Fiscality and infrastructures, fiscality as infrastructure: the role of taxation in the shaping of economic landscape in the Julian Alps (13th-15th century)

Abstract

Taxation is often thought of as either an obstacle or a veritable hinderance to economic development. This holds especially true for pre-industrial European societies, whose fiscality was characterized by extreme fragmentation and lack of coordination. With this paper I will try to challenge this mainstrem inerpretation, questioning both the idea the development should correspond to centralization and streamlining and the notion that fiscality itself was only an obstacle to pre-industrial economic development. Using data from a toll register produced in the Julian Alps in 1426-1427 I will try to argue that the area was characterized by a complex and fairly integrated economic system. Here fiscality was neither an obstacle nor a burden; in a more nuanced way it was one of the key elements that shaped and influenced economic integration. I will thus analyse the development of the fiscal system of the area, highlighting the complex and contingent mechanisms of political bargaining that shaped it. Then, I will try to asses its effects on the economy from both a qualitative and quantitative standpoint.

Keywords

• late medieval italy
• economic history
• alpine communities
• fiscality