The Local Merchants of Prato: Small Entrepreneurs in the Late Medieval Economy & Il Banco Cambini: Affari e cercati di una compagnia mercantile-bancaria nella Firenze del XV secolo.

Richard K. Marshall, The Local Merchants of Prato: Small Entrepreneurs in the Late Medieval Economy

(The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 117.) Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. xix + 191 pp. $42.50. ISBN: 0-8018-6057-1.

Sergio Tognetti, Il Banco Cambini: Affari e cercati di una compagnia mercantile-bancaria nella Firenze del XV secolo

(Biblioteca Storica Toscana a cura della deputazione di storia patria per la Toscana, 37). Florence: Olschki, 1999. ix + 398 pp. IL 74,000. ISBN: 88-222-4777-9.

No area of research on late medieval and early modern Europe has received less attention in the past quarter century than the economy, even though there are many volumes of unstudied primary sources in archives available for analysis. This appears to be particularly true of scholars in the English-speaking world. In Italy, however, the situation is different. Economic history continues to play a major role in research on the late medieval commune, as the work of Giorgio Chittolini and Giuliano Pinto indicates. Italian historians have assumed for generations that the economy was linked in important ways to the political development of the territorial state and to the fortunes of the social elite that dominated it. As a quick glance at the titles of articles recently published by this journal will attest, the focus in North America and Britain has tended to center on the history of culture. Enriched by exciting new scholarship on the history of gender, sexuality, ritual, and the body, the study of cultural, so cial, and political developments has flourished. With few notable exceptions, however, scholarship on the economy has not kept pace. There are encouraging signs nevertheless that this situation may now be slowly changing.

Each of the two fine books under review here is a noteworthy addition to our understanding of the economic past. Both share several common features. Each analyzes previously unstudied collections of account books to address a variety of historiographical issues. Both focus on middling bankers and merchants rather than on the elite firms such as the Strozzi or Medici. Furthermore, both stress the prominence of landed property in economic investment strategies. There are, obviously, some differences between these two books. Whereas Marshall's study focuses on the local economy of Prato, Tognetti's book uses a case study approach to explore international economic operations throughout Italy and the Mediterranean world. Whereas the social context of economic activity is largely absent in the former, it is a key focus of the latter.

The principal aim of Marshall's book is "to portray the way in which the local merchants of a small Italian town lived and worked" (8) and "to investigate how one local economy was organized and functioned" (10). His primary subjects are seventeen tradesmen, whose activities spanned a period of seventy-three years (1337-1410). At the heart of his research are forty-five account books. In this small and attractive volume, the author achieves the goals he sets for himself. He is able to explore the basic components of the diet of these middling merchants, describe their charitable giving, and examine their penchant for buying rural property with the proceeds of their businesses. Women appear as important consumers and producers in this portrait of a local economy. When combined with what we know about the business practices of the most famous entrepreneur of Prato, Francesco Datini (d. 1410), this volume provides for us as full a portrait of this local economy as the sources allow.

One of the principal themes of the book, and one of its major contributions, is that among these merchants short-term and long-term credit "was a way of life in fourteenth-century Prato" (72). This runs counter to the views voiced long ago by Federico Melis and Armando Sapori, who assumed that the cash-box and barter were sufficient resources to meet the needs of merchants like these. Another major theme of the book is that there prevailed in this local economy a "casual regime" (75) between borrowers and lenders, which allowed the former to delay paying their loans in full to the latter. In such an economy, as Marshall argues convincingly, local tradesmen and shopkeepers were intricately involved in the development of banking practices. Here again the author is taking issue with Federico Melis. These tradesmen extended lines of credit, and by the late fourteenth century they had began to appear as trusted middlemen in long distance trading transactions. This social dimension of the activities of these merch ants and shopkeepers deserved elaboration and scrutiny. Indeed, the existence of a "casual regime" suggests strongly that patronage networks were crucial components of this local economy. Although Marshall lists a series of "favors" done by tradesmen for their customers (49), he does not take his social analysis of these relations further.

When Marshall's description of the local economy of Prato ends (around 1420), Tognetti's study of the international Cambini bank begins. Through a careful scrutiny of seventy-nine account books (supplemented by other economic and political sources), the author examines the history of the merchant banking firm founded by the descendants of a fourteenth century flax-dresser (linaiolo), Francesco Cambini (died around 1400). The author's explicit aim is to contextualize the world of these merchant bankers within its social setting. Consequently, Tognetti seeks to offer a type of analysis that runs counter to the trend in the history of banking that has neglected social history. He has in mind in particular the work of Frederick Lane and Federico Melis. Tognetti's book approaches its subject matter chronologically, tracing the history of the Cambini bank from its foundation in 1420 to its demise in 1482. In precise and often exhaustive detail, Tognetti lays out the operations of an institution that served as an e xport/import firm, a local bank, and an institution dealing in high finance. At its heyday the commodities it traded on the international stage included silk, dye, luxury cloth, leather, and even law books. Of crucial importance to the fortunes of the Cambini were the economic demands of the papal court and the resources of Portugal.

Tognetti manages to tease out of the sources some very interesting and plausible conclusions, some of which are at variance with views of previous scholars. Over and over again, he takes issue with some of the themes associated with the work of Philip Jones. For example, he suggests that this case study offers an important counter-example to the argument that rural lineages and interests dominated the cultural values and economic life of the city. He also argues for historians of the fifteenth-century commune to elevate the history of commerce and finance over the history of agriculture (a key focus in Jones's work). The author also uses this case study to argue convincingly against family solidarity and coherence. Indeed, the various branches of the family experienced very different economic fortunes, depending on the strategies adopted by each head of household. Tognetti has made an important contribution to the history of merchant banking in the fifteenth century. However, his criticism regarding Jones's emphasis on the rural character of the late medieval commune seems overstated. After all, as the author himself lays out in a clear fashion, the family invested in and later developed rural property as soon as their fortunes allowed. Tognetti makes some interesting observations about the differences between the medieval and early modern economies, but he leaves unexamined the issue of the economic depression of the Renaissance. Overall, however, this book -- as well as Marshall's study of Prato -- are welcome additions to what is surely a growing body of scholarship on the late medieval and early modern economy. May this trend continue.