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ADAM MANIKOWSKI THE SOCIETY OF ELITE CONSUMPTION LORENZO STROZZI’S ARISTOCRATIC ENTERPRISE IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY TUSCANY TRANSLATED FROM THE POLISH BY MICHAEL COLE WARSAW 2017 www.rcin.org.pl THE SOCIETY OF ELITE CONSUMPTION LORENZO STROZZI’S ARISTOCRATIC ENTERPRISE IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY TUSCANY www.rcin.org.pl In Memory of Marian Małowist www.rcin.org.pl ADAM MANIKOWSKI THE SOCIETY OF ELITE CONSUMPTION LORENZO STROZZI’S ARISTOCRATIC ENTERPRISE IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY TUSCANY TRANSLATED FROM THE POLISH BY MICHAEL COLE WARSAW 2017 www.rcin.org.pl Originally published in Polish as: Toskańskie przedsiębiorstwo arystokratyczne w XVII wieku. Społeczeństwo elitarnej konsumpcji Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1991 Proofreading Paweł Dobrowolski Copy-editing Grażyna Waluga Layout and cover Dariusz Górski © Copyright by Adam Manikowski © Copyright by Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk ISBN 978–83–65880–06–2 Publication founded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland, in 2014–2017, as a part of the National Program for the Development of the Humanities, no. 0128/NPRH3/H31/82/2014 Instytut Historii PAN Rynek Starego Miasta 29/31 00–272 Warszawa +48 22 831 02 61–62 ext. 44 www.ihpan.edu.pl http://ksiegarnia-ihpan.edu.pl/ [email protected] www.rcin.org.pl TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction to the English Edition . I From the Author . 7 Introduction . 9 Chapter I: Lorenzo Strozzi . 15 Chapter II: People and Account Books . 25 Chapter III: The Estate and its Profi tability . 45 1. The Evolution of the Estate . 45 2. Income . 50 (a) The structure and profi tability of rural estates . 50 (b) Urban real estate and its profi tability . 57 (c) Income from shares in banks, monti and accomandità 60 (d) Other income . 64 (e) Extraordinary income . 65 Chapter IV: THE EXPENSES OF THE ENTERPRISE . 70 1. Principles of classifi cation . 70 2. Expenses on Fixed Assets . 81 3. Current Consumption . 86 (a) Expenses on Food . 94 (b) Lordly Clothes and Liveries . 100 (c) Movables . 105 (d) Horses and Coaches . 109 (e) Gifts, Alms, Salaries and Wages . 112 (f ) Miscellaneous Expenses . 127 (g) Travel and Ceremonies . 131 Chapter V: Family Policy . 136 Chapter VI: Aristocratic Enterprise and the Development of Florence and Tuscany in the Seventeenth Century . 161 www.rcin.org.pl 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter VII: The Society of Elite Consumption . 177 Postscript . 202 Genealogical Table of the Descendants of Giovanbattista di Lorenzo Strozzi . 206 Income and expenses of Lorenzo Strozzi’s enterprise 1595–1670. Tables A–H . 207 Table A. Income of Lorenzo Strozzi’s enterprise 1595–1670 . 207 Table B. Expenses of Lorenzo Strozzi’s enterprise 1595–1670 . 207 Table C. Summarised income of Lorenzo Strozzi’s enterprise 1595–1670 . 209 Table D. Summarised expenses of Lorenzo Strozzi’s enterprise 1595–1670 . 210 Table E. Income of Lorenzo Strozzi’s enterprise 1595–1670 . 210 Table F. Expenses of Lorenzo Strozzi’s enterprise 1595–1670 . 210 Table G. Summarised income of Lorenzo Strozzi’s enterprise 1595–1670 . 212 Table H. Summarised expenses of Lorenzo Strozzi’s enterprise 1595–1670 . 211 Bibliography . 213 List of Abbreviations . 220 www.rcin.org.pl INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH EDITION This book was published in Polish more than 30 years ago. Needless to say, I would not repeat many of the same judgements again today. If I have decided to publish this book in English now, it is for the following reasons. Firstly, Senator Lorenzo Strozzi’s account books cover a period of 75 years and accurately record practically all his and his family’s income and expenditure – both on consumption and investment – during the period from 1595 to 1671. Over the course of the few years I spent on archive research in Italy, I found no materials of a similar completeness and homogeneity. Instead, the account books would typically cover a shorter period, or else cover only part of an estate; which would not allow for the complete secular analysis of an aristocratic estate’s economy, nor balancing of the income and expenditure of an entire estate and an entire family. That Strozzi’s accounts are different is the result of coincidence: Lorenzo was a posthumous child and comprehensive accounting of his life was begun at his birth; his estate was not divided; and, last but not least, he had a long life. It was rare to reach 75 years of age in the early modern period. Another exceptional feature of these accounts is the expression of individual consumption in monetary terms, something rather unusual to an agricultural estate in the 17th century. In combination, these factors mean that the economic activities of Strozzi and his family form a set of archive material that is unique in Europe. From this perspective, the model by which the Strozzi family estate functioned is worth being disseminated. It may help to understand the logic with which early modern aristocrats managed their affairs and not only in Italy. It may help those living in the early 21st century to explain the meandering and apparently absurd actions of feudal entrepreneurs. Secondly – and this is a highly personal motivation – the reading of a work on a 17th-century Florentine aristocrat thirty years after it was written is, I believe, a good example of how much contemporary realities can change our understanding of the past. It can show how fundamentally the questions that we ask of the distant past are subject to change. Following www.rcin.org.pl II INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH EDITION three short trips to Italy in 1975–1977, I moved there in 1981 for almost four years. I offer this chronology precisely, because it was not without signifi cance for a Polish historian, who had decided to work on the modern luxury trade, and the mechanisms shaping the foundations of consumption by the early-modern fi nancial and social elite. The early 1980s were, or at least appeared to be, a period of great economic prosperity in Italy and the Italians living in the cocoon of luxury. That’s how it appears to me now, anyway, in contrast to the great pessimism characterising Italy at the beginning of the third millennium. The way I saw the past in those years was also greatly infl uenced by the Polish and Italian realities of the time. In the eyes of a Pole for whom shops were a matter of empty shelves, Italy appeared like a land of economic miracle. I was also leaving a country that was the fi rst to question the rationality of real socialism, marking the beginning of the end for that utopian vision of human development. This all sounds today like prehistory, but in the early 1980s it was not. Italy then was to my eyes an example of a country of exceptional prosperity, allowing me to understand the phenomenon of luxury consumption, and to recognise its infl uence on the dynamics of economic development. I was raised in a country with strong traditions in the modern school of economic historiography. The pre-war achievements of Jan Rutkowski and Franciszek Bujak were continued by Witold Kula and Marian Małowist, and their students. That was a group of researchers closely connected to the traditions of Marxism – so unpopular today – and the French Annales school. Yet they also understood well their Italian colleagues and historians from Anglo-Saxon countries. The late 1970s and 1980s were still a time when economic historians mostly supported the view that the evolution of the global economy was rational, rather than questioning its universality. Crucial to the historiography of the time was the problem of the development of capitalist economy during modern times. Italy was seen as having played in that process the thankless role of spearheading the economic change, only to lose its chance at leadership. The model of crisis in the 17th-European economy was exceptionally prevalent in the economic historiography at the time, and the causes and progression of that crisis were a matter of heated debate. No one, however, questioned the universality – on a European scale at least – of that phenomenon, and whether its emergence was an immanent feature of the economic development of Europe. The industrial revolution has usually been considered the turning point in European economic history. That assumption led me, using the example of the 17th-century Strozzi family enterprise, to present the hypothesis that another type of economic develop- ment was possible. Such an approach would now probably be impossible for a historian raised in the reality of the 21st century global economy. It’s hard www.rcin.org.pl INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH EDITION III to demand of that historian that he should perceive economic development in as European-centric a way as historians of the previous century, who were unable to foresee such rapid globalisation of civilisation. Finally, the third reason for which I have decided to publish this book again is the diametrically different position of luxury consumption in the contemporary world. Luxury and its impact on the economic and social development of early modern Florence was the main subject of my studies. Luxury appears to be a timeless category, permanently inscribed in the human imagination. However, it is also a concept that is utterly relative, and escapes precise defi nitions. When I wrote this book in late 1980s, luxury and real wealth seemed to be something much more intimate and concealed than the ostentatious demonstration of the 17th century; with the exception perhaps of the stars of pop culture, and the provincial nouveau riche who imitated them to some extent. The civilisation of the 21st century appears to be fi lled with ostentatious consumption, unconcealed due to the revolution that has occurred in social communication.

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