Recent studies on economic inequality have hitherto focused on measuring trends of distribution rather than testing potential explanatory factors. Among the latter, the role of agrarian system and property regime in shaping inequality have often been understudied despite large research on rural history. This paper explores the relation between economic inequality and agrarian systems by studying two villages (S. Giovanni in Petroio and Rifredi) in the territory of Florence between 1427 and 1512. This area was characterised by the development of a peculiar sharecropping system (mezzadria) driven by urban investment between 13th–20th c. Such development boosted after the Black Death of 1348, when scholars have observed an increasing proletarianisation (and less differentiation) among peasants. Besides, however, other lease-holding contracts survived together with small peasant property according to distance from cities and markets, soil quality and morphology, peasants expropriations of private and collective property, the socio-economic profile of the landlord. By selecting those villages according to the prevalent property regime, this paper aims to compare at cross-sectional and longitudinal level the impact on socio-economic inequality of a) sharecropping and b) tenancy. In fact, each lease-holding system could provide different level of formal and informal differentiation among peasantry. In this regard, inequality will be measured through quantitative analyses on proxies such as wealth concentration (Gini and Theil indexes), property distribution, estimated wheat consumption and access to resources such as land, credit and oxen. In addition, also the supplementary role of smallholding in integrating tenants’ agricultural rents within the two main lease-holding systems will be explored. All these proxies will be examined within each village society and between rural and Florentine landlords to take into account the influence of urban investment on inequality and differentiation among peasants. In this regard, the Florentine fiscal surveys of 1427 and 1512 provide in total comparable information for over 700 rural inhabitants and 300 Florentine landlords for the villages under study. The analyses, furthermore, will be done a) per village and b) per period in order to control for difference among territories and sources and to observe the relation between agrarian systems and economic inequality after the Black Death in the long-run.

During the last four centuries of Middle Ages rural economy and society observed radical changes across Europe. In this regard, the role of institutions and socio-property relations such as seigneurial powers, leasing system, credit market and peasant agency have been extensively researched by rural historians and medievalists, renovating the fields and its agenda during the last three decades. Such achievements, however, have not always been homogeneous across European historiographies. The Italian one, for instance, albeit a rich tradition in rural studies, have been scarcely challenged by the current agenda in rural history, apart from themes such as commons and economic inequalities (Alfani 2014). In this respect, however, a comparative exploration embedding institutions and socio-economic change in late medieval rural Italy within a European perspective is also missing. This panel contributes to fill this gap by addressing the role of institutions and the dynamics of social changes in rural countryside through case-studies and comparisons from the Italian peninsula and western Europe (France, England). More specifically, it aims to question and to explore, first, the role of seigneurial powers and credit market in shaping overall growth in 1100–1200 and, second, the impact of leasing system such as sharecropping as well as urban and seigneurial power relations and law enforcement in shaping economic inequalities and peasant resistance in rural society. For instance, research on the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is often rife with the narrative of the expansion of urban mercantile classes into the countryside as one of the main factors of economic development – in both Italy and Europe. In this regard, however, several questions can be asked: what was the role played by rural aristocracies? Were they backward, ‘feudal’ lords? Or did they share the entrepreneurial attitude of the bourgeoisie? Similarly, Italian and European scholarship on the central and late Middle Ages has mostly focused on large-scale credit activities – the bedrock on which international networks of trade were built; petty credit to agriculturists has been comparatively less studied. Is the evolution of small-scale rural credit a symptom of economic growth? And how is it related to the transformations of land management? Finally, inequalities represent one of the major fields of investigation of current economic research, and the way these were shaped by – or else adapted to – extant ecosystems and farming regimes is of paramount importance for the understanding of society and economy as a whole. The wealth of information enshrined by late medieval sources does make room for new research: what was the interplay between different farming regimes (sharecropping, leasehold, seigneurial domain) and socio-economic inequalities in the countryside? And how did the institutional structures of urban governing bodies contribute to shaping debt relations between landlords and tenants? Addressing these questions, moreover, will contribute to throw light on how inequalities could lead to social unrest and peasant resistance.

This article provides an overview of economic inequality, particularly of wealth, in the Florentine state (Tuscany) from the early fourteenth to the late eighteenth century. Regional studies of this kind are rare, and this is only the second-ever attempt at covering such a long period. Consistent with recent research conducted on other European areas, during the early modern period we find clear indications of a tendency for economic inequality to grow continually, a finding that for Tuscany cannot be explained as the consequence of economic growth. Furthermore, the exceptionally old sources we use allow us to demonstrate that a phase of declining inequality, lasting about one century, was triggered by the Black Death from 1348 to 1349. This finding challenges earlier scholarship and significantly alters our understanding of the economic consequences of the Black Death.

This paper provides an overview of economic inequality in the Florentine State (Tuscany) from the late fourteenth to the late eighteenth century. Regional studies of this kind are rare, and this is only the second-ever attempt at covering such a long period. Consistent with recent research conducted on other European areas, during the Early Modern period we find clear indications of a tendency for economic inequality to grow continually, a finding that for Tuscany cannot be explained as the consequence of economic growth. Furthermore, the exceptionally old sources we use allow us to demonstrate that a phase of declining inequality, lasting about one century, was triggered by the Black Death from 1348 to 1349. This finding challenges earlier scholarship and significantly alters our understanding of the economic consequences of the Black Death. We also take into account other important topics, such as the change over time of the patrimony of the Church and of poverty. Particular attention is paid to the latter, and estimates of the prevalence of the poor in time and space are provided and discussed, also taking into account the definition and perception of the poor. Keywords: Economic inequality; social inequality; wealth concentration; middle ages; early modern period; Tuscany; Florentine State; Italy; plague; Black Death; Church property; poverty; Florence; Prato; Arezzo; San Gimignano Acknowledgements

A key strand of research for social and economic historians of the pre-industrial period is the relationship between city and countryside. Sometimes urban and rural environments enjoyed mutually beneficial relationships, though in other cases cities reduced their rural hinterlands to poverty and decay – the question is, why? By focusing on late-medieval Florence and Tuscany, this paper moves away from approaching this question through an ‘urban bias’, and suggests the answers can be found within the structural configuration of rural societies themselves. Essentially, some rural regions were well set up to repel urban predatory tendencies, while other societies were susceptible to exploitation.

From the point of view of size, this case would appear, on the face of it, to be a marginal one in European history. Present-day Tuscany, even though it is larger than when it was a regional State in the early modern times, is still not very large: less than 23,000 sq. km, with a population of just over three and a half million inhabitants. However, in this small area there are many cities which back in the Middle Ages were free communes, with a population that exceeded the European average. From medieval times up to the modern period, this Italian region has been continuously involved in European history. It was one of the protagonists in the creation of the first world economy in the early modern period, centred around the Mediterranean and identified by Braudel, and albeit more marginally, it continued to be involved with major trends in the context of European history until, with the advent of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty in the mid-eighteenth century, it fully entered the grea...