The Mercers of Parma; 1585-1739: a Microcosm of the World of Commerce
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The Mercers of Parma; 1585-1739: A Microcosm of the World of Commerce by John Donald Panter Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia August 2014 © Copyright by John Donald Panter, 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES . iv LIST OF FIGURES .. v ABSTRACT . vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED . vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. 1 Technical Matters to Keep in Mind: Measures, Money and Terminology. 17 Parman Units of Measurement.. 18 List of Units. 26 Money. 29 Terminology.. 36 Methodology. 38 Synopsis of Historical Trends. 48 CHAPTER 2: ANALYSIS OF THE INVENTORIES. 57 First Period, 1582–1631.. 59 The Inventories. 59 The Frangheri/ Mangisti Inventory, 1582 . 60 The Barozzi Inventory, 1605. 64 The Montauti Inventory, 1608 . 67 The Bonifatia/Vagnini Inventory, 1614. 77 The Rubianni Inventory, 1631. 78 Analysis of the 1636 Tax Rolls. 81 Second Period,1655--1676.. 85 The Carduini Inventory, 1655. 89 The Zalli Inventory, 1655. .90 The Baistrocchi Inventory, 1657.. 93 The Riccardi Inventories, 1658 & 1659.. 95 The Corradi Inventory, 1661. 98 ii The Tirelli Inventory, 1664. 103 The Donelli Inventory, 1674. 104 The Emprini/Arnod Inventory, 1676. 107 Third Period, 1684--1739.. 111 The Bedeschi Inventory, 1684. 120 The Cornutti Inventories, 1695 and 1705. 122 The Menochii Inventory, 1719.. 127 The Zucchi Inventories, 1718 and 1728.. 129 The Zurlini Inventory, 1739.. 134 CHAPTER 3: LIFESTYLES. 137 First Period.. 138 Second Period. 143 Third Period. 146 CHAPTER 4: COSTS AND VALUES. 150 Problems. 150 Values of goods: Changes over the years . 151 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS. 170 Last Thoughts.. 174 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 177 Archival Documents and Topical Papers.. 177 Secondary Sources: Books. 178 Journal Articles:.. 188 On-Line Sources. 191 Additional Sources.. 192 Print. 192 On-Line. 193 APPENDIX: Glossary of Italian/English terms relating to the Mercery Trade.. 196 iii iv LIST OF TABLES Table # 1: List of Inventories.. 49 Table # 2: Sources of Goods, First Period. 60 Table # 3: Social Ranks of Accounts in Frangheri/Mangisti Inventory,1582... 63 Table # 4: Social Ranks of Accounts in Barozzi Inventory, 1605. 66 Table # 5: Social Ranks of Accounts in Montauti Inventory, 1608.. 70 Table # 6: Sources of Goods, Second Period.. 88 Table # 7: Social Ranks of Accounts in Zalli Inventory, 1655.. 92 Table # 8: Social Ranks of Accounts in Riccardi Inventory, 1659. 96 Table # 9: Origins of goods in Corradi Inventory, 1661. 101 Table # 10: Social Ranks of Accounts in Emprini/Arnod Inventory, 1676. 109 Table # 11: Sources of Goods, Third Period. 116 Table # 12: Social Ranks of Accounts in Cornutti Inventory, 1705. 126 Table # 13: Origins of Goods in Zucchi Inventory, 1718. 130 Table # 14: Prices of Fibres, per Ounce.. 152 Table # 15 Cloth Entries by Year & Period. 161 Table # 16: Real Consumption Wages of Unskilled Building Labourers. 168 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure #1: France: Named Sources. 118 Figure #2:Italy: Named Sources.. 119 v ABSTRACT Examination of 21 inventories and other documents from Parma, ranging from 1585 to 1739, correlating with historical trends over the period, revealed changes in the local and internationally ramified trade in mercery: cloth, apparel, fibre and ancillary goods. Prices for denotable goods varied in an inverted U curve, lower at the beginning and end of the period, high in the middle period when war and plague placed labour at a premium. Developments in trade patterns tended toward larger firms locally, with greater international connections and toward dominance of the international trade by Northern European countries and away from Italy. Consideration was given to details of money, measurements systems, technological developments and specialized terminology, which led to compilation of a glossary, appended. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED: ASPr -Archivio di Stato di Provincia di Parma —the State Archives of Parma NDP -Notai di Parma — a section within ASPr ADNP –Archivio Distrettuale Notarile di Parma –Archive of the District Notarial Society of Parma Monetary notations follow the European pre-decimal system: £ Pounds (British) Livres (French) Lire (Italian) s. Shillings (British) Sous (French) Soldi (Italian) d. Pennies (British) Deniers (French) Denarii (Italian) P£ designates Parman Lire T£ designates the French Livre Tournois Bo£ designates Bolognese Lire Ve£ designates Venetian Lire vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the help and inspiration given by the many good people and profound scholars (not mutually exclusive groups), in the History Department at Dalhousie University, and especially my supervisor, Professor Gregory Hanlon, for his and their several and collective forbearance over the time it took to complete this study. I would also like to thank my friend, Professor A. Michèle Millar for inspiring me to return to academic pursuits and for her encouragement and assistance along the way. Megan Archer rescued me from some soft-ware morasses. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge Laurel Harrington and the staff and patrons at Freeman’s Little New York, who saw me through some dark times. viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION The Thesis and the Theory Behind the Thesis: The Thesis The main thesis informing this study holds that examining the records left from mercers in Parma in a period spanning the 17th century will demonstrate linkages with places and events at distances in time and space, and that the information in these documents is not fully comprehensible if those distant factors are not taken into account. In examining the documents and their context, twenty-one inventories from Parma ranging from 1585 to 1739, we would thus expect to find that they were not isolated from developments in the rest of the world but that that ambience was itself the result of influences from much farther in the past, and that they were currently affecting and being affected by entities and activities from Japan to Mexico. In fact, this is what we do find. The main trends of history, demography and technology are clearly demarcated from the secondary literature. The inventories, upon close analysis, confirm these predictions. Goods were sourced from across Europe and from India and the Far East. We conclude that the examination of this limited selection of documents can give us a ground-level insight into the lives of mercantile workers who, although constrained geographically and temporally, were part of distributed networks of commercial activity and participants in a culture that stretched from deepest antiquity to nearly the present 1 day. In fact there is little distinction to be made in terms of culture and activities between these mercers and present day small shopkeepers in many specialized trades. The Theory Behind the Thesis. The theory underpinning this thesis can be expressed succinctly: The World is One! Rather than being divided geographically into regions or countries, or chronologically into eras or centuries the world is an interactive unity. Any such division could only be heuristic, that is, undertaken to simplify a problem that would otherwise be of intractable complexity, in the conscious awareness that the division must ultimately be abandoned when the inquiry has sufficiently advanced. Not only was that world a unity, the ongoing advances in transportation and communications mean that it was, and is, growing smaller apace. In this context I propose that the world of commerce can be viewed as a hologram. By examining the reduced sub-group of data found in the Parman invoices we can discern the outlines of the whole, albeit at reduced definition. More data would essentially show the same overall structure, but in greater detail. 1 In our present discourse, this tells us that we cannot know everything, or even everything important, about Parman commerce if we only look at Parman commerce: it is necessary to consider the wider context and the relationships that bind our subject matter F1 or a more detailed exposition of this concept, although in a different metaphorical structure see Carl Jung’s remarks on ‘Synchronicity’ in his Forward to the I Ching or Book of Changes, by Richard Wilhelm, tr. Cary F. Baynes (London: Penguin. 3rd ed. 1983), xxiv 2 to the.