation - perpetrated by public authorities. They also seek to define the uneasy, often intricate relation between legal and legitimate. In a perspective of lights and shadows, the role of confiscation and expropriation changes : now seen as powerful instruments of change, now as enduring factors of conservation in the evolution of private ownership rights. Les droits de propriete sont depuis longtemps au coeur de l'interet de diverses disciplines. L'attention des historiens s'est focalisee surtout sur la naissance de la propriete privee et individuelle telle qu'elle a ete codifiee dans l'Europe liberale du XIXe siecle. Toutefois, son histoire a trop souvent neglige l'autre face de la medaille, a savoir les limites fixees a ce droit par le souverain au nom de l'interet de la collectivite. Les contributions figurant dans ce volume suggerent que la propriete privee individuelle ne represente pas le modele juridique le plus apte a la proteger face aux risques d'infraction. Au coeur des analyses il y a les formes historiques de la violation de la propriete privee - expropriations, saisies, confiscations - perpetrees par les autorites et le rapport, souvent complexe et ambigue, entre les dimensions de la legalite et de la legitimite. Dans un jeu d'ombres et de lumieres, les confiscations et les expropriations se dessinent a la fois comme de puissants instruments de changement et de tenaces facteur de conservation dans l'evolution des formes de propriete.

Recent decades have seen many economic history books and articles published about working men and women, small and big entrepreneurs, guilds and state manufactures, farmers and journeymen, and children and citizens. Studies have been conducted both at a macro and a micro level, at a global and at a local scale and with regional and national approaches aimed at analysing cultural, social and economic phenomena associated with the world of work. Yet, there is still new ground to be covered. This book aims to fill a gap in early modern history by presenting new insights in the study of global labour history. It considers the whole Italian peninsula as one geographical unit of analysis, encompassing all of the features that characterize labour cultures during the early modern period. It details the evolution of forms of labour in both agriculture and manufacture and the role of labour as an economic, social and cultural factor in the evolution of the Italian area.

This volume contains selected essays which together re-frame the roles of guilds in medieval and early modern European cities. They focus on the different ways in which we can understand the interfaces between regulatory frameworks, represented by guild and civic regulations, and the wider world of labour and production. Through case studies of single cities, economic sectors, and of territories, they address a range of questions about the operation of labour markets, the nature of guild regulation within and outside guild jurisdictions, and the interaction between `regulation' and `freedom' as expressed in legislation and in the organization of production and distribution. In doing so, they offer a means to compare and contrast experiences across Europe and the circumstances which determined and altered economic structures and, in turn, political and social structures in cities.