The grain trade and minorities in the early modern Italian Peninsula and beyond: An introduction

This paper introduces the Special Issue ‘Minorities and Grain Trade in Early Modern Europe’. While an area’s traditional supply circuits benefitted from satisfactory harvests and a stable food demand, minorities’ contribution became crucial during crisis. Due to their commercial networks, facilities, and capital, minorities and their agents were able to cope with market disruption, especially when inflation and the reconfiguration of supply areas rendered ‘traditional’ grain merchants unable to face the emergency. The papers included in the Special Issue focus on the geographical and financial scope of legal grain-trading minorities’ businesses and their degree of specialisation and analyse how political authorities’ reliance on minorities to face food scarcity not only represented an economic opportunity for minorities but also contributed to shaping their relationship with public authorities.