Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:41:24.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

England and Northern Italy in the Early Fourteenth Century: the Economic Contrasts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

R. H. Britnell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

We know almost as much about the operations of big Italian companies in England as about those in Italy itself during the early fourteenth century. Tuscan trade here engaged some of Europe's most celebrated businesses, attracted by the kingdom's fine wool and the credit-worthiness of her crown and nobility. Historians have some-times drawn an analogy with international lending from richer to poorer countries in the modern world, both to create a point of contact with their readers and to meet the need for deep-lying explanations. The analogy usually carries the implication that Italy had a more advanced economy than England, and there are authors who say so explicitly. Some use terms designed to describe international economic growth during the last two hundred years, and represent medieval Italy as a pole of development, or a core economy. Others, borrowing the language of power, describe Italy as a dominant economy. Professor Cipolla uses a number of these ideas at once in his observation that ‘in the early years of the fourteenth century Florence represented a dominant and developed economy, while England and the kingdom of Naples were two decidedly underdeveloped countries: the periphery, to use Wallerstein's expression’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 39 , December 1989 , pp. 167 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Fryde, E.B., ‘Italian Maritime Trade with England (c. 1270 c. 1530)’, Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, xxxii (1974), 294–303Google Scholar; Lloyd, T. H., Alien Merchants in England in the High Middle Ages (Brighton, 1982), 166–203Google Scholar; Prestwich, M. C., ‘Italian Merchants in Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Century England’, in Chiappelli, F., ed., The Dawn of Modern Banking, University of California (Los Angeles, 1979), 77–104Google Scholar.

2 Cipolla, C., ll fiorino e il quattrino: la politica monetaria a Firenze nel 1300 (Bologna, 1982), 14Google Scholar.

3 Taking a high estimate of 8m. for the total population of northern Italy and a modest estimate of 1.3m. for population in towns of 10,000 and over: Renouard, Y., Les Villes d'ltalie de la fin du Xe siècle au debut du XIVe siècle, ed. Braunstein, P. (Paris, 2 vols., 1969), ii. 461–2Google Scholar; Hyde, J. K., Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: the Evolution of Civil Life, 1000–1350 (1973), map 5, p. xxiiiGoogle Scholar.

4 Taking a modest estimate of 4.5m. for total English population from Hatcher, J., Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348–1530 (1977), 68Google Scholar and a high estimate of 150,000 for population living in towns of 10,000 or more. For London, see Keene, D., ‘A New Study of London before the Great Fire’, Urban History Yearbook 1984, 20Google Scholar.

5 Herlihy, D. and Klapisch-Zuber, C., Les Toscans el leurs families (Paris, 1978), 295Google Scholar.

6 Hilton, R. H., A Medieval Society: The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century (1966), 185, 189–93Google Scholar.

7 Riva, Bonvesin de la, De Magnalibus Mediolani, ed. Corn, M. (Milan, 1974), 68–71Google Scholar.

8 Ronciere, C. M. de La, Prix et salaires à Florence au XIVe siècle, 1280–1380 (Paris, 1982), 676Google Scholar; Villani, Giovanni, Cronica, XI, xcivGoogle Scholar.

9 Luzzatto, G., Storia economica di Venezia dall'XI al XVI secolo (Venice, 1961), 67Google Scholar.

10 de la Riva, 42–3, 64–9; Holmes, G. A., Florence, Rome and the Origins of the Renaissance (Oxford, 1986), 72–4Google Scholar.

11 Pini, A.I., ‘La ripartizione topografica degli artigani a Bologna nel 1294: un esempio di demografia sociale’, in Cristiani, E. and others, Artigiani e salariati: il mondo del lavoro nell'Italia dei secoli XII-XV (Centro italiano di studi di storia e d'arte, Pistoia, 1984). 199Google Scholar.

12 Balard, M., ‘Les Genois en Asie centrale et en Extreme-Orient au XIVe siècle: un cas exceptionel?’, in Economies et societis au Moyen Age: mélanges offerts à Edouard Perroy (Paris, 1973), 681–8Google Scholar.

13 Renouard, Y., Les hommes d'affaires italiens du Moyen Age, ed. Guillemain, B. (Paris, 1968), 107–216Google Scholar; Jones, P. J., ‘La storia economica dalla caduta dall'Impero romano al secolo XIV’, in Romano, R. and Vivanti, G., eds., Storia d'ltalia dalla caduta dell'Impero romano al secolo XVIII (Turin, 1974), ii (2), 1681–1740Google Scholar.

14 Fryde, E.B., William de la Pole: Merchant and King's Banker (1988), 87–90, 124–6Google Scholar.

15 Jones, , ‘La storia economica’, 1740–1Google Scholar.

16 Lane, F. C. and Mueller, R. C., Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, i: Coins and Moneys of Account (Baltimore, 1985), 79–89Google Scholar; Blomquist, T.W., ‘The Dawn of Banking in an Italian Commune: Thirteenth Century Lucca’, in Chiappelli, , 57–8, 62–4Google Scholar; Herlihy, D., Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia: The Social History of an Italian Town, 1200–1430 (New Haven, 1967), 161Google Scholar.

17 A. Sapori, ‘Le compagnie mercantili toscane del dugento e dei primi del trecento’, in idem, Studi di storia economica (3rd edn., Florence, 1955), ii. 805–7.

18 Cipolla, 16–18.

19 Prestwich, M. C., Edward I (1988), 403Google Scholar.

20 Fryde, E. B., ‘The Deposits of Hugh Despenser the Younger with Italian Bankers’, Ec.H.R., 2nd ser., iii (1951), 358Google Scholar.

21 G. Boccaccio, Decameron, second day, third tale. An approximate historical parallel is the departure of Castruccio Castracani for London after the expulsion of his family from Lucca in 1301: Green, L., Castruccio Castracani: a Study on the Origins and Character of a Fourteenth-Century Italian Despotism (Oxford, 1986), 42–5Google Scholar.

22 Prestwich, , ‘Italian Merchants’, 88–91Google Scholar; A. Sapori, ‘La compagnia dei Frescobaldi in Inghilterra’, in idem, Studi, ii. 872–8.

23 Violante, C., Economia, società, istituzioni a Pisa nel medioevo: saggi e ricerche (Bari, 1980), 122Google Scholar; Bowsky, W. M., Le finanze del Comune di Siena, 1287–1355 (Florence, 1975), 264–5Google Scholar; Kaeuper, R. W., Bankers to the Crown: The Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I (Princeton, 1973), 120–1Google Scholar; Fryde, E.B., ‘Loans to the English Crown, 1328–31’, E.H.R., lxx (1955), 209Google Scholar; Fryde, E.B., ‘Financial Resources of Edward III in the Netherlands, 1337–40’, Revue Beige de Philologie et d'Histoire, xlv (1967), 1155Google Scholar.

24 A. Sapori, ‘II concetto di “usura”’, in idem, Studi, i. 187; idem, ‘I mutui e la proprieta fondiaria’, in idem, Studi, i. 197–8; Cipolla, C., Money, Prices and Civilization in the Mediterranean World (Princeton, 1956), 63Google Scholar.

25 Montanari, M., Campagne medievali: strutture produttive, rapporti di lavoro, sistemi alimentari (Turin, 1984), 91–3Google Scholar; Occhipinti, E., Il contado milanese nel secolo XIII: I'amministrazione della proprietá fondiaria del Monastero Maggiore (Bologna, 1982), 178–83Google Scholar.

26 Herlihy, , Pistoia, 136Google Scholar; Kotel'nikova, L. A., Mondo contadino e citta in Italià dall'XI al XIV secolo (Bologna, 1975), 289Google Scholar.

27 Jones, P.J., ‘From Manor to Mezzadria: A Tuscan Case-Study in the Medieval Origins of Modern Agrarian Society’, in Rubinstein, N., ed., Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence (Evanston, 1968), 222–5Google Scholar.

28 Kotel'nikova, 19–110; Pinto, G., La Toscana nel tardo medioevo: ambiente, economia rurale, società (Florence, 1982), 275–81Google Scholar; Osheim, D.J., An Italian Lordship: The Bishopric of Lucca in the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1977), 101, 152–3Google Scholar.

29 Kotel'nikova, 281–4.

30 Jones, , ‘From Manor to Mezzadria’, 222, 234–5Google Scholar.

31 Hyde, J. K., Padua in the Age of Dante (Manchester, 1966), 37–8, 91–190Google Scholar.

32 Larner, J., Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch, 1216–1380 (1980), 113–25Google Scholar.

33 Sapori, , ‘I mutui e la proprieta fondiarià’, 191–213Google Scholar; Cherubini, G., Signori, contadini, borghesi: ricerche sulla societa italiana del basso medioevo (Florence, 1974), 302–8Google Scholar.

34 Herlihy, , Pistoia, 134–5Google Scholar. Southern English wheat prices for the period are listed in Titow, J. Z., English Rural Society, 1200–1350 (1969), 98–9Google Scholar. For some English leasehold rents, see Miller, E. and Hatcher, J., Medieval England: Rural Society and Economic Change, 1086–1348 (1978), 45–6Google Scholar.

35 Villani, , Cronica, XI, xcivGoogle Scholar.

36 Herlihy, D., ‘Santa Maria Impruneta: a Rural Commune in the Late Middle Ages’, in Rubinstein, 252–3Google Scholar; Jones, P. J., ‘Medieval Agriculture in its Prime: Italy’, in Postan, M. M., ed., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, i: The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1966), 375Google Scholar; Pinto, 119–20; Epstein, S. R., Alle origini della fattoria toscana (Florence, 1986), 154Google Scholar.

37 Cherubini, G., L'Italia rurale del basso medioevo (Rome-Bari, 1984), 27–8Google Scholar.

38 Campbell, B. M.S., ‘Agricultural Progress in Medieval England: some Evidence from Eastern Norfolk’, Ec.H.R., 2nd ser., xxxvi (1983)Google Scholar; Brandon, P. F., ‘Farming Techniques: South-Eastern England’, in Hallam, H. E., ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ii: 1042–1350 (Cambridge, 1988), 317–325Google Scholar.

39 Rotelli, C., Una campagna medievale: storia agraria del Piemonte Jra il 1250 e il 1450 (Turin, 1973), 101–2Google Scholar; Panero, F., Terra in concessione e mobilità contadina: le campagne fra Po, Sesia e Dora Baltea (secoli XII e XIII) (Bologna, 1984), 142–5Google Scholar; Pinto, I2on.; Epstein, 154; Cherubini, , L'Italia rurale, 25–7Google Scholar.

40 Jones, , ‘Medieval Agriculture in its Prime: Italy’, 377Google Scholar; Cherubini, , Signori, conladini, borgkesi, 89Google Scholar; Pinto, 124; Montanari, 62–3; Cherubini, , L'Italia rurale, 12–13Google Scholar; Rotelli, 103–4; Epstein, 154n.; Titow, J.Z., Winchester Yields: a Study in Medieval Agricultural Productivity (Cambridge, 1972), 14Google Scholar; Farmer, D., ‘Grain Yields on Westminster Abbey Manors’, Canadian Journal of History, xviii (1983), 335Google Scholar.

41 Rotelli, 127, 329; Cherubini, , Signori, contadi, borghesi, 100–2Google Scholar.

42 Herlihy, , ‘Santa Maria Impruneta’, 257Google Scholar.

43 Kotel'nikova, 289.

44 Pinto, 258–9.

45 Kotel'nikova, 289, 317–27; Mauri, L. C., ‘ “Me allogabat in platea”: manodopera salariata nelle campagne milanesi alia fine del medioevo’, in Andreolli, B. and others, Leprestazioni d'opera nelle campagne italiane del medioevo (IX Convegno Storico di Bagni di Lucca, Bologna, 1987), 215–20Google Scholar; Postan, M. M., The Famulus: The Estate Labourer in the XIIth and XIIth Centuries (Economic History Review Supplement, 2, Cambridge, 1954), 18–27Google Scholar; Hilton, 137, 165.

46 Melis, F., L'economia fiorentina del Rinascimento (Florence, 1984), 19–21Google Scholar; Dini, B., ‘I lavoratori dell'Arte della lana a Firenze nel XIV e XV secolo’, in Cristiani and others, 30–2Google Scholar.

47 Lane, F. C., Venice, A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973), 156–65Google Scholar; Roover, R. de, Business, Banking and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 1974), 47–8Google Scholar; Hoshino, H., L'Arte della Lana in Firenze nel basso medioevo (Florence, 1980), 307–12Google Scholar.

48 Cherubini, G., ‘I lavoratori nell'Italia dei secoli XIII–XV: considerazioni storiographiche e prospettive di ricerca’, in Cristiani and others, 20Google Scholar.

49 Cohn, S., ‘Florentine Insurrections, 1342–1385, in Comparative Perspective’, in Hilton, R. H. and Aston, T. H., The English Rising 0f 1381 (Cambridge, 1984), 164Google Scholar.

50 Zdekauer, L., ll mercante senese nel dugenio (Siena, 1925), 25–30Google Scholar; Helihy, , Pistoia, 172–4Google Scholar; Larner, 194–5.

51 Cherubini, , Signori, contadini, borghesi, 90Google Scholar.

52 The Economist, The World in Figures (2nd edn., 1978), 236, 265.

53 Houston, J. M., The Western Mediterranean World: An Introduction to its Regional Landscapes (1964), 151, 438–9Google Scholar.

54 Pinto, 7; Cherubini, , Signori, contadini, borghesi, 83–7Google Scholar.

55 Abulafia, D., ‘Southern Italy and the Florentine Economy, 1265–1370’, Ec.H.R., 2nd sen, xxxiv (1981), 377–88Google Scholar.

56 Compagni, Dino, Cronica, I, iGoogle Scholar.

57 ll libro del biadaiolo: carestia e annona a Firenze dalla meta del'200 al 1348, ed. Pinto, G. (Florence, 1978), 78, 317Google Scholar.

58 Carus-Wilson, E. M., Medieval Merchant Venturers (2nd edn., 1967), 241–9Google Scholar.

59 Fryde, E.B. and Fryde, M. M., ‘Public Credit with Special Reference to North-Western Europe’, in Postan, M. M., Rich, E. E. and Miller, E., eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Hi: Economic Organization and Policies in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1963), 459Google Scholar.

60 Carus-Wilson, E. M. and Coleman, O., England's Export Trade, 1275–1547 (Oxford, 1963), 43–5Google Scholar. The price of £5.4 a sack is calculated from Lloyd, T. H., The Movement of Wool Prices in Medieval England (Ec.H.R. Supplement, 6, Cambridge, 1973), 40–1 (annual means of prices per stone)Google Scholar, calculating each sack at 28 stone: Power, E., The Wool Trade in English Medieval History (Oxford, 1941), 23Google Scholar.

61 Lloyd, , Alien Merchants, 35–60Google Scholar.

62 James, M. K., Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade, ed. Veale, E. M. (Oxford, 1971), 9–10 37Google Scholar.

63 Lloyd, , Alien Merchants, 210–26Google Scholar. The median price for regular coloured cloths was £3 16s. 8d. in 1323–4: Moore, E. W., The Fairs of Medieval England: An Introductory Study (Toronto, 1985), 44Google Scholar.

64 M. M. Postan, ‘Italians and the Economic Development of England in the Middle Ages’, in idem, Medieval Trade and Finance (Cambridge, 1973), 335–41.

65 Prestwich, , ‘Italian Merchants’, 79Google Scholar.

66 Kershaw, , Bolton Priory, 90–3Google Scholar.

67 Kaeuper, 28; Fryde, , ‘The Deposits of Hugh Despenser’, 347–51Google Scholar; Prestwich, , ‘Italian Merchants’, 95–6Google Scholar.

69 Green, 112–22; Lloyd, , Alien Merchants, 183–4Google Scholar.

70 Lunt, W. E., Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939). 346–65Google Scholar.

71 Rationes decimarum Iialiae nei secoli XIII e XIV. Tuscia II: Le decime degli anni 1295–1304, ed. Giusti, M. and Guidi, P. (Studi e testi 98, Vatican City, 1932), 12Google Scholar.

72 Day, J., The Medieval Market Economy (Oxford, 1987), 138–9Google Scholar. Florins have been valued at 41s. 6d., an average of the rates for June and December 1296: Spufford, P., Handbook of Medieval Exchange (Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 13, 1986), 3Google Scholar.

73 Stubbs, W., The Constitutional History of England, ii (4th edn., Oxford, 1896), table opp. p. 580Google Scholar. Sterling has been converted at the rate of 2s. iod. to the florin: Spufford, 198.

74 Fiumi, E., ‘Sui rapporti economici tra città e contado nell'età communale’, Archive storico italiano, cxiv (1956), 23, 62–4Google Scholar; idem, ‘Fioritura e decadenza dell'economia fiorentina’, Archivo storico italiano, cxvi (1958), 497–505; Cherubini, , L'ltalia rurale, 65–71Google Scholar; Jones, P.J., ‘Economia e società nell'Italia medievale: la leggenda della borghesia’, in Romano, R. and Vivanti, C., eds., Storia d'ltalia dal feudalesimo al capitalismo (Turin, 1978), 328–36Google Scholar.

75 This is calculated on a wage of 2d. a day in England, 4.5 soldi a day in Florence: Beveridge, W., ‘Wages in the Winchester Manors’, Ec.H.R., vii (1936), 42Google Scholar; Beveridge, W., ‘Westminster Wages in the Manorial Era’, Ec.H.R., 2nd ser., viii (1955), 27Google Scholar; Il libra del biadaiolo, 141. The English wheat price (6s. gd. a quarter) is from Titow, English Rural Society, 98. The Florentine wheat price (16soldi astaio) is from Il libro del biadaiolo, 63–70. Measures have been converted at the rate of 0.73 bushels to the Florentine staio: Herlihy, , Pistoia, xixGoogle Scholar.

76 This is calculated on a wage of 4d. a day in England, 8.6soldi in Florence: Brown, H. Phelps and Hopkins, S.V., A Perspective of Wages and Prices (1981), 11Google Scholar; Roncière, La, Prix et salaires, 280Google Scholar. The wheat price used for Florence (17.25 soldi a staio) is from ll libro del biadaiolo, 66–9. The English price (7s. 4d. a quarter) is from Titow, , English Rural Society, 98Google Scholar.

77 Farmer, D. L., ‘Crop Yields, Prices and Wages in Medieval England’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History (Vancouver, 1983), 147Google Scholar; Roncière, La, Prix et salaires, 280, 821Google Scholar. The estimate for Florence is calculated from a daily wage of 6.4 soldi and an average wheat price of 19.05soldi a staio (average of 1340/1–1347/8, both terms).

78 Hunt, E. H., British Labour History, 1815–1914 (1981), 57Google Scholar.

79 Blanshei, S.R., Perugia, 1260–1340: Conflict and Change in a Medieval Italian Urban Society (American Philosophical Society, new ser., lxvi (2), Philadelphia, 1976), 44–5Google Scholar.

80 Cherubini, , Signori, contadini, borghesi, 247Google Scholar.

81 Larner, 204.

82 Larner, 218–19; Roncière, C. M. de La, ‘Indirect Taxes or “Gabelles” at Florence in the Fourteenth Century: The Evolution of Tariffs and Problems of Collection’, in Rubinstein, 141Google Scholar, 174–82; Miller, E., ‘War, Taxation and the English Economy in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries’, in Winter, J. M., ed., War and Economic Development (Cambridge, 1975), 26–7Google Scholar; Maddicott, J. R., The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown, 1294–1341 (Past and Present Supplement, 1, Oxford, 1975). 1–15. 45–75Google Scholar.

83 Meek, C., Lucca, 1369–1400: Politics and Society in an Early Renaissance State (Oxford, 1978), 77–8Google Scholar.

84 Herlihy, , ‘Santa Maria Impruneta’, 266, 269–70Google Scholar.

85 Herlihy, , Pistoia, 105Google Scholar.

86 Roncière, La, Prix et salaires, 676Google Scholar.

87 Villani, , Cronica, X, cxviiiGoogle Scholar; ll libro del biadaiolo, 316–23.

88 Epstein, 206.

89 Roncière, La, Prix et salaires, 628–38Google Scholar; Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, 173–6; ll libro del biadaiolo, 95–100.

90 Postan, M. M. and Titow, J. Z., ‘Heriots and Prices on Winchester Manors’, in Postan, M. M., Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of the Medieval Economy (Cambridge, 1973), 150–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kershaw, I., ‘The Great Famine and Agrarian Crisis in England’, in Hilton, R.H., ed., Peasants, Knights and Heretics (Cambridge, 1976), 85–132Google Scholar.

91 Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, 210.