2 - Social relations and control of resources in an area of transit: eastern Liguria, sixteenth to seventeenth centuries

Summary

One of the main characteristics of the economy and life of Ligurian communities in modern times has been the structural shortage of cereal production. In terms of historical analysis, this reality implies the study of notable problems, such as levels of domestic consumption, forms of subsistence, integration of town and village economies and their dependency on regional and international markets, the nature of the obligations to commercialize and articulate local and extra-local exchanges. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the products of Ligurian coastal communities which could assure the necessary circuit of exchange and supply of wheat were oil and, to a lesser extent, wine.

Another characteristic of Liguria – shared by many Mediterranean regions and communities – is the interdependence, often within limited ranges, of different ecological areas: a richer coastal strip adjacent to poor valley and mountainous zones, particularly lacking in food products. In these areas the shortage of wheat, compensated only partially by chestnuts and minor cereals, was rendered the more serious by the absence of oil and wine or of the opportunities offered by the sea (fishing and navigation). Because of this, access to necessary integrative resources became particularly dramatic.

The problem of economic integration is one of the critical points of historical and anthropological literature dealing with agricultural societies and with the necessary links between communities and society as a whole.