Page 37 - Mocarelli, Luca, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2020. Maize to the People! Cultivation, Consumption and Trade in the North-Eastern Mediterranean (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Century). Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 37
maize diffusion in the republic of venice: the case of the province of vicenza
valleys. At the moment, there is a lack of specific research on this topic, but
we can hypothesize that this element also affected the diffusion of maize.
Similarly, specific research on agrarian contracts and on the agricultural
production could provide useful information on the cultivation techniques
and varieties of products.
Moreover, if it is true that in this area, too, the general cultivation of
maize and especially the moment in which it substituted the other minor
cereals in the harvests and in the peasant diet – as we have observed, this
often depended on the elevation of the villages – happened during the fam-
ine of the 1590s, and then completely between the seventeenth and eight-
eenth century, it is also true that a previous situation of food scarcity could
have facilitated its inclusion in the rural alimentary regimen. In this sense,
especially the 1569-1572 famine that affected central and northern Italy has
a chronology that is entirely compatible with the examples referred to in
the previous lines (Alfani, Mocarelli and Strangio 2015, 4, 7-8, 10, 26; Alfani
and O’ Grada 2017, 8-9; Alfani, Mocarelli and Strangio 2017, 29-35).
Maize in the Province of Vicenza:
self-consumption or market? A hypothesis.
Before concluding this short and preliminary analysis of the diffusion of
maize in the Province of Vicenza in the early modern period, it is inter-
esting, referring to the examples quoted above, to propose a hypothesis on
the use of the new cereal and especially on its connection with the mar-
ket dynamics. This topic is widely recalled in the historiography on maize:
Marco Doria wrote that, within a process that continued to intensify un-
til the eighteenth century, “a dualistic cereal growing […] took place: the
wheat one, market-oriented; the maize one, the key element of subsistence
and a poor economy” (Doria 2002, 572; Levi 1991, 161). Montanari recalls
this bipartition that seems to link maize consumption to poverty and wheat
to richness, given its high price; however, this does not exclude the inclu-
sion of maize in market dynamics, to which especially the day labourers
and the salaried workers resorted (Montanari 1993, 167). Furthermore, the
importance of maize in the organization of both the rural and the urban
market has been extensively demonstrated thanks to the research on the
Lombardy and Umbria regions conducted by Luca Mocarelli and Manuel
Vaquero Piñeiro (Mocarelli and Vaquero Piñeiro 2018, 25, 42-43), howev-
er, their focus is on the eighteenth century; scholars who analysed the first
steps of maize diffusion stressed the fact that the new cereal appeared ini-
35
valleys. At the moment, there is a lack of specific research on this topic, but
we can hypothesize that this element also affected the diffusion of maize.
Similarly, specific research on agrarian contracts and on the agricultural
production could provide useful information on the cultivation techniques
and varieties of products.
Moreover, if it is true that in this area, too, the general cultivation of
maize and especially the moment in which it substituted the other minor
cereals in the harvests and in the peasant diet – as we have observed, this
often depended on the elevation of the villages – happened during the fam-
ine of the 1590s, and then completely between the seventeenth and eight-
eenth century, it is also true that a previous situation of food scarcity could
have facilitated its inclusion in the rural alimentary regimen. In this sense,
especially the 1569-1572 famine that affected central and northern Italy has
a chronology that is entirely compatible with the examples referred to in
the previous lines (Alfani, Mocarelli and Strangio 2015, 4, 7-8, 10, 26; Alfani
and O’ Grada 2017, 8-9; Alfani, Mocarelli and Strangio 2017, 29-35).
Maize in the Province of Vicenza:
self-consumption or market? A hypothesis.
Before concluding this short and preliminary analysis of the diffusion of
maize in the Province of Vicenza in the early modern period, it is inter-
esting, referring to the examples quoted above, to propose a hypothesis on
the use of the new cereal and especially on its connection with the mar-
ket dynamics. This topic is widely recalled in the historiography on maize:
Marco Doria wrote that, within a process that continued to intensify un-
til the eighteenth century, “a dualistic cereal growing […] took place: the
wheat one, market-oriented; the maize one, the key element of subsistence
and a poor economy” (Doria 2002, 572; Levi 1991, 161). Montanari recalls
this bipartition that seems to link maize consumption to poverty and wheat
to richness, given its high price; however, this does not exclude the inclu-
sion of maize in market dynamics, to which especially the day labourers
and the salaried workers resorted (Montanari 1993, 167). Furthermore, the
importance of maize in the organization of both the rural and the urban
market has been extensively demonstrated thanks to the research on the
Lombardy and Umbria regions conducted by Luca Mocarelli and Manuel
Vaquero Piñeiro (Mocarelli and Vaquero Piñeiro 2018, 25, 42-43), howev-
er, their focus is on the eighteenth century; scholars who analysed the first
steps of maize diffusion stressed the fact that the new cereal appeared ini-
35
