Notarial Credit in Eighteenth-Century Trentino: Dynamics and Trends

This paper investigates the informal credit market in Trentino in the second half of the eighteenth century by drawing upon notaries' loan contracts. The analysis focuses on four benchmark years: 1750, 1760, 1770, and 1780. More than 10,000 contracts from the period were examined, including 1,200 credit transactions registered in two different cities, Trent and Rovereto. The research aims to analyze dynamics and trends, as well as the mechanisms that characterize the two credit markets, specifically who the borrowers and the lenders were, what capital was borrowed for, and at what price. The findings show stark differences between the two cities' financial markets. In Trent, whose population amounted to some 9,000, credit activity accounted for 7.7% of all notarial transactions, whereas in nearby Rovereto, with about half that population, credit contracts represented twice as much, 15% of business. Likewise, capital flow reflects the different nature and dynamism of the two towns. In Trent, loans were mainly to finance agriculture and the urban economy (craftsmen, retailers). In Rovereto, where capital flow was nearly three times that of Trent, went largely to sustain agriculture and the flourishing international silk trade. The political and institutional frameworks around the two towns were indeed quite different. Trent, as the capital of the Prince- Bishopric, was chiefly an administrative town and apparently impervious to innovation. But Rovereto, part of the Habsburg Monarchy, was a well-integrated node in an international trade network of rapidly expanding silk manufacturing, whose growth was fostered by the vivid and effective credit market.