Page 33 - Changing Living Spaces

1

The Privatization of the Common Real Estate
1
in Lombard Alpine Valleys in the Nineteenth
Century: Social, Economic, and Environmental

Effects

Luca Mocarelli Paolo Tedeschi
University of Milano-Bicocca, University of Milano-Bicocca,
Italy Italy
© 2024 Luca Mocarelli and Paolo Tedeschi
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-399-9.31-54

Introduction
This paper deals with the effects of the privatization of common real
estate in the Italian Alpine valleys in the nineteenth century, mainly
in Lombardy. The sale of a large part of the common real estate greatly
changed the methods that the Lombard communities normally used to
increase production (or to maintain the same yields) on their properties
as well as the system for distributing the associated ‘fruits’ (grain, hay,
wood, as well as the rent from pastures, smelting furnaces, mills, etc.).
The villages located in the Alpine valleys gradually lost their social and
economic equilibrium, which also had a negative impact on the environ-
ment. The privatization of common real estate was not the only factor
that destroyed the existing equilibrium; however, It had relevant effects
and it also weakened social cohesion and made the local economy less re-
sistant to changes brought about by technological advances in transport
and industrial production. Thus, many Alpine villages that had been able
to maintain a stable population structure for centuries lost a very high
proportion of their population within a few decades. Only in some val-
leys, which produced high quality artisanal products and had a favoura-
ble location in relation to lowland markets, the effects were limited, and

Murayama, S., Ž. Lazarević, and A. Panjek, eds. 2024. Changing Living
Spaces: Subsistence and Sustenance in Eurasian Economies from Early Modern
Times to the Present. Koper: University of Primorska Press.

31