Pastoral Economics in the Kingdom of Naples

Abstract

This is a formidable work containing a vast amount of information on the history of the Dogana or Customs house of the kingdom of Naples, the institution through which the crown controlled transhumance of all animals in South Italy.Indeed the dogana was central to the general economy of much of the kingdom, since through it the crown could to some extent control how much land was devoted to grain production and how much to pastoralism.It was the major source of crown revenue, theoretically raising taxes on all sheep in the Regno.Marino, aiming at "total history" in the tradition of the Annales school, deals with the Dogana in its social, economic and political contexts, showing the interrelationships between them.He emphasises that the Dogana was, from its inception in the fifteenth century, a capitalistic enterprise in as much as it was a large scale, profit-oriented organization of state control of transhumant pas- toralism was much older and was dictated as much by a concern for good government as for the maximisation of profits.Hence a perennial tension in the organization as the