Commercio e banca in Lombardia dal secondo Duecento alla fine del Trecento: una proposta interpretativa

The essay examines the economic evolution of the Lombard cities between the last decades of the XIIIth century and the end of the XIVth century. Within a much wider geographical area than the current region (therefore including portions of Piedmont, Emilia and Veneto) there are two types of urban economic developments: one, north of the Po, marked by a greater and persistent importance of the manufacturing sector, the other, south of the great river, decidedly more oriented towards trade and banking, sometimes exercised on an international scale. The crisis of the central decades of the XIVth century, combined with Visconti expansionism, will especially affect this second model. The cities of Piacenza, Alessandria, Asti and Chieri, faced with the increase in competition and the emergence of the Milanese political and commercial power, entered a phase of recession, more or less in the same way as in Tuscany, such as Siena, Pistoia and Arezzo facing the Florentine hegemony. The destiny of cities such as Como, Bergamo and Brescia was more rosy, whose solid industrial sector successfully adapted to the late medieval institutional and economic transformations.