Italian Victualling Systems in the Early Modern Age: An Overview and a Critical Assessment

In this book, the term ‘victualling system’ is employed to designate an organised set of public and private channels, evolved typically in urban contexts, for the procurement, storage, and distribution of goods essential for the daily life of common people (not necessarily only foodstuffs). According to this definition, specifically, a victualling system included also the market, as one of the different channels for the procurement, storage, and distribution of goods. In this sense, the term sistema annonario came into use in Italy from the second half of the eighteenth century. However, for a long time the historiography of urban provisioning systems in late medieval and early modern times featured a conceptual opposition between victualling administration and the market. On the one hand, markets were understood as a manifestation of private economic freedom, which some historians considered legitimate and others arbitrary, depending on their ideological approach. On the other hand, victualling offices and boards were understood as machineries arranged by public authorities in order to regulate and intervene in the economy, an action likewise considered harmful by some and providential by others.