278 luciano pezzolo
cept of absolute decline since the city had not suffered a fall in revenues,
which remained stable. Indeed, Venice had filled the fiscal voids provoked
by the plague of 1630 rather quickly, thus demonstrating a notable capac-
ity of recovery. Though Rapp lent excessive faith to certain sources, his
view presented a more textured reality than the bleak depictions pro-
posed in the past.51
At present, it is difficult to blame the guilds for production difficulties.
First, one must explain why the guilds were able to sustain the strong
growth of the Renaissance period on the one hand and, on the other,
constituted a serious impediment to its future growth. Second, the guild
system showed itself quite flexible, and capable, as in the case of the silk
and glass industries, of adjusting qualitative standards and production
processes to adapt to changes in international demand through the use of
technological innovation. It should be noted, moreover, that the decisions
made by the guilds depended on the productive capabilities of the city, as
well as on the political and social relations among the guild leaders, guild
members, and the government in the wider context of the market.52
As for the cost of labor, although we do not have comparable data for
the manufacturing sector in the rest of Europe, the data series of con-
struction workers’ salaries demonstrate that in England and Holland, real
salaries were higher than in Italy (see Figure 5.2). That would reflect a
greater labor productivity in northern Europe. In Venice, in particular, the
trend does not differ from the more general one (a tendency for workers’
purchasing power to fall over the early modern period).
The comparison with other European cities indicates that, in fact,
unspecialized workers in Venice enjoyed a relatively good socio-economic
position, which improved during the course of the 17th century compared
to English salaried workers and which was more or less equivalent to their
Dutch colleagues. It is possible that a comparison in terms of the purchasing
power of grain alone could create a false picture, and yet another interest-
ing problem emerges. How does one evaluate the discrepancies between
the various levels of salaries? The 17th-century differential between Ven-
ice and England would justify those who see high salaries as the cause
of the crisis, but Holland also presents salaries which were just as high.
51 Rapp, Industry and Economic Decline; and the critical comments of John A. Marino,
“La crisi di Venezia e la New Economic History,” Studi storici 19 (1978), 79–108.
52 Francesca Trivellato, “Guild, Technology, and Economic Change in Early Modern
Venice,” in Stephan R. Epstein and Maarten Prak, eds., Guilds, Innovation, and the Euro-
pean Economy, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 199–231.