Agricultural History Review, Volume 56 Part 2 (2008), p. 255

Hemp, like other products used in shipbuilding, was a strategic resource in the age of sail. It is not difficult, therefore, to understand why a state so closely linked to the sea, like the Republic of Venice, should make such an effort to produce it within its boundaries and thus be freed from the need to import the fibre.

David Celetti’s book analyses how, by introducing, maintaining and regulating the cultivation and trade of hemp, the Venetian State aimed to provide a supply for its Arsenal, one of the oldest and most important pre-industrial complexes in Europe. The book spans the period from the Battle of Lepanto, in 1571, to 1660, during the latter part of the twenty-three-year war with the Ottoman Empire. During that time, the Arsenal bought more than 7,759 metric tons of hemp and 310 metric tons of tow, most of which was imported from the Bologna area, while the rest came from the Venetian town of Montagnana, near Padua. From 1571 to 1648, three years after the Turkish invasion of Crete, which had led to the war, the Arsenal purchased large stocks of Bolognese hemp from a group of foreign merchants who closely controlled the trade. Celetti demonstrates that the ten most important merchants supplied 76 per cent of the hemp used for the Arsenal. Later, the Republic authorized Arsenal officials to buy at a fixed price a ten per cent quota, afterwards reduced to 7.5 per cent, of all the hemp imported into Venice. In this way, throughout the period of the war with the Turks, shipbuilding in the Venetian State had at its disposal large quantities of hemp.

The second part of the book is devoted to the growing and processing of hemp in Montagnana. In 1455, a commission of three Venetian magistrates appointed to find land suitable for growing hemp on the Venetian mainland discovered in that area the right conditions for the cultivation of the plant: a soil rich in clay and plenty of water. Some months later, the Republic ordered everyone who possessed two oxen to sow two Paduan campi (1.88 acres) with hemp. The cultivation of hemp was widespread in early modern Veneto, but the fibre was used mainly for threading cord and for making textiles for domestic use, such as tablecloths and aprons. In order to produce strong, water-resistant ropes, more advanced methods of cultivation were required; in fact an expert from the Bologna area was hired to instruct the peasants from Montagnana and to oversee the whole process of the growing and refining of hemp. It was difficult and heavy work for the peasants, who were required to plough the soil several times and to use a quantity of manure that was far in excess of that produced on their farms. In the countryside around Bologna, landowners put considerable pressure on farmers to hoe the soil instead of ploughing it. After harvesting, the hemp was retted underwater in huge open-air basins built by the rural communities; it was then dried and underwent a series of further operations to free the fibre from the wooden part of the stem.

Hemp growing in Montagnana and in the neighbouring communities was imposed on the peasants by the state. A complex hierarchy of Venetian officials oversaw the cultivation and the initial stages of fibre production on site, and then organized the transport of the raw material by cart and boat, under armed escort, to the Arsenal in Venice. Here state experts fixed the price paid for Montagnana hemp. It is hardly surprising that the results did not meet the expectations of the government: the hemp cultivated in Montagnana did manage to reduce the amount imported, but the national hemp never reached the quality of that produced in the area of Bologna. State-fixed prices reduced profits and this led peasants and landowners to resorting to every possible subterfuge in an attempt to replace hemp with more profitable crops. This kind of behaviour was more common when the price of wheat rose. Not even the considerable increase in the sums paid by the state for hemp – it rose from 21 ducats for 1,000 pounds in 1577 to 29 ducats at the end of the sixteenth century – managed to stop a decrease in the number of fields sown and the consequent fall in production. Moreover, the meagre profits from growing hemp induced peasants to cut costs and cut down on the numerous ploughings required and the abundant fertilizer required by state-issued regulations. As a result, much of the fibre that reached the Arsenal was not suited for making durable rope. Efforts to enforce quality standards and to curb smuggling met with little success. Only in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did Venice change this policy, allowing a freer fluctuation in prices and freer markets. The result of this policy was that, at the fall of the Republic, hemp growing had spread well beyond the Montagnana district and a steady improvement in the quality had been achieved.

David Celetti’s book is remarkable for the wealth of quantitative data collected by the author and presented to the reader, and for the effort to single out the key factors and economic variables that shaped the production system and the dynamics of output, market and consumption, viewing them through the lens of economic analysis. At the same time, it takes into account the many institutional and administrative layers that oriented the actors’ choices and set boundaries to their freedom, and it also provides a comprehensive examination of the shortcomings that plagued the enforcement of state policies. For these reasons this book is useful as a case study for a comparative analysis of public intervention in support of naval expansion in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.