A Treatise on Abundance (1638) and Early Modern Views of Poverty and Famine

Carlo Tapia

Description

First English translation of Carlo Tapia’s ‘Trattato dell’abondanza’

‘A “Treatise on Abundance” (1638) and Early Modern Views of Poverty and Famine’ is an edited English translation of Carlo Tapia’s ‘Trattato dell’abondanza’.

Tapia (1565–1643) lived and worked in Naples, at the time the largest city in Italy and in the Spanish global empire, one of the three largest cities in Europe and a major center of artistic, musical and intellectual life in Baroque Europe. Tapia had a very distinguished career in the Spanish administration of the Kingdom of Naples and of Spanish Italy, generally serving in many offices across the kingdom, in Naples itself and in Madrid where, in 1612–24, he was a member of the Consejo de Italia (Council on Italy), the Spanish monarchy’s pre-eminent body to govern its various Italian possessions. Tapia had deep classical and juridical knowledge, and also rich experience as an administrator, including at the local level, all of which he brought to bear in the ‘Trattato’.

In the ‘Trattato’, Tapia tackled the question of how to provision the city with essential foodstuffs, a central issue for all early modern governments, and more generally the issue of how to prevent or combat famine across the kingdom’s largely rural provinces. The treatise represents the earliest systematic attempt to develop and publicize the most effective tools available to governments to fight famine and poverty. In particular, Tapia moved the discussion of these issues away from traditional religious approaches and aimed instead to offer both a theoretical understanding of the issues (based in part on his study of both classical sources and contemporary legal theories) and practical advice that could help administrators both in the provinces and in the capital.

Acknowledgments; List of Illustrations; Introduction; Translation of ‘Trattato dell’abondanza’; Index.

Sujets

• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Modern history
• Social policy
• Public policy
• 17th century
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783089604
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Treatise on Abundance (1638) and Early Modern Views on Poverty and Famine
Economic Ideas that Built Europe
Economic Ideas that Built Europe reconstructs the development of European political economy as seen through the eyes of its principal architects and interpreters, working to overcome the ideological nature of recent historiography. The volumes in the series—contextualized through analytical introductions and enriched with explanatory footnotes, bibliographies and indices—offer a wide selection of texts inspired by very different economic visions, and stress their complex consequences and interactions in the rich but often simplified history of European economic thought.
Economic Ideas that Built America reconstructs the development of American political economy as seen through the eyes of its principal architects and interpreters, working to overcome the ideological nature of recent historiography. The volumes in the series—contextualized through analytical introductions and enriched with explanatory footnotes, bibliographies and indices—offer a wide selection of texts inspired by very different economic visions, and stress their complex consequences and interactions in the rich but often neglected history of American economic thought.
A Treatise on Abundance (1638) and Early Modern Views on Poverty and Famine
Carlo Tapia
translation and notes by Tommaso Astarita,
introduction by Gaetano Sabatini
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2019
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Part of The Anthem Other Canon Economics Series
Series Editor Erik S. Reinert
© 2019 Tommaso Astarita and Gaetano Sabatini editorial matter and selection; individual chapters © individual contributors
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-958-1 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-958-X (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Gaetano Sabatini
Trattato dell’Abondanza / Treatise on Abundance
   Title Page and Dedication
  Trattato dell’Abondanza: Proemio/Prologue
  Trattato dell’Abondanza : Parte Prima/First Part
  Trattato dell’Abondanza : Parte Seconda/Second Part
  Trattato dell’Abondanza : Parte Terza/Third Part
  Trattato dell’Abondanza : Parte Quarta/Fourth Part
  Trattato dell’Abondanza : Parte Quinta/Fifth Part
Index of Personal Names
ILLUSTRATIONS
1 Alessandro Baratta, The Most Faithful City of Naples
2 Anonymous, Map of the Kingdom of Naples , c. 1650
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Professor Erik Reinert, Abi Pandey and the whole team at Anthem Press for their help with and support of this project.
Tommaso Astarita is grateful to Georgetown University for a sabbatical semester, during which much of the work on the project was possible. He also thanks David Collins, Marden Nichols and Josiah Osgood for help with specific points in the translation of Latin passages. He is grateful to Lawrence Hyman for his willingness to listen cheerfully to many tales of the pleasures and frustrations of translating erudite seventeenth-century texts.
Gaetano Sabatini gratefully remembers Marcello De Cecco (1939–2016), an illustrious economist born in the same town as Carlo Tapia, who first alerted him to the importance of the Treatise on Abundance . He is also thankful to Isabel Aguirre of the Archivo General de Simancas for help in locating documents pertaining to Tapia; to Julien Dubouloz of the Université Aix-Marseille for help in understanding the importance of the classical tradition in Tapia’s work; and to Lina Nicoletti for following with her usual passion and competence the early phases of this work.
INTRODUCTION
Gaetano Sabatini
1. The Particular Features of the Treatise on Abundance
The Treatise on Abundance , published in 1638 in Naples by Carlo Tapia, a high official of Spanish origin, holds a special place within sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian discussions of provisioning. 1 The uniqueness of Tapia’s book consists not only in the fact that it is the only treatise published in Italy over those two centuries (i.e., before the large production of essays on this matter in the eighteenth century) devoted fully and expressly to the problems of grain provisioning, but also in the direct involvement of the author with his topic and in the specific character of the work.
Tapia’s personal experience as minister for the king of Spain in Naples, involved on numerous occasions and in various positions in the resolution of concrete problems linked to the provisioning of grains for both Naples and the other communities of the kingdom, was fundamental in shaping the Treatise . 2 Moreover, Tapia was no ordinary official in Spanish Naples: he held the highest rank among the togati (the “robed ones”), as the Naples magistrates were commonly called by the habit that distinguished their profession, worked closely with several viceroys and in 1612–24 served on the Council of Italy in Madrid. 3 That is, between the 1580s and the 1630s, Tapia encountered, at the highest levels, all the challenges involved in the government of the political, administrative and economic life of the kingdom. The famous 1585 revolt in Naples would suffice to demonstrate how central the challenges of food provisioning were to that government. 4 The Treatise is thus a work of markedly practical character, born of direct experience both of the concrete problems posed by grain provisions, and of the broader sociopolitical context in which those problems had to be resolved.
Tapia aimed to provide public administrators with clear suggestions on provisioning policy, but he also developed a precise theoretical approach. He validated his arguments by a constant recourse to the authority not only of contemporary or medieval writers and Church Fathers, but even more of Latin authors. This is another important feature of the Treatise : in it, Tapia attempted to recover ancient knowledge, particularly ancient juridical knowledge, pertaining to grain provisioning. This was not a mere homage to a system of thought that played a central role in the culture of his time; rather, Tapia’s recourse to the authority of Roman authors was part of his effort to employ ancient reflections on provisioning matters to strengthen the practical arguments of his work. His use of ancient knowledge further proves its continuing strength throughout the seventeenth century; the next century would aim to clear the deck of all prior tradition and knowledge.
2. The Debate on Provisioning in Naples in the Late Sixteenth Century
In the first half century of Spain’s rule in Naples, the provisioning system for the capital and the provinces did not undergo substantial changes compared to the period of the Aragonese kings (1442–1503). 5 Thus, in Naples, by far the largest population center in the kingdom, the whole process of grain collecting, milling and bread-making was under the purview of the municipal government, embodied in the seven members of the Tribunal of San Lorenzo, six elected by the noble Seggi (or wards) of the city and one elected by the People’s ward. 6
This arrangement began to change in the 1550s, especially after a famine in 1555 caused significant tensions in the kingdom’s grain provisions. 7 Following a series of poor harvests, in 1560 Viceroy Alcalá added to the Tribunal of San Lorenzo a new official called the Grassiero (also known with the ancient Roman name of the Prefect of the Annona). The Grassiero was chosen usually among the regents (i.e., members) of the Collateral Council, the kingdom’s highest administrative organ, and represented the viceroy, with the aim to coordinate, and in effect to concentrate, control over the city’s provisions. 8 Already since 1548, moreover, Viceroy Pedro de Toledo had brought the Eletto of the People’s ward under viceregal control; this Eletto held the power to regulate flour provisions for the capital’s main market, and to set the retail price of flour. The result of these moves was that the provisioning system came under the de facto control of the viceroy. 9
The repeated occurrence of poor harvests, which determined the viceroys to devote more attention to the challenges of grain provisioning for Naples, offered further evidence of the consequences of the enormous demographic growth of Naples. In three decades, the city had increased its population by a third. Between the late 1520s and the 1550s, Naples went from around 150,000 inhabitants to about 200,000; it then reached about 300,000 by the first quarter of the seventeenth century; the kingdom as a whole went from 315,990 households in 1532 to 540,090 in 1595. 10 Starting in the 1550s, governing groups in Nap