— Ты это! А ты товой!
— Чего т-того?!
— Ты… это… не безобразничай.
Аннотация
Эта статья сравнивает влияние чумы по всей Европе в течение семнадцатого века. Это показывает, что заболевание затронуло
Южная Европа намного тяжело, чем север. Италия была безусловно, в худшем случае поражена. Использование новой базы данных, статья представляет эпидемиологическую переменную, которая не была
Рассматривается в литературе: территориальная распространенность заражения. Эта переменная гораздо важнее, чем местные показатели смертности в учете различных региональных
Влияние чумы. Эпидемии, а не экономические трудности, породили тяжелый демографический кризис в Италии в течение семнадцатого века. Чума вызвала шок экономики
Итальянский полуостров, который мог бы быть ключом к началу его относительного снижения по сравнению с развивающимися странами Северной Европы.
Введение
В последние годы произошло возрождение интереса к чумы. В настоящее время известно, что не все средневековые и ранние современные чумы разделили одинаковую
Характеристики. Территориальная распространяемость определила не только демографические последствия чумы, но и его политико-институциональные и экономические последствия.
Пострельная популяция не смогла быстро восстановиться, поэтому эпидемии имели долгосрочные эффекты с точки зрения общего выработки уровня и фискальной мощности страны. Эта статья утверждает
То, что сила эпидемий, влияющих на Италию семнадцатого века, беспрецедентная в других странах Европы, является основным фактором в отношении относительного снижения итальянских государств в этот период.
Раздел 1 обеспечивает обзор европейских бедствий в течение семнадцатого века. Раздел 2 сосредоточен на Италии и на людях 1629-1630 и 1656-1657 гг. Раздел 3 Формирует
Гипотезы об их демографических и макроэкономических последствиях и предлагают повестку дня для будущих исследований. 1. Разнообразное воздействие чумы в Европу семнадцатого века
Помимо черной смерти 1347-1350, исследования единой чумы, обычно ограничивались небольшими районами, иногда достигая национального масштаба, но
Неспособность предоставить европейскую перспективу. 2 для поздних средневековых и ранних современных волн основным источником все еще база данных Biraben. На основании коллекций анлаговок и хроники,
База данных перечисляет населенные пункты, пострадавшие от заболевания, годиться к году, через континент ( Biraben 1975 , Vol. Я, с. 363-449). Бирабен стремился реконструировать хронологию чумы
Волны, определяющие худшие эпизоды, задача, которую он совершил уместно. Тем не менее, его база данных сыграла важную роль в установлении идеи о том, что общая чума была эгалитарией
Убийца: поразительно, теперь одна часть Европы, теперь другая, но в долгосрочной перспективе, нанесении аналогичного урона на разных областях. правильное использование Бирабена
Данные состоит в том, чтобы определить лучевые волны как краткосрочное увеличение количества пострадавших мест. Превратился в количественные меры, такие как те, которые представлены в таблице1, however, they may prove
misleading. In particular, they suggest the following:
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, north-western Europe (including
France) was struck by plague at least as badly as south-western and central Europe;
plague struck the continent about as badly during the
sixteenth century as in the first part of the seventeenth (up until around 1670–1680);
during the second half of the seventeenth century, plague
began to retreat from Europe, albeit with a different chronology according to the area considered. During the eighteenth century, epidemics of plague became rare and the area
affected more limited.
Table 1.Number and time distribution of plague outbreaks in Western Europe, 1500–1749
Spain and Portugal Italy France England, Scotland, and Ireland Belgium, Low Countries, and Luxemburg Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland 1500–1549 (%) 21.4 42.0 29.8 14.3 15.6 19.8 1550–1599
(%) 36.7 22.6 30.6 28.5 26.8 24.4 1600–1649 (%) 22.1 19.6 33.4
46.1 36.9 37.1 1650–1699 (%) 19.9 13.5 4.9 11.1 20.7 16.1
1700–1749 (%) 0.0 2.3 1.3 0.0 0.0 2.5 1500–1749 (%) 100 100
100 100 100 100 1500–1749 (n.) 458 438 2148 1355 358 902
Spain and Portugal Italy France England, Scotland, and Ireland Belgium, Low Countries, and Luxemburg Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland 1500–1549 (%) 21.4 42.0 29.8 14.3 15.6 19.8 1550–1599
(%) 36.7 22.6 30.6 28.5 26.8 24.4 1600–1649 (%) 22.1 19.6 33.4
46.1 36.9 37.1 1650–1699 (%) 19.9 13.5 4.9 11.1 20.7 16.1
1700–1749 (%) 0.0 2.3 1.3 0.0 0.0 2.5 1500–1749 (%) 100 100
100 100 100 100 1500–1749 (n.) 458 438 2148 1355 358 902
Note: own elaboration from data published in Biraben (1975, pp. 363–374)
Table 1.Number and time distribution of plague outbreaks in Western Europe, 1500–1749
Spain and Portugal Italy France England, Scotland, and Ireland Belgium, Low Countries, and Luxemburg Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland 1500–1549 (%) 21.4 42.0 29.8 14.3 15.6 19.8 1550–1599
(%) 36.7 22.6 30.6 28.5 26.8 24.4 1600–1649 (%) 22.1 19.6 33.4
46.1 36.9 37.1 1650–1699 (%) 19.9 13.5 4.9 11.1 20.7 16.1
1700–1749 (%) 0.0 2.3 1.3 0.0 0.0 2.5 1500–1749 (%) 100 100
100 100 100 100 1500–1749 (n.) 458 438 2148 1355 358 902
Spain and Portugal Italy France England, Scotland, and Ireland Belgium, Low Countries, and Luxemburg Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland 1500–1549 (%) 21.4 42.0 29.8 14.3 15.6 19.8 1550–1599
(%) 36.7 22.6 30.6 28.5 26.8 24.4 1600–1649 (%) 22.1 19.6 33.4
46.1 36.9 37.1 1650–1699 (%) 19.9 13.5 4.9 11.1 20.7 16.1
1700–1749 (%) 0.0 2.3 1.3 0.0 0.0 2.5 1500–1749 (%) 100 100
100 100 100 100 1500–1749 (n.) 458 438 2148 1355 358 902
Note: own elaboration from data published in Biraben (1975, pp. 363–374)
Открыть на новой вкладке
Эти выводы являются частью принятой мудрости о чуме. Эта статья предлагает глубокую ревизию первого
заключение. Хотя во-вторых, и третий здесь не будет оценена, необходима краткое обсуждение. Что касается второго, для Франции Бирабен перечислены четыре «сильные волны»
чумы в течение шестнадцатого века (два из которых через 1550) и только один на семнадцатое (эпидемия также влияет на Италию в 1629-1630 гг.). Для северо-западной Европы
В целом, в шестнадцатом веке сильные волны поднимаются до пяти и в семнадцатом до двух ( Biraben 1975 , с. 119, 125). Этот вывод, вероятно, правильный; тем не менее,
Это может быть вводит в заблуждение. Например, в Италии, например, эпидемии чума, безусловно, были более распространены в шестнадцатом веке, чем в семнадцатом, но эти эпизоды были намного больше
Ограничено, чем катастрофические чумы 1629-1630 и 1656-1657. Последнее было воздействие намного больше, чем все чумы шестнадцатого века, взятые вместе ( Alfani 2010A ,
2013 ).
Можно нарисовать общие указания: частота серьезных возмущений в период не всегда является хорошим прокси для интенсивности чумы. Третий вывод,
Об отступлении чумы из Европы, несомненно, верно. Предложено много объяснений этого еще таинственно таинственного процесса: взаимная адаптация человека и патогена;
улучшения в санитарии и гигиене; Лучший контроль над эпидемиями; Вариации населения векторов заболевания (крыс или другой)(McNeill 1976; Appleby 1980;
Del
Panta 1980; Slack 1985; Livi Bacci 1998). Lastly, climate: a factor mentioned by some early authors, which has recently been re-proposed as a key variable to
understanding medieval and early modern epidemics (Woehlkens 1954, pp. 139–148; Biraben 1975, pp. 134–139; recently Campbell 2010a , B ). То
Новые данные, представленные в следующем разделе, также имеют отношение к этой дискуссии. Через много лет база данных Biraben неизбежно требует обновления. Вместо,
Он был использован для целей, которые хорошо проходят за пределами оригинальных. Примером является попытка Дункана и Скотта для изучения «широкомасштабной динамики метапопуляции» исключительно на основе
этой информации. Их вывод, что Франция была «Фокусом и эпицентром для чумы в Европе со времен черной смерти до 1670 года» ( Дункан и
Скотт 2004 , с. 286) почти неверно ошибается из-за чрезмерного представления Франции в базе данных Бирабена. В целом нет никаких работ, использующих данные Biraben
Обнаружен неравномерный способ, в котором чума поразила Европу. Это связано с тем, что территориальная распространяемость каждой эпидемии не может быть оценена правильно, используя «частоты»
Данные, изначально означали просто воссоздать хронологию люм. показать, что семнадцатое века поражена поражением отдельных областей
Иначе эта статья ориентирована на Западную Европу, театр сдвига баланса экономической власти от Средиземного моря на севере. Интересно, во время
Век, самые быстрые районы были менее затронуты чумой. Анализ использует самые последние исследования, связанные с каждой областью, и для Италии, интеграции
Выводы из новой базы данных (см. Раздел 2). Тем не менее, качество доступной информации даже не по всей Европе, и ни в одной области не является информацией как точной, как это
Предоставляется этой статьей для Италии.
можно подумать, что лучший способ сравнить интенсивность чумы в разных областях в течение данного периода
Сравните уровень смертности. Однако в течение семнадцатого века большинство регионов Европы были поражены более чем одной чумой волной (Италия, где явные волны не перекрывались,
является наиболее заметным исключением). Скорость смертности каждой одиночной волны не может быть суммирована, поскольку размер опорной популяции изменяется от одной волны в другую. Следовательно,
Таблица
Table 2.Plague intensity in Western Europe during seventeenth century
Country/region Plague victims (millions) Percentage of population lost to plague Italy (Kingdom of Naples) 0.87–1.25 30–43 Italy (north) 2.00 30–35
South Germanya not available 20–25 Dutch Republic not available 15–25
Spainb 1.25 18–19 France ≥2.20 11–14 England and Wales 0.45
8–10
Country/region Plague victims (millions) Percentage of population lost to plague Italy (Kingdom of Naples) 0.87–1.25 30–43 Italy (north) 2.00 30–35
South Germanya not available 20–25 Dutch Republic not available 15–25
Spainb 1.25 18–19 France ≥2.20 11–14 England and Wales 0.45
8–10
aSouth-West Germany including Rhineland, Alsace, and part of Switzerland.
bThe estimate for Spain includes the 1599 epidemic, which accounts for about half the
victims.
Sources: author's elaborations for
North Italy; Fusco (2007, 2009) for the Kingdom of Naples; author's elaborations for Europe, based on the literature cited in this article.
Table 2.Plague intensity in Western Europe during seventeenth century
Country/region Plague victims (millions) Percentage of population lost to plague Italy (Kingdom of Naples) 0.87–1.25 30–43 Italy (north) 2.00 30–35
South Germanya not available 20–25 Dutch Republic not available 15–25
Spainb 1.25 18–19 France ≥2.20 11–14 England and Wales 0.45
8–10
Country/region Plague victims (millions) Percentage of population lost to plague Italy (Kingdom of Naples) 0.87–1.25 30–43 Italy (north) 2.00 30–35
South Germanya not available 20–25 Dutch Republic not available 15–25
Spainb 1.25 18–19 France ≥2.20 11–14 England and Wales 0.45
8–10
aSouth-West Germany including Rhineland, Alsace, and part of Switzerland.
bThe estimate for Spain includes the 1599 epidemic, which accounts for about half the
victims.
Sources: author's elaborations for
North Italy; Fusco (2007, 2009) for the Kingdom of Naples; author's elaborations for Europe, based on the literature cited in this article.
If we accept the higher estimates provided for northern Italy and the Kingdom of Naples and consider that the lower estimate of
around 30 per cent provided for the latter seems to be a reasonable estimate for central Italy, then no other area of Western Europe came near to the overall losses suffered
by the peninsula.3 The closest is southern Germany, with between two-thirds and one-half of the losses in Italy. England and France sustained only one-third or
one-fourth. Given the high population density of the peninsula, the difference in the total number of plague victims is equally great: ∼450,000 for England, compared with
two million for northern Italy.4
These figures are even more striking, considering that in Italy they relate to a single plague wave, whilst
elsewhere they are the cumulative effects of many epidemics. Overall, they tell a different story from that indicated by Biraben's data. The fact that plagues became more
frequent in north-western Europe during the first half of the seventeenth century while in the south their frequency decreased (table 1) does not go hand in
hand with changes in plague intensity. Instead, the areas of Europe where plague caused more victims were those where plague waves became less frequent.
The main reason why Biraben's data do not allow to evaluate correctly plague intensity is that they do not really inform us of the territorial
pervasiveness of the infection. The occurrence of repeated outbreaks in the main cities of countries like England (see below) does not tell much about the ability of the
disease to spread to rural areas. Territorial pervasiveness can only be measured correctly as the proportion of communities affected over the total, from which probability
of contagion can be deduced. Section 2 provides this information for Italy, but such data are not available for other regions of Europe. Consequently, current literature
only allows for a provisional analysis.
Figure 1 shows where and when plague struck, dividing the century into four 25-year periods. The coloured
areas are those where epidemics affected thoroughly a territory; isolated cases have not been represented in order to reveal where the disease manifested a degree of
territorial pervasiveness. Among the areas included, only Austria and south-eastern Spain experienced plague in the last quarter of the century: the time of the “Great
Plague of Vienna” (1679) killing ∼76,000 residents of the city. The second quarter of the century contrasts strikingly with all others for the large-scale diffusion of
plague epidemics, covering most of Germany, half of Italy and much of France and Spain as well as the main urban clusters in the Netherlands and England.
Figure 1.![Plague in
Western Europe, 1600–1699. Sources and notes: reliable maps allowing to evaluate whether a territory was infected pervasively in a given period are available only for England,
central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and western Poland), and Italy (provided by Wrigley and Schofield 1981; Eckert 1996; and by this article for Italy). For the rest of
Western Europe, the reconstruction remains partly conjectural. For France, I mostly relied on maps published in Histoire de la population française (especially Biraben and Blum
1988). For Spain, Perez Moreda (1980, 1988). For the Netherlands, Flanders, and Hainaut, Van Bath (1965); Van Werveke (1965); Arnould (1965); Rommes (1990). Note that for Spain, the
map does not include the plague that affected the central and southern part of Iberia in 1599, even if somewhere it ended in 1600 or 1601.]()
Plague in Western Europe, 1600–1699. Sources and notes: reliable maps allowing to evaluate whether a territory was infected pervasively in a given
period are available only for England, central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and western Poland), and Italy (provided by Wrigley and Schofield 1981; Eckert 1996; and
by this article for Italy). For the rest of Western Europe, the reconstruction remains partly conjectural. For France, I mostly relied on maps published in Histoire de la
population française (especially Biraben and Blum 1988). For Spain, Perez Moreda (1980, 1988). For the Netherlands, Flanders, and Hainaut, Van Bath (1965); Van Werveke
(1965); Arnould (1965); Rommes (1990). Note that for Spain, the map does not include the plague that affected the central and southern part of Iberia in 1599, even if somewhere
it ended in 1600 or 1601.
Figure 1.![Plague in Western Europe, 1600–1699. Sources and notes: reliable maps allowing to evaluate whether a territory was infected pervasively in a given
period are available only for England, central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and western Poland), and Italy (provided by Wrigley and Schofield 1981; Eckert 1996; and by
this article for Italy). For the rest of Western Europe, the reconstruction remains partly conjectural. For France, I mostly relied on maps published in Histoire de la population
française (especially Biraben and Blum 1988). For Spain, Perez Moreda (1980, 1988). For the Netherlands, Flanders, and Hainaut, Van Bath (1965); Van Werveke (1965); Arnould (1965);
Rommes (1990). Note that for Spain, the map does not include the plague that affected the central and southern part of Iberia in 1599, even if somewhere it ended in 1600 or 1601.]()
Plague in Western Europe, 1600–1699. Sources and notes: reliable maps allowing to evaluate whether a territory was
infected pervasively in a given period are available only for England, central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and western Poland), and Italy (provided by Wrigley and Schofield
1981; Eckert
1996; and by this article for Italy). For the rest of Western Europe, the reconstruction remains partly conjectural. For France, I mostly relied on maps published in
Histoire de la population française (especially Biraben and Blum 1988). For Spain, Perez Moreda (1980, 1988). For the Netherlands, Flanders, and Hainaut, Van Bath (1965); Van Werveke
(1965); Arnould (1965); Rommes (1990). Note that for Spain, the map does not include the plague that affected the central and southern part of Iberia in 1599, even if somewhere
it ended in 1600 or 1601.
Figure 1 shows clearly a key difference in seventeenth-century European plagues:
in the north, plagues affected mainly highly urbanized areas, while in the south, they had much greater territorial pervasiveness spreading more effectively to
the countryside;
in the north, different plague waves affected repeatedly the same places, while in the south, areas affected by one wave were
usually spared by the following ones.
These differences between north and south appear only in the seventeenth century. In the sixteenth, also
in southern Europe plague was mainly an urban affair and separate waves struck the same place every few decades. This hints at transformations in the epidemiological, and maybe also
biological, characteristics of plague (section 2).
Even if these results have to be considered provisional until territorial pervasiveness of plagues is
measured precisely across Europe, they are consistent with the findings of regional studies. In England for example, “in the seventeenth century plague became relatively rare except
in large urban centres and, when it occurred, was often an accompaniment to a major epidemic in London” (Wrigley and Schofield 1981, p. 668). This would be the case for all of the worst
epidemics of the century, in 1603, 1625, and 1636, as well as for the more localized outbreak of 1665–1666, which ended with the Great Fire of London (Slack 1985, pp. 68–69). For
England, we also have some measures indicative of low territorial pervasiveness. Between 1565 and 1666, 43 per cent of the parishes in Devon did not suffer from an epidemic of
plague (as measured by a doubling of burials or more), while in Exeter, the same measure rises to 45 per cent. Focusing on market towns, the proportion of places spared falls below
21 per cent (Slack 1985, pp. 109–110). These figures are impressive, given that if calculated for northern Italy in 1600–1657, overall they drop to 9 per cent (see below):
one-fifth the figure for England, and considering a time period half as long. This was probably also the case of most central and southern regions of Italy, as well as
Germany.
Something more should be said about the main plague waves affecting seventeenth-century Europe. While in the north, the situation of England is
also representative of the Netherlands (Flanders and Hainaut included), where plague was mainly an urban affair striking repeatedly the main cities but mostly sparing the rural
areas,5 in
the central and southern part of the continent, most of the plague damage was due to a small number of great plague waves. The most severe began on the shores of northern France, in
the Netherlands, and in Renania around 1623, struck England in 1625, and in 1625–1626 infected central Germany. In the following years, it moved southwards, through southern Germany
and eastern France. In 1628–1629, it was covering the area between the Pyrenees and southern France on one side, Bavaria and Switzerland on the other. In late 1629, it entered
Italy, ravaging it in 1630 (Eckert 1978). From Lombardy, under Spanish rule, the plague spread to Catalonia.
For southern France and northern Italy, this is considered
the worst plague since the Black Death. This may also be true for other regions, like Germany, but there the plague effects are not easy to distinguish from those of the Thirty
Years' War, since troops acted as disease carriers infecting vast areas (Alfani 2013, pp. 43–4). Another important plague wave ravaged Andalusia, the Balearic archipelago, and the rest
of the Spanish Mediterranean in 1647–1654. This was the worst plague striking Iberia in the century.6 In 1652, it spread to Sardinia, and in 1656, through Naples, to most of southern and
central Italy.
2. Italy: an exceptional
case
“The spectre of plague loomed as large in seventeenth-century England as it did in contemporary Italy. True, even the worst English epidemics in this period
seem to have been somewhat less lethal than the two Italian outbreaks; but then their frequency was much greater.” In this way, Helleiner (1967) introduced his
comparison of Italian and British epidemics, pointing out correctly a difference in their frequency, but also suggesting that the total demographic impact was roughly the same. This
still-widespread idea needs revising, taking into account a previously neglected variable: territorial pervasiveness. Before doing this, though, a general picture of plague in the
peninsula must be provided.
2.1 Plague
waves in early modern Italy
During the sixteenth century, Italy had suffered relatively little from plague. Even the worst epidemic, the “San Carlo” plague of 1575–1577 that struck many
important cities in the north, had been mainly an urban event involving a limited area. The damage it caused was quickly mended thanks to the availability of a large surplus
population in the countryside (Alfani 2010a, 2013). There would be no such surplus after the two great epidemics of the seventeenth century. The first began in October 1629, when Spanish and French troops
involved in the War of the Mantuan Succession, entered the peninsula spreading the disease from areas infected since 1628 (section 1). During the spring of 1630, the disease spread
quickly southwards and eastwards the infected territories of the Susa valley and the lake of Como, covering all of the north (save for Liguria and parts of Friuli and Piedmont) by
the early summer and then spreading to Tuscany, but failing to go further (Del Panta 1980; Manfredini et al. 2002; Alfani and Cohn 2007; Alfani 2010a).
The second epidemic began in Sardinia in 1652, having arrived in Alghero from Spain. After ravaging much of the island, it landed in Naples in April 1656.
Thence, it spread to most of southern Italy (the Kingdom of Naples); only Sicily and parts of Calabria and Apulia were spared. To the north, the epidemic arrived in Rome in June
1656 and then affected most of the Papal State, arresting its spread in Umbria and Marche. It did not penetrate the Granduchy of Tuscany, affected by the previous wave, but it did
spread by sea to Liguria (it was present in Genoa from July 1656), which instead had been previously spared (Del Panta 1980; Fusco 2007; Alfani 2010a).
Among the Italian regions, only Sicily was entirely spared the two main waves. However, it had experienced a regional plague in 1624. Overall, the territorial
integration of the seventeenth-century Italian epidemics is impressive. As apparent from figures 1 and 2, no known Italian communities were struck by more than one of these plague waves.
Especially impressive is the case of Liguria, spared in 1630 when Piedmont and Tuscany were affected, and unable in its turn to infect these areas in 1656. On the micro level, only
small areas around the towns of Rapallo and Finale were infected in 1630. Those same territories were the only parts of the region spared in 1656. The perfect match between the two
epidemics does not allow for a simple “morphological-institutional” explanation of why the two plague waves did not overlap (as discussed later).
Figure 2.![Urban
mortality rates during the plagues of 1629–1630 and 1656–1657. Sources and notes: places represented on the map only comprise those cities for which mortality rates could be
calculated. For territorial coverage of different Italian plague waves see figure 1, as well as figure 2.1 in Alfani 2010a, p. 232.]()
Urban mortality rates during the plagues of 1629–1630 and 1656–1657. Sources and notes: places represented on the map only comprise those cities for
which mortality rates could be calculated. For territorial coverage of different Italian plague waves see figure 1, as well as figure 2.1 in Alfani 2010a, p.
232.
Figure 2.![Urban mortality rates during the plagues of 1629–1630 and 1656–1657. Sources and notes: places represented on the map only comprise those cities for which mortality
rates could be calculated. For territorial coverage of different Italian plague waves see figure 1, as well as figure 2.1 in Alfani 2010a, p. 232.]()
Urban mortality rates during the plagues of 1629–1630 and 1656–1657. Sources and notes: places represented on the map only comprise those cities for
which mortality rates could be calculated. For territorial coverage of different Italian plague waves see figure 1, as well as figure 2.1 in Alfani 2010a, p.
232.
2.2 Characteristics and
composition of the database
Parish books of burials are rare before around 1600 (only the Rituale Romanum, introduced in 1614, established a duty for all Catholic parishes to
keep them). Consequently, seventeenth-century plagues are the first that it is possible to study systematically with these sources. Other sources, the city books of the dead, have
similar characteristics. However, while sometimes available since the fifteenth century, they exist only for some cities (for example Milan. Cohn and Alfani 2007, pp.
178–181).
The new database of north Italian burials used here includes 138 time series related to 101 different communities. Some communities, especially
cities, had more than one parish recording burials. Only in three cases (Milan, Mantua, and Venice) have city books of the dead been used instead of parish registers. During severe
epidemics, under-registration of burials may occur but usually this is either a minor disturbance given the diligence used in the records or a macroscopic event (especially if the
parish priest died) resulting in a stoppage of the records that could last weeks or even months. All time series presenting serious gaps in the relevant years as revealed by simple
completeness tests have been excluded from the analysis.7
The original registers are usually preserved in the relevant parish archive, sometimes in the
diocesan archive. Direct reconstruction of time series from the original registers has been complemented with collection and digitalization of previously published data. The
resulting database is adequately balanced from the point of view of territorial and political/institutional representation (see distribution per region and per state in table 3). It also
allows for an unusually good coverage of rural areas given that about three out of four series are rural (see below).8
Table 3.Structure of the database
Single series
Communities
Aggregate, n Percentage of total Aggregate, n Percentage of total Distribution of the sample by series starting date Series starting before:
1550 3 2.2 3 3.0 1600 78 56.5 52 51.5
1610 104 75.4 74 73.3 1620 126 91.3 93 92.1
1627 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the sample by contemporary administrative region Emilia Romagna 41 29.7 26 25.7
Liguria 33 23.9 25 24.8 Lombardy 27 19.6 19 18.8
Piedmont and Aosta Valley 21 15.2 17 16.8 Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino 16
11.6 14 13.9 Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the
sample by Italian state (at 1630) Republic of Genoa 29 21.0 21 20.8 Papal State 23
16.7 17 16.8 Duchy of Milan 21 15.2 13 12.9 Duchy of Savoy
20 14.5 16 15.8 Republic of Venice 17 12.3 15 14.9 Duchy of
Parma and Piacenza 9 6.5 3 3.0 Duchy of Mantua 7 5.1 7 6.9
Duchy of Modena 6 4.3 3 3.0 Others 6 4.3 6 5.9
Total 138 100.0 101 100.0
Single series
Communities
Aggregate, n Percentage of total Aggregate, n Percentage of total Distribution of the sample by series starting date Series starting before:
1550 3 2.2 3 3.0 1600 78 56.5 52 51.5
1610 104 75.4 74 73.3 1620 126 91.3 93 92.1
1627 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the sample by contemporary administrative region Emilia Romagna 41 29.7 26 25.7
Liguria 33 23.9 25 24.8 Lombardy 27 19.6 19 18.8
Piedmont and Aosta Valley 21 15.2 17 16.8 Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino 16
11.6 14 13.9 Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the
sample by Italian state (at 1630) Republic of Genoa 29 21.0 21 20.8 Papal State 23
16.7 17 16.8 Duchy of Milan 21 15.2 13 12.9 Duchy of Savoy
20 14.5 16 15.8 Republic of Venice 17 12.3 15 14.9 Duchy of
Parma and Piacenza 9 6.5 3 3.0 Duchy of Mantua 7 5.1 7 6.9
Duchy of Modena 6 4.3 3 3.0 Others 6 4.3 6 5.9
Total 138 100.0 101 100.0
Table 3.Structure of the database
Single series
Communities
Aggregate, n Percentage of total Aggregate, n Percentage of total Distribution of the sample by series starting date Series starting before:
1550 3 2.2 3 3.0 1600 78 56.5 52 51.5
1610 104 75.4 74 73.3 1620 126 91.3 93 92.1
1627 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the sample by contemporary administrative region Emilia Romagna 41 29.7 26 25.7
Liguria 33 23.9 25 24.8 Lombardy 27 19.6 19 18.8
Piedmont and Aosta Valley 21 15.2 17 16.8 Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino 16
11.6 14 13.9 Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the
sample by Italian state (at 1630) Republic of Genoa 29 21.0 21 20.8 Papal State 23
16.7 17 16.8 Duchy of Milan 21 15.2 13 12.9 Duchy of Savoy
20 14.5 16 15.8 Republic of Venice 17 12.3 15 14.9 Duchy of
Parma and Piacenza 9 6.5 3 3.0 Duchy of Mantua 7 5.1 7 6.9
Duchy of Modena 6 4.3 3 3.0 Others 6 4.3 6 5.9
Total 138 100.0 101 100.0
Single series
Communities
Aggregate, n Percentage of total Aggregate, n Percentage of total Distribution of the sample by series starting date Series starting before:
1550 3 2.2 3 3.0 1600 78 56.5 52 51.5
1610 104 75.4 74 73.3 1620 126 91.3 93 92.1
1627 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the sample by contemporary administrative region Emilia Romagna 41 29.7 26 25.7
Liguria 33 23.9 25 24.8 Lombardy 27 19.6 19 18.8
Piedmont and Aosta Valley 21 15.2 17 16.8 Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino 16
11.6 14 13.9 Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the
sample by Italian state (at 1630) Republic of Genoa 29 21.0 21 20.8 Papal State 23
16.7 17 16.8 Duchy of Milan 21 15.2 13 12.9 Duchy of Savoy
20 14.5 16 15.8 Republic of Venice 17 12.3 15 14.9 Duchy of
Parma and Piacenza 9 6.5 3 3.0 Duchy of Mantua 7 5.1 7 6.9
Duchy of Modena 6 4.3 3 3.0 Others 6 4.3 6 5.9
Total 138 100.0 101 100.0
The database is the largest collection of information about burials existing for early modern Italy. In 1624–1628, the average
yearly number of deaths in the included villages, towns, and cities was ∼16.800. Around 1600, the population of the area was ∼6.5 million. Thus, hypothesizing a mortality
rate of 30–35 per thousand in normal years, the database accounts for 7.4–8.6 per cent of all deaths.
A limited use will be made of a second
database, containing information about mortality rates. This information comes from a variety of sources and is mostly related to cities, which makes it inadequate to
measure territorial pervasiveness. This database, still being expanded, here is used only to provide examples and the data chartered in figure 2.
2.3 Mortality and territorial pervasiveness
The two large-scale epidemics suffered by Italy were characterized by very high mortality rates compared with those of the sixteenth century (Alfani 2010a), or to
those affecting contemporary Europe. If a typical English epidemic had mortality rates of 100–120 per thousand (Slack 1985, p. 66), in Italy the most common was 300–400, with peaks
of 500–600 per thousand. For example, the mortality rate was 330 per thousand in Venice, 443 in Piacenza and 615 per thousand in Verona in 1629–1630, and 490 in Genoa and 500 per
thousand in Naples in 1656–1657. The situation could vary considerably from one city to another. For example, Tuscan cities in 1629–1630 were “lightly” affected, with a mortality
rate in Florence of 137 per thousand. In Rome in 1656–1657, sanitary authorities proved very efficient at limiting the spread of plague; consequently the mortality rate was just 80
per thousand (Sonnino 2006). While higher estimates exist (187 per thousand: Cipolla 1981), Rome was certainly struck less badly than other communities of Latium, where mortality rates
equalled 300–400 per thousand, with peaks around 600 per thousand (Ago and Parmeggiani 1990; Sonnino et al. 1999). Such variability is visible in figure 2.
The figure shows the prevalence in Italy of very high mortality rates, well above those most common across Europe. Strikingly, rural mortality was not inferior
to the urban. In 1629–1630, it equalled 400 per thousand in Nonantola near Modena; 322 and 689 per thousand, respectively, in the villages of Madregolo and Cella near Parma; and 522
per thousand in Cerea near Verona (Ferrarese 2000; Manfredini et al. 2002; Alfani and Cohn 2007). Extreme plague mortality rates in the countryside are not unheard of.9 What is specific to
the Italian epidemics is that there was a match between rural and urban communities not only in mortality rates but also in the probability of a community being infected. This led
to exceptional territorial pervasiveness, with plague spreading even to the smallest country village. Isolation still offered some protection, but very few places escaped contagion
entirely.
To illustrate this point, the argument will be set in the shape of an experiment, using the new database of time series of burials. Covering all
of northern Italy, it allows to evaluate the territorial pervasiveness of the 1630 epidemic and even provides a control group: the Ligurian communities, where reportedly plague did
not spread.
To check which communities were affected, a method developed by Del Panta and Livi Bacci (1977) has been used. They defined a mortality crisis as a
short-term perturbation of mortality that reduces the dimension of the generations so much that they are unable to reproduce themselves entirely even making full use of their
potential for recovery. A mortality crisis, then, happens when one generation is prevented from generating another at least equal in size, even when the rise in fertility and
nuptiality that always follows a peak of deaths is taken into account.
A 50-per cent rise in deaths is enough to prevent the generation born in the year
of the crisis from fully reproducing. This would be a “small” crisis. A 300 per cent rise in deaths could not be counter-balanced by the recovery potential of all of the generations
under the age of 15 at the moment of the crisis. This would be a “great” crisis. In figure 3, the number of deaths recorded for 1629 and 1630 has been compared with the “normal”
mortality of previous years.10 All the points coloured from grey to black experienced a crisis: in the case of the black ones, a particularly great crisis with 10 times or more the normal
mortality. The database for northern Italy has been complemented with 26 time series related to Tuscany.
Figure 3.![Increases
in deaths in Northern Italy and Tuscany during the 1629–1630 plague.]()
Increases in deaths in Northern Italy and Tuscany during the
1629–1630 plague.
Figure 3.![Increases in deaths in Northern Italy and Tuscany during the 1629–1630 plague.]()
Increases in
deaths in Northern Italy and Tuscany during the 1629–1630 plague.
None of the communities of the Po Plain comprised in the database, and in
general none in Lombardy, Veneto, or Emilia Romagna, were spared a mortality crisis. The increase in deaths was particularly severe within a triangle placed at the intersection of
these three regions. In this densely populated area, communication routes were excellent and trade flourishing, a fact that could have helped to spread the disease. From this
central area, increases in deaths decline moving westwards and eastwards. Only in western Piedmont are communities to be found which were spared, or lightly affected, probably due
to the morphology of the land. In this pre-Alpine area, full of rivers and steep hill ranges, particularly effective sanitary cordons could be established, improving the chances of
controlling the contagion.11 The control group, the Ligurian communities, confirms that the method employed is able to capture the occurrence of plague, given that the only communities
experiencing a marked rise in deaths are placed in the territories of Rapallo and Finale, the only areas of the region infected in 1630. The same is true for Tuscany, as it is known
that the southern part of the region, around the city of Siena, was largely spared by plague. The cluster of white dots in north Tuscany is related to Pistoia and its territory,
which were only slightly affected. As in Piedmont, the morphology of this largely Apennine region might have helped to fight the spread of the disease. However, even in those Tuscan
communities that were infected, increases in deaths proved lower than in northern Italy.
As in Rome, sanitary authorities might have helped to contain the
contagion and the most recent literature has re-evaluated the effectiveness of their action, but it is difficult to see how this could fully account for such a marked difference
from other areas whose health boards were equally efficient and well-trained.12 Other factors that might have played a role are the delay with which Tuscany was struck by this
plague wave compared with other parts of northern Italy,13 and the epidemic of typhus that ravaged much of the region in 1629 and decimated the poor, who were the preferred victims of
early modern plague. Consequently, by 1630, typhus had already curtailed that part of the population particularly susceptible to catching and transmitting the plague, which could
have resulted in lower overall mortality rates. However, the case of Tuscany remains, in Cipolla's words, “an epidemiological puzzle” (Cipolla 1981, p. 85).
The white dots in western Piedmont, Liguria, and southern and eastern Tuscany mark well the boundaries of the contagion. Within them, plague territorial
pervasiveness was exceptionally high. The same is true for the second great epidemic (1656–1657), striking central and southern Italy. This plague happened largely outside the area
covered by the database. Only Liguria is included and, as shown by figure 4, all of it, with the exception of Rapallo and Finale, was involved.
Figure 4.![Increases
in deaths in Liguria during the 1656–1657 plague.]()
Increases in deaths in Liguria during the 1656–1657
plague.
Figure 4.![Increases in deaths in Liguria during the 1656–1657 plague.]()
Increases in deaths in Liguria during the 1656–1657
plague.
2.4 Probability of
infection
The information presented graphically can be interpreted quantitatively. Out of ninety-seven communities14, only nine (9 per cent) were
entirely spared by plague during the seventeenth century (table 4), and among them only one city: Biella in the north-west corner of Piedmont, a city well protected by
natural barriers. Using the data to estimate probabilities of infection, in the year 1600, an urban community had a probability of just 0.05 (a 5 per cent chance) of being spared by
plague throughout the century. Rural communities had a higher chance (P = 0.11), but basically these measures confirm the striking capacity of Italian plagues to spread to
the countryside, especially considering that excluding Liguria the probability of being spared was only 0.05 for north Italian cities and 0.07 for rural communities—and this, for a
single epidemic (1629–1630). The estimated probability would be 0.00, if not for a few places spared in western Piedmont.
Table 4.Probability of infection of rural communities in different plague waves, 1600–1699
1629–1630
1629–1630, Liguria excluded
1656–1657, only Liguria
1600–1699, North Italy
Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Overall Spared (n) 3 14 1 4 1 12 1 8 9
Infected (n) 19 61 18 50 2 9 21 67 88 Total
22 75 19 54 3 21 22 75 97 Probability of being spared 0.14
0.19 0.05 0.07 0.33 0.57 0.05 0.11 0.09
1629–1630
1629–1630, Liguria excluded
1656–1657, only Liguria
1600–1699, North Italy
Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Overall Spared (n) 3 14 1 4 1 12 1 8 9
Infected (n) 19 61 18 50 2 9 21 67 88 Total
22 75 19 54 3 21 22 75 97 Probability of being spared 0.14
0.19 0.05 0.07 0.33 0.57 0.05 0.11 0.09
Source: database
Alfani.
Table 4.Probability of infection of rural communities in different plague waves, 1600–1699
1629–1630
1629–1630, Liguria excluded
1656–1657, only Liguria
1600–1699, North Italy
Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Overall Spared (n) 3 14 1 4 1 12 1 8 9
Infected (n) 19 61 18 50 2 9 21 67 88 Total
22 75 19 54 3 21 22 75 97 Probability of being spared 0.14
0.19 0.05 0.07 0.33 0.57 0.05 0.11 0.09
1629–1630
1629–1630, Liguria excluded
1656–1657, only Liguria
1600–1699, North Italy
Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Overall Spared (n) 3 14 1 4 1 12 1 8 9
Infected (n) 19 61 18 50 2 9 21 67 88 Total
22 75 19 54 3 21 22 75 97 Probability of being spared 0.14
0.19 0.05 0.07 0.33 0.57 0.05 0.11 0.09
Source: database
Alfani.
Focusing on the overall sample for 1600–1699 (P = 0.09), the 95 per cent confidence interval (t distribution)
can be estimated as 0.04–0.15. In this period, the probability for any single north Italian community of being spared by plague was extremely low. This situation seems very
different from other parts of Europe, particularly the North-West. A formal test would help in demonstrating this point, but we lack the data necessary to do this
systematically. It is however possible to compare Italy with England by referring to data published by Slack (1985, p. 109). The point estimate of the probability
of a parish in Devon or Exeter being spared from plague during 1565–1666 was 0.44. This is significantly different from the figure for northern Italy (P <
0.01).15 The fact that the period considered is shorter (1600–1657, since after 1657 plague disappeared from Italy) strengthens this finding.
Territorial pervasiveness and mortality rates of the 1656–1657 plague are similar to those found for that of 1629–1630. This is true for Liguria as well
as for the infected areas of the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal State. Here, too, rural communities were struck as well as urban centres. Table 5 shows that the
percentage of communities affected in most terre (rural districts) of the Kingdom of Naples was very high. For example, in the Principato Ultra and Principato
Citra, it was 89.9 and 89.3 per cent, respectively. Territorial pervasiveness decreased in the terre farther from the capital (Naples). This is probably connected
to lower urban density, relative scarcity of communication routes, and consequently, greater isolation of the communities. Institutions and sanitary authorities also played
an important role in controlling the spread of the disease (Fusco 2007). On the whole, however, in the most densely populated areas, the territorial pervasiveness
of this epidemic is comparable to that of 1630, as are the mortality rates in the countryside, sometimes exceeding 800 per thousand (Benedictow 1987 for
Cilento; SIDES 1990 for Lazio, Apulia and Sardinia; Fusco 2007, p. 249 for rural mortality rates). A recent estimate places mortality at 430 per thousand
in the whole Kingdom, much higher than earlier estimates of 200–300 per thousand (Fusco 2009). This may be too high, but it suggests a mortality of at least 300
per thousand, about equal to that found in northern Italy 25 years earlier.
Table 5.Terre (“lands”) infected in the provinces of the Kingdom of Naples
Provinces Percentage of terre infected Total number of terre Principato Ultra 89.9 158 Principato Citra 89.3 242
Terra di Lavoro 61.2 232 Contado di Molise 48.1 108 Capitanata 47.7
86 Basilicata 34.5 119 Abruzzo Citra 35.5 183 Abruzzo Ultra
30.0 223 Terra di Bari 26.9 52 Calabria Citra 16.4 171
Provinces Percentage of terre infected Total number of terre Principato Ultra 89.9 158 Principato Citra 89.3 242
Terra di Lavoro 61.2 232 Contado di Molise 48.1 108 Capitanata 47.7
86 Basilicata 34.5 119 Abruzzo Citra 35.5 183 Abruzzo Ultra
30.0 223 Terra di Bari 26.9 52 Calabria Citra 16.4 171
Note: this table does not include the area surrounding Naples (thoroughly devastated), the provinces of Calabria Ultra (only three
terre infected), and Terra d'Otranto (entirely spared).
Sources: my elaboration from data published by Fusco (2007).
Table 5.Terre (“lands”) infected in the provinces of the Kingdom of Naples
Provinces Percentage of terre infected Total number of terre Principato Ultra 89.9 158 Principato Citra 89.3 242
Terra di Lavoro 61.2 232 Contado di Molise 48.1 108 Capitanata 47.7
86 Basilicata 34.5 119 Abruzzo Citra 35.5 183 Abruzzo Ultra
30.0 223 Terra di Bari 26.9 52 Calabria Citra 16.4 171
Provinces Percentage of terre infected Total number of terre Principato Ultra 89.9 158 Principato Citra 89.3 242
Terra di Lavoro 61.2 232 Contado di Molise 48.1 108 Capitanata 47.7
86 Basilicata 34.5 119 Abruzzo Citra 35.5 183 Abruzzo Ultra
30.0 223 Terra di Bari 26.9 52 Calabria Citra 16.4 171
Note: this table does not include the area surrounding Naples (thoroughly devastated), the provinces of Calabria Ultra (only three
terre infected), and Terra d'Otranto (entirely spared).
Sources: my elaboration from data published by Fusco (2007).
2.5 Demographic
consequences of high territorial pervasiveness
The fact that the countryside was depopulated similarly to the urban areas was a serious hindrance to recovery. When mortality is so high, as to prevent the
local demographic forces from recovering by themselves, the only way to prevent a long-term population decline is immigration. This is what happened in northern Europe, serious and
frequent waves of plague notwithstanding, and this was also the Italian experience during the sixteenth century (Alfani 2010a). In the seventeenth, though, the exceptional territorial
pervasiveness of epidemics all but cancelled the demographic surplus of the countryside, destroying any chance of quick recovery.16 In Venice, where 46,500 perished
in 1630 from a population of around 141,000, it took 70–80 years to fully recover. In Naples, where in 1656 about 150,000 died, the pre-plague level of around 300,000 inhabitants
was recovered only in the late 1730s or early 1740s (Del Panta 1980, pp. 162–3, 168).
This slow recovery had primarily demographic reasons:
the epidemics covered an area so large and densely inhabited that it can be treated as a closed population. In other words, no relevant
demographic help could come from the outside;
within this area, plague territorial pervasiveness meant the destruction of the potential for urban
recovery by curbing the traditional demographic exchanges with the countryside;
the overall mortality rates were so high that a quick and
generalized recovery would have been impossible even in the presence of significant migration influxes.
2.6 The disappearance of plague and the agent of the disease
The almost perfect territorial integration of the two main plague waves is an interesting phenomenon. While the areas spared in 1630 could attribute their
favourable situation to effective sanitary cordons or to pure luck, in 1656 the territorial limits of the epidemic match too closely those of the earlier plague for this to be
casual. While for central Italy, where the epidemic stopped in the middle of Abruzzo and spared Tuscany, sanitary authorities trained by the earlier wave could have played an
important role, it is difficult to argue the same for Liguria, where the disease penetrated the boundaries of the Republic, sanitary cordons notwithstanding, and spared only the
area around Rapallo (Finale was not under Genoese rule).
It is tempting to explain the territorial integration of the epidemics with the combination of
two factors: 1. the exceptional territorial pervasiveness of seventeenth-century Italian plague, which could have provided widespread active immunization; 2. selection caused by
extreme mortality rates and virulence. This draws the picture of a new strain of an old disease that kills too many people over too large areas in too short a time for its own
good—thus laying the foundations for its own disappearance. Such a hypothesis differs from the traditional one, which implied mutual adaptation between humans and the plague
pathogen (Hirst
1953; McNeill 1976), and which has failed to fully convince (Slack 1981). Spontaneous mutation of the pathogen could indeed have played a role, but a very different one,
increasing and not reducing the damage done by pathogen to host.
Exceptionally high mortality rates and pervasiveness may not be enough to imply that new
strains of plague were at work. However, if this implication is accepted, a further hypothesis can be proposed: that new, extremely dangerous strains of plague appeared somewhere in
central or southern Europe in the early seventeenth century spread across the continent and favoured, in the medium term, the disappearance of endemic plague. Although further
research is needed, one thing seems clear: the knowledge recently acquired about transformations over time of plague no longer allows thinking of it as a “uniform”
disease.17 The possibility of different strains of plague competing over time and space must be given full consideration. This does not imply refuting all factors
suggested by previous scholarship, but simply adding a player, and possibly a key one, in a complex game with many other participants.
This reconstruction
has a weak point in its assumptions about immunization. Firstly, given the 25-year period separating the two Italian plague waves, this would be a very long-lasting, and
consequently not very probable, mass immunization. Secondly, the possibility of human beings acquiring immunization from medieval and early modern plague is by no means certain,
given that no lasting immunization can be acquired from Yersinia pestis, the agent responsible for the so-called third pandemic in the nineteenth century as well as for the
most recent plague outbreaks (Manson-Bahr and Bell 1987, p. 591). Maybe we should focus on selection caused by widespread over-mortality as the main factor or on complex interaction of
selection and immunization processes, but further interdisciplinary research is needed.
Something more needs to be said about the role of institutions and
economic conditions. As already noted, the action of health authorities does not explain either why Tuscany was less affected than northern Italy in 1630, or why the 1656–1657
plague spared precisely the areas affected by the earlier epidemic. One could hypothesize that poor institutions are the reason why Italy was affected more severely than north-west
Europe, but this hypothesis should be rejected because Italian anti-plague institutions were the best in the continent. The first permanent health boards were introduced in Italian
cities during the fifteenth century and copied by Spain and France within few decades (Cipolla 1976). England, however, “was unlike many other European countries in having no
public precautions against plague at all before 1518” and at the beginning of the seventeenth century was still intent on importing institutions that were common in Mediterranean
Europe (Slack
1985, pp. 201–226). This is also the case for plague tracts, which in north-western Europe were mostly translations or strongly inspired by Italian or French originals, while in
Italy we find, during the sixteenth century, an unparalleled boom in the publication of new works. Many of these included sections on “governing the plague,” a topic not covered by
earlier tracts (Cohn 2009). While possibly in other areas of north-western Europe, for example the Low Countries, health institutions were similar to those in Italy, there is no
reason to believe that they were better. The same is true for hygienic conditions and similar factors.
Regarding overall economic conditions, while Italy
before the seventeenth-century epidemics was probably overpopulated as testified to by recurrent famines, it was still one of the wealthiest areas of Europe and had a solid economy
(Sella 1997;
Alfani 2013).
Section 3 suggests that plague played a fundamental role in changing this situation, although by no means does this allow us to state that the high incidence of plague in Italy is
explained by pre-epidemic economic conditions.
Overall, it seems that plague should be considered a mostly exogenous factor, also because at the beginning
of the seventeenth century, it was probably no longer endemic in Italy. When plagues did occur in the peninsula, they were re-infections coming from other areas of Europe or the
Mediterranean. We might even assume that Italian health institutions had been so successful as to drive the disease from the peninsula. When it came back, striking areas that in
some cases had been plague-free for fifty years or more, it might have been favoured by finding a population the majority of whom had never been in contact with the plague
pathogen.
3. Plague and the decline of
Italy: hypotheses and research agenda
In seventeenth-century Italy, plague caused a demographic catastrophe that took many decades to recover. The long-lasting decline in population had
demographic, and more specifically epidemic, reasons and was neither the consequence of economic difficulties nor of the malgoverno (bad government) of foreign dominators.
Statements such as Helleiner's, “[Even without the plagues] the secular stagnation of the Italian economy in the period under review would probably have militated against
demographic expansion,” betray the conviction that demographic decline was a consequence of economic decline (Helleiner 1967, p. 50).
The new data
discussed here, combined with the most recent reconstruction of demographic trends in the century preceding the epidemics (Alfani 2013), suggest to reconsider this statement. Plague was the main
cause of demographic decline in seventeenth-century Italy. More generally, by comparing the demographic trends of different areas of Western Europe (table 6) with plague incidence (table
2), there
is clearly a strong inverse relation. Mortality, and not only economic or commercial growth, is a key factor explaining the changing demographic weight of different parts of the
continent.
Table 6.Demographic growth in Italy and Europe, 1600–1700 (millions of people)
Italy: North Italy: Centre Italy: South Italy: Isles Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 6.5 2.2 3.3 1.5 6.8 16.2 18.5 1.5 4.5
1700 6.7 2.1 3.3 1.5 7.4 14.1 21.5 2.0 5.5 Change
(%) +3 −4.5 - - +9 −13 +16 +33 +22
Italy: North Italy: Centre Italy: South Italy: Isles Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 6.5 2.2 3.3 1.5 6.8 16.2 18.5 1.5 4.5
1700 6.7 2.1 3.3 1.5 7.4 14.1 21.5 2.0 5.5 Change
(%) +3 −4.5 - - +9 −13 +16 +33 +22
Sources:Sonnino (1996) for
Italy and Malanima (2009) for other European countries.
Table 6.Demographic growth in Italy and Europe, 1600–1700 (millions of people)
Italy: North Italy: Centre Italy: South Italy: Isles Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 6.5 2.2 3.3 1.5 6.8 16.2 18.5 1.5 4.5
1700 6.7 2.1 3.3 1.5 7.4 14.1 21.5 2.0 5.5 Change
(%) +3 −4.5 - - +9 −13 +16 +33 +22
Italy: North Italy: Centre Italy: South Italy: Isles Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 6.5 2.2 3.3 1.5 6.8 16.2 18.5 1.5 4.5
1700 6.7 2.1 3.3 1.5 7.4 14.1 21.5 2.0 5.5 Change
(%) +3 −4.5 - - +9 −13 +16 +33 +22
Sources:Sonnino (1996) for
Italy and Malanima (2009) for other European countries.
During the seventeenth century, only Germany performed worse than Italy, with a 13-per cent decline in population due at least
as much to the Thirty Years' War as to plague. The Italian case is all the more striking because overall the great seventeenth-century wars affected it lightly. If northern
Italy, struck by plague in 1629–1630, had recovered its lost population by 1680 or 1690, the centre and the south were still showing the signs of the 1656–1657 epidemic by
1700. This poor performance is not due to scarce demographic dynamism. After the epidemics, marriages and births peaked as normal after a severe mortality crisis, and
population grew at a steady pace (in northern Italy after 1630, over 5 per thousand yearly). However, the lack of rural surplus population, coupled with the wide area
covered by the plagues, prevented the kind of quick recovery that, in northern Europe, was being accomplished by means of steady population movements from countryside to
cities. In England or the Netherlands, urban population was booming despite frequent plagues (table 7).
Table 7.Urbanization rates in Italy and Europe, 1600–1700
Italy: Centre–North Italy: South Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 14.4 14.9 11.4 4.1 5.9 24.3 5.8 1700
13.0 12.2 9 4.8 9.2 33.6 13.3 Change −9.7% −18.1% −21.1%
+17.1% +55.9% +38.3% +129.3%
Italy: Centre–North Italy: South Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 14.4 14.9 11.4 4.1 5.9 24.3 5.8 1700
13.0 12.2 9 4.8 9.2 33.6 13.3 Change −9.7% −18.1% −21.1%
+17.1% +55.9% +38.3% +129.3%
Note: rates refer to cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants.
Sources:Malanima (2005, p. 106) for North Italy; De Vries
(1984, p. 39) for other areas.
Table 7.Urbanization rates in Italy and Europe, 1600–1700
Italy: Centre–North Italy: South Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 14.4 14.9 11.4 4.1 5.9 24.3 5.8 1700
13.0 12.2 9 4.8 9.2 33.6 13.3 Change −9.7% −18.1% −21.1%
+17.1% +55.9% +38.3% +129.3%
Italy: Centre–North Italy: South Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 14.4 14.9 11.4 4.1 5.9 24.3 5.8 1700
13.0 12.2 9 4.8 9.2 33.6 13.3 Change −9.7% −18.1% −21.1%
+17.1% +55.9% +38.3% +129.3%
Note: rates refer to cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants.
Sources:Malanima (2005, p. 106) for North Italy; De Vries
(1984, p. 39) for other areas.
Plagues played a key role in reducing Italian urbanization rates. Apart from eliminating a large share of the population, they
acted as a “system shock” for Italian economies, precipitating a mainly urban crisis that resulted in a long-term decline in urbanization rates (Alfani 2010a).18 While
this article does not aim to analyse in detail the economic consequences of the Italian epidemics, some points need to be made. From a macro perspective, the sharp decline
in population favoured the decline in power and international influence of the Italian states. This process had been underway since the Italian Wars (1494–1559) and also had
political and institutional reasons (Alfani 2013). However, only during the seventeenth century did those Italian states not under “foreign” rule lose most of their residual
capacity for autonomous military action, in its turn increasingly dependent on the fiscal capacity of the State (Bonney1999; Pezzolo 2012). The
epidemics, by curbing total product, also reduced the possibility of the Italian states to compete in the European power struggles. The rise of Piedmont, ruled by the House
of Savoy, as the main military power in Italy may be linked to the fact that it was the northern Italian state that suffered less from the plague.
Loss of military and diplomatic power was not without consequence for the conditions of international trade. It has been suggested that easy access to
the Atlantic routes and the institutions created (in non-absolutist countries) to exploit the opportunities offered by the New World fuelled the First Great Divergence
(Acemoglu
et al. 2005). Epidemiological factors strengthened this process and, in the case of leading Mediterranean areas such as Italy, hindered any residual possibility
of profiting from an increase in world trade. Given that plague struck in a lighter way those countries credited with developing the best institutions, it is possible that
part of the impact on long-term growth attributed by some to institutions is actually due to epidemiological factors.
The decline in total product
has been often used to suggest that the seventeenth-century epidemics caused serious damage to the Italian economies. In the case of a fundamental sector, the wool industry,
in most northern Italian cities, the levels of production following the 1630 plague were far from those of the beginning of the century. In Lombardy, the production of
woollen cloths had declined from an yearly average of 15,000 to ∼3,000 in 1640 in Milan and from 8–10,000 to ∼400 in 1650 in Como; in Cremona the 187 members of the Arte
della Lana to be counted in 1615 had shrunk to 23 by 1648; in Monza the 20 wool enterprises present in the city in 1620 had entirely disappeared by 1640 (Cipolla
1959, pp. 605–607; Sella 1959, p. 547). In Veneto, the plague fostered the complete disappearance of the production of woollen cloths in Verona and caused lasting
damage to that of Treviso and Bassano (Panciera 1996, pp. 15, 22). When information is scattered in time, it is difficult to distinguish the specific impact of the plague on a
sector that was facing increasing international competition. However, when we can measure yearly production (figure 5), we find that not only did production greatly decrease in
the plague years, but after the crisis the recovery was difficult, slow and overall the production trend seems to have moved to a definitely lower level.
Figure 5.![Yearly
production of wool and linen cloths in Venice and Florence, 1620–1645 (indexes; value 100 equals to average yearly production in 1620–1628). Sources: Panciera (1996, pp. 42–43) for
Venice; Romano (1952, pp. 511–512) for Florence.]()
Yearly production of wool and linen cloths in Venice and
Florence, 1620–1645 (indexes; value 100 equals to average yearly production in 1620–1628). Sources: Panciera (1996, pp. 42–43) for Venice; Romano (1952, pp. 511–512) for
Florence.
Figure 5.![Yearly production of wool and linen cloths in Venice and Florence, 1620–1645 (indexes; value 100 equals to average yearly production in 1620–1628).
Sources: Panciera (1996, pp. 42–43) for Venice; Romano (1952, pp. 511–512) for Florence.]()
Yearly production of
wool and linen cloths in Venice and Florence, 1620–1645 (indexes; value 100 equals to average yearly production in 1620–1628). Sources: Panciera (1996, pp. 42–43) for
Venice; Romano
(1952, pp. 511–512) for Florence.
Plague affected also other sectors, such as linen (figure 5) and silk. In Milan, the production
of silk drapes fell by ∼80 per cent from 1606 to 1636, while in Venice this sector, flourishing in pre-plague years, had to face its first crisis ever (Cipolla 1959, p. 606; Panciera 2006, p.
191). Generally, the damage suffered by silk production was not long-lasting, but the example of Milan reinforces the idea that at the local level plague proved able to determine a
deep structural crisis and a displacement effect for entire sectors, and not only the textile industry. In Milan, also the building sector suffered greatly, as in 1656 the
Collegio degli Ingegneri ed Architetti reported that house values were still 25 per cent lower compared with pre-plague years (Sella 2010, p. 127). Similarly, a
lasting decline of house rents, in the 25–35 per cent range, followed the epidemic (Barbot 2008, pp. 142–151).
Traditional historiography also
mentioned a rise in wages, due to the scarcity of workforce, as a negative consequence of the plague. This would have made Italian products less appealing on the European markets at
a time when international competition was on the rise, contributing to explain the difficult recovery of many industries (Cipolla 1993, pp. 248–249). However, an increase in wages is not per
se detrimental to the economy. More generally, the idea that plague was damaging to the economy has been challenged on the grounds that what should be considered is per-capita, and
not total, product. In this view, the standards of living of the survivors improved so that plague might have proved beneficial in the medium–long term (Malanima 2002, p. 345; Malanima and Capasso
2007, p. 29). This is a strong argument, which is widespread in recent historiography about the economic consequences of epidemics in Europe (Clark 2007, pp. 99–102; Pamuk 2007; Voigtländer and Voth
2012). Indeed, the great Italian epidemics of the seventeenth century helped to balance population and resources (Alfani 2010a, b, 2013). However, there is still much to say about the macro-economic
consequences of these demographic catastrophes. All factors considered, it seems probable that the seventeenth-century plagues were detrimental to the Italian economies. Some lines
for future enquiry can be mentioned.
First and foremost, the fact that plague did not strike all of Europe in the same way implies that any evaluation of
the impact of the disease across the continent should take into account as much the absolute damage, as the relative. The fact that the Italian populations took 70–80 years to
recover would not be so relevant, if other parts of Europe, in the meantime, had not moved on. Furthermore, in an age of mercantilism, internal aggregate demand could have been of
key importance in preventing Italian manufactures from reaching the volume of product necessary to compete effectively, both abroad and—later—in domestic markets. By curbing
aggregate demand, the plagues could have determined a decline in production levels that would prove impossible to restore even after demographic recovery. This is because the
epidemics struck at the worst possible moment: Italian economies were forced to slow down while others accelerated. In the short- and medium-term, the increase in per-capita
resources might well have prevented a decline in economic welfare, but in the long term, Italy was forced on a path which led it to become, by the eighteenth century, an economic
backwater.
A third point is the damage done to human capital. While early modern European plague was mainly a disease of the poor and unskilled (then,
replaceable), mortality rates of the order of 300–500 per thousand could not be reached without the disease becoming again, at least to a degree, a universal killer. Many studies
suggest a shortage of skills in post-plague Italian economies, a fact that further differentiates the seventeenth from the sixteenth century plagues (Pullan 1964; Andreozzi 2010; Alfani 2013). More generally, even if
pre-industrial societies could easily mend after a mortality crisis, the possible existence of thresholds should be recognized which, when surpassed, made it difficult to provide
effective answers.
4. Conclusions
The data presented here have shown that plague affected unevenly seventeenth-century Europe. The use of a new database has made it possible to postulate that
Italian plagues had dire consequences, because of their extreme mortality rates and territorial pervasiveness. The latter variable has been shown to be key in determining both the
dimension of the demographic damage caused by plague, and the severity of its consequences. When plague proved able to spread pervasively to the countryside as well as to the
cities, the possibility of a quick recovery of the urban populations was curtailed. The article also suggested that plague greatly contributed to the relative economic decline of
Italy and set an agenda for investigating fully the economic consequences of the epidemics.
As a final remark, this study of seventeenth-century plagues
has much to offer also to scholarship focused on earlier periods. One lesson from the early modern age is that one should be wary of considering plague a “great equalizer.” Instead,
it distributed around Europe advantages and disadvantages, conditioning the demographic, political-institutional, and economic performance of different regions in ways which are
still largely unknown.
Acknowledgements
I thank Maristella Botticini, Bruce Campbell, Gregory Clark, Samuel K. Cohn, Paolo Malanima, Richard Smith, Hans-Joachim Voth, seminar participants at
Bocconi University, Centre Roland Mousnier—Université Sorbonne, University of Florence, INED, as well as participants at the 2010 Economic History Society Annual Conference and the
2012 European Population Conference for helpful comments. I am very grateful to Lorenzo Del Panta for providing the time series of burials for Tuscany, to Alessio Fornasin and
Claudio Lorenzini for providing some of the time series for Friuli, to Matteo Di Tullio for helping to collect the time series for the area around Finale, and to Vicente Pérez
Moreda and Ronald Rommes for supplying crucial information about plague in Spain and the Dutch Republic, respectively. This article was partly written during my stay at the
Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, which proved an excellent and friendly research environment. I am grateful to the Wellcome Trust for generously
funding my stay in Cambridge.
References
Acemoglu D.,
Johnson S., Robinson J.. The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth, American Economic Review, 2005, vol. 95 (pg. 546-79)Ago
R., Parmeggiani A.. SIDESLa peste del 1656–57 nel Lazio, Temi di demografia storica italiana, 1990BolognaClueb(pg. 596-611)Alfani G.. Cavaciocchi S.. Pestilenze e «crisi di sistema» in Italia tra XVI e
XVII secolo. Perturbazioni di breve periodo o cause di declino economico?, Le interazioni fra economia e ambiente biologico, 2010aFlorenceFlorence University Press(pg. 223-47)Alfani G.. Climate,
population and famine in Northern Italy: general tendencies and Malthusian crisis, ca. 1450–1800, Annales de Démographie Historique, 2010b, vol. 2 (pg. 23-53)Alfani G.. The effects of plague on the
distribution of property: Ivrea, Northern Italy 1630, Population Studies, 2010c, vol. 64 (pg. 1-15)Alfani
G.. , Calamities and the Economy in Renaissance Italy: The Grand Tour of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 2013BasingstokePalgraveAlfani G.,
Cohn S.K.. Nonantola 1630. Anatomia di una pestilenza e
meccanismi del contagio, Popolazione e Storia, 2007, vol. 2 (pg. 99-138)Andreozzi D.. Cavaciocchi S.. Ritratto lacrimevole delle miserie e calamità humane. Crisi di mortalità e standard di vita nel Cremonese del
XVII secolo, Le interazioni fra economia e ambiente biologico, 2010FlorenceFlorence University Press(pg. 575-84)Appleby A.B.. The
disappearance of plague: a continuing puzzle, Economic History Review, 1980, vol. 33 (pg. 161-73)Arnould M.A..
, Mortalité et épidemies sous l'Ancien Régime dans le Hainaut et quelques régions limitrophes. Actes de colloque international de démographie
historique, 1965Liege-Paris: Université de Liège(pg. 465-81)Barbot M.. , Le architetture della vita
quotidiana, 2008VeniceMarsilioBenedictow O.J.. Morbidity in historical plague epidemics, Population Studies, 1987, vol. 41
(pg. 401-31)Bennassar B.. , Recherches sur les grandes épidémies dans le nord de l'Espagne à la fin du
XVIe siècle, 1969ParisEHESSBiraben J.N.. , Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays Européens et Méditerranées, 1975ParisMoutonBiraben J.N., Blum A.. , Géographie et
intensité des crises. Histoire de la population française, 1988ParisPUF(pg. 192-219) vol. IIBonney R..
, The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c.1200–1815, 1999OxfordOxford University PressBosker M.,
Brakman S., Garretsen H., De Jong H., Schramm M.. Ports, plagues and politics: explaining Italian city growth 1300–1861,
European Review of Economic History, 2008, vol. 12 (pg. 97-131)Bradley L.. The most famous of all English plagues: a detailed analysis of the plague at
Eyam 1665–6, The Plague Reconsidered, 1977CambridgeHourdsprint(pg. 63-94)Campbell B.M.S.. Nature as historical
protagonist: environment and society in pre-industrial England, Economic History Review, 2010a, vol. 63 (pg. 281-314)Campbell B.M.S.. Cavaciocchi S.. Cause and effect? Physical shocks and biological hazards, Le interazioni fra
economia e ambiente biologico nell'Europa preindustriale, 2010bFlorenceFlorence University
Press(pg. 13-32)Cipolla C.M..
Il declino economico dell'Italia, Storia dell'economia italiana, 1959TorinoEinaudi(pg. 605-23)Cipolla C.M.. , Publich
Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance, 1976CambridgeCambridge University
PressCipolla C.M..
, Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Italy, 1981MadisonUniversity of Winsconsin PressCipolla C.M.. , Before the
Industrial Revolution, 19933rd edLondonTaylor and FrancisClark G.. , A Farewell to
Alms, 2007PrincetonPrinceton University PressCohn S.K.. After the Black Death: labour
legislation and attitudes towards labour in late-medieval Western Europe, Economic History Review, 2007, vol. 60 (pg. 486-512)Cohn S.K.. , Cultures of Plague. Medical Thought
at the End of the Renaissance, 2009OxfordOxford University PressCohn S.K., Alfani G.. Households and plague in early modern Italy, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2007, vol. 38 (pg. 177-205)Del Panta L..
, Le epidemie nella storia demografica italiana, 1980TorinoLoescherDel Panta L.. Per
orientarsi nel recente dibattito sull'eziologia della ‘peste’: alcune indicazioni bibliografiche e un tentativo di riflessione, Popolazione e
Storia, 2007, vol. 2 (pg. 139-49)
Эта статья сравнивает влияние чумы по всей Европе в течение семнадцатого века. Это показывает, что заболевание затронуло Южная Европа намного тяжело, чем север. Италия была безусловно, в худшем случае поражена. Использование новой базы данных, статья представляет эпидемиологическую переменную, которая не была Рассматривается в литературе: территориальная распространенность заражения. Эта переменная гораздо важнее, чем местные показатели смертности в учете различных региональных Влияние чумы. Эпидемии, а не экономические трудности, породили тяжелый демографический кризис в Италии в течение семнадцатого века. Чума вызвала шок экономики Итальянский полуостров, который мог бы быть ключом к началу его относительного снижения по сравнению с развивающимися странами Северной Европы.
Введение
В последние годы произошло возрождение интереса к чумы. В настоящее время известно, что не все средневековые и ранние современные чумы разделили одинаковую
Характеристики. Территориальная распространяемость определила не только демографические последствия чумы, но и его политико-институциональные и экономические последствия.
Пострельная популяция не смогла быстро восстановиться, поэтому эпидемии имели долгосрочные эффекты с точки зрения общего выработки уровня и фискальной мощности страны. Эта статья утверждает
То, что сила эпидемий, влияющих на Италию семнадцатого века, беспрецедентная в других странах Европы, является основным фактором в отношении относительного снижения итальянских государств в этот период.
Раздел 1 обеспечивает обзор европейских бедствий в течение семнадцатого века. Раздел 2 сосредоточен на Италии и на людях 1629-1630 и 1656-1657 гг. Раздел 3 Формирует
Гипотезы об их демографических и макроэкономических последствиях и предлагают повестку дня для будущих исследований. Помимо черной смерти 1347-1350, исследования единой чумы, обычно ограничивались небольшими районами, иногда достигая национального масштаба, но
Неспособность предоставить европейскую перспективу. 2 для поздних средневековых и ранних современных волн основным источником все еще база данных Biraben. На основании коллекций анлаговок и хроники,
База данных перечисляет населенные пункты, пострадавшие от заболевания, годиться к году, через континент ( Biraben 1975 , Vol. Я, с. 363-449). Бирабен стремился реконструировать хронологию чумы
Волны, определяющие худшие эпизоды, задача, которую он совершил уместно. Тем не менее, его база данных сыграла важную роль в установлении идеи о том, что общая чума была эгалитарией
Убийца: поразительно, теперь одна часть Европы, теперь другая, но в долгосрочной перспективе, нанесении аналогичного урона на разных областях. правильное использование Бирабена
Данные состоит в том, чтобы определить лучевые волны как краткосрочное увеличение количества пострадавших мест. Превратился в количественные меры, такие как те, которые представлены в таблице1, however, they may prove
misleading. In particular, they suggest the following: in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, north-western Europe (including
France) was struck by plague at least as badly as south-western and central Europe; plague struck the continent about as badly during the
sixteenth century as in the first part of the seventeenth (up until around 1670–1680); during the second half of the seventeenth century, plague
began to retreat from Europe, albeit with a different chronology according to the area considered. During the eighteenth century, epidemics of plague became rare and the area
affected more limited. Number and time distribution of plague outbreaks in Western Europe, 1500–1749 Note: own elaboration from data published in Biraben (1975, pp. 363–374) Number and time distribution of plague outbreaks in Western Europe, 1500–1749 Note: own elaboration from data published in Biraben (1975, pp. 363–374) Эти выводы являются частью принятой мудрости о чуме. Эта статья предлагает глубокую ревизию первого
заключение. Хотя во-вторых, и третий здесь не будет оценена, необходима краткое обсуждение. Что касается второго, для Франции Бирабен перечислены четыре «сильные волны»
чумы в течение шестнадцатого века (два из которых через 1550) и только один на семнадцатое (эпидемия также влияет на Италию в 1629-1630 гг.). Для северо-западной Европы
В целом, в шестнадцатом веке сильные волны поднимаются до пяти и в семнадцатом до двух ( Biraben 1975 , с. 119, 125). Этот вывод, вероятно, правильный; тем не менее,
Это может быть вводит в заблуждение. Например, в Италии, например, эпидемии чума, безусловно, были более распространены в шестнадцатом веке, чем в семнадцатом, но эти эпизоды были намного больше
Ограничено, чем катастрофические чумы 1629-1630 и 1656-1657. Последнее было воздействие намного больше, чем все чумы шестнадцатого века, взятые вместе ( Alfani 2010A ,
2013 ).
Можно нарисовать общие указания: частота серьезных возмущений в период не всегда является хорошим прокси для интенсивности чумы. Третий вывод,
Об отступлении чумы из Европы, несомненно, верно. Предложено много объяснений этого еще таинственно таинственного процесса: взаимная адаптация человека и патогена;
улучшения в санитарии и гигиене; Лучший контроль над эпидемиями; Вариации населения векторов заболевания (крыс или другой)(McNeill 1976; Appleby 1980;
Del
Panta 1980; Slack 1985; Livi Bacci 1998). Lastly, climate: a factor mentioned by some early authors, which has recently been re-proposed as a key variable to
understanding medieval and early modern epidemics (Woehlkens 1954, pp. 139–148; Biraben 1975, pp. 134–139; recently Campbell 2010a , B ). То
Новые данные, представленные в следующем разделе, также имеют отношение к этой дискуссии. Через много лет база данных Biraben неизбежно требует обновления. Вместо,
Он был использован для целей, которые хорошо проходят за пределами оригинальных. Примером является попытка Дункана и Скотта для изучения «широкомасштабной динамики метапопуляции» исключительно на основе
этой информации. Их вывод, что Франция была «Фокусом и эпицентром для чумы в Европе со времен черной смерти до 1670 года» ( Дункан и
Скотт 2004 , с. 286) почти неверно ошибается из-за чрезмерного представления Франции в базе данных Бирабена. В целом нет никаких работ, использующих данные Biraben
Обнаружен неравномерный способ, в котором чума поразила Европу. Это связано с тем, что территориальная распространяемость каждой эпидемии не может быть оценена правильно, используя «частоты»
Данные, изначально означали просто воссоздать хронологию люм. показать, что семнадцатое века поражена поражением отдельных областей
Иначе эта статья ориентирована на Западную Европу, театр сдвига баланса экономической власти от Средиземного моря на севере. Интересно, во время
Век, самые быстрые районы были менее затронуты чумой. Анализ использует самые последние исследования, связанные с каждой областью, и для Италии, интеграции
Выводы из новой базы данных (см. Раздел 2). Тем не менее, качество доступной информации даже не по всей Европе, и ни в одной области не является информацией как точной, как это
Предоставляется этой статьей для Италии. можно подумать, что лучший способ сравнить интенсивность чумы в разных областях в течение данного периода
Сравните уровень смертности. Однако в течение семнадцатого века большинство регионов Европы были поражены более чем одной чумой волной (Италия, где явные волны не перекрывались,
является наиболее заметным исключением). Скорость смертности каждой одиночной волны не может быть суммирована, поскольку размер опорной популяции изменяется от одной волны в другую. Следовательно,
Таблица
Plague intensity in Western Europe during seventeenth century aSouth-West Germany including Rhineland, Alsace, and part of Switzerland. bThe estimate for Spain includes the 1599 epidemic, which accounts for about half the
victims. Sources: author's elaborations for
North Italy; Fusco (2007, 2009) for the Kingdom of Naples; author's elaborations for Europe, based on the literature cited in this article. Plague intensity in Western Europe during seventeenth century aSouth-West Germany including Rhineland, Alsace, and part of Switzerland. bThe estimate for Spain includes the 1599 epidemic, which accounts for about half the
victims. Sources: author's elaborations for
North Italy; Fusco (2007, 2009) for the Kingdom of Naples; author's elaborations for Europe, based on the literature cited in this article. If we accept the higher estimates provided for northern Italy and the Kingdom of Naples and consider that the lower estimate of
around 30 per cent provided for the latter seems to be a reasonable estimate for central Italy, then no other area of Western Europe came near to the overall losses suffered
by the peninsula.3 The closest is southern Germany, with between two-thirds and one-half of the losses in Italy. England and France sustained only one-third or
one-fourth. Given the high population density of the peninsula, the difference in the total number of plague victims is equally great: ∼450,000 for England, compared with
two million for northern Italy.4 These figures are even more striking, considering that in Italy they relate to a single plague wave, whilst
elsewhere they are the cumulative effects of many epidemics. Overall, they tell a different story from that indicated by Biraben's data. The fact that plagues became more
frequent in north-western Europe during the first half of the seventeenth century while in the south their frequency decreased (table 1) does not go hand in
hand with changes in plague intensity. Instead, the areas of Europe where plague caused more victims were those where plague waves became less frequent. The main reason why Biraben's data do not allow to evaluate correctly plague intensity is that they do not really inform us of the territorial
pervasiveness of the infection. The occurrence of repeated outbreaks in the main cities of countries like England (see below) does not tell much about the ability of the
disease to spread to rural areas. Territorial pervasiveness can only be measured correctly as the proportion of communities affected over the total, from which probability
of contagion can be deduced. Section 2 provides this information for Italy, but such data are not available for other regions of Europe. Consequently, current literature
only allows for a provisional analysis. Figure 1 shows where and when plague struck, dividing the century into four 25-year periods. The coloured
areas are those where epidemics affected thoroughly a territory; isolated cases have not been represented in order to reveal where the disease manifested a degree of
territorial pervasiveness. Among the areas included, only Austria and south-eastern Spain experienced plague in the last quarter of the century: the time of the “Great
Plague of Vienna” (1679) killing ∼76,000 residents of the city. The second quarter of the century contrasts strikingly with all others for the large-scale diffusion of
plague epidemics, covering most of Germany, half of Italy and much of France and Spain as well as the main urban clusters in the Netherlands and England.
Plague in Western Europe, 1600–1699. Sources and notes: reliable maps allowing to evaluate whether a territory was infected pervasively in a given
period are available only for England, central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and western Poland), and Italy (provided by Wrigley and Schofield 1981; Eckert 1996; and
by this article for Italy). For the rest of Western Europe, the reconstruction remains partly conjectural. For France, I mostly relied on maps published in Histoire de la
population française (especially Biraben and Blum 1988). For Spain, Perez Moreda (1980, 1988). For the Netherlands, Flanders, and Hainaut, Van Bath (1965); Van Werveke
(1965); Arnould (1965); Rommes (1990). Note that for Spain, the map does not include the plague that affected the central and southern part of Iberia in 1599, even if somewhere
it ended in 1600 or 1601. Plague in Western Europe, 1600–1699. Sources and notes: reliable maps allowing to evaluate whether a territory was
infected pervasively in a given period are available only for England, central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and western Poland), and Italy (provided by Wrigley and Schofield
1981; Eckert
1996; and by this article for Italy). For the rest of Western Europe, the reconstruction remains partly conjectural. For France, I mostly relied on maps published in
Histoire de la population française (especially Biraben and Blum 1988). For Spain, Perez Moreda (1980, 1988). For the Netherlands, Flanders, and Hainaut, Van Bath (1965); Van Werveke
(1965); Arnould (1965); Rommes (1990). Note that for Spain, the map does not include the plague that affected the central and southern part of Iberia in 1599, even if somewhere
it ended in 1600 or 1601. Figure 1 shows clearly a key difference in seventeenth-century European plagues: in the north, plagues affected mainly highly urbanized areas, while in the south, they had much greater territorial pervasiveness spreading more effectively to
the countryside; in the north, different plague waves affected repeatedly the same places, while in the south, areas affected by one wave were
usually spared by the following ones. These differences between north and south appear only in the seventeenth century. In the sixteenth, also
in southern Europe plague was mainly an urban affair and separate waves struck the same place every few decades. This hints at transformations in the epidemiological, and maybe also
biological, characteristics of plague (section 2). Even if these results have to be considered provisional until territorial pervasiveness of plagues is
measured precisely across Europe, they are consistent with the findings of regional studies. In England for example, “in the seventeenth century plague became relatively rare except
in large urban centres and, when it occurred, was often an accompaniment to a major epidemic in London” (Wrigley and Schofield 1981, p. 668). This would be the case for all of the worst
epidemics of the century, in 1603, 1625, and 1636, as well as for the more localized outbreak of 1665–1666, which ended with the Great Fire of London (Slack 1985, pp. 68–69). For
England, we also have some measures indicative of low territorial pervasiveness. Between 1565 and 1666, 43 per cent of the parishes in Devon did not suffer from an epidemic of
plague (as measured by a doubling of burials or more), while in Exeter, the same measure rises to 45 per cent. Focusing on market towns, the proportion of places spared falls below
21 per cent (Slack 1985, pp. 109–110). These figures are impressive, given that if calculated for northern Italy in 1600–1657, overall they drop to 9 per cent (see below):
one-fifth the figure for England, and considering a time period half as long. This was probably also the case of most central and southern regions of Italy, as well as
Germany. Something more should be said about the main plague waves affecting seventeenth-century Europe. While in the north, the situation of England is
also representative of the Netherlands (Flanders and Hainaut included), where plague was mainly an urban affair striking repeatedly the main cities but mostly sparing the rural
areas,5 in
the central and southern part of the continent, most of the plague damage was due to a small number of great plague waves. The most severe began on the shores of northern France, in
the Netherlands, and in Renania around 1623, struck England in 1625, and in 1625–1626 infected central Germany. In the following years, it moved southwards, through southern Germany
and eastern France. In 1628–1629, it was covering the area between the Pyrenees and southern France on one side, Bavaria and Switzerland on the other. In late 1629, it entered
Italy, ravaging it in 1630 (Eckert 1978). From Lombardy, under Spanish rule, the plague spread to Catalonia. For southern France and northern Italy, this is considered
the worst plague since the Black Death. This may also be true for other regions, like Germany, but there the plague effects are not easy to distinguish from those of the Thirty
Years' War, since troops acted as disease carriers infecting vast areas (Alfani 2013, pp. 43–4). Another important plague wave ravaged Andalusia, the Balearic archipelago, and the rest
of the Spanish Mediterranean in 1647–1654. This was the worst plague striking Iberia in the century.6 In 1652, it spread to Sardinia, and in 1656, through Naples, to most of southern and
central Italy. “The spectre of plague loomed as large in seventeenth-century England as it did in contemporary Italy. True, even the worst English epidemics in this period
seem to have been somewhat less lethal than the two Italian outbreaks; but then their frequency was much greater.” In this way, Helleiner (1967) introduced his
comparison of Italian and British epidemics, pointing out correctly a difference in their frequency, but also suggesting that the total demographic impact was roughly the same. This
still-widespread idea needs revising, taking into account a previously neglected variable: territorial pervasiveness. Before doing this, though, a general picture of plague in the
peninsula must be provided. During the sixteenth century, Italy had suffered relatively little from plague. Even the worst epidemic, the “San Carlo” plague of 1575–1577 that struck many
important cities in the north, had been mainly an urban event involving a limited area. The damage it caused was quickly mended thanks to the availability of a large surplus
population in the countryside (Alfani 2010a, 2013). There would be no such surplus after the two great epidemics of the seventeenth century. The first began in October 1629, when Spanish and French troops
involved in the War of the Mantuan Succession, entered the peninsula spreading the disease from areas infected since 1628 (section 1). During the spring of 1630, the disease spread
quickly southwards and eastwards the infected territories of the Susa valley and the lake of Como, covering all of the north (save for Liguria and parts of Friuli and Piedmont) by
the early summer and then spreading to Tuscany, but failing to go further (Del Panta 1980; Manfredini et al. 2002; Alfani and Cohn 2007; Alfani 2010a). The second epidemic began in Sardinia in 1652, having arrived in Alghero from Spain. After ravaging much of the island, it landed in Naples in April 1656.
Thence, it spread to most of southern Italy (the Kingdom of Naples); only Sicily and parts of Calabria and Apulia were spared. To the north, the epidemic arrived in Rome in June
1656 and then affected most of the Papal State, arresting its spread in Umbria and Marche. It did not penetrate the Granduchy of Tuscany, affected by the previous wave, but it did
spread by sea to Liguria (it was present in Genoa from July 1656), which instead had been previously spared (Del Panta 1980; Fusco 2007; Alfani 2010a). Among the Italian regions, only Sicily was entirely spared the two main waves. However, it had experienced a regional plague in 1624. Overall, the territorial
integration of the seventeenth-century Italian epidemics is impressive. As apparent from figures 1 and 2, no known Italian communities were struck by more than one of these plague waves.
Especially impressive is the case of Liguria, spared in 1630 when Piedmont and Tuscany were affected, and unable in its turn to infect these areas in 1656. On the micro level, only
small areas around the towns of Rapallo and Finale were infected in 1630. Those same territories were the only parts of the region spared in 1656. The perfect match between the two
epidemics does not allow for a simple “morphological-institutional” explanation of why the two plague waves did not overlap (as discussed later). Urban mortality rates during the plagues of 1629–1630 and 1656–1657. Sources and notes: places represented on the map only comprise those cities for
which mortality rates could be calculated. For territorial coverage of different Italian plague waves see figure 1, as well as figure 2.1 in Alfani 2010a, p.
232. Urban mortality rates during the plagues of 1629–1630 and 1656–1657. Sources and notes: places represented on the map only comprise those cities for
which mortality rates could be calculated. For territorial coverage of different Italian plague waves see figure 1, as well as figure 2.1 in Alfani 2010a, p.
232. Parish books of burials are rare before around 1600 (only the Rituale Romanum, introduced in 1614, established a duty for all Catholic parishes to
keep them). Consequently, seventeenth-century plagues are the first that it is possible to study systematically with these sources. Other sources, the city books of the dead, have
similar characteristics. However, while sometimes available since the fifteenth century, they exist only for some cities (for example Milan. Cohn and Alfani 2007, pp.
178–181). The new database of north Italian burials used here includes 138 time series related to 101 different communities. Some communities, especially
cities, had more than one parish recording burials. Only in three cases (Milan, Mantua, and Venice) have city books of the dead been used instead of parish registers. During severe
epidemics, under-registration of burials may occur but usually this is either a minor disturbance given the diligence used in the records or a macroscopic event (especially if the
parish priest died) resulting in a stoppage of the records that could last weeks or even months. All time series presenting serious gaps in the relevant years as revealed by simple
completeness tests have been excluded from the analysis.7 The original registers are usually preserved in the relevant parish archive, sometimes in the
diocesan archive. Direct reconstruction of time series from the original registers has been complemented with collection and digitalization of previously published data. The
resulting database is adequately balanced from the point of view of territorial and political/institutional representation (see distribution per region and per state in table 3). It also
allows for an unusually good coverage of rural areas given that about three out of four series are rural (see below).8 Structure of the database Structure of the database The database is the largest collection of information about burials existing for early modern Italy. In 1624–1628, the average
yearly number of deaths in the included villages, towns, and cities was ∼16.800. Around 1600, the population of the area was ∼6.5 million. Thus, hypothesizing a mortality
rate of 30–35 per thousand in normal years, the database accounts for 7.4–8.6 per cent of all deaths. A limited use will be made of a second
database, containing information about mortality rates. This information comes from a variety of sources and is mostly related to cities, which makes it inadequate to
measure territorial pervasiveness. This database, still being expanded, here is used only to provide examples and the data chartered in figure 2. The two large-scale epidemics suffered by Italy were characterized by very high mortality rates compared with those of the sixteenth century (Alfani 2010a), or to
those affecting contemporary Europe. If a typical English epidemic had mortality rates of 100–120 per thousand (Slack 1985, p. 66), in Italy the most common was 300–400, with peaks
of 500–600 per thousand. For example, the mortality rate was 330 per thousand in Venice, 443 in Piacenza and 615 per thousand in Verona in 1629–1630, and 490 in Genoa and 500 per
thousand in Naples in 1656–1657. The situation could vary considerably from one city to another. For example, Tuscan cities in 1629–1630 were “lightly” affected, with a mortality
rate in Florence of 137 per thousand. In Rome in 1656–1657, sanitary authorities proved very efficient at limiting the spread of plague; consequently the mortality rate was just 80
per thousand (Sonnino 2006). While higher estimates exist (187 per thousand: Cipolla 1981), Rome was certainly struck less badly than other communities of Latium, where mortality rates
equalled 300–400 per thousand, with peaks around 600 per thousand (Ago and Parmeggiani 1990; Sonnino et al. 1999). Such variability is visible in figure 2. The figure shows the prevalence in Italy of very high mortality rates, well above those most common across Europe. Strikingly, rural mortality was not inferior
to the urban. In 1629–1630, it equalled 400 per thousand in Nonantola near Modena; 322 and 689 per thousand, respectively, in the villages of Madregolo and Cella near Parma; and 522
per thousand in Cerea near Verona (Ferrarese 2000; Manfredini et al. 2002; Alfani and Cohn 2007). Extreme plague mortality rates in the countryside are not unheard of.9 What is specific to
the Italian epidemics is that there was a match between rural and urban communities not only in mortality rates but also in the probability of a community being infected. This led
to exceptional territorial pervasiveness, with plague spreading even to the smallest country village. Isolation still offered some protection, but very few places escaped contagion
entirely. To illustrate this point, the argument will be set in the shape of an experiment, using the new database of time series of burials. Covering all
of northern Italy, it allows to evaluate the territorial pervasiveness of the 1630 epidemic and even provides a control group: the Ligurian communities, where reportedly plague did
not spread. To check which communities were affected, a method developed by Del Panta and Livi Bacci (1977) has been used. They defined a mortality crisis as a
short-term perturbation of mortality that reduces the dimension of the generations so much that they are unable to reproduce themselves entirely even making full use of their
potential for recovery. A mortality crisis, then, happens when one generation is prevented from generating another at least equal in size, even when the rise in fertility and
nuptiality that always follows a peak of deaths is taken into account. A 50-per cent rise in deaths is enough to prevent the generation born in the year
of the crisis from fully reproducing. This would be a “small” crisis. A 300 per cent rise in deaths could not be counter-balanced by the recovery potential of all of the generations
under the age of 15 at the moment of the crisis. This would be a “great” crisis. In figure 3, the number of deaths recorded for 1629 and 1630 has been compared with the “normal”
mortality of previous years.10 All the points coloured from grey to black experienced a crisis: in the case of the black ones, a particularly great crisis with 10 times or more the normal
mortality. The database for northern Italy has been complemented with 26 time series related to Tuscany. Increases in deaths in Northern Italy and Tuscany during the
1629–1630 plague. Increases in
deaths in Northern Italy and Tuscany during the 1629–1630 plague. None of the communities of the Po Plain comprised in the database, and in
general none in Lombardy, Veneto, or Emilia Romagna, were spared a mortality crisis. The increase in deaths was particularly severe within a triangle placed at the intersection of
these three regions. In this densely populated area, communication routes were excellent and trade flourishing, a fact that could have helped to spread the disease. From this
central area, increases in deaths decline moving westwards and eastwards. Only in western Piedmont are communities to be found which were spared, or lightly affected, probably due
to the morphology of the land. In this pre-Alpine area, full of rivers and steep hill ranges, particularly effective sanitary cordons could be established, improving the chances of
controlling the contagion.11 The control group, the Ligurian communities, confirms that the method employed is able to capture the occurrence of plague, given that the only communities
experiencing a marked rise in deaths are placed in the territories of Rapallo and Finale, the only areas of the region infected in 1630. The same is true for Tuscany, as it is known
that the southern part of the region, around the city of Siena, was largely spared by plague. The cluster of white dots in north Tuscany is related to Pistoia and its territory,
which were only slightly affected. As in Piedmont, the morphology of this largely Apennine region might have helped to fight the spread of the disease. However, even in those Tuscan
communities that were infected, increases in deaths proved lower than in northern Italy. As in Rome, sanitary authorities might have helped to contain the
contagion and the most recent literature has re-evaluated the effectiveness of their action, but it is difficult to see how this could fully account for such a marked difference
from other areas whose health boards were equally efficient and well-trained.12 Other factors that might have played a role are the delay with which Tuscany was struck by this
plague wave compared with other parts of northern Italy,13 and the epidemic of typhus that ravaged much of the region in 1629 and decimated the poor, who were the preferred victims of
early modern plague. Consequently, by 1630, typhus had already curtailed that part of the population particularly susceptible to catching and transmitting the plague, which could
have resulted in lower overall mortality rates. However, the case of Tuscany remains, in Cipolla's words, “an epidemiological puzzle” (Cipolla 1981, p. 85). The white dots in western Piedmont, Liguria, and southern and eastern Tuscany mark well the boundaries of the contagion. Within them, plague territorial
pervasiveness was exceptionally high. The same is true for the second great epidemic (1656–1657), striking central and southern Italy. This plague happened largely outside the area
covered by the database. Only Liguria is included and, as shown by figure 4, all of it, with the exception of Rapallo and Finale, was involved. Increases in deaths in Liguria during the 1656–1657
plague. Increases in deaths in Liguria during the 1656–1657
plague. The information presented graphically can be interpreted quantitatively. Out of ninety-seven communities14, only nine (9 per cent) were
entirely spared by plague during the seventeenth century (table 4), and among them only one city: Biella in the north-west corner of Piedmont, a city well protected by
natural barriers. Using the data to estimate probabilities of infection, in the year 1600, an urban community had a probability of just 0.05 (a 5 per cent chance) of being spared by
plague throughout the century. Rural communities had a higher chance (P = 0.11), but basically these measures confirm the striking capacity of Italian plagues to spread to
the countryside, especially considering that excluding Liguria the probability of being spared was only 0.05 for north Italian cities and 0.07 for rural communities—and this, for a
single epidemic (1629–1630). The estimated probability would be 0.00, if not for a few places spared in western Piedmont. Probability of infection of rural communities in different plague waves, 1600–1699 Source: database
Alfani. Probability of infection of rural communities in different plague waves, 1600–1699 Source: database
Alfani. Focusing on the overall sample for 1600–1699 (P = 0.09), the 95 per cent confidence interval (t distribution)
can be estimated as 0.04–0.15. In this period, the probability for any single north Italian community of being spared by plague was extremely low. This situation seems very
different from other parts of Europe, particularly the North-West. A formal test would help in demonstrating this point, but we lack the data necessary to do this
systematically. It is however possible to compare Italy with England by referring to data published by Slack (1985, p. 109). The point estimate of the probability
of a parish in Devon or Exeter being spared from plague during 1565–1666 was 0.44. This is significantly different from the figure for northern Italy (P <
0.01).15 The fact that the period considered is shorter (1600–1657, since after 1657 plague disappeared from Italy) strengthens this finding. Territorial pervasiveness and mortality rates of the 1656–1657 plague are similar to those found for that of 1629–1630. This is true for Liguria as well
as for the infected areas of the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal State. Here, too, rural communities were struck as well as urban centres. Table 5 shows that the
percentage of communities affected in most terre (rural districts) of the Kingdom of Naples was very high. For example, in the Principato Ultra and Principato
Citra, it was 89.9 and 89.3 per cent, respectively. Territorial pervasiveness decreased in the terre farther from the capital (Naples). This is probably connected
to lower urban density, relative scarcity of communication routes, and consequently, greater isolation of the communities. Institutions and sanitary authorities also played
an important role in controlling the spread of the disease (Fusco 2007). On the whole, however, in the most densely populated areas, the territorial pervasiveness
of this epidemic is comparable to that of 1630, as are the mortality rates in the countryside, sometimes exceeding 800 per thousand (Benedictow 1987 for
Cilento; SIDES 1990 for Lazio, Apulia and Sardinia; Fusco 2007, p. 249 for rural mortality rates). A recent estimate places mortality at 430 per thousand
in the whole Kingdom, much higher than earlier estimates of 200–300 per thousand (Fusco 2009). This may be too high, but it suggests a mortality of at least 300
per thousand, about equal to that found in northern Italy 25 years earlier. Terre (“lands”) infected in the provinces of the Kingdom of Naples Note: this table does not include the area surrounding Naples (thoroughly devastated), the provinces of Calabria Ultra (only three
terre infected), and Terra d'Otranto (entirely spared). Sources: my elaboration from data published by Fusco (2007). Terre (“lands”) infected in the provinces of the Kingdom of Naples Note: this table does not include the area surrounding Naples (thoroughly devastated), the provinces of Calabria Ultra (only three
terre infected), and Terra d'Otranto (entirely spared). Sources: my elaboration from data published by Fusco (2007). The fact that the countryside was depopulated similarly to the urban areas was a serious hindrance to recovery. When mortality is so high, as to prevent the
local demographic forces from recovering by themselves, the only way to prevent a long-term population decline is immigration. This is what happened in northern Europe, serious and
frequent waves of plague notwithstanding, and this was also the Italian experience during the sixteenth century (Alfani 2010a). In the seventeenth, though, the exceptional territorial
pervasiveness of epidemics all but cancelled the demographic surplus of the countryside, destroying any chance of quick recovery.16 In Venice, where 46,500 perished
in 1630 from a population of around 141,000, it took 70–80 years to fully recover. In Naples, where in 1656 about 150,000 died, the pre-plague level of around 300,000 inhabitants
was recovered only in the late 1730s or early 1740s (Del Panta 1980, pp. 162–3, 168). This slow recovery had primarily demographic reasons: the epidemics covered an area so large and densely inhabited that it can be treated as a closed population. In other words, no relevant
demographic help could come from the outside; within this area, plague territorial pervasiveness meant the destruction of the potential for urban
recovery by curbing the traditional demographic exchanges with the countryside; the overall mortality rates were so high that a quick and
generalized recovery would have been impossible even in the presence of significant migration influxes. The almost perfect territorial integration of the two main plague waves is an interesting phenomenon. While the areas spared in 1630 could attribute their
favourable situation to effective sanitary cordons or to pure luck, in 1656 the territorial limits of the epidemic match too closely those of the earlier plague for this to be
casual. While for central Italy, where the epidemic stopped in the middle of Abruzzo and spared Tuscany, sanitary authorities trained by the earlier wave could have played an
important role, it is difficult to argue the same for Liguria, where the disease penetrated the boundaries of the Republic, sanitary cordons notwithstanding, and spared only the
area around Rapallo (Finale was not under Genoese rule). It is tempting to explain the territorial integration of the epidemics with the combination of
two factors: 1. the exceptional territorial pervasiveness of seventeenth-century Italian plague, which could have provided widespread active immunization; 2. selection caused by
extreme mortality rates and virulence. This draws the picture of a new strain of an old disease that kills too many people over too large areas in too short a time for its own
good—thus laying the foundations for its own disappearance. Such a hypothesis differs from the traditional one, which implied mutual adaptation between humans and the plague
pathogen (Hirst
1953; McNeill 1976), and which has failed to fully convince (Slack 1981). Spontaneous mutation of the pathogen could indeed have played a role, but a very different one,
increasing and not reducing the damage done by pathogen to host. Exceptionally high mortality rates and pervasiveness may not be enough to imply that new
strains of plague were at work. However, if this implication is accepted, a further hypothesis can be proposed: that new, extremely dangerous strains of plague appeared somewhere in
central or southern Europe in the early seventeenth century spread across the continent and favoured, in the medium term, the disappearance of endemic plague. Although further
research is needed, one thing seems clear: the knowledge recently acquired about transformations over time of plague no longer allows thinking of it as a “uniform”
disease.17 The possibility of different strains of plague competing over time and space must be given full consideration. This does not imply refuting all factors
suggested by previous scholarship, but simply adding a player, and possibly a key one, in a complex game with many other participants. This reconstruction
has a weak point in its assumptions about immunization. Firstly, given the 25-year period separating the two Italian plague waves, this would be a very long-lasting, and
consequently not very probable, mass immunization. Secondly, the possibility of human beings acquiring immunization from medieval and early modern plague is by no means certain,
given that no lasting immunization can be acquired from Yersinia pestis, the agent responsible for the so-called third pandemic in the nineteenth century as well as for the
most recent plague outbreaks (Manson-Bahr and Bell 1987, p. 591). Maybe we should focus on selection caused by widespread over-mortality as the main factor or on complex interaction of
selection and immunization processes, but further interdisciplinary research is needed. Something more needs to be said about the role of institutions and
economic conditions. As already noted, the action of health authorities does not explain either why Tuscany was less affected than northern Italy in 1630, or why the 1656–1657
plague spared precisely the areas affected by the earlier epidemic. One could hypothesize that poor institutions are the reason why Italy was affected more severely than north-west
Europe, but this hypothesis should be rejected because Italian anti-plague institutions were the best in the continent. The first permanent health boards were introduced in Italian
cities during the fifteenth century and copied by Spain and France within few decades (Cipolla 1976). England, however, “was unlike many other European countries in having no
public precautions against plague at all before 1518” and at the beginning of the seventeenth century was still intent on importing institutions that were common in Mediterranean
Europe (Slack
1985, pp. 201–226). This is also the case for plague tracts, which in north-western Europe were mostly translations or strongly inspired by Italian or French originals, while in
Italy we find, during the sixteenth century, an unparalleled boom in the publication of new works. Many of these included sections on “governing the plague,” a topic not covered by
earlier tracts (Cohn 2009). While possibly in other areas of north-western Europe, for example the Low Countries, health institutions were similar to those in Italy, there is no
reason to believe that they were better. The same is true for hygienic conditions and similar factors. Regarding overall economic conditions, while Italy
before the seventeenth-century epidemics was probably overpopulated as testified to by recurrent famines, it was still one of the wealthiest areas of Europe and had a solid economy
(Sella 1997;
Alfani 2013).
Section 3 suggests that plague played a fundamental role in changing this situation, although by no means does this allow us to state that the high incidence of plague in Italy is
explained by pre-epidemic economic conditions. Overall, it seems that plague should be considered a mostly exogenous factor, also because at the beginning
of the seventeenth century, it was probably no longer endemic in Italy. When plagues did occur in the peninsula, they were re-infections coming from other areas of Europe or the
Mediterranean. We might even assume that Italian health institutions had been so successful as to drive the disease from the peninsula. When it came back, striking areas that in
some cases had been plague-free for fifty years or more, it might have been favoured by finding a population the majority of whom had never been in contact with the plague
pathogen. In seventeenth-century Italy, plague caused a demographic catastrophe that took many decades to recover. The long-lasting decline in population had
demographic, and more specifically epidemic, reasons and was neither the consequence of economic difficulties nor of the malgoverno (bad government) of foreign dominators.
Statements such as Helleiner's, “[Even without the plagues] the secular stagnation of the Italian economy in the period under review would probably have militated against
demographic expansion,” betray the conviction that demographic decline was a consequence of economic decline (Helleiner 1967, p. 50). The new data
discussed here, combined with the most recent reconstruction of demographic trends in the century preceding the epidemics (Alfani 2013), suggest to reconsider this statement. Plague was the main
cause of demographic decline in seventeenth-century Italy. More generally, by comparing the demographic trends of different areas of Western Europe (table 6) with plague incidence (table
2), there
is clearly a strong inverse relation. Mortality, and not only economic or commercial growth, is a key factor explaining the changing demographic weight of different parts of the
continent. Demographic growth in Italy and Europe, 1600–1700 (millions of people) Sources:Sonnino (1996) for
Italy and Malanima (2009) for other European countries. Demographic growth in Italy and Europe, 1600–1700 (millions of people) Sources:Sonnino (1996) for
Italy and Malanima (2009) for other European countries. During the seventeenth century, only Germany performed worse than Italy, with a 13-per cent decline in population due at least
as much to the Thirty Years' War as to plague. The Italian case is all the more striking because overall the great seventeenth-century wars affected it lightly. If northern
Italy, struck by plague in 1629–1630, had recovered its lost population by 1680 or 1690, the centre and the south were still showing the signs of the 1656–1657 epidemic by
1700. This poor performance is not due to scarce demographic dynamism. After the epidemics, marriages and births peaked as normal after a severe mortality crisis, and
population grew at a steady pace (in northern Italy after 1630, over 5 per thousand yearly). However, the lack of rural surplus population, coupled with the wide area
covered by the plagues, prevented the kind of quick recovery that, in northern Europe, was being accomplished by means of steady population movements from countryside to
cities. In England or the Netherlands, urban population was booming despite frequent plagues (table 7). Urbanization rates in Italy and Europe, 1600–1700 Note: rates refer to cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. Sources:Malanima (2005, p. 106) for North Italy; De Vries
(1984, p. 39) for other areas. Urbanization rates in Italy and Europe, 1600–1700 Note: rates refer to cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. Sources:Malanima (2005, p. 106) for North Italy; De Vries
(1984, p. 39) for other areas. Plagues played a key role in reducing Italian urbanization rates. Apart from eliminating a large share of the population, they
acted as a “system shock” for Italian economies, precipitating a mainly urban crisis that resulted in a long-term decline in urbanization rates (Alfani 2010a).18 While
this article does not aim to analyse in detail the economic consequences of the Italian epidemics, some points need to be made. From a macro perspective, the sharp decline
in population favoured the decline in power and international influence of the Italian states. This process had been underway since the Italian Wars (1494–1559) and also had
political and institutional reasons (Alfani 2013). However, only during the seventeenth century did those Italian states not under “foreign” rule lose most of their residual
capacity for autonomous military action, in its turn increasingly dependent on the fiscal capacity of the State (Bonney1999; Pezzolo 2012). The
epidemics, by curbing total product, also reduced the possibility of the Italian states to compete in the European power struggles. The rise of Piedmont, ruled by the House
of Savoy, as the main military power in Italy may be linked to the fact that it was the northern Italian state that suffered less from the plague. Loss of military and diplomatic power was not without consequence for the conditions of international trade. It has been suggested that easy access to
the Atlantic routes and the institutions created (in non-absolutist countries) to exploit the opportunities offered by the New World fuelled the First Great Divergence
(Acemoglu
et al. 2005). Epidemiological factors strengthened this process and, in the case of leading Mediterranean areas such as Italy, hindered any residual possibility
of profiting from an increase in world trade. Given that plague struck in a lighter way those countries credited with developing the best institutions, it is possible that
part of the impact on long-term growth attributed by some to institutions is actually due to epidemiological factors. The decline in total product
has been often used to suggest that the seventeenth-century epidemics caused serious damage to the Italian economies. In the case of a fundamental sector, the wool industry,
in most northern Italian cities, the levels of production following the 1630 plague were far from those of the beginning of the century. In Lombardy, the production of
woollen cloths had declined from an yearly average of 15,000 to ∼3,000 in 1640 in Milan and from 8–10,000 to ∼400 in 1650 in Como; in Cremona the 187 members of the Arte
della Lana to be counted in 1615 had shrunk to 23 by 1648; in Monza the 20 wool enterprises present in the city in 1620 had entirely disappeared by 1640 (Cipolla
1959, pp. 605–607; Sella 1959, p. 547). In Veneto, the plague fostered the complete disappearance of the production of woollen cloths in Verona and caused lasting
damage to that of Treviso and Bassano (Panciera 1996, pp. 15, 22). When information is scattered in time, it is difficult to distinguish the specific impact of the plague on a
sector that was facing increasing international competition. However, when we can measure yearly production (figure 5), we find that not only did production greatly decrease in
the plague years, but after the crisis the recovery was difficult, slow and overall the production trend seems to have moved to a definitely lower level.
Yearly production of wool and linen cloths in Venice and
Florence, 1620–1645 (indexes; value 100 equals to average yearly production in 1620–1628). Sources: Panciera (1996, pp. 42–43) for Venice; Romano (1952, pp. 511–512) for
Florence. Yearly production of
wool and linen cloths in Venice and Florence, 1620–1645 (indexes; value 100 equals to average yearly production in 1620–1628). Sources: Panciera (1996, pp. 42–43) for
Venice; Romano
(1952, pp. 511–512) for Florence. Plague affected also other sectors, such as linen (figure 5) and silk. In Milan, the production
of silk drapes fell by ∼80 per cent from 1606 to 1636, while in Venice this sector, flourishing in pre-plague years, had to face its first crisis ever (Cipolla 1959, p. 606; Panciera 2006, p.
191). Generally, the damage suffered by silk production was not long-lasting, but the example of Milan reinforces the idea that at the local level plague proved able to determine a
deep structural crisis and a displacement effect for entire sectors, and not only the textile industry. In Milan, also the building sector suffered greatly, as in 1656 the
Collegio degli Ingegneri ed Architetti reported that house values were still 25 per cent lower compared with pre-plague years (Sella 2010, p. 127). Similarly, a
lasting decline of house rents, in the 25–35 per cent range, followed the epidemic (Barbot 2008, pp. 142–151). Traditional historiography also
mentioned a rise in wages, due to the scarcity of workforce, as a negative consequence of the plague. This would have made Italian products less appealing on the European markets at
a time when international competition was on the rise, contributing to explain the difficult recovery of many industries (Cipolla 1993, pp. 248–249). However, an increase in wages is not per
se detrimental to the economy. More generally, the idea that plague was damaging to the economy has been challenged on the grounds that what should be considered is per-capita, and
not total, product. In this view, the standards of living of the survivors improved so that plague might have proved beneficial in the medium–long term (Malanima 2002, p. 345; Malanima and Capasso
2007, p. 29). This is a strong argument, which is widespread in recent historiography about the economic consequences of epidemics in Europe (Clark 2007, pp. 99–102; Pamuk 2007; Voigtländer and Voth
2012). Indeed, the great Italian epidemics of the seventeenth century helped to balance population and resources (Alfani 2010a, b, 2013). However, there is still much to say about the macro-economic
consequences of these demographic catastrophes. All factors considered, it seems probable that the seventeenth-century plagues were detrimental to the Italian economies. Some lines
for future enquiry can be mentioned. First and foremost, the fact that plague did not strike all of Europe in the same way implies that any evaluation of
the impact of the disease across the continent should take into account as much the absolute damage, as the relative. The fact that the Italian populations took 70–80 years to
recover would not be so relevant, if other parts of Europe, in the meantime, had not moved on. Furthermore, in an age of mercantilism, internal aggregate demand could have been of
key importance in preventing Italian manufactures from reaching the volume of product necessary to compete effectively, both abroad and—later—in domestic markets. By curbing
aggregate demand, the plagues could have determined a decline in production levels that would prove impossible to restore even after demographic recovery. This is because the
epidemics struck at the worst possible moment: Italian economies were forced to slow down while others accelerated. In the short- and medium-term, the increase in per-capita
resources might well have prevented a decline in economic welfare, but in the long term, Italy was forced on a path which led it to become, by the eighteenth century, an economic
backwater. A third point is the damage done to human capital. While early modern European plague was mainly a disease of the poor and unskilled (then,
replaceable), mortality rates of the order of 300–500 per thousand could not be reached without the disease becoming again, at least to a degree, a universal killer. Many studies
suggest a shortage of skills in post-plague Italian economies, a fact that further differentiates the seventeenth from the sixteenth century plagues (Pullan 1964; Andreozzi 2010; Alfani 2013). More generally, even if
pre-industrial societies could easily mend after a mortality crisis, the possible existence of thresholds should be recognized which, when surpassed, made it difficult to provide
effective answers. The data presented here have shown that plague affected unevenly seventeenth-century Europe. The use of a new database has made it possible to postulate that
Italian plagues had dire consequences, because of their extreme mortality rates and territorial pervasiveness. The latter variable has been shown to be key in determining both the
dimension of the demographic damage caused by plague, and the severity of its consequences. When plague proved able to spread pervasively to the countryside as well as to the
cities, the possibility of a quick recovery of the urban populations was curtailed. The article also suggested that plague greatly contributed to the relative economic decline of
Italy and set an agenda for investigating fully the economic consequences of the epidemics. As a final remark, this study of seventeenth-century plagues
has much to offer also to scholarship focused on earlier periods. One lesson from the early modern age is that one should be wary of considering plague a “great equalizer.” Instead,
it distributed around Europe advantages and disadvantages, conditioning the demographic, political-institutional, and economic performance of different regions in ways which are
still largely unknown. I thank Maristella Botticini, Bruce Campbell, Gregory Clark, Samuel K. Cohn, Paolo Malanima, Richard Smith, Hans-Joachim Voth, seminar participants at
Bocconi University, Centre Roland Mousnier—Université Sorbonne, University of Florence, INED, as well as participants at the 2010 Economic History Society Annual Conference and the
2012 European Population Conference for helpful comments. I am very grateful to Lorenzo Del Panta for providing the time series of burials for Tuscany, to Alessio Fornasin and
Claudio Lorenzini for providing some of the time series for Friuli, to Matteo Di Tullio for helping to collect the time series for the area around Finale, and to Vicente Pérez
Moreda and Ronald Rommes for supplying crucial information about plague in Spain and the Dutch Republic, respectively. This article was partly written during my stay at the
Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, which proved an excellent and friendly research environment. I am grateful to the Wellcome Trust for generously
funding my stay in Cambridge. 1. Разнообразное воздействие чумы в Европу семнадцатого века
Table 1.Spain and Portugal Italy France England, Scotland, and Ireland Belgium, Low Countries, and Luxemburg Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland 1500–1549 (%) 21.4 42.0 29.8 14.3 15.6 19.8 1550–1599
(%) 36.7 22.6 30.6 28.5 26.8 24.4 1600–1649 (%) 22.1 19.6 33.4
46.1 36.9 37.1 1650–1699 (%) 19.9 13.5 4.9 11.1 20.7 16.1
1700–1749 (%) 0.0 2.3 1.3 0.0 0.0 2.5 1500–1749 (%) 100 100
100 100 100 100 1500–1749 (n.) 458 438 2148 1355 358 902
Spain and Portugal Italy France England, Scotland, and Ireland Belgium, Low Countries, and Luxemburg Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland 1500–1549 (%) 21.4 42.0 29.8 14.3 15.6 19.8 1550–1599
(%) 36.7 22.6 30.6 28.5 26.8 24.4 1600–1649 (%) 22.1 19.6 33.4
46.1 36.9 37.1 1650–1699 (%) 19.9 13.5 4.9 11.1 20.7 16.1
1700–1749 (%) 0.0 2.3 1.3 0.0 0.0 2.5 1500–1749 (%) 100 100
100 100 100 100 1500–1749 (n.) 458 438 2148 1355 358 902
Table 1.Spain and Portugal Italy France England, Scotland, and Ireland Belgium, Low Countries, and Luxemburg Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland 1500–1549 (%) 21.4 42.0 29.8 14.3 15.6 19.8 1550–1599
(%) 36.7 22.6 30.6 28.5 26.8 24.4 1600–1649 (%) 22.1 19.6 33.4
46.1 36.9 37.1 1650–1699 (%) 19.9 13.5 4.9 11.1 20.7 16.1
1700–1749 (%) 0.0 2.3 1.3 0.0 0.0 2.5 1500–1749 (%) 100 100
100 100 100 100 1500–1749 (n.) 458 438 2148 1355 358 902
Spain and Portugal Italy France England, Scotland, and Ireland Belgium, Low Countries, and Luxemburg Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland 1500–1549 (%) 21.4 42.0 29.8 14.3 15.6 19.8 1550–1599
(%) 36.7 22.6 30.6 28.5 26.8 24.4 1600–1649 (%) 22.1 19.6 33.4
46.1 36.9 37.1 1650–1699 (%) 19.9 13.5 4.9 11.1 20.7 16.1
1700–1749 (%) 0.0 2.3 1.3 0.0 0.0 2.5 1500–1749 (%) 100 100
100 100 100 100 1500–1749 (n.) 458 438 2148 1355 358 902
Открыть на новой вкладке
Table 2.Country/region Plague victims (millions) Percentage of population lost to plague Italy (Kingdom of Naples) 0.87–1.25 30–43 Italy (north) 2.00 30–35
South Germanya not available 20–25 Dutch Republic not available 15–25
Spainb 1.25 18–19 France ≥2.20 11–14 England and Wales 0.45
8–10 Country/region Plague victims (millions) Percentage of population lost to plague Italy (Kingdom of Naples) 0.87–1.25 30–43 Italy (north) 2.00 30–35
South Germanya not available 20–25 Dutch Republic not available 15–25
Spainb 1.25 18–19 France ≥2.20 11–14 England and Wales 0.45
8–10 Table 2.Country/region Plague victims (millions) Percentage of population lost to plague Italy (Kingdom of Naples) 0.87–1.25 30–43 Italy (north) 2.00 30–35
South Germanya not available 20–25 Dutch Republic not available 15–25
Spainb 1.25 18–19 France ≥2.20 11–14 England and Wales 0.45
8–10 Country/region Plague victims (millions) Percentage of population lost to plague Italy (Kingdom of Naples) 0.87–1.25 30–43 Italy (north) 2.00 30–35
South Germanya not available 20–25 Dutch Republic not available 15–25
Spainb 1.25 18–19 France ≥2.20 11–14 England and Wales 0.45
8–10 Figure 1.Figure 1.2. Italy: an exceptional
case
2.1 Plague
waves in early modern Italy
Figure 2.Figure 2.2.2 Characteristics and
composition of the database
Table 3.Single series Communities Aggregate, n Percentage of total Aggregate, n Percentage of total Distribution of the sample by series starting date Series starting before:
1550 3 2.2 3 3.0 1600 78 56.5 52 51.5
1610 104 75.4 74 73.3 1620 126 91.3 93 92.1
1627 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the sample by contemporary administrative region Emilia Romagna 41 29.7 26 25.7
Liguria 33 23.9 25 24.8 Lombardy 27 19.6 19 18.8
Piedmont and Aosta Valley 21 15.2 17 16.8 Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino 16
11.6 14 13.9 Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the
sample by Italian state (at 1630) Republic of Genoa 29 21.0 21 20.8 Papal State 23
16.7 17 16.8 Duchy of Milan 21 15.2 13 12.9 Duchy of Savoy
20 14.5 16 15.8 Republic of Venice 17 12.3 15 14.9 Duchy of
Parma and Piacenza 9 6.5 3 3.0 Duchy of Mantua 7 5.1 7 6.9
Duchy of Modena 6 4.3 3 3.0 Others 6 4.3 6 5.9
Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Single series Communities Aggregate, n Percentage of total Aggregate, n Percentage of total Distribution of the sample by series starting date Series starting before:
1550 3 2.2 3 3.0 1600 78 56.5 52 51.5
1610 104 75.4 74 73.3 1620 126 91.3 93 92.1
1627 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the sample by contemporary administrative region Emilia Romagna 41 29.7 26 25.7
Liguria 33 23.9 25 24.8 Lombardy 27 19.6 19 18.8
Piedmont and Aosta Valley 21 15.2 17 16.8 Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino 16
11.6 14 13.9 Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the
sample by Italian state (at 1630) Republic of Genoa 29 21.0 21 20.8 Papal State 23
16.7 17 16.8 Duchy of Milan 21 15.2 13 12.9 Duchy of Savoy
20 14.5 16 15.8 Republic of Venice 17 12.3 15 14.9 Duchy of
Parma and Piacenza 9 6.5 3 3.0 Duchy of Mantua 7 5.1 7 6.9
Duchy of Modena 6 4.3 3 3.0 Others 6 4.3 6 5.9
Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Table 3.Single series Communities Aggregate, n Percentage of total Aggregate, n Percentage of total Distribution of the sample by series starting date Series starting before:
1550 3 2.2 3 3.0 1600 78 56.5 52 51.5
1610 104 75.4 74 73.3 1620 126 91.3 93 92.1
1627 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the sample by contemporary administrative region Emilia Romagna 41 29.7 26 25.7
Liguria 33 23.9 25 24.8 Lombardy 27 19.6 19 18.8
Piedmont and Aosta Valley 21 15.2 17 16.8 Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino 16
11.6 14 13.9 Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the
sample by Italian state (at 1630) Republic of Genoa 29 21.0 21 20.8 Papal State 23
16.7 17 16.8 Duchy of Milan 21 15.2 13 12.9 Duchy of Savoy
20 14.5 16 15.8 Republic of Venice 17 12.3 15 14.9 Duchy of
Parma and Piacenza 9 6.5 3 3.0 Duchy of Mantua 7 5.1 7 6.9
Duchy of Modena 6 4.3 3 3.0 Others 6 4.3 6 5.9
Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Single series Communities Aggregate, n Percentage of total Aggregate, n Percentage of total Distribution of the sample by series starting date Series starting before:
1550 3 2.2 3 3.0 1600 78 56.5 52 51.5
1610 104 75.4 74 73.3 1620 126 91.3 93 92.1
1627 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the sample by contemporary administrative region Emilia Romagna 41 29.7 26 25.7
Liguria 33 23.9 25 24.8 Lombardy 27 19.6 19 18.8
Piedmont and Aosta Valley 21 15.2 17 16.8 Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino 16
11.6 14 13.9 Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 Distribution of the
sample by Italian state (at 1630) Republic of Genoa 29 21.0 21 20.8 Papal State 23
16.7 17 16.8 Duchy of Milan 21 15.2 13 12.9 Duchy of Savoy
20 14.5 16 15.8 Republic of Venice 17 12.3 15 14.9 Duchy of
Parma and Piacenza 9 6.5 3 3.0 Duchy of Mantua 7 5.1 7 6.9
Duchy of Modena 6 4.3 3 3.0 Others 6 4.3 6 5.9
Total 138 100.0 101 100.0 2.3 Mortality and territorial pervasiveness
Figure 3.Figure 3.Figure 4.Figure 4.2.4 Probability of
infection
Table 4.1629–1630 1629–1630, Liguria excluded 1656–1657, only Liguria 1600–1699, North Italy Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Overall Spared (n) 3 14 1 4 1 12 1 8 9
Infected (n) 19 61 18 50 2 9 21 67 88 Total
22 75 19 54 3 21 22 75 97 Probability of being spared 0.14
0.19 0.05 0.07 0.33 0.57 0.05 0.11 0.09 1629–1630 1629–1630, Liguria excluded 1656–1657, only Liguria 1600–1699, North Italy Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Overall Spared (n) 3 14 1 4 1 12 1 8 9
Infected (n) 19 61 18 50 2 9 21 67 88 Total
22 75 19 54 3 21 22 75 97 Probability of being spared 0.14
0.19 0.05 0.07 0.33 0.57 0.05 0.11 0.09 Table 4.1629–1630 1629–1630, Liguria excluded 1656–1657, only Liguria 1600–1699, North Italy Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Overall Spared (n) 3 14 1 4 1 12 1 8 9
Infected (n) 19 61 18 50 2 9 21 67 88 Total
22 75 19 54 3 21 22 75 97 Probability of being spared 0.14
0.19 0.05 0.07 0.33 0.57 0.05 0.11 0.09 1629–1630 1629–1630, Liguria excluded 1656–1657, only Liguria 1600–1699, North Italy Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Overall Spared (n) 3 14 1 4 1 12 1 8 9
Infected (n) 19 61 18 50 2 9 21 67 88 Total
22 75 19 54 3 21 22 75 97 Probability of being spared 0.14
0.19 0.05 0.07 0.33 0.57 0.05 0.11 0.09 Table 5.Provinces Percentage of terre infected Total number of terre Principato Ultra 89.9 158 Principato Citra 89.3 242
Terra di Lavoro 61.2 232 Contado di Molise 48.1 108 Capitanata 47.7
86 Basilicata 34.5 119 Abruzzo Citra 35.5 183 Abruzzo Ultra
30.0 223 Terra di Bari 26.9 52 Calabria Citra 16.4 171
Provinces Percentage of terre infected Total number of terre Principato Ultra 89.9 158 Principato Citra 89.3 242
Terra di Lavoro 61.2 232 Contado di Molise 48.1 108 Capitanata 47.7
86 Basilicata 34.5 119 Abruzzo Citra 35.5 183 Abruzzo Ultra
30.0 223 Terra di Bari 26.9 52 Calabria Citra 16.4 171
Table 5.Provinces Percentage of terre infected Total number of terre Principato Ultra 89.9 158 Principato Citra 89.3 242
Terra di Lavoro 61.2 232 Contado di Molise 48.1 108 Capitanata 47.7
86 Basilicata 34.5 119 Abruzzo Citra 35.5 183 Abruzzo Ultra
30.0 223 Terra di Bari 26.9 52 Calabria Citra 16.4 171
Provinces Percentage of terre infected Total number of terre Principato Ultra 89.9 158 Principato Citra 89.3 242
Terra di Lavoro 61.2 232 Contado di Molise 48.1 108 Capitanata 47.7
86 Basilicata 34.5 119 Abruzzo Citra 35.5 183 Abruzzo Ultra
30.0 223 Terra di Bari 26.9 52 Calabria Citra 16.4 171
2.5 Demographic
consequences of high territorial pervasiveness
2.6 The disappearance of plague and the agent of the disease
3. Plague and the decline of
Italy: hypotheses and research agenda
Table 6.Italy: North Italy: Centre Italy: South Italy: Isles Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 6.5 2.2 3.3 1.5 6.8 16.2 18.5 1.5 4.5
1700 6.7 2.1 3.3 1.5 7.4 14.1 21.5 2.0 5.5 Change
(%) +3 −4.5 - - +9 −13 +16 +33 +22 Italy: North Italy: Centre Italy: South Italy: Isles Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 6.5 2.2 3.3 1.5 6.8 16.2 18.5 1.5 4.5
1700 6.7 2.1 3.3 1.5 7.4 14.1 21.5 2.0 5.5 Change
(%) +3 −4.5 - - +9 −13 +16 +33 +22 Table 6.Italy: North Italy: Centre Italy: South Italy: Isles Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 6.5 2.2 3.3 1.5 6.8 16.2 18.5 1.5 4.5
1700 6.7 2.1 3.3 1.5 7.4 14.1 21.5 2.0 5.5 Change
(%) +3 −4.5 - - +9 −13 +16 +33 +22 Italy: North Italy: Centre Italy: South Italy: Isles Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 6.5 2.2 3.3 1.5 6.8 16.2 18.5 1.5 4.5
1700 6.7 2.1 3.3 1.5 7.4 14.1 21.5 2.0 5.5 Change
(%) +3 −4.5 - - +9 −13 +16 +33 +22 Table 7.Italy: Centre–North Italy: South Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 14.4 14.9 11.4 4.1 5.9 24.3 5.8 1700
13.0 12.2 9 4.8 9.2 33.6 13.3 Change −9.7% −18.1% −21.1%
+17.1% +55.9% +38.3% +129.3% Italy: Centre–North Italy: South Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 14.4 14.9 11.4 4.1 5.9 24.3 5.8 1700
13.0 12.2 9 4.8 9.2 33.6 13.3 Change −9.7% −18.1% −21.1%
+17.1% +55.9% +38.3% +129.3% Table 7.Italy: Centre–North Italy: South Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 14.4 14.9 11.4 4.1 5.9 24.3 5.8 1700
13.0 12.2 9 4.8 9.2 33.6 13.3 Change −9.7% −18.1% −21.1%
+17.1% +55.9% +38.3% +129.3% Italy: Centre–North Italy: South Spain Germany France Netherlands England and Wales 1600 14.4 14.9 11.4 4.1 5.9 24.3 5.8 1700
13.0 12.2 9 4.8 9.2 33.6 13.3 Change −9.7% −18.1% −21.1%
+17.1% +55.9% +38.3% +129.3% Figure 5.Figure 5.4. Conclusions
Acknowledgements
References
,
Acemoglu D., Johnson S.. Robinson J.The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth, American Economic Review, 2005, vol. 95 (pg. 546-79), Ago
R.. Parmeggiani A.SIDESLa peste del 1656–57 nel Lazio, Temi di demografia storica italiana, 1990BolognaClueb(pg. 596-611). Alfani G.. Cavaciocchi S.Pestilenze e «crisi di sistema» in Italia tra XVI e
XVII secolo. Perturbazioni di breve periodo o cause di declino economico?, Le interazioni fra economia e ambiente biologico, 2010aFlorenceFlorence University Press(pg. 223-47). Alfani G.Climate,
population and famine in Northern Italy: general tendencies and Malthusian crisis, ca. 1450–1800, Annales de Démographie Historique, 2010b, vol. 2 (pg. 23-53). Alfani G.The effects of plague on the
distribution of property: Ivrea, Northern Italy 1630, Population Studies, 2010c, vol. 64 (pg. 1-15). , Alfani
G.Calamities and the Economy in Renaissance Italy: The Grand Tour of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 2013BasingstokePalgrave,
Alfani G.. Cohn S.K.Nonantola 1630. Anatomia di una pestilenza e
meccanismi del contagio, Popolazione e Storia, 2007, vol. 2 (pg. 99-138). Andreozzi D.. Cavaciocchi S.Ritratto lacrimevole delle miserie e calamità humane. Crisi di mortalità e standard di vita nel Cremonese del
XVII secolo, Le interazioni fra economia e ambiente biologico, 2010FlorenceFlorence University Press(pg. 575-84). Appleby A.B.The
disappearance of plague: a continuing puzzle, Economic History Review, 1980, vol. 33 (pg. 161-73).
, Arnould M.A.Mortalité et épidemies sous l'Ancien Régime dans le Hainaut et quelques régions limitrophes. Actes de colloque international de démographie
historique, 1965Liege-Paris: Université de Liège(pg. 465-81). , Barbot M.Le architetture della vita
quotidiana, 2008VeniceMarsilio. Benedictow O.J.Morbidity in historical plague epidemics, Population Studies, 1987, vol. 41
(pg. 401-31). , Bennassar B.Recherches sur les grandes épidémies dans le nord de l'Espagne à la fin du
XVIe siècle, 1969ParisEHESS. , Biraben J.N.Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays Européens et Méditerranées, 1975ParisMouton, Biraben J.N.. , Blum A.Géographie et
intensité des crises. Histoire de la population française, 1988ParisPUF(pg. 192-219) vol. II.
, Bonney R.The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c.1200–1815, 1999OxfordOxford University Press,
Bosker M., Brakman S., Garretsen H., De Jong H.. Schramm M.Ports, plagues and politics: explaining Italian city growth 1300–1861,
European Review of Economic History, 2008, vol. 12 (pg. 97-131). Bradley L.The most famous of all English plagues: a detailed analysis of the plague at
Eyam 1665–6, The Plague Reconsidered, 1977CambridgeHourdsprint(pg. 63-94). Campbell B.M.S.Nature as historical
protagonist: environment and society in pre-industrial England, Economic History Review, 2010a, vol. 63 (pg. 281-314). Campbell B.M.S.. Cavaciocchi S.Cause and effect? Physical shocks and biological hazards, Le interazioni fra
economia e ambiente biologico nell'Europa preindustriale, 2010bFlorenceFlorence University
Press(pg. 13-32).
Cipolla C.M.Il declino economico dell'Italia, Storia dell'economia italiana, 1959TorinoEinaudi(pg. 605-23). , Cipolla C.M.Publich
Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance, 1976CambridgeCambridge University
Press.
, Cipolla C.M.Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Italy, 1981MadisonUniversity of Winsconsin Press. , Cipolla C.M.Before the
Industrial Revolution, 19933rd edLondonTaylor and Francis. , Clark G.A Farewell to
Alms, 2007PrincetonPrinceton University Press. Cohn S.K.After the Black Death: labour
legislation and attitudes towards labour in late-medieval Western Europe, Economic History Review, 2007, vol. 60 (pg. 486-512). , Cohn S.K.Cultures of Plague. Medical Thought
at the End of the Renaissance, 2009OxfordOxford University Press, Cohn S.K.. Alfani G.Households and plague in early modern Italy, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2007, vol. 38 (pg. 177-205).
, Del Panta L.Le epidemie nella storia demografica italiana, 1980TorinoLoescher. Del Panta L.Per
orientarsi nel recente dibattito sull'eziologia della ‘peste’: alcune indicazioni bibliografiche e un tentativo di riflessione, Popolazione e
Storia, 2007, vol. 2 (pg. 139-49)