The Florence wheat market (1284-1494)

• Grant number: 20/15721-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: May 01, 2021
• End date: April 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Cândido da Silva
• Grantee: Felipe Mendes Erra
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The Florence wheat market, between 1284 and 1494, underwent a continuous process of transformation, which can be observed through the discontinuities that occurred in each of its three constituent elements: the oscillation in the composition of urban demand; the changes in the institutional architecture that regulated the terms of trade; and the growth and decline of different commercial circuits, which operated on a local, regional, interregional and maritime scale. After a spectacular population and urban growth between the end of the 13th century and the first third of the 14th century, the Republic was hit by cycles of plague, including the Black Plague of 1348, which led to strong demographic fluctuations, changed the relationship between the countryside and the city, and directly affected the mechanisms of food supply and demand. Moreover, Florence went through a process of expansion and political reorganization, defined by historiography as the "formation of the Territorial State", which promoted changes in the administration, in the bureaucratic organization, in the dimension of the taxation system, and, above all, in the integration of a territorial space of regional dimension. Both processes defined and characterized the Florentine Renaissance period. Therefore, we will investigate the documentation based on the initial hypothesis that, between 1284 and 1494, the organization of the wheat trade experienced a first period marked by the heyday of interregional and maritime trade circuits, which was gradually replaced, not without social and political crises, by the decline of international food trade and, at the same time, by an intensive integration of markets on a regional scale. (AU)