Page 50 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Giulio Ongaro and Edoardo Demo

plicated than the cliché of rural dependence from the urban noblemen and
landowners; certainly, often the power equilibria were in favour of the city,
and the rural factions and patronages were an extension of the urban ones
(Savio 2017), but in the previous pages we underlined also the common
economic interests, investments, and trades, up to the similar choices in
terms of land management. This in a context of strong continuity in the
names of the rural families that stood out especially in the textiles mar-
ket, from the establishment of the first companies for the trade of woollen
clothes and raw silk, up to the first industrialization in the nineteenth
century. This clearly does not mean that the rural society was static: new
families conquered their economic, political, and social space (the case of
the Folco family recalled above is emblematic); other lineages obtained the
long-overdue status of citizens and moved at least part of their interests
within the urban walls. However, if the newcomers often solidified their
position through the construction of economic and social bonds (not least
with marriage policies) with the local wealthy families, when moving in-
to the city the rural families that obtained citizenship maintained strong
connections – for centuries – with their home village, thanks to the conser-
vation of large landed properties and/or to the management of manufac-
turing and trading activities in the area. These bonds with the countryside
could be so strong that the newcomer urban families could maintain per-
manently their actual residence in the rural villages, even if they formally
should have lived in the city.

Acknowledgements
This chapter is the result of research carried out in the context of the prin
2022 pnrr project ‘p2022mbb3n – Political Inclusion and Inequality in
Preindustrial Italian Alps (1500–1800),’ financed by the Italian Ministry of
University and Research (cup master h53d23010250001,
cu h53d23010250001).

Archival Sources
ascs: Historical Archives of the Municipality of Schio.
asvi: Archivio di Stato di Vicenza.

References
Alfani,G.2010. Il Grand Tour dei Cavalieri dell’Apocalisse: l’Italia del «lungo
Cinquecento» (1494-1629). Marsilio.
Alfani,G., andM.DiTullio. 2019. The Lion’s Share: Inequality and the Rise of
the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe. Cambridge University Press.

48