Serra’s Brief Treatise in a World-System Perspective: The Dutch Miracle and Italian Decadence in the Early 17th Century

This chapter employs a framework of world-systems analysis to revisit Serra’s Breve trattato, and the contemporary debate in which he partook regarding economic reforms triggered by the so-called ‘twelve years’ truce’ between the great powers of the period, in light of contemporary developments in the European economy at large. Largely retrograde and agricultural, Southern Italy’s integration into a larger European and increasingly global economic architecture offered new possibilities as well as challenges, and Serra’s ‘industrial’ model, which looked back to the experiences of the Italian city-states of earlier centuries, was from this perspective in the process of being overcome by the rise of England and the Low Countries.