Stocks and flows: Material culture and consumption behaviour in early modern Venice (c. 1650–1800)
通过遗物清单和家庭预算，研究了17至18世纪威尼斯消费实践的演变，发现其物质文化不逊于欧洲先进城市，但消费是渐进演化而非革命，且消费发展不必然导致经济起飞。
Abstract This paper examines the evolution of consumption practices in Venice in the long eighteenth century through the combined use of post‐mortem inventories and household budgets. Although Italy experienced a period of relative decline between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, our findings suggest that Venetian households enjoyed a rich and vibrant material culture that was fully comparable with those of the most advanced European urban economies. However, although new products, practices, and fashions were adopted by Venetian society, the architecture of consumption did not undergo sudden and extreme changes; rather, consumption was gradually refined, following the path that it had begun during the Renaissance. We therefore argue that the Venetian economy did not experience a consumer revolution but, instead, consumer evolution. Moreover, this study shows that sophisticated consumption practices were not exclusive to the more dynamic economies of the continent but were widespread even in those regions that were victims of the Little Divergence. We thus suggest that the relationship between consumption development and economic development was not necessarily causal and that the diffusion of new consumption practices throughout society was a necessary, but insufficient, prerequisite for economic take‐off.