Mobility, Print and Trade in Europe: The Case of the Tesini Pedlars (17th–19th Centuries)

Abstract

This article focuses on the itinerant print trade that actively involved the Alpine Tesini pedlars for more than three centuries (between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries) and that profoundly influenced the cultural, social, and economic history of their home valley. The case study of the pedlars from the Tesino valley, in what is now the Trentino region of Northern Italy, offers a privileged perspective for analysing three interrelated broader questions: the dynamics and effects of mobility in Ancien Régime Alpine societies; the spread of cheap print in pre-modern Europe; and the economic system underlying this large-scale trade. Through the analysis of a corpus of previously overlooked notarial sources, this article aims to unravel the complex financial and credit mechanisms that enabled the Tesini pedlars to succeed, but which in many cases were also the cause of their downfall.