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With this English edition of Surviving the Ghetto, Serena Di Nepi traces the troubled and compelling history of the birth of the ghetto in sixteenth-century Rome. From the arrival of the Sephardim to the Italian wars, and the incredible story of an accusation of ritual homicide that was never made, the research sketches a picture of Jewish society, its institutions and its ruling class during the first fifty years of segregation. How did Jews react to the ghetto? Did their institutional organization change, and how? What was the impact of the restrictive laws regarding their professions and their working environment? What was the role of the rabbis in such a problematic moment? What became of Rome’s Jewish bankers? This book addresses these questions.
The book analyses the role of private bankers who were pivotal in modernizing the economic and financial system of Italy in the XIX century. To achieve this they needed to interact with the international haute banque to organize and place the public loans and the large investments associated with the joint-stock companies. The theme of reputation, which is currently at the centre of the historiographical debate, is fundamental for the study of the private banker figures, whose professional success is linked to the limitless trust accorded to them by their circle of personal contacts. Historiography has studied the role of Italian bankers in the trade, credit and international finance during ...
The early decades of the sixteenth century were a turbulent time for the Italian peninsula as competing centres of power struggled for political control. Nowhere was this more true than the area contested by Milan and Venice, that was constantly crossed and occupied by rival armies. Investigating the impact of successive crises upon the inhabitants of the Po Valley, this book challenges many fundamental assumptions about the relationship between war and economic development and draws conclusion that have implications for early modern Europe as a whole. In traditional historiography, periods of war and general crisis have often been regarded as promoting a shift in resources from the communal...
Milan was for centuries the most important center of economic, ecclesiastical and political power in Lombardy. As the State of Milan it extended in the Renaissance over a large part of northern and central Italy and numbered over thirty cities with their territories. A Companion to Late Medieval and early Modern Milan examines the story of the city and State from the establishment of the duchy under the Viscontis in 1395 through to the 150 years of Spanish rule and down to its final absorption into Austrian Lombardy in 1704. It opens up to a wide readership a well-documented synthesis which is both fully informative and reflects current debate. 20 chapters by qualified and distinguished scho...
Gives accurate and reliable summaries of the current state of research. It includes entries on philosophers, problems, terms, historical periods, subjects and the cultural context of Renaissance Philosophy. Furthermore, it covers Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Byzantine and vernacular philosophy, and includes entries on the cross-fertilization of these philosophical traditions. A unique feature of this encyclopedia is that it does not aim to define what Renaissance philosophy is, rather simply to cover the philosophy of the period between 1300 and 1650.
The way merchants trade, think about business and represent commerce in art forms define merchant culture. The world between 1500 and 1800 encompassed different merchant cultures that stood alone and in contact with others. Culture, power relations and institutions framed similarities and differences and outlined the global outcome of these exchanges.
Taking a broad chronological approach to the subject, this book provides readers with a cutting-edge overview of research into the varying attitudes towards work and its place in pre-Industrial society. This volume takes a fresh and innovative approach to the history of ideas of work, concerning perceptions, attitudes, cultures and representations of work throughout Antiquity and the medieval and early modern periods. Focusing on developments in Europe, the contributors approach the subject from a variety of angles, considering aspects of work as described in literature, visual culture, and as perceived in economic theory.
Cities and Solidarities charts the ways in which the study of individuals and places can revitalise our understanding of urban communities as dynamic interconnections of solidarities in medieval and early modern Europe. This volume sheds new light on the socio-economic conditions, the formal and informal institutions, and the strategies of individual town dwellers that explain the similarities and differences in the organisation and functioning of urban communities in pre-modern Europe. It considers how communities within cities and towns are constructed and reconstructed, how interactions amongst members of differing groups created social and economic institutions, and how urban communities reflected a sense of social cohesion. In answering these questions, the contributions combine theoretical frameworks with new digital methodologies in order to provoke further discussion into the fundamental nature of urban society in this key period of change. The essays in this collection demonstrate the complexities of urban societies in pre-modern Europe, and will make fascinating reading for students and scholars of medieval and early modern urban history.
This book focuses on early examples of women who may be said to have anticipated, in one way or another, modern professional and/or career-oriented women. The contributors to the book discuss women who may at least in some respect be seen as professionally ambitious, unlike the great majority of working women in the past. In order to improve their positions or to find better business opportunities, the women discussed in this book invested in developing their qualifications and professional skills, took economic or other kinds of risks, or moved to other countries. Socially, they range from elite women to women of middle-class and lower middle-class origin. In terms of theory, the book brings fresh insights into issues that have been long discussed in the field of women’s history and are also debated today. However, despite its focus on women, the book is conceptually not so much focused on gender as it is on profession, business, career, qualifications, skills, and work. By applying such concepts to analyzing women’s endeavours, the book aims at challenging the conventional ideas about them.
The Jewish population of early modern Italy was characterised by its inner diversity, which found its expression in the coexistence of various linguistic, cultural and liturgical traditions, as well as social and economic patterns. The contributions in this volume aim to explore crucial questions concerning the self-perception and identity of early modern Italian Jews from new perspectives and angles.