The aim of the book is to analyse the history of work in the Italian peninsula in the Early Modern period. Adopting a variety of perspectives, we will look at who the workers were, their numbers, and the nature, extent, location, and results of their work across different geographical areas and time periods. Before proceeding, we will clarify the fundamental issue of what “work” meant in the Early Modern period. As with every concept, the understanding of “work” was an evolving one, changing across time and space. And positive or negative social values are assigned to work activities based on very specific social contexts. Naturally enough, what we currently consider to be “work” displays very different characteristics to Early Modern “work”.
Therefore, we will distinguish as clearly as possible between what is and what is not “work”, we will delineate between “work” and “labour”, and we will identify the various forms of work (not-work, anti-work, reciprocal labour, tributary labour, commodified labour) that were present in the Early Modern period and that remain with us today, albeit in altered manifestations. We will trace the historical evolution of these concepts and provide a rounded picture of work in the Early Modern period by reflecting on the freedom of work and the importance of domestic labour in the context of the pre-industrial economy.
1.1 What Is Work
Let’s start with a fundamental question: what do we mean by the word “work”? Karin Hofmeester and Christine Moll-Murata, in the research project “Global collaboratory”, refer to the definition proposed by Chris and Charles Tilly: work is “any human effort adding use value to goods and services ” (Hofmeester and Moll-Murata 2011, 5; Chris Tilly and Charles Tilly 1998, 22 ; van der Linden 2011, 27). On one hand, as the authors underline, this definition allows us to go beyond the equivalence between work and salaried work, taking into consideration
This is also the interpretative stance taken here because it avoids the analytical method that emerged during the Industrial Revolution and linked “work” directly to salary. But this definition could be further expanded; indeed, from a perspective that is in a certain way quite a Marxist one, Chris and Charles Tilly consider as work only such activities that “add use value” to goods and services, explicitly excluding “purely destructive, expressive, or consumptive acts […] as they reduce transferable use value” (Chris Tilly and Charles Tilly 1998, 23). We will come back shortly to the concept of anti-work, suffice it to say for now that this approach inevitably excludes activities that are effectively “works” even though they do not add any economic value. Military labour is a clear example of such a phenomenon, and was for a long time excluded from the historiographical analysis for this reason (Zürcher 2013, 11). We can say the same for other activities, such as the tribal ceremonies reported by Thomas in his article Work and Leisure. While these activities (“both cultivating the ground and dancing at a religious ceremony”) do not lead to an increase in the value of goods and services, in the social context in which they are performed they are “equally useful forms of activity” and so are referred to using the same word (Thomas 1964, 51).the unpaid, mostly household-based labour of more or less all family members, including women and children, who are physically able to work. It also comprises all types of labour relations, from slavery to independent entrepreneurship and everything in between . (Hofmeester and Moll-Murata 2011, 5)
In this sense, we think that sociologist Heiner Ganßmann’s definition, quoted by van der Linden, is more suitable: “Work is human activity that transforms matter/energy and applies information for the purpose ultimately of providing resources to satisfy needs” (van der Linden 2011, 27; Ganßmann 1992, 263). The kinds of needs and resources (material or intangible) in question, and the ways of transforming them, are all concepts that should be historically and socially contextualised. It is interesting also to underline two more elements that van der Linden stresses as differentiating work from other human activities: “premeditation” and “usefulness” (van der Linden 2011, 27).
These definitions are undoubtedly valid and they help to shape such a complex concept as “work” because they are historically and socially grounded. Moreover, they highlight other topics that are equally important to analyse. Talking about labour also means identifying other activities that are included in the categories of “not work”, “rest” and “leisure”: however, as we will observe throughout this book, the hardening of the distinction between these fields (while never becoming absolute) was the result of the historical evolution of work and how it was perceived. As the spaces and times for performing work expanded alongside reflection on the idea of work itself, definitions of work became more limited and more closely linked to remuneration. Thomas referred to what he called “primitive societies” as useful case studies for the pre-industrial period, which despite shortcomings could raise critical issues for debate:
This statement prompts discussion of the mix of leisure and work, which was clearly not just a trait of pre-industrial societies (the exaggeration of the influence of clocks in setting the chronological articulation of the working day is the topic of Chap. 5). However, we completely share Thomas’ view on the importance of not transposing typical contemporary attitudes to the strong distinction between work and leisure to other times. If the concept of work is historically and socially grounded, so is that of not-work (leisure).In these societies there are no clearly defined periods of leisure as such, but economic activities, like hunting or market-going, obviously have their recreational aspects, as do singing or telling stories at work […]. Finally work is not regulated by the clock, but by the requirements of the task. (Thomas 1964, 52)
Van der Linden himself refers to this concept, specifying that “work can be distinguished from non-work and from anti-work”; in this sense, not-work is intended in its broader meaning, as “recovery from work”. In other words, it is an activity that is intrinsically connected to work itself; indeed, not-work, being a form of recovery of the energies after a working activity, could not exist without the latter. This interpretation leaves some doubts, however, given that it excludes, just to take one example, not-work because of unemployment or other forms of inactivity that are not necessarily linked to post-work rest (van der Linden 2011, 27–28). In respect of anti-work, it “covers all playful activities that cost a lot of energy but are not meant to produce useful objects or services” (van der Linden 2011, 28). Besides doubts over the definition of “not-work”, van der Linden’s proposition is very interesting because it helps to define a hypothetical three-way partition of human activities: working activities that require energy and are (or should be) “useful”, even if this concept is mutable; not-working (perhaps best understood as the absence of activities); and anti-working efforts and wastes of energy that lack “useful” aim in socio-economic terms (such as sporting pursuits).
As Thomas suggested, it is not possible to definitively separate these concepts and moments, and as Van der Linden himself underlined, human actions often intersect within this triangle.
The declarations above on work, not-work, and anti-work point to another problem: why do people work, instead of dedicating themselves to not-working activities? The answer is more complex than we might expect. Van der Linden identifies three fundamental “work incentives”: coercion, compensation, and commitment (van der Linden 2011, 28–29). In this case too, the limits of each category are fluid and the working relations that resulted (or that changed across time) can be affected by one or more of these elements. Coercion implies the presence of compulsions (violent or non-violent) that convince people to work; further consideration of the intricacies of this category is required and will be provided below. Commitment, on the contrary, is a sort of persuasion of the workers “that what they are doing is useful, important, and honorific” (van der Linden 2011, 29). Therefore, there is a sort of “immaterial payment” for the work performed, contrary to what happens in the case of people working against compensation, that is receiving a remuneration in money or benefit in kind for the activity performed. It is important to reiterate that these push factors can act independently or in varying combinations with varying measures of influence.
Following on from these conceptualisations, the members of the working group produced a taxonomy of labour relations, as summarised in Fig. 1.1 (Hofmeester and Moll-Murata 2011, 6, 21–23); compared to the categories proposed by van der Linden, the active/inactive population category is divided not only according to the push factors that lead to the performance of working activities, but also the beneficiaries of these activities themselves. Focusing on the push factors, there are some slight differences between the sets of van der Linden and the working group: leaving the not-working population aside, labour could involve an exchange of goods within a family or a community (reciprocal labour), be imposed by state authorities (tributary labour) or engage directly with market dynamics, being itself an exchange of goods (commodified labour). As we can observe, this categorisation does not exclude the one proposed by van der Linden—given that within these categories, coercion, commitment, and compensation can be present in various ways—but is more focused on the working relations and their struct...