Urban Network and Economic Policy: The Milanese Case During the Spanish and Austrian Ages

The essay focuses on the factors on which the economic network of the Lombard cities was based: the resources and the productive structures, the roads, the transit trade, the opening of borders to foreign goods and to foreign businessmen, the structure of the system of customs’ duties, the mercantile vocation of the State; the role of Milan as a gateway and ‘emporium’ for its territory and for the cities of the State and the neighboring States. It aims at analysing the State policies that let it survive during the Spanish and the Austrian Age and let Milan preserve its role of gateway and ‘emporium’ for the other cities of the State and for principal cities of the neighboring States until the French Era.