Page 25 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Eonomy and Networks of Rural Elite Families in a Manufacturing Area

is not suitable for the cultivation of wheat, as is testified by the fact that
at the end of the sixteenth century the local population chronically relied
on the import of wheat for its subsistence (Vianello 2004a, 34). A bocche
ebiade (literally, ‘mouths and cereals’) survey, dated 1545, ordered by the
Venetian authorities to quantify the food needs of the population, con-
firms this picture, revealing that in the piedmont villages, between 70 and
90 per cent of the agricultural production was composed of minor cereals,
while the percentages were notably lower (between 40 and 50 per cent)
in the southern part of the province (Ongaro 2021, 29–31). In summary,
in the Vicentine area the agricultural sector was quite differentiated, and
in the villages close to the mountains it was strongly linked to manufac-
turing development: indeed, the agricultural downtimes allowed a shift of
the workforce to the domestic manufacturing or centralized industries (in
the few cases in which there was this kind of organization of production),
while the low incomes coming from the backward and low-production agri-
culture would have stimulated the workforce itself to be engaged in the
manufacturing sector. This formed a strong bond between agriculture and
industry that for a long period characterized the secondary sector in Schio,
long after the end of the early modern period (Panciera 1988, 66, 99–100;
Fontana 1985, 84).
The relevant relationship between the agricultural sector and the man-
ufacturing one is testified, besides the characteristics of the workforce, by
the widespread cultivation of mulberries in the province. Already, by the
beginning of the fifteenth century, these trees had spread, especially in the
piedmont area of the Vincentine district (Demo 2001b, 5; Bianchi and De-
mo 2014, 111), and their expansion continued in the following decades, as
was happening in the other territories of the Republic of Venice (Zanni-
ni 2010, 149); indeed, if we look to the tax declarations in Schio, especially
theonesdated 1541–1565(asvi,Estimo, bb.26, 28), almost allthe plotsare
described as piantà de morari, i.e. planted with mulberries. The diffusion of
these trees is clearly linked to the crucial role that their leaves played in the
breeding of silkworms (Demo 2001a, 117), an activity that was widespread
among rural families and that was essential for the development of the
urban and rural silk industry.

The Mining Industry
Still looking to the primary sector, besides agriculture, the mining indus-
try also, as anticipated, played a crucial role as an investment field of the
wealthy families from Schio, Vicenza, and Venice. In the area of Schio-

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