Black - Early modern Italy: a social history

• A SOCIAL HISTORY OF MODERN SPAIN (1990)
  Adrian Schubert
  
• EARLY MODERN SPAIN: A SOCIAL HISTORY (1999)
  James Casey
  

A social history or the history of society is concerned mainly with the interrelationships of individuals with each other, and the factors that affected these interrelationships. These factors include the physical environment, the political, legal and institutional frameworks, agreed roles of behaviour, conventions and accepted ways of behaving, languages and other means of communication. There are different kinds of grouping of individuals: family and household, hamlet and city, work-places, guilds, confraternities, religious houses and so on. Social inter-relationships may be seen in terms of conceptual belonging or exclusion: nobility, order, class, rich and poor, clerical and lay, national groups. A general history like this can suggest to readers an abundant choice of ways of looking at society, and can include both wide-angle and microscope lenses. Readers then can follow their own inclinations and interests.

Social history has to be selective, by topic and geographical area. Each issue cannot be generalised and illustrated for all of the Italian peninsula, but my discourse should suggest some similarities and contrasts geographically. Current historical knowledge, understanding and perceptions and my own biases mean that more will be exemplified from north-central Italy than from the south, though the latter should have its share of attention in discussion of the rural scenes or household and kinship relations. In choosing examples, and highlighting certain historians work, I have tried to represent different approaches and biases of other historians in favour of mentalities (more aptly the French mentalits), feminism, social anthropology, physical determinism, microhistory and so forth. Readers may well detect that chapters speak with different dialects. The authorial voice has many tones, including discords and dissonance. When not trying to convey others approaches, I have favoured socio-religious matters rather than supposedly quantifiable economic dimensions. Social history concerns all in society, not just the lower orders and class warfare. I have tried to give a due share to womens history, but integrated into the whole, and not segregated into a separate chapter. The works of Fernand Braudel, and of historians working around the French periodical Annales: histoire, sciences sociales, have had their impact when dealing with physical environment, structures, mentalits, but not when over-emphasising statistics, or excessively discounting the importance of events and individual actors. Other aspects seem influenced by Natalie Zemon Daviss work and approaches (though on France rather than Italy), I use works of art as evidence alongside written documents conventionally utilised by historians, though word limitations have curtailed sections that might have used them more, and have prevented discussion of problems of reading the different kinds of evidence.

I am writing primarily for the English-speaking world, not the Italian (though I am mindful of the possibilities of an Italian version), in anticipation of a student and beginner audience (including that mythical beast, the General Reader). I also want to help professional academic readers with expertise elsewhere who want some guidance on early modern Italy, whether their primary interests are post-unification Italy, other parts of early modern Europe or the wider world. But I also consider Italian specialists whether historians of certain cities and regions, or experts in art history, literature, music, political theory who want some guidance about other areas, whether geographical or topical (while they can either challenge or educate me from their expertise). Italianist friends and contacts (as particularly at some recent transatlantic conferences) have encouraged me to consider them as well.

This last readership factor has added to the complications of bibliography, reference notes, language and detailed exemplification. The literature on virtually all I have covered is potentially large. Constraints of space mean that I have only been able to use a fraction, and to cite even less. I have included some archival references for the benefit of specialist colleagues.