Il Breve Trattato di Antonio Serra nel contesto della decadenza italiana

The debate about economic conditions of the Kingdom of Naples, in the first three decades of the Seventeenth century, scarred an important evolution in Neapolitan culture, because for the first time the economic problems were separated from ethical thinking and were outlined in autonomous way. In Naples, as in other dominions of the Spanish Empire, a copious literature in the form of arbitrios (advice) appeared, proposing measures to reverse the decline of the economy. The debate about economic conditions of the Kingdom of Naples in the early 17th Century, can be considered as a contrast among different models of development in the context of the World-System. The debate between Marc’Antonio de Santis, an anonimous Genoese writer and Antonio Serra focus on the contrast of different models of development. Marc’Antonio de Santis proposed a process of development based on the local forces against the Kingdom’s subjection to foreign investors and rentiers, on the base of natural fertility of Southern-Italy, that conferred it an advantage in terms of exchange. Antonio Serra defended the role of the foreign investors, proposing as model the commercial and manufacturing development of the Northern Italian city states (Genoa, Florence, and, above all, Venice). Both of these proposals were based on the opinion of the fertility of the Kingdom, but Southern Italy in the early 17th Century was full of an agrarian crisis, that was not imputable to normal fluctuations of the agrarian cycle. This crisis, which acquired the characters of a generalized crisis of subsistence, became the main subject of analysis for other Neapolitans authors that indicated a different model of development, based on the solution of agrarian problem.