Page 83 - 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. 83
innovations in agr icultur e and population growth in fr iuli ...
cause it specifies the absolute quantities of goods, but because it indicates
to us, according to the modalities previously described, the different diffu-
sion of maize. The average number of members per household is positively
correlated with population growth and is also statistically significant. This
result seems to me to be particularly important because, as we shall see in
the next section, it helps to explain through which mechanisms population
growth may have occurred. Finally, the effects of the famine of 1629 had a
depressive effect on growth, since, in the face of greater losses in terms of
deaths and emigrations, it was more difficult to return to the number of in-
habitants before the crisis. This means that the villages that had been most
affected by the crisis grew more slowly than the others. However, the rela-
tionship is weak, and the level of significance is also close to the limit.
Discussion
In seventeenth-century Friuli, there was a relationship between maize dif-
fusion and population increase. However, there are at least two fundamen-
tal interpretative aspects that the model cannot resolve because there are
several possible data readings. 1) It does not solve the basic dilemma: was
it maize that determined population growth or, on the contrary, was it the
demographic increase that stimulated the spread of maize? 2) It does not
explain the mechanisms through which the cause-effect relationship be-
tween these two variables has been achieved.
With regard to the first point, the Malthusian rather than the
Boserupian perspective seems to me much more plausible. This belief is not
based on the way maize spread through the territory, which could also be
consistent with the second perspective. It is based, instead, on the dynam-
ics related to its consumption. As we have seen, the consumption of maize
in Friuli, as in other territories, began to take hold in order to alleviate situ-
ations that had arisen following Malthusian crises: famines and epidemics.
The introduction and, above all, the beginning of maize consumption took
place, as I have already pointed out, in the context of a supply and not a de-
mand crisis. In the Boserupian scheme, population growth is the driving
force behind innovation in agriculture, but this does not seem to me to be
the case in seventeenth-century Friuli. With regard to the second question,
from a theoretical point of view, i.e. relating only to demographic account-
ing aspects, population growth may have manifested itself through one of
these three factors or through a combination of the three: 1) increase in fer-
tility; 2) decline in mortality; 3) positive net migration.
81
cause it specifies the absolute quantities of goods, but because it indicates
to us, according to the modalities previously described, the different diffu-
sion of maize. The average number of members per household is positively
correlated with population growth and is also statistically significant. This
result seems to me to be particularly important because, as we shall see in
the next section, it helps to explain through which mechanisms population
growth may have occurred. Finally, the effects of the famine of 1629 had a
depressive effect on growth, since, in the face of greater losses in terms of
deaths and emigrations, it was more difficult to return to the number of in-
habitants before the crisis. This means that the villages that had been most
affected by the crisis grew more slowly than the others. However, the rela-
tionship is weak, and the level of significance is also close to the limit.
Discussion
In seventeenth-century Friuli, there was a relationship between maize dif-
fusion and population increase. However, there are at least two fundamen-
tal interpretative aspects that the model cannot resolve because there are
several possible data readings. 1) It does not solve the basic dilemma: was
it maize that determined population growth or, on the contrary, was it the
demographic increase that stimulated the spread of maize? 2) It does not
explain the mechanisms through which the cause-effect relationship be-
tween these two variables has been achieved.
With regard to the first point, the Malthusian rather than the
Boserupian perspective seems to me much more plausible. This belief is not
based on the way maize spread through the territory, which could also be
consistent with the second perspective. It is based, instead, on the dynam-
ics related to its consumption. As we have seen, the consumption of maize
in Friuli, as in other territories, began to take hold in order to alleviate situ-
ations that had arisen following Malthusian crises: famines and epidemics.
The introduction and, above all, the beginning of maize consumption took
place, as I have already pointed out, in the context of a supply and not a de-
mand crisis. In the Boserupian scheme, population growth is the driving
force behind innovation in agriculture, but this does not seem to me to be
the case in seventeenth-century Friuli. With regard to the second question,
from a theoretical point of view, i.e. relating only to demographic account-
ing aspects, population growth may have manifested itself through one of
these three factors or through a combination of the three: 1) increase in fer-
tility; 2) decline in mortality; 3) positive net migration.
81
