Trading and Investing during Regime Changes in Genoa

Abstract

During the Italian Wars, trade and finance went on intensively and financial systems prospered, even while cities were plundered and people were massacred. Taking this often striking contrast as its subject, this chapter focuses on the political turmoil in Genoa between 1490s and 1520s. In contrast to much previous scholarship on the Italian Wars, which has tended to concentrate on the political and military dimensions of the conflict, this chapter seeks to show how traders’ capital investments and regime changes were interconnected. Merchants and merchant-bankers in places like Genoa, and in many other city-states of the Renaissance Italian peninsula, played a key political role. During the Italian Wars they continued to invest and intensively traded. The chapter shows how Genoese traders actively invested in the war and in regime changes. It analyzes macro financial dynamics, such as the interaction between public debt and regime changes and secondly looks at some well-known Genoese families (the Fregoso and Sauli) and almost unknown merchants (the Monleone brothers).