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Protecting the commons: self-governance and state intervention in the Italian States during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2016

GIULIO ONGARO
GIULIO ONGARO*
Affiliation:
University of Verona.
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article provides an overview of the evolution of the commons in the Italian peninsula during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It focuses on the connection between the phenomenon of growing community debt, the loss of property held in common and the evolution of the institutions appointed to govern such properties. The later sections of the article will discuss the situation found in each of the Italian States: Venice, Spanish Lombardy, the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States. Two models will be used for reference; one characterised by state intervention; the second by the growth of institutions of self-governance.

Protéger les biens communaux: autonomie et intervention étatique dans les états italiens aux xvie et xviie siècles

Cet article donne un aperçu général de l’évolution des biens communaux dans la péninsule italienne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Il insiste sur les rapports entre croissance de l'endettement des communautés, perte de biens communaux et évolution des institutions en charge de régir ces propriétés collectives. Dans les sections qui suivent, la situation spécifique de chacun des États italiens fait l'objet d'une étude critique: Venise, Lombardie espagnole, Royaume de Naples et États pontificaux. Deux modèles de référence sont utilisés: le premier est caractérisé par l'intervention de l’État; le second par la croissance des institutions autonomes.

Schutz von gemeindeland: selbstverwaltung und staatsintervention in italienischen staaten im 16. und 17. jahrhundert

Dieser Beitrag bietet einen Überblick über die Entwicklung kommunaler Ländereien auf der italienischen Halbinsel im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Im Zentrum steht zunächst der Zusammenhang zwischen der steigenden Verschuldung der öffentlichen Hand, dem Verlust von Grundstücken in kommunalem Besitz und der Entwicklung von Institutionen, die eingerichtet wurden, um solche Grundstücke zu verwalten. Die späteren Abschnitte des Beitrags behandeln die Situation in jedem der italienischen Staaten: Venedig, spanische Lombardei, Königreich Neapel und Kirchenstaat. Zwei Modelle dienen als Bezugspunkt: das erste ist durch Staatsintervention charakterisiert, das zweite durch das Anwachsen von Selbstverwaltungsinstitutionen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , December 2016 , pp. 311 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

ENDNOTES

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3 Spain and Portugal have been identified as important exceptions in Southern Europe, thanks to the work of Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia, José Miguel Lana, Iñaki Iriarte-Goñi and Alberto Marcos Martin (Spain) and Rui Santos and Margarida Sobral Neto (Portugal). See, for example, Iriate-Goñi, Iñaki, ‘Common lands in Spain, 1800–1995: persistence, change and adaptation’, Rural History 13, 1 (2002), 19–37 Google Scholar; Beltrán, Francisco J., ‘Social and environmental filters to market incentives: common land persistence in nineteenth-century Spain’, Journal of Agrarian Change 15, 2 (2015), 239–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lana, José Miguel, ‘From equilibrium to equity: the survival of the commons in the Ebro Basin: Navarra from the 15th to the 20th centuries’, International Journal of the Commons 2, 2 (2008), 162–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rui Santos and Maria José Roxo, ‘A tale of two tragedies: the case of the commons of Serra de Mértola in the Alentejo (southern Portugal) and its privatization, eighteenth to twentieth centuries’, in van Bavel and Thoen eds., Rural societies and environments at risk, 115–46.

4 Alfani, Guido and Rao, Riccardo eds., La gestione delle risorse collettive: Italia settentrionale, secoli XII–XVIII [Managing the commons: Northern Italy, twelfth-eighteenth centuries] (Milan, 2011)Google Scholar; Alfani, Guido, Calamities and the economy in Renaissance Italy: the grand tour of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse (London, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 See: January, Peter and Knapton, Michael, ‘The demands made on Venetian Terraferma Society for Defence in the early seventeenth century’, Ateneo Veneto CXCIV (2007), 25–115 Google Scholar.

8 See: Giulio Ongaro, ‘Venetian rural communities during the “Italian Wars”: institutional evolution and tightness of the rural economic system’, Rural History Conference (2013), available at https://www.academia.edu/7406323/Ongaro_rural_history_2013_Venetian_rural_communities_during_the_Italian_Wars_Institutional_evolution_and_tightness_of_the_rural_economy. The paper also provides some quantitative data on the increasing expenditure and the gradually diminishing (and changing character) of the incomes of the rural communities.

9 This is a very complex topic, which cannot be given justice here.  For more on this topic, see Ongaro, Peasants and soldiers.

10 See, for example, Fusaro, Maria, Political economies of empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: the decline of Venice and the rise of England 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12 The term ‘Common Pool Resources' refers to resource systems ‘where excluding potential appropriators or limiting appropriation rights of existing users is nontrivial (but not necessarily impossible) and the yield of the resource system is subtractable’, quoting Ostrom, Elinor, Gardner, Roy and Walker, James, Rules, games, and Common-Pool Resources (Ann Arbor, 1994), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In turn, the term ‘resource system’ refers to the structure that includes the resources and allows access to them.

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17 Rossini, Le campagne bresciane nel Cinquecento, 247. The construction of the fortress of Palmanova in Friuli was the last step in the renewing of the Venetian defensive structure, a process started with the building of the fortress of Legnago and the renewing of the fortresses of Brescia, Bergamo and Verona. For the construction of Palmanova – the most ambitious project – all the provinces of the Mainland Dominion had to contribute with men and money. See: Mallett, Michael, and Hale, John, The military organisation of a Renaissance State: Venice from 1400 to 1617 (Cambridge, 1984), 409–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 For example, the commons owned by the community of Bedizzole, in the same province, were alienated in 1622, 1623, 1624, 1654, 1657, 1660, 1661, 1662, 1664, 1667 and in 1668, see Municipal Archive of Bedizzole (hereafter MAB), busta 4, registro 1–2. The community of Maderno, on Lake Garda, lost land in 1583, 1611, 1618, 1630, 1640, 1643, State Archive of Venice (hereafter ASVe), Compilazione delle leggi, Serie I, b. 143, fos. 1026 r-v; Municipal Archive of Maderno (hereafter MAM), registro 1612–1689 and Provvedimenti 1610–1615.

19 Municipal Archive of Gavardo (hereafter MAG), busta 57, fos. 20 r-v.

20 ASVe, Senato, Dispacci dei Rettori, Brescia e Bresciano, busta 15, letter dated 19 March 1615.

21 Ibid., 17 January 1625; busta 50, 26 November 1648 and 17 February 1649.

22 ‘Podesteria e Capitanato di Vicenza’, volume 7 of Relazioni dei rettori veneti in terraferma (Milan, 1976), 294Google Scholar.

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33 Ibid., 93–4.

34 Alfani and Rao eds., La gestione delle risorse collettive; Ongaro, ‘Il problema della contabilità delle proprietà collettive’; Aparisi Romero and Royo Pérez eds., Beyond lord and peasants.

35 Hardin, Garrett, ‘The tragedy of the commons’, Science, New Series 162, 3859 (1968), 1243–8Google ScholarPubMed, here 1244–5.

36 Ibid., 1244.

37 Ostrom, Governing the commons, 9.

38 The ‘prisoner's dilemma’ refers to a situation in game theory whereby two individuals, with no possibility of communication, have the option to cooperate or not, with outcomes dependent upon what the other individual does. The usual example is of two prisoners, each of whom will go free if he/she betrays the other, so long as the other remains silent. If they both remain silent (cooperate), the outcome (a lighter prison sentence) is better for both than if they both betray (a longer prison sentence). The dilemma lies in trying to predict what the other will do and thus illustrates the tension between individual and collective outcomes. Dawes, M. Robyn, The commons dilemma game: an N-person mixed-motive game with a dominating strategy for defection, ORI Research Bulletin 13 (1973), 1–12 Google Scholar; Dawes, M. Robyn, Formal models of dilemma in social decision-making, ORI Research Bulletin 14, 12 (1974), 8–13 Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., 18.

40 Olson, Mancur, The logic of collective action: public goods and the theory of groups (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar. Briefly, Olson asserts that while many theories are based on the assumption that ‘groups of individuals with common interests are expected to act on behalf of their common interests’, ‘even if all of the individuals in a large group are rational and self-interested, and would gain if, as a group, they acted to achieve their common interest …, they will still not voluntarily act to achieve that common or group interest.’ (Olson, The logic of collective action, 1–2).

41 Ostrom, Governing the commons, 8–18.

42 Tabacchi, Stefano, ‘Il controllo delle finanze locali negli antichi stati italiani’, Storia Amministrazione Costituzione, Annali ISAP 4 (1993), 81–115 Google Scholar; Mannori, Luca, Il sovrano tutore: pluralismo istituzionale e accentramento amministrativo nel principato dei Medici, sec. XVI–XVIII (Milan, 1994)Google Scholar.

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44 ASVe, Senato, Dispacci, Dispacci dei Rettori, Brescia e Bresciano, busta 50, 26 November 1648.

45 ASVe, Compilazione delle leggi, Serie I, busta 143, fos. 1026 r-v.

46 MAB, busta 4, registro 2, fos. 12 r-v.

47 Raccolta di Privilegi, Ducali, Giudizi, Terminazioni, e decreti pubblici sopra varie materie giurisdizionali, civili, criminali, ed economiche concernenti la città, e provincia di Brescia (Brescia, 1732), 298–301 Google Scholar.

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49 Raccolta di Leggi, Sindicali, ed altri Decreti, e Proclami, Promulgati per la Città, e Territorio di Vicenza (Vicenza, 1762), 9–23 Google Scholar.

50 Barbacetto, ‘La più gelosa delle pubbliche regalie’, 172–90. It is interesting to note that a similar process of the sale of state properties occurred in Spain at the same time, but the role played by local institutions in this process was probably different in the two areas. In Spain, communities tried to buy partial rights to properties – although the result was often debt and the definitive loss of these properties – while in the Republic of Venice the main buyers were Venetian aristocratic families. See: Vassberg, David E., Land and society in Golden Age Castile (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar and Alberto Marcos-Martin, ‘Before the liberal desamortizaciones: the sale of baldios in 16th century Castile’, in Beaur, Schofield, Chevet, and Perez-Picazo eds., Property rights, 102–22.

51 Raccolta di Leggi, 38.

52 Kamen cites the example of Burgundy, where in 1667 it was established that properties that had been illegitimately acquired from 1620 onwards should be returned to their communities (Kamen, ‘The economic and social consequences’, 56). Another example is the Bavernschutz (protection of the peasant), practiced by German princes to preserve common property in rural areas, as reported in de Vries, Jan, Economy of Europe in an age of crisis (1600–1750) (London, 1976), 61Google Scholar.

53 Bulgarelli, La finanza locale sotto tutela, 247.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid., 262–4.

56 Tabacchi, Il Buon Governo, 109.

57 Ibid., 119, 247, 251–60.

58 Ibid., 251–4.

59 Faccini, La Lombardia fra ‘600 e ‘700.

60 Colombo, Giochi di luoghi, 103.

61 Ibid., 103–8.

62 Ostrom, Governing the commons, 8–12.

63 Ibid., 98–9.

64 Ibid., 102.

65 Tabacchi, Il Buon Governo, 286.

66 Bulgarelli, La finanza locale sotto tutela, 287–93.

67 Tabacchi, ‘Il controllo delle finanze locali’, 95.

68 Reinhard, Wolfgang, Power elites and state building: the origins of the modern state (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar.

69 Matteo Di Tullio, La ricchezza delle comunità: guerra, risorse e cooperazione nella Geradadda del Cinquecento (Milan, 2011), now available in the English translation: Di Tullio, Matteo, The wealth of communities: war, resources and cooperation in Renaissance Lombardy (Farnham, 2014)Google Scholar.

70 Di Tullio, La ricchezza delle comunità, 135–57.

71 Ibid., 154.

72 Ibid., 158.

73 Ibid., 159.

74 Putnam, Making democracy work.

75 Colombo, Giochi di luoghi, 120.

76 Faccini, La Lombardia fra ‘600 e ‘700; Colombo, Giochi di luoghi.

77 Putnam, Making democracy work.

78 Ibid., 167.

79 Ostrom, Elinor and Ahn, Toh-Kyeong eds., Foundations of social capital (Cheltenham, 2003)Google Scholar.

80 Putnam, Making democracy work, 177.

81 Curtis, Coping with crisis.

82 Ibid., 24.

83 Ibid., 60.