the venetian economy 279
Yet, Venice itself could already boast higher real salaries than those in
Florence in the later Middle Ages.53 It must be noted, however, that with
grain being a rather costly cereal in England, popular consumption there
tended to focus mainly on rye. English salaries expressed in grain, then,
underestimate workers’ real purchasing power. Recent work has found, in
fact, that a relatively high quality of life in the most developed areas was
an element that distinguished them from areas with a lower rate of eco-
nomic growth.54 Thus, the Venetian data might be explained not as much
in the prerogatives of the guilds as in the high concentration of wealth
which the city continued to enjoy, even in the 17th and 18th centuries, and
in its ability to modify its own productive structure. Indeed, the salaries
53 Mueller, The Venetian Money Market, p. 656.
54 Robert C. Allen, “Real wages in Europe and Asia: A First Look at the Long-Term Pat-
terns,” in Robert C. Allen, Tommy Bengtsson, and Martin Dribe, eds., Living Standards in the
Past. New Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe (Oxford, 2005), pp. 111–30; Stephen
Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, “The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices
and Economic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800,” Economic History Review 59
(2006), 2–31. But see also Jan Luiten van Zanden, The Rise and Decline of Holland’s Econ-
omy. Merchant Capitalism and the Labour Market (Manchester, 1993), pp. 136–37.
Source: Author’s dataset; and Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Wages and the Standard of Living in
Europe, 1500–1800,” European Review of Economic History 3 (1999), 181, 185.
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Venice England Paris HollandFigure 5.2. Real wages of building laborers in comparison, 1396–1775.