Urbanization without Economic Growth in Pre-Industrial Italy: Rome’s Long Shadow (Routledge Explorations in Economic History)

Why did some of Europe’s most urbanized pre-industrial societies industrialize relatively late?Conventional theories link urbanization to economic growth.Yet European history presents a paradox: early industrializers were not the most urbanized, while highly urbanized regions often stagnated.This book argues that urbanization levels alone are misleading.What matters is the structure of urbanization - the spatial concentration of cities and the organization of urban networks - inherited from earlier historical processes. Italy, the demographic and infrastructural core of the Roman world, inherited exceptionally high urbanization within a markedly decentralized urban system.Through comparative analysis and detailed case studies - including the Republic of Genoa and Early Modern Tuscany - the book shows how this legacy fostered the emergence and persistence of regional states, constrained political unification, and encouraged extractive institutional arrangements, producing urbanization w