the venetian economy 257
Table 1. Venice’s population and its ranking among the largest cities in Italy
and Europe. Index: mean 1540–86=100.
Inhabitants Index Ranking in Italy Ranking in Europe
1300 110000 73 2
1363 65228 44
1400 85000 57 2 3
1509 103500 69 2 3
1540 129971 87
1552 158069 105
1555 159467 106
1563 168627 113
1581 134871 90
1586 148097 99
1607*+ 188970 126 2 5
1624 141625 95
1633 102243 68
1642 120307 80
1655+ 158772 106
1696 137867 92 2 7
1740 147470 98
1761 148576 99 9
1766 140256 94
1771 138700 93
1780 140286 94
1784 139095 93
1790 137603 92
1795 137240 92 3 14
- Estimate
- Data uncertain
Sources: Benjamin Kedar, Merchants in Crisis. Genoese and Venetian Men of Affairs and
the Fourteenth Century Depression (New Haven, 1976), Appendix 7; Richard T. Rapp,
Industry and Economic Decline in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Cambridge, Mass., 1976),
p. 22; Daniele Beltrami, Storia della popolazione di Venezia dalla fine del secolo XVI alla
caduta della Repubblica (Padua, 1954), p. 59; Andrea Zannini, “Un censimento inedito del
primo Seicento e la crisi demografica ed economica di Venezia,” Studi veneziani 26 (1993),
108; Paolo Malanima, “Italian Cities 1300–1800. A Quantitative Approach,” Rivista di storia
economica 14 (1998), Appendix; Jean Georgelin, Venise au siècle des lumières (Paris, 1978),
p. 189. For comparison to other states in Europe, see Paul Bairoch, Jean Batou, and Pierre
Chèvre, La population des villes européenes de 800 à 1850 (Geneva, 1988), pp. 276–80.
These data, which should be considered as indicative of a general trend,
reflect the ambiguity of Venice’s economic history, an ambiguity which
neither the rise and fall of a great power nor the overall stability of the
population during the early modern period can explain. Certainly, the
effects of the Black Death in the mid-14th century were significant, and
it took several decades to recover from the demographic losses inflicted
by such a catastrophe. Nevertheless, the long-term fluctuations are not