The Italian credit and financial system was the result of progressive developments that accelerated during the process of Italian unification. Our essay analyses the role of local private bankers in modernizing the economic and financial system of the country and the way in which the gradual...

Early Modern historians have long been fascinated by the mercantile world of the late medieval and early modern periods. The reason for their fascination can be ascribed to the wealth, cosmopolitism, social capital and political clout that many of these merchants (mostly men) projected onto...

The essay examines the contribution provided by Piero, Roberto and Leone Strozzi - sons of the wealthy Florentine banker Filippo Strozzi - to the French war effort in the last two decades of the Ital- ian Wars. A contribution based on their military and diplomatic skills and on the availability...

Monti di Pietà were first founded in the 1460s as public banks whose aim was to provide citizens with solidaristic credit. In this institution, the interplay between the objects pawned and the small money loans granted in exchange was vital and mediated by a wellorganized paper "ecosystem" of...

Using two household account books, this article analyses the family and staff, travel, consumption and flamboyance of the merchant-aristocratic household of the Loitz family in the 1570s. In 1572, the merchant-bankers Loitz, who had been highly successful in international trade and finance from...