Abstract

"After the Plague: Businesses in Mantua from 1630s to 1650s"

Alberto Grandi, University of Parma (alberto.grandi@unipr.it)

At the beginning of the XVII century, Mantua was the capital city of a small State in the North of Italy. Its population was about 30,000 inhabitants and its economy was really sturdy, thanks to a very well developed agriculture and some modern manufacturing activities focused on wool and leather.
In 1627, due to various dynastic issues of the ruling family, the Gonzaga, the “Succession war of Mantua” began and its overwhelming effects were added to the ones of the humongous plague epidemic in 1630. Once the war was ended and the plague passed, in the spring of 1631, the city was vanished: it counted less than 7,000 inhabitants and each economic activity was basically absent. Thus the new dukedom’s government tried to boost both the population and the economic growth, by guaranteeing tax exemptions for those people who chose to move to Mantua and mainly to those who started a new business there.
This paper analyzes the stories of these entrepreneurs, who took advantages of the incentives, making private negotiations with the new ruling family as well to gain even more benefits, the Gonzaga-Nevers. The outcome was kind of surprising because the demographic growth was really fast, in 1640 already the city was back to 25,000 inhabitants, but mostly the economic recovery was focused on new areas, such as stockings and caps factories and paper industry. The Plague and the war erased a city but in its place a new one arose, followed by a new ruling class and new economic and social basis. Sadly, the recovery, in the middle period, was shown less solid than expected because it was too linked to economic benefits, but some new businesses of that time kept pushing the local economy.