Economy and Demography. Growth, Innovation, Crisis and Catastrophe: 12th-14th Centuries

Bologna strongly fits the model of the so-called urban revolution, a process that took off between the tenth and eleventh centuries and involved the European cities in a dynamic of great renewal and development. That phenomenon which Rondo Cameron defines as the first European ‘logistic’ took off at the beginning of the millennium, drew to an end between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and collapsed with the Black Death of 1348. A second long logistic followed the first, this one characterized by the same dynamic profile, taking off in the fifteenth century and descending in the seventeenth century, then recovering until taking off again with the Industrial Revolution. This broad diachronic sequence is characterized by an imposing accumulation of innovations, which developed in many sectors, from the institutional and political to the technological. The process was not linear, often contradicting itself and distributing itself like the spots on a leopard, in a geography that was in continuous evolution and saw its center of gravity move from southern to northern Europe. Bologna belongs fully within this dynamic, following a path that led to its becoming, in a phase of growth, one of the most important of European cities. It experimented with a negotiated form of political autonomy and invented the university, beginning with the rediscovery of law. It expanded, enlarging its circle of walls, redesigning its internal road map, carrying hydraulic energy into the city and gaining a leadership role in the silk industry. The great innovations and great investments that carried it into the heart of the European process of development and socioeconomic growth from then on had diverse reactions in the face of crisis. Our research will seek to analyze these areas of development, emphasizing possible intersections and diverse responses to crisis, and underlining problematic nodes and interpretive hypotheses.

il capitolo è una riflessione su economia e popolazione nella bologna medievale a partire da fonti edite e letteratura specifica.