Page 10 - Mocarelli, Luca, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2020. Maize to the People! Cultivation, Consumption and Trade in the North-Eastern Mediterranean (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Century). Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 10
maize to the people!
historiographical reviews, case studies and researches, it gathers and of-
fers a wider spectrum of information about maize introduction and dif-
fusion, which enables a comparative perspective. Such an approach to in-
vestigating this topic seems extraordinarily useful, and that is the reason
why we have brought together scholars from different countries who are
dealing with the same issues. We decided to focus on the eastern part of
the Mediterranean taking into consideration certain countries facing the
Adriatic Sea. We have involved scholars from Italy, a country that, thanks
to its position and size, has a central place in the Mediterranean world as
well as a known historical role in maize pioneering, along with Austria,
Slovenia and Serbia. The idea was to embrace the Adriatic area from the
Alps to the Danube, asking these scholars to tackle the same issues in order
to produce a steady basis for a truly comparative work.
The first question to be answered pertained to the chronology and ge-
ography of the diffusion of maize in the countries considered. Although it is
a well-known fact that the diffusion of maize followed a west to east direc-
tion starting from Spain, a full and comparative overview of the spread of
this plant is still lacking; we can mainly count on researches carried out at
a narrower regional scale, also in the case of Italy (Coppola 1979, Levi 1979,
Fornasin 1999, Gasparini 2002; Mocarelli, Vaquero Piñeiro 2018). The coun-
tries between the eastern Alps and the eastern Adriatic coast, addressed in
this volume, represent the ideal extension of such a west-east maize dif-
fusion route. It was our intention to check whether and when this is con-
firmed by historical evidence. In the case of the Balkans, it will be also
fruitful to investigate the presence of another possible line of maize diffu-
sion on a south-north axis from the Black Sea and the Ottoman Empire to
Central Europe. Moreover, particular attention had to be focused on the
time when maize became a widespread and familiar commodity. A good
proxy for this would be the date on which maize prices began to be record-
ed on regulated grain markets. In Lombardy, for example, that happened in
1681 in Bergamo, in 1717 in Milan, etc. (Maffi, Mocarelli forthcoming). To
both locate and map the areas where maize cultivation and consumption
had become preponderant is an important issue, because there are signs
of a discrepancy between the two aspects, since in many cases the areas of
production and consumption did not overlap (Mocarelli 2019).
A second important issue to deal with were the reasons for a great-
er or lesser success of maize. An important reason, although not the only
one, that explains the spread of maize, or indeed its failure to do so, would
8
historiographical reviews, case studies and researches, it gathers and of-
fers a wider spectrum of information about maize introduction and dif-
fusion, which enables a comparative perspective. Such an approach to in-
vestigating this topic seems extraordinarily useful, and that is the reason
why we have brought together scholars from different countries who are
dealing with the same issues. We decided to focus on the eastern part of
the Mediterranean taking into consideration certain countries facing the
Adriatic Sea. We have involved scholars from Italy, a country that, thanks
to its position and size, has a central place in the Mediterranean world as
well as a known historical role in maize pioneering, along with Austria,
Slovenia and Serbia. The idea was to embrace the Adriatic area from the
Alps to the Danube, asking these scholars to tackle the same issues in order
to produce a steady basis for a truly comparative work.
The first question to be answered pertained to the chronology and ge-
ography of the diffusion of maize in the countries considered. Although it is
a well-known fact that the diffusion of maize followed a west to east direc-
tion starting from Spain, a full and comparative overview of the spread of
this plant is still lacking; we can mainly count on researches carried out at
a narrower regional scale, also in the case of Italy (Coppola 1979, Levi 1979,
Fornasin 1999, Gasparini 2002; Mocarelli, Vaquero Piñeiro 2018). The coun-
tries between the eastern Alps and the eastern Adriatic coast, addressed in
this volume, represent the ideal extension of such a west-east maize dif-
fusion route. It was our intention to check whether and when this is con-
firmed by historical evidence. In the case of the Balkans, it will be also
fruitful to investigate the presence of another possible line of maize diffu-
sion on a south-north axis from the Black Sea and the Ottoman Empire to
Central Europe. Moreover, particular attention had to be focused on the
time when maize became a widespread and familiar commodity. A good
proxy for this would be the date on which maize prices began to be record-
ed on regulated grain markets. In Lombardy, for example, that happened in
1681 in Bergamo, in 1717 in Milan, etc. (Maffi, Mocarelli forthcoming). To
both locate and map the areas where maize cultivation and consumption
had become preponderant is an important issue, because there are signs
of a discrepancy between the two aspects, since in many cases the areas of
production and consumption did not overlap (Mocarelli 2019).
A second important issue to deal with were the reasons for a great-
er or lesser success of maize. An important reason, although not the only
one, that explains the spread of maize, or indeed its failure to do so, would
8
