Rural merchants in the Early Modern Republic of Venice
本文利用账簿和审判记录，分析了16世纪威尼斯维琴察省乡村商人的行为、企业组织及与城市商人的关系，并与其他欧洲地区比较，为讨论原始工业化理论和意大利经济乡村化提供新视角。
This article innovatively analyses the economic structure of sixteenth century Venetian rural areas, specifically the countryside of the province of Vicenza. Many studies have proposed general reconstructions of the manufacturing and agricultural characterisation of the Venetian rural areas in the Early Modern period, but little is known about the behaviour of the rural merchants, organisation of rural enterprises, scope of their businesses, and their relationship with urban entrepreneurs. Apart from shedding new light on these topics, this article will also permit a comparison of the characteristics of Vicentine rural merchants with those of rural entrepreneurs operating in other European regions, based on information gathered from accounting books and trials. Consequently, this article will contribute to the discussion of Mendel’s proto-industrialization theory and, more generally, it will offer new insights into the ‘ruralization’ of the Italian economy during the sixteenth century.