Military food supply in the Republic of Venice in the eighteenth century: Entrepreneurs, merchants, and the state

Ongaro, Giulio

doi:10.1080/00076791.2018.1520211

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Large suppliers entered the market only during high-demand periods, i.e. during wartime (Ongaro, 2020). Private businessmen responded to military machinery de-mand (e.g., guns, rifles) as well as to the demand for 'civilian' military equipment (war logistics), such as uniforms, boots or food (Church, 1970;Ongaro, 2020).…”

Section: Innovation and The Market For War Suppliesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The military demand structure differed between war machinery and war logistics. While guns and rifles were often purchased on international markets (e.g., the famous gun trades of Birmingham and Lüttich), food supplies were more often purchased from national or even regional producers, not least owing to the perishability of food (Behagg, 1998;Ongaro, 2020). The international sourcing of arms emerged since production and trade of weapons were dominated by few internationally recognized production centers operating at the technological frontier with strong economies of scale (Krause, 1992).…”

Section: Innovation and The Market For War Suppliesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among the required warfare inputs, two were decisive for military success: products in war technology (i.e., weaponry or warships) and war logistics (i.e., preserved foods for the supply of armies) (Barrett & Cardello, 2012). 2 The markets for these two groups of warfare supplies had, however, different geographic scope: While guns and canons were predominantly sourced from few dominant global producers (e.g., the Birmingham or Lüttich gun trade) supplies for war logistics and (perishable) food stemmed from national or subnational sources (Ongaro, 2020). Ample anecdotal evidence suggests that food innovation was pivotal for the military to solve the problem of food perishability: for instance, Napoleon III offered a prize for finding a preservable and transportable low-cost substitute for butter, leading to the invention of margarine in 1869 (Gander, 1970).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Military spending and innovation: learning from 19th-century world fair exhibition data

Danzer

Feuerbaum

2023

Industrial and Corporate Change

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We provide quantitative evidence on the relationship between military spending and innovation in the 19th century. Combining innovation data from world fairs and historical military data across Europe, we show that national military spending is associated with national innovation toward war logistics such as food processing, but less toward war technology such as guns. This innovation pattern reflects differences in the historical markets for war supplies: while the armed forces sourced weapons globally, the food market remained local.

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Section: Innovation and The Market For War Suppliesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Innovation and The Market For War Suppliesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Military spending and innovation: learning from 19th-century world fair exhibition data

Danzer

Feuerbaum

2023

Industrial and Corporate Change

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The role of quality in the grain market: wheat prices formation in eighteenth-century Northern Italy

Ongaro,

Prosperi,

Ronsijn

2023

Rural History

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The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of wheat quality in the formation of wheat prices in the early modern period, adopting eighteenth-century northern Italy as a case study. Wheat prices have been widely used by economic historians to calculate living standards, determine the degree of market integration, and date famines. Rarely, however, have economic historians focused on how wheat prices were determined. By looking at the wheat supply chain, we will try to make more visible the extent to which wheat quality was crucial in determining the value of wheat and, as a consequence, the final price of grain.

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’A man of particular ability’: A Jewish-Genoese military contractor in the fiscal-military system

Martoccio

2021

Business History

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In recent years, scholars have explored the pivotal role Jewish merchants played in feeding and arming European armies from 1500 to 1800. Yet they have ignored the problems these merchants faced when they cast outside national borders to urban centres far from the battlefield, a multi-national mobilisation of resources known as the 'fiscal-military system' . This article uses a case-study of one Jewish merchant, Jacob Levi, from the port of Genoa to explore the essential brokerage role of ethnic-religious minorities in the early modern fiscal-military system. With knowhow built through his private businesses as well as a network of his co-religious, Levi became one of the most important suppliers of grain for the Bourbon army of northern Italy from 1702 to 1706. But foodstuffs did not transit alone; as Levi's records show, other war matériel accompanied grain, none more volatile than the at-least 17,000 barrels of gunpowder that Levi transited through the port in these years.On 29 May 1705, the Genoese prayed for a Jew to save them from annihilation. The threat had arrived four days earlier when a French convoy of four Men-of-War, three merchant ships, seven barques, and twenty tartanes (small ships) appeared outside the Mediterranean port carrying all manner of war matériel for the French army in Lombardy − 10,630 cannon balls, 3528 bombs, 24 cannon wheels, 482 bandoliers, 116 barrels and 114 bales of musket shot, 340 bales of cartridge paper, 7 barrels of nails, 4 barrels of flints, 8600 rock hammers, 400 pick axes, 158 bales of hatchets and spades, 23,980 pickaxe handles, 1800 pairs of shoes, 313 bales of woollen goods, and 18,346 baskets of wheat. 1 Such a fleet, while large, was not unusual; since the mid-sixteenth century, the ostensibly-neutral maritime republic had served as a critical military logistics centre, and for the last four years it had played a 'an essential role' role in supplying the French army in northern Italy fighting the War of Spanish Succession (1701)(1702)(1703)(1704)(1705)(1706)(1707)(1708)(1709)(1710)(1711)(1712)(1713)(1714). Indeed, the ongoing struggle over the Spanish throne between Louis XIV's France and his opponents from the Grand Alliance of Great Britain, the United Provinces, Austria, and Savoy arguably could be called Europe's first great resource war as these two Europe-spanning coalitions supplied armies from Iberia to Bavaria and everywhere in between. 2 But even by Genoese standards, six ships in the convoy -the L'Angelo Gabrielle, S. Andrea, Il Fortunato Rinaldo, and three smaller vessels -carried an especially volatile cargo: 3933

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Military food supply in the Republic of Venice in the eighteenth century: Entrepreneurs, merchants, and the state

Cited by 4 publications

References 18 publications

Military spending and innovation: learning from 19th-century world fair exhibition data

Military spending and innovation: learning from 19th-century world fair exhibition data

The role of quality in the grain market: wheat prices formation in eighteenth-century Northern Italy

’A man of particular ability’: A Jewish-Genoese military contractor in the fiscal-military system

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