This chapter will examine the economy and population of Locorotondo as it appears from nineteenth-century documents. It will concentrate upon the documentary evidence for movement of peasants into the countryside, describe the extraordinary effort of the town's upper classes to curtail this movement in 1827, and portray, insofar as the evidence allows, aspects of nineteenth-century peasant life in rural Locorotondo.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ECONOMY AND POPULATION OF LOCOROTONDO

The Catasto Provvisorio and the 1811 Census

The catasto provvisorio (provisional cadaster) contains most of what can be learned about the economy of Locorotondo during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The Murattian government issued the official decree for its formation on April 4, 1809, and the cadaster constituted one of the major economic reforms of the Napoleonic period. It was called “provisional” because this descriptive cadaster was to be replaced by a permanent “geometric” one which would actually map fields. But it remained provisional for almost a century. The new cadaster was compiled in a more orderly manner than the old catasto onciario and much reflected the new French order and its enlightenment roots (Dibenedetto, 1976: 106–110).

The provvisorio differed in some important ways from the onciario. First, it did not constitute a list of households because the taxable unit was now the individual owner. Since the onciario provides no ways to ascertain which properties in it belong to which members of recorded households, the two cadasters are difficult to compare.