Industria tessile e commercio internazionale nella Firenze del tardo Medioevo. (Reviews).

Hidetoshi Hoshino. Industria tessile e commercio internazionale nella Firenze del tardo Medioevo

Eds. Franco Franceschi and Sergio Tognetti. (Biblioteca Storica Toscana, Serie I, vol. 39) Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2001. xvi + 204 pp. L 42,000. ISBN: 88-222-4964-X.

In 1991 Florentine scholarship lost one of its most influential economic historians: Hidetoshi Hoshino. Eleven years later, his impact on Florentine historiography still resonates. Scholars who were fortunate enough to do research in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze in the 1970's and 1980's will certainly remember Professor Hoshino with fondness. His erudition, courtesy, and graciousness impressed established scholars and graduate students alike. An expert on the late medieval Florentine cloth industry, Professor Hoshino taught at the Universities of Bologna and Florence for fifteen years before he passed away at the age of sixty-two. He is best known for his book on the trade and marketing of Florentine woolen cloth, L'arte della lana in Firenze nel Basso Medioevo: il commercio della lana e il mercato dei panni fiorentini nei secoli XIII-XV (1980). At the time of his death, he was completing a study on the economic relations between Florence and the Ottoman Empire.

In homage to his legacy, two members of the current generation of Florentine economic historians, Franco Franceschi and Sergio Tognetti, have collected into a single volume twelve previously published essays. All of them originally appeared in a variety of journals between 1981 and 1993. Three were first published in Japanese, so they appear here in Italian translation for the first time. Accompanying these studies is a lucid and illuminating introduction by Franco Franceschi. While providing an instructive overview of Hoshino's scholarship, it also skillfully situates his work within the context of current historiographical trends regarding the late medieval economy.

This slender volume is worth the attention of economic historians for a number of reasons. First, several essays provide important insights regarding the issue of the "economic depression of the Renaissance." Second, they make available illuminating research on the economic relations between Florence and the Ottoman Empire. Finally, they offer a superb, carefully documented chronology of the development of the woolen cloth industry in Florence. The editors have organized this collection into three thematically united sections: the Florentine cloth industry, the Florentine economy and the role of merchant companies, and the economy of Florence and western Tuscany. The chronological span extends from the thirteenth through early sixteenth centuries. Complementing the essays and the introduction are a biographical note on the late author, a listing of edited primary sources, a bibliography, and two indexes (names and places).

Among the principal issues explored in the essays are the development of the woolen cloth industry in Florence, the economic depression of the late Middle Ages, Florentine economic relations with the eastern Mediterranean, and the Tuscan regional economy. Tracing the development of the cloth industry in Florence from the late thirteenth through early sixteenth centuries in his essay, "La produzione laniera nel Trecento," Hoshino identifies the third decade of the fourteenth century as a turning point. It is then, he argues, that the production (rather than simply the re-finishing) of luxury cloth actually begins. From the 1320's there developed an industry that eventually transformed Florence into one of the foremost producers of luxury woolen cloth in Europe. Although Hoshino does not deny the existence of an economic contraction after the middle of the fourteenth century, he notes that simultaneous with this downturn were new opportunities for expansion and growth in the cloth industry. Indeed, as he argues in "La crisi del Trecento a Firenze," Florentines acquired at that time new markets for their luxury woolen cloth (including the Ottoman Empire), greater access to needed raw materials (English wool), and wider commercial opportunities for contacts in the eastern Mediterranean. His perspective on the trajectory of the Florentine economy between 1350 and 1500 therefore calls into question the view that the economic contraction was a generalized and monolithic phenomenon throughout Europe. As such, his complex portrayal of the European economy after 1350 -- one in which economic sectors in some areas flourished while other sectors in other regions declined -- is presciently consistent with the rich and complicated image that historians accept today.

In conclusion, readers have much to gain from these essays. Even so, they might also want to supplement them with up-to-date research on the late medieval economy (S. R. Epstein), the cloth industry (Franco Franceschi), and fulling mills (John Muendel).