Marco Ferrari

My research project focuses on early modern Genoa, where different types of sources tell different stories about social unrest. While Genoese chronicles contain explicit references to food protests, archival records tend to refer to social tensions without clearly naming public disorder. Even in this fragmented and often silent documentation, it is still possible to trace both institutional responses and reactions from below.

I examine tensions created in the documents of the Abbondanza (the grain office), the Senate, and various forms of private and public correspondence, to reconstruct what lies behind these silences.

The first case study centers on 1590, a year in which Mediterranean Europe faced a systemic crisis triggered largely by extreme weather. As Genoa’s traditional supply markets were simultaneously depleted, prices for basic goods rose; institutions desperately searched for alternatives and tried to manage scarce resources, while hunger intensified. In this context, social unrest emerged, revealing the political stakes of food in the city.