Department of Social and Economic History

La ricerca che ha prodotto le idee qui presentate mi ha spinto ad entrare per la prima volta nella ciclofficina popolare "Ampio Raggio" il 13 Marzo 2012. La ciclofficina, fisicamente intesa, è collocata nell'ultimo box dell'ex mercato rionale di via Fioravanti 24, a Bologna, utilizzato ora per dare spazio ai collettivi che si riuniscono sotto il nome di "spazio sociale autogestito XM24".

A growing body of literature on the monetary history of Africa focuses on the processes of domestication of colonial currencies. While these studies highlight how African actors manipulated colonial currencies and adapted to colonial monetary reforms, they generally exclude African agency in the design process of colonial monetary systems. Through the case of the Egyptian exile in Eritrea Ḥasan Mūsā al-ʿAqqād, this article demonstrates how privileged African actors could participate in the design process of colonial monetary systems. By comparing implemented colonial policies and the contributions of African actors in the design process, it is possible to highlight some aspects of the sociocultural reality of the colonies that were overlooked and neglected by colonial administrators. The analysis of Ḥasan Mūsā al-ʿAqqād's memorandum on the introduction of a new colonial monetary system reveals that Italian policymakers prioritised their accounting needs over local accounting systems and numerical scales in their first monetary reform in the colony of Eritrea, offering a new potential explanation for its failure.

Labour migrants were a widespread phenomenon in the Alps
during the early modern period and impacted the materiality of
everyday life in the mountains. This article investigates traces of
these movements in linguistic usage by exploring the way in
which goods were described by actors from the Three Leagues, in
present-day Switzerland and Italy. Provenances of goods were
given by using toponyms that indicated the place of origin the
more precise, the closer the location was to the Alps. These
geographical terms informed about specific visual and tactile
qualities and were introduced together with other technical
vocabulary via specialized merchants and spread via shops to
customers of the upper echelons. Small-scale retailers and
occasional dealers made use of less detailed descriptions that can
also be found in the accounts of their clients which resembled
the language used in informal correspondences. These channels
could be activated to gain more detailed information and thanks
to the wide-spread networks of migrant labourers, knowledge
was exchanged with and via the Alps. This exchange of
information appears, however, to have become less intense when
migration patterns changed in the aftermath of the French
Revolutionary Wars.

"Materielle Kulturen in den frühneuzeitlichen Alpen: konsumgeschichtliche Zugänge zu einer histoire connectée der Drei Bünde, 1639-1798." Paper presented within the research colloquium organised by Christina Brauner, Renate Dürr, Philip Hahn and Xenia von Tippelskirch at the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, 11 November 2021.

"Women’s Cloth and Men’s Beverage? Gendered Retail Networks and Consumption Practices in the Southern Alps, 1639–1798." Paper presented in the session The 'Rural Consumer': Consumer Goods, Con-sumption, and Material Culture of Rural Households in Early Modern Europe, organised by Henning Bovenkerk (University of Münster) at the Rural History Conference, Uppsala, 20 – 23 June 2022.

Paper presented at the conference Atlantic Italies: Economic Entanglements between the Americas, Africa, and the Mediterranean (15th–19th Centuries), organised by Silvia Marzagalli (University of Nice) and Rob-erto Zaugg (University of Zurich), held at the University of Zurich, 1–3 September 2022.

Paper presented at the workshop Debts: The Good, the Bad, and the Hidden. Bringing Family, Kin, Commerce, and Consumption Debts Together, organised by Janine Maegraith, Margareth Lanzinger, and Matthias Donabaum (all University of Vienna), held at the University of Vienna, 15–17 September 2022.

Talk at the workshop Intrecci globali e retaggi coloniali in Italia: Strategie di public history tra università, musei e movimenti, organised by Carlo Taviani (Università di Teramo) and Roberto Zaugg (Universität Zürich), held at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome, 20–21 October 2022.

Paper presented in the panel Guardians of Children, Custodians of Wealth, Opponents of Widowed Parents (16th to 18th Century), organised by Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith (both University of Vienna), at the European Social Science History Conference, University of Gothenburg, 12–15 April 2023.

Das Zeitalter der Renaissance, welches durch das Italien des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts "hindurchfegte", hat die neuzeitliche Kultur sicherlich in mehrfacher Hinsicht geprägt. Natürlich hat dieser geistige und technische Entwicklungsprozess nicht nur innerhalb der Grenzen der Halbinsel, sondern auch im europäischen Kontext stattgefunden. Die Ausbreitung der Renaissance hat nämlich sehr schnell andere europäische Städte und Regionen erfasst, besonders jene, die bereits früher anhaltende kulturelle Kontakte mit den wohlhabenden Städten der Halbinsel unterhielten. Innerhalb dieses Prozesses waren die Lagunenstadt Venedig und das oberdeutsche Gebiet maßgebliche Protagonistin. Die "Serenissima" Republik Venedig, das Tor zum Osten, war in der Tat ein begehrter Stützpunkt für den Handel über die Alpen. Die Handelsgesellschaften waren mit besonderen, zum Teil speziell auf sie zugeschnittenen Privilegien ausgestattet. Deutliches Zeichen für die gegenseitigen Interessen an diesen wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen ist, dass die Fondaco dei Tedeschi, die Niederlassung deutschsprachiger Händler, ihren Sitz nur wenige Schritte vom wirtschaftlichen Herzen der Lagunenstadt entfernt hatte. Über dieses Netzwerk wurden jedoch nicht nur Gewürze, Silber, Pelze usw. verhandelt, sondern auch andere kulturelle Ausdrucksformen weitergegeben, die in diesem außergewöhnlichen Zeitraum entstanden sind. Dadurch erfolgte etwas, was die Historiker einen Kulturtransfer nennen, ein kultureller Austauschprozess, von dem beide Parteien profitierten. In diesen Austausch einbezogen waren Objekte wie Menschen: Gemälde und zugehörige Kaufleute, Bücher des italienischen Humanismus und deren Drucker, die sie produzierten, venezianische Glashandwerker und Tiroler Glashütten; sie ermöglichten den kontinuierlichen Fluss von Ideen, welche sich auf dieser Achse bewegten und in Städten und Regionen kulminierten, was wiederum Entwicklungen und Transformationen in den Kulturen zur Folge hatte und neue Wege eröffnete.

Per diversi decenni gli studi sulla regione alpina in epoca preindustriale hanno risentito della definizione braudeliana di 'fabbrica di uomini', espressione con cui il grande storico francese indicava una sorta di bacino della manodopera disponibile occasionalmente e/o stagionalmente per gli agglomerati urbani delle zone pianeggianti limitrofe. 1 Inoltre, teorie economiche e demografiche risalenti alla seconda metà del secolo scorso individuavano come cause principali della mobilità alpina in epoca preindustriale la scarsità di risorse primarie, insufficienti a sfamare le popolazioni di montagna, e le limitate specializzazioni manifatturiere delle relative economie. 2 Negli ultimi vent'anni le ricerche di storia sociale ed economica delle Alpi hanno messo in discussione queste interpretazioni. In primo luogo, è stato ribadito che le emigrazioni alpine non scaturivano esclusivamente da necessità legate agli squilibri demografici dovuti alla scarsa produzione di risorse alimentari, quanto piuttosto da concrete prospettive di guadagno dovute all'ampliamento della domanda degli agglomerati urbani di pianura. 3 Inoltre, gli studi su alcune manifatture e sui modelli di consumo hanno mostrato un sostanziale aumento quantitativo e qualitativo dell'attività produttiva e commerciale nell'area alpina. * Il seguente elaborato si basa sui risultati ottenuti dalla tesi specialistica dell'autore discussa presso l'Università degli Studi di Padova nel dicembre 2016, intitolata "Vetrai veneziani in Tirolo (1534-1590). Mobilità, tecnologia, istituzioni" e supervisionata da Andrea Caracausi del Dipartimento di studi storici, geografici e dell'antichità (DISSGEA). Ringrazio Ellinor Forster (Institut für neuere Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte der Johannes Kepler Universität Linz) per l'importante contributo dato alla stesura della tesi.