Population and Environment in Northern Italy during the XVIth Century

The paper provides new estimates of population trends in Northern Italy during 16th and early 17 century. It develops a differential analysis of how population, technology and resources interacted in different parts of Northern Italy, presenting the thesis that while "Boserupian-style" dynamics were at work in the Alps due to the existence of a low-pressure demographic regime, the plains fell into a Malthusian trap (the famine of the 1590s), nothwistanding the agricultural innovations being introduced. The article suggests the thesis that in the plain population suffered more where agricultural innovation was market-oriented and directed by big landowners, than where sharecropping and small property allowed people living on the land to take the decision of how, and if, to innovate.