the terraferma state 115
system; and the overall efficacy of government choices, including scant
success in repressing contraband circulation of goods. As already stated,
major reform of indirect taxes came only in 1794, and action to reform
the guilds was equally tardy, but the buoyancy of market forces and the
initiative of entrepreneurs had in many ways preceded and pre-empted
the state. This meant the dynamism of areas more rural than urban; the
successful development of new products, which in textiles meant not just
lower-quality woollen cloth but also silk cloth and thread and a variety
of knitted goods; and the adaptability of the organization of production.
Especially important was the vitality of trading networks and circuits both
Italian and European, not centered on Venice or dominated by it but,
indeed, often excluding it. A 1773 government report reckoned that only a
third of the terraferma’s imports were routed via Venice, though in these
decades almost half the goods handled by its port were mainland exports
and imports.56 Exclusion of Venice from trade circuits was particularly
evident for the terraferma’s Lombard provinces, which by the 18th century
gravitated very largely towards the duchy of Milan and its international
dealings, and in the same period Habsburg lands east and north of Friuli,
including the free port of Trieste, exerted a similar attraction.
As to law and order, the early 17th-century transfer of much handling of
penal justice away from lawcourts dominated by terraferma aristocracies
was no panacea in lowering overall levels of violence, whether linked to
nobles or others.57 After 1630, problems of collective rather than individual
violence (banditry, brigandage, protest, etc.) remained serious in certain
types of areas—e.g., in the proximity of boundaries between jurisdictions,
where they were also associated with smuggling—and also especially in
relation to the social pressure generated by population increase, peas-
ant impoverishment, and food scarcity, evident from mid-18th century.
There were no radical changes over the period 1630–1797 in the anoma-
lous relationship between Venetian and terraferma law, despite centuries
of contiguity and intermingling in the practice of the courts, especially
through patrician provincial governors’ handling of penal cases and the
work of civil appeal courts in the capital; mainland statutes were still for-
mally in use but accompanied by a sedimentation of norms of Venetian
provenance. The lasting difficulty and delicacy of the issues at stake are
56 Scarabello, “Il Settecento,” p. 604.
57 Povolo, “Un sistema giuridico”; Chiodi and Povolo, L’amministrazione della giustizia;
Berengo, La società veneta.