Global Crisis

by Parker, Geoffrey

  Now although Chardin was fluent in Persian, and had lived many years in Iran, he was not qualified to pontificate on the frequency of sodomy (impossible to measure) or the exact number of emigrants (whilst the Mughal rulers of India did indeed welcome thousands of Persians, thousands of Indians migrated to Iran). He was on firmer ground in suggesting that birth control was common, however. Although the Qur'an was silent on reproductive matters, several ‘Hadith’ (commands attributed to the Prophet Mohammed) enjoined birth control, while Islamic Law allowed abortions within the first three months of pregnancy (albeit officially only to preserve the life of the mother and not as a way to control population size). By the seventeenth century, those who read medical treatises in Arabic could find descriptions of almost 200 techniques of contraception and abortion, and pharmacies stocked many of the medications mentioned therein. Some of these treatises explicitly argued that contraception (including early abortions) was ‘permitted when times are bad’ or ‘to attempt to escape having too many dependants, or to escape having any dependants at all’. Iran therefore avoided the ‘overpopulation’ that plagued states elsewhere.59

  Nevertheless, the Safavid state remained fragile – a fact reflected in the remarkable freedom of speech it allowed its subjects. In the 1640s a French traveller marvelled that the government ‘allowed them to talk and argue about religious matters’, and it ‘freely admitted when it had lost a battle or a town (whereas the Ottomans always asserted that some treason was to blame)’. A generation later, Jean Chardin noted with surprise that in urban coffee houses ‘political criticism was voiced in full liberty, free of government scrutiny, for the court was not concerned with what people said’ – but as usual in the seventeenth century, toleration reflected weakness, not strength.60 The Safavid regime endured mainly because it lacked external challengers, and when this changed early in the eighteenth century, the shahs proved powerless to prevent both the Ottomans and the Russians from making territorial gains, while their Afghan neighbours first rebelled, then invaded and finally murdered the last male members of the dynasty – before defeating the Mughals and conquering Hindustan in 1739.

  Since both the Safavid and Mughal states collapsed into anarchy soon after 1700, some might infer that they had merely deferred catastrophe rather than averting it; but this is unfair. Like other parts of south and Southeast Asia, their territories suffered natural disasters (notably droughts) in the mid-seventeenth century, yet they escaped political catastrophe. Instead, for another two generations, and for most of their subjects, life in much of South Asia was indeed ‘not worse or more calamitous than it used to be’.

  14

  Red Flag over Italy1

  MANY CONTEMPORARIES EXPECTED THE REVOLT OF THE CATALANS IN JUNE 1640 to produce the collapse of the Spanish Monarchy. In Paris, Swedish ambassador Hugo Grotius gloated that ‘in time this flame could spread to Aragon, Valencia and Portugal’; while in London, James Howell predicted that ‘the sparkles of this fire will fly further, either to Portugal, or to Sicily and Italy; all which countries, I observed, the Spaniard holds, as one would do a wolf, by the ear’.2 And, indeed, Portugal rebelled in December 1640 and Aragon came close the following year (see chapter 9 above); while rioting against conscription and tax increases paralyzed much of the kingdom of Valencia after a drought produced the worst harvest of the century in 1645. Two years later a broadsheet bore the menacing slogan:

  If it's good government you want

  Naples, Messina and Palermo

  Have shown you the way.3

  By then ‘the sparkles’ of rebellion had flown not only to Naples, Messina and Palermo but also to Milan – but in each case they failed to start a conflagration. Whereas the revolt of the Catalans lasted 19 years, and Portugal achieved independence after 28 years of war, in Spanish Italy the government prevented the ‘fire’ from taking hold in Lombardy, and extinguished it in Naples and Sicily within a year. Why?

  Sicily in Revolt

  Spain began to impose heavier taxes on its Italian subjects in 1619, when Philip III demanded three million ducats from his Italian vassals to pay for the troops he sent to assist Emperor Ferdinand II defeat his enemies in Germany (see chapter 8 above). Despite their unequal size and wealth, the split was equal – one million each from Lombardy, Naples and Sicily – but Sicily presented a particularly tempting fiscal target. First, the island's fertile soil normally produced yields of 7–10 grains of wheat and 9–11 grains of barley for each grain sown, the highest recorded in seventeenth-century Europe. Second, three-quarters of Sicily's population lived in towns, 70 of them founded on the uplands of the interior specifically to produce grain for export (see chapter 3 above). Thanks to the benign climate of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, most of them thrived, and the population of the island doubled from 600,000 in 1500 to 1,200,000 in 1623, including 130,000 in Palermo and perhaps 120,000 in Messina, the two principal cities.

  Nevertheless, there were two Sicilies. The west and centre of the island, including Palermo, the administrative capital, produced and exported primarily grain; while the east, including Messina, the commercial capital, produced and exported primarily silk. Despite their prosperity, both parts of the island were economically vulnerable. Messina and its hinterland produced virtually no grain, and so the population depended on being able to import bread and export textiles. When war broke out between Venice and the Ottoman empire in 1645 (see chapter 7 above), silk exports from Messina fell by one-quarter, throwing thousands out of work. Crisis could strike western Sicily with equal severity and suddenness, because drought rendered the marginal lands around the new towns of the central uplands barren. During the 1640s, yield ratios on some estates fell to 1:3 – the lowest recorded on the island during the entire early modern period – which drastically reduced the grain available to feed Palermo.4 The two Sicilies also differed politically. The king appointed most local government officials in the west, whereas the eastern cities enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy. Luis Ribot García has suggested that Messina, in particular, ruled by a Senate composed of six magistrates elected annually, ‘had gained a greater degree of self government than any other city in Sicily – perhaps in the Hispanic world – making it in effect a sort of republic under Spanish protection’. The king appointed directly only the straticò, the official who commanded his garrison and enforced his laws.5

  The decision by Philip IV and his Spanish ministers in 1643 to make Italy contribute more for his foreign wars (see chapter 9 above) almost doubled the tax burden on his Sicilian subjects over the next four years. The government of the island, headed by a viceroy, met these demands with many of the same fiscal strategies adopted elsewhere during the mid-seventeenth-century crisis: it exploited ‘regalian rights’ (such as the ‘media anata’ and stamp duty); it bullied the island's Parliament into voting new taxes, and then farmed their collection out to bankers in return for cash advances; and it imposed excise duties on almost all commodities in common use. When these measures fell short of the king's demands, the viceroys also alienated crown lands and rights (although this reduced revenue), sold public offices (although this undermined the loyalty and integrity of the civil service) and issued bonds (although the interest payable greatly increased expenditure). The fiscal pressure forced the major towns to take similar measures: they sold lands, imposed new taxes and borrowed money at interest (by the 1640s, the public debt of Palermo stood at over four million ducats). This meant that both central and local governments lacked resources when a series of natural disasters struck the island.

  Starting in September 1645, rain fell almost continuously on Sicily for a year, destroying first the winter crops and then drastically reducing the yield of the summer harvest. In addition, floods destroyed houses and washed away bridges, gales destroyed the olive trees and an eruption of Mount Etna ‘did notable damage’. Nevertheless, the king commanded his viceroy to send 300,000 bushels of grain to Spain the following spring and rejected all the vicero
y's pleas that the island's own food shortages made this impossible. Philip also issued express orders that the city magistrates must not subsidize grain prices (as they had been doing) to cushion the impact of rising food prices on the poor. In August 1646, with wheat prices higher than ever previously recorded, the Senate of Messina ordered all bakers to reduce the size of a standard loaf by 10 per cent – the only alternative to raising its price. Three weeks later, as wheat prices continued to rise, they did the same again.6

  A crowd of ‘boys and women’ now took to the streets of Messina, brandishing the small loaves on the end of pikes and shouting ‘Long live the king and down with the evil government!’ The rioters killed one of the magistrates, burned down the houses of two others and stoned the homes of several nobles; but the viceroy, the same marquis of Los Vélez who had performed so dismally in the campaign against the Catalans in 1640–1 (see chapter 9 above), reacted swiftly. He ordered the soldiers aboard the galleys that happened to be in Messina harbour to march through the streets to restore order; he sent grain from the government's ‘strategic reserve’ to the city; then he travelled to Messina in person and supervised the arrest and execution of the leading rioters.

  Although these measures pacified Messina, they did nothing to address the crisis caused by harvest failure in the rest of Sicily. On the contrary, in autumn 1646, ‘having ploughed and sowed the land, the peasants desired rain, but a great drought occurred, not only then but for almost the whole succeeding winter, and into the spring of 1647’, which seemed to ‘threaten a universal catastrophe’. The drought coincided with (or caused) a serious epidemic in Palermo that killed hundreds each week as bread prices reached their highest level in three centuries. When the king ordered the city's magistrates to cease subsidizing the price of bread, at a cost of 300 ducats a day, they refused because (recalling the events in Messina) they feared a riot if they obeyed.7

  Meanwhile the local clergy organized processions to pray for rain and beg forgiveness for the sins that, they claimed, had brought God's punishment on the land. ‘Day after day and hour after hour’ the men, women and children of Palermo took to the streets ‘showing their penitence in a variety of ways, with crowns of thorns on their heads, iron chains around their necks and feet, flagellating themselves, continuously weeping’. Then a miracle occurred: it rained for two days and the crops began to grow again. Just as popular anxiety subsided, ‘a Sirocco wind blew day and night, so fierce that it dried the breath in your throat and killed off both grain and fruit crops’ – but on 19 May 1647 a second miracle occurred: a ship docked in Palermo harbour carrying several tons of grain.8 Unfortunately, the ship also brought new letters from the king, threatening that unless the city magistrates ended the bread subsidy they would have to pay for it personally. The bakers therefore received orders to reduce the size of the standard loaf by 15 per cent ‘in order to align the price with the cost’.9

  The prospect of mass starvation, the outpouring of religious zeal and then two apparent miracles of deliverance created emotional overload in Palermo. Some women went to the cathedral carrying the small loaves which they laid on the altar, shouting ‘Look what we get, Lord, after so much penitence.’ On 20 May about 200 people, many of them women and boys (as in Messina the previous year), gathered outside the city hall and shouted ‘Long live the king and down with the evil government’, ‘Big loaves, no excise’ and, more simply, ‘Bread, bread’. Their cries attracted a much larger crowd and some began to throw stones at the windows and set fire to the doors. They also broke into the principal prison and freed over 1,000 inmates.10

  The convicts transformed the situation. The following day one of them, Antonino la Pelosa, incited the crowd to storm the treasury and burn the tax documents within. In a desperate attempt to restore order, Viceroy Los Vélez issued a proclamation abolishing excise duty (gabella) on five basic foodstuffs and fixed the prices at which each should be sold; and he restored the bread subsidy so that the bakers could produce larger loaves for the same price. More surprisingly, he also deposed the city magistrates who had decreed the reduction; granted ‘the people’ the right to elect two magistrates themselves; and formally pardoned not only all rioters but also those freed from prison. The violence subsided until the city magistrates, perhaps still fearful that the king would hold them responsible for any food subsidy, insisted that all items except bread should be sold at cost price. La Pelosa and his supporters denounced this move as a breach of faith and burned down the houses of officials and merchants involved in tax collection.

  The escalating violence produced panic. The archbishop instructed all clergy in the city to keep loaded guns by them at all times, while Los Vélez authorized the city guildsmen to bear arms. Together with the nobles and their bands of retainers, the guildsmen restored order to the streets and captured La Pelosa, who confessed under torture that he had intended to distribute among his followers the money taken from the city treasury, expecting to be hailed as king, and that he had brought into the city ‘some Greeks’ (farmers of Greek descent) who planned to murder all the nobles (and any others he deemed to be his enemies) on the feast of Corpus Christi, the seventh anniversary of the Catalan uprising. The following day the viceroy had him and other leading ‘incendiaries’ executed, after which he wrote a letter to the king boasting that he had just toured the streets in his carriage in perfect safety.11

  Los Vélez boasted too soon. Famished citizens in other Sicilian towns drew the obvious lesson from the ease with which Palermo had won concessions, and crowds led by ‘women and youngsters carrying sticks and stones in their hands’ took to the streets shouting ‘Long live the king of Spain, down with the excise.’ Almost everywhere the magistrates complied, and, if they refused, the crowds broke open the prisons and started burning the houses of the rich until they received the concessions they demanded. In Catania, a port 60 miles south of Messina, rioters led by a local nobleman set free all prisoners, burnt all trial papers and forced the city authorities to abolish excise duties, to issue a pardon and to allow the guilds to elect two magistrates who would serve for life. In Caltabellotta, a small upland town, a public meeting demanded not only the abolition of the excise but also a new census to serve as the base for allocating future taxes, because the existing one listed ‘8,000 souls, the greater part of them very prosperous; but at present there are scarcely 3,500 impoverished and miserable souls’.12

  Palermo, too, faced a financial crisis because, without the excise duties, it lacked money to pay its creditors. On 1 July 1647 the viceroy met the newly elected magistrates and the guild leaders, and they agreed to impose taxes that targeted the rich: duty would henceforth be paid on every window, door and balcony of the city's houses; on every pound of tobacco; and on every horse-drawn carriage. They also decreed that there would be no exemptions for either nobles or clerics. This represented the first ‘progressive’ fiscal system of early modern Europe, and it might have produced a lasting settlement had not news arrived of a revolution in Naples.13

  ‘I find nothing more difficult than walking around Naples’

  The kingdoms of Sicily and Naples were adjacent, enjoyed numerous cultural and commercial ties, obeyed a common master and closely monitored events on the other side of straits of Messina. Reports of the Palermo revolt, and its remarkable outcome, spread swiftly to Naples where, before long, posters criticizing the Spanish government appeared. There was much to criticize. The kingdom of Naples was more than twice as large as England, with a smaller population (about three million), but its capital (with perhaps 350,000 inhabitants) was the largest city in the Spanish Monarchy and one of the largest in Europe. In 1634 Giulio Cesare Capaccio published a guide to Naples, complaining that the streets ‘are bursting with people on foot, on horseback, in carriages, with a buzzing everywhere as if it were a beehive. I find nothing more difficult than walking around Naples and going where I want, whatever the time of day.’ Capaccio also noted the prodigious quantities of food consumed by this hu
ge population, most of it bought and sold every day in the city's principal marketplace, the Piazza del Mercato.14

  Many observers noted the striking contrast between the ostentation of the city's patrician elite (a French visitor considered that ‘there was not a race in the world more presumptuous and more boastful’ than the nobles of Naples) and the destitution of the rest of the population, many of whom eked out a living in ‘high-rise’ apartment buildings in the city centre, in shacks around the periphery, or in the streets. The Neapolitans called them lazzari (Lazaruses) because their ability to arise from their beds and walk seemed miraculous – but Capaccio considered them ‘the dregs of the state, prone to rebellions, to revolutions [rivoluzioni], to break laws, customs, obedience to superiors’. They were, he believed, ‘capable of reducing everything to disorder with every tiny movement’.15

  To minimize the risk of ‘revolutions’, the viceroys exploited the rivalry between different social groups. The nobles in Naples belonged to one of six groups of families (known as Seggi or ‘seats’), and a representative from each served on the city council, together with a candidate chosen by the viceroy from a list submitted by the non-noble householders (misleadingly known as the Eletto del popolo, ‘the man elected by the people’) who served for a six-month term, which the viceroy could terminate or prolong at will. Despite his title, the holder reflected the views of the government. In 1620 a major political crisis ensued when the lawyer Giulio Genoino, then serving as Eletto del popolo, proposed a programme of constitutional reform that included equal representation in the city's government of nobles and popolo. One of his manifestos justified the new division on the basis of their respective numbers – ‘300,000 against 1,000’ – but although the viceroy endorsed the plan, Madrid vetoed it and condemned both the viceroy and Genoino to prison.16