industry and production in the venetian terraferma 313
armaments industry was able to sell its products throughout Italy and
europe. the markets for such products, in fact, covered all of Italy and
europe, particularly in the princely states of the peninsula; as far as fire-
arms were concerned, Brescia was the only provider until the mid-18th
century. Brescian arms were available in the fairs of central Italy, where
Greek and near-eastern merchants purchased them for export to the
east. From the Lombard city, military manufactures went towards Ven-
ice, Ferrara, Mantua, parma, Milan, Florence, rome, naples, piedmont,
and savoy; but also to spain, France, Germany, poland, and switzerland.
Brescian arms for private use turned up, sometimes via re-exportation, in
the Low countries, Germany, France, spain, sardinia, eastern europe, the
near east, and north africa. naturally, Venice played a fundamental role
in providing a market for Brescia’s products, for the needs of its armies
both in the terraferma as well as in the stato da mar. the success of the
Lombard city’s arms and armor was owed, among other things, to a vital
ability with which Brescian armsmakers were blessed: an adaptability to
the demands of the buyer. this characteristic made them highly sought-
after by emissaries of the most disparate geographic provenance. While
still maintaining the secrets of their art, the Brescians were able to manu-
facture spanish corslets when they worked for the spanish, and German-
style armor when they worked for the Germans and swiss.48
ConclusionsIt is beyond doubt that the progress achieved in the last 20 years of stud-
ies on manufacturing in the Venetian terraferma has allowed for a better
knowledge of the evolution of this secondary sector in an ample portion
of the republic’s territory. We can now modify and nuance the tradi-
tional vision of a Veneto economy whose development was blocked by its
exclusively rural vocation, and re-evaluate the claims of those who have
long argued that industrialization in the Veneto is a recent phenomenon
devoid of historical precedents.
In light of the previous pages, it would not seem rash to consider the
15th- and 16th-century terraferma as a zone characterized by one of the
highest concentrations of manufacturing activity in all of europe, with
48 Frederico Bauce, Crescita e declino economico in una città di antico regime. Il caso di
Brescia tra la fine del Quattrocento e la seconda metà del Cinquecento (ph.d. thesis, Verona,
2009), pp. 116–34 and 154–87 with his ample cited bibliography.