1 Key studies at a conceptual level are De Moor, Tine, ‘The silent revolution: a new perspective on the emergence of commons, guilds, and other forms of corporate collective action in Western Europe’, International Review of Social History 53, 16 (2008), 179–212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De Moor, Tine, ‘Avoiding tragedies: a Flemish common and its commoners under the pressure of social and economic change during the eighteenth century’, The Economic History Review 62, 1 (2009), 1–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De Moor, Tine, The dilemma of the commoners: understanding the use of Common-Pool Resources in long-term perspective (Cambridge, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Curtis, Daniel R., Coping with crisis: the resilience and vulnerability of pre-industrial settlements (Farnham, Surrey, 2014)Google Scholar; van Bavel, Bas, ‘People and land: rural population developments and property structures in the low countries, 1300–1600’, Continuity and Change 17, 1 (2002), 9–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; van Bavel, Bas and Thoen, Erik eds., Rural societies and environments at risk: ecology, property rights and social organisation in fragile areas, Middle Ages–twentieth century (Turnhout, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 On France, see: Vivier, Nadine, Propriété collective et identité communal: les biens communaux en France de 1750 à 1914 (Paris, 1998)Google Scholar; Béaur, Gérard, Schofield, Phillipp, Chevet, Jean-Michel and Pérez-Picazo, Maria Teresa eds., Property rights, land markets and economic growth in the European countryside (Turnhout, 2013)Google Scholar; Sylvain Olivier, ‘Peasant property, common land and the environment in the garrigues of Languedoc from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century’, in Thoen and van Bavel eds., Rural societies and environments at risk, 89–114. On Belgium, see: Paul Servais, ‘Common lands and agricultural development in the foothills of the Ardennes, 1750–1900’, in Béaur, Schofield, Chevet and Pérez-Picazo eds., Property rights, 139–56. On Germany, see: Brakensiek, Stefan, ‘The management of common land in north-western Germany’, in De Moor, Tine, Shaw-Taylor, Leigh and Warde, Paul eds., The management of common land in North West Europe, c. 1500–1850 (Turnhout, 2002), 225–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Niels Grüne, ‘Individualisation, privatisation, mobilisation: the impact of common property reforms on land markets and agricultural growth in Germany: a comparative view of Westphalia and Baden (1750–1900)’, in Béaur, Schofield, Chevet and Pérez-Picazo eds., Property rights, 157–78; Grüne, Niels, ‘Transformation of the commons in rural south-west Germany (18^th–19^th centuries)’, Historia Agraria 55 (2011), 47–74 Google Scholar; Warde, Paul, Ecology, economy and state formation in early modern Germany (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warde, Paul, ‘Law, the “commune”, and the distribution of resources in early modern German state formation’, Continuity and Change 17, 2 (2002), 183–len CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On England, see: Winchester, Angus, ‘By ancient right or custom: the local history of common land in a European context’, The Local Historian 45, 4 (2015), 266–85Google Scholar; Rodgers, Christopher P., Straughton, Eleanor A., Winchester, Angus J. L. and Pieraccini, Margherita eds., Contested common land: environmental governance past and present (London, 2011)Google Scholar; Shaw-Taylor, De Moor and Warde eds., The management of common land; Shaw-Taylor, Leigh, ‘Labourers, cows, common rights and parliamentary enclosure: the evidence of contemporary comment, c. 1760–1810’, Past and Present 171 (2001), 95–126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Neeson, Jeannette, Commoners: common right, enclosure and social change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Sweden, see: Larsson, Jesper, ‘Boundaries and property rights: the transformation of a Common-Pool Resource’, The Agricultural History Review 62, 1 (2014), 20–40 Google Scholar; Larsson, Jesper, ‘An analytical framework for Common-Pool Resource–large technical system (CPR-LTS) constellations’, International Journal of the Commons 7, 1 (2013), 113–39Google Scholar. On Switzerland, see: Anne-Lise Head-König, ‘Régulation étatique, biens communaux et alpages dans une société préalpestre et alpestre en voir d'indstrialisation: le pays de Glaris aux XVIII^e et XIX^e siècles', in Burguière, André, Goy, Joseph and Tits-Dieuaide, Marie-Jeanne eds., L'Histoire grande ouverte : hommages à Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (Paris, 1997), 50–7Google Scholar; Head-König, Anne-Lise, ‘Les biens communaux en Suisse aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles: enjeux et controverses’, in Demelas, Marie-Danielle and Vivier, Nadine eds., Les propriétés collectives face aux attaques libérales (1750–1914): Europe occidentale et Amérique latine (Rennes, 2003), 99–118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Spain and Portugal have been identified as important exceptions in Southern Europe, thanks to the work of Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia, José Miguel Lana, Iñaki Iriarte-Goñi and Alberto Marcos Martin (Spain) and Rui Santos and Margarida Sobral Neto (Portugal). See, for example, Iriate-Goñi, Iñaki, ‘Common lands in Spain, 1800–1995: persistence, change and adaptation’, Rural History 13, 1 (2002), 19–37 Google Scholar; Beltrán, Francisco J., ‘Social and environmental filters to market incentives: common land persistence in nineteenth-century Spain’, Journal of Agrarian Change 15, 2 (2015), 239–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lana, José Miguel, ‘From equilibrium to equity: the survival of the commons in the Ebro Basin: Navarra from the 15th to the 20th centuries’, International Journal of the Commons 2, 2 (2008), 162–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rui Santos and Maria José Roxo, ‘A tale of two tragedies: the case of the commons of Serra de Mértola in the Alentejo (southern Portugal) and its privatization, eighteenth to twentieth centuries’, in van Bavel and Thoen eds., Rural societies and environments at risk, 115–46.

4 Alfani, Guido and Rao, Riccardo eds., La gestione delle risorse collettive: Italia settentrionale, secoli XII–XVIII [Managing the commons: Northern Italy, twelfth-eighteenth centuries] (Milan, 2011)Google Scholar; Alfani, Guido, Calamities and the economy in Renaissance Italy: the grand tour of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse (London, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Putnam, Robert D., Making democracy work: civic traditions in modern Italy (Princeton, 1993)Google Scholar. For a definition of ‘social capital’, see sections 4 and 5 of this article.

6 Giulio Ongaro, The military structure and local economies: the Venetian rural communities between the mid sixteenth century and the end of the War of Candia (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Verona, 2015). In December 2016 this thesis will be published with Routledge as Peasants and soldiers: the management of the Venetian military structure in the mainland dominion between XVI and XVII centuries.

7 See: January, Peter and Knapton, Michael, ‘The demands made on Venetian Terraferma Society for Defence in the early seventeenth century’, Ateneo Veneto CXCIV (2007), 25–115 Google Scholar.

8 See: Giulio Ongaro, ‘Venetian rural communities during the “Italian Wars”: institutional evolution and tightness of the rural economic system’, Rural History Conference (2013), available at https://www.academia.edu/7406323/Ongaro_rural_history_2013_Venetian_rural_communities_during_the_Italian_Wars_Institutional_evolution_and_tightness_of_the_rural_economy. The paper also provides some quantitative data on the increasing expenditure and the gradually diminishing (and changing character) of the incomes of the rural communities.

9 This is a very complex topic, which cannot be given justice here.  For more on this topic, see Ongaro, Peasants and soldiers.

10 See, for example, Fusaro, Maria, Political economies of empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: the decline of Venice and the rise of England 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Hobsbawm, Eric, ‘The general crisis of the European economy in the 17th century’, Past & Present 5 (1954), 33–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Romano, Ruggero, ‘Tra XVI e XVII secolo: una crisi economica: 1619–1622’, Rivista Storica Italiana 74, 3 (1962), 480–531 Google Scholar; Clark, Peter ed., The European crisis of the 1590s: essays in comparative history (London, 1985)Google Scholar; Malanima, Paolo, Crisi e riconversione nell'Italia del Seicento (Milan, 1998)Google Scholar; Alfani, Calamities and the economy; Parker, Geoffrey, Global crisis: war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth century (New Haven and London, 2013)Google Scholar.

12 The term ‘Common Pool Resources' refers to resource systems ‘where excluding potential appropriators or limiting appropriation rights of existing users is nontrivial (but not necessarily impossible) and the yield of the resource system is subtractable’, quoting Ostrom, Elinor, Gardner, Roy and Walker, James, Rules, games, and Common-Pool Resources (Ann Arbor, 1994), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In turn, the term ‘resource system’ refers to the structure that includes the resources and allows access to them.

13 While there is little research on the beni comuni, many historians have studied the beni comunali, see: Pitteri, Mauro, ‘La politica veneziana dei beni comunali (1496–1797)’, Studi Veneziani 10 (1985), 57–len Google Scholar; Barbacetto, Stefano, ‘La più gelosa delle pubbliche regalie’: i ‘beni communali’ della Repubblica veneta tra dominio della signoria e diritti delle comunità, secoli XV–XVIII (Venice, 2008)Google Scholar; Bragaggia, Roberto, Confini litigiosi: i governi del territorio nella Terraferma veneta del  Seicento (Sommacampagna, 2012)Google Scholar.

14 Zacchello, Giorgio ed., Statuti del comune di Schio, 1393 (Schio, 1993)Google Scholar.

15 This topic has been widely covered in European and Italian historiography. See, for example, Romero, Frederic Aparisi and Pérez, Vicent Royo eds., Beyond lord and peasants: rural elites and economic differentiation in pre-modern Europe (Valencia, 2014)Google Scholar; and Alfani and Rao eds., La gestione delle risorse collettive; Tocci, Giovanni, Le comunità negli Stati italiani d'antico regime (Bologna, 1989)Google Scholar; Tocci, Giovanni, Le comunità in età moderna: problemi storiografici e prospettive di ricerca (Roma, 1997)Google Scholar. For the Republic of Venice see Knapton, Michael, ‘Il Territorio vicentino nello stato veneto del ‘500 e primo ‘600: nuovi equilibri politici e fiscali’, in Cracco, Giorgio and Knapton, Michael eds., Dentro lo ‘stado italico’: Venezia e la terraferma fra Quattro e Seicento (Trento 1984), 33–115 Google Scholar; Rossini, Alessandra, Le campagne bresciane nel Cinquecento: Territorio, fisco, società (Milan, 1994), 55, 115Google Scholar; Maifreda, Germano, Rappresentanze rurali e proprietà contadina: il caso veronese tra Sei e Settecento (Milan, 2002)Google Scholar; Pederzani, Ivana, Venezia e lo ‘Stado de Terraferma: il governo delle comunità nel territorio bergamasco (secc. XV–XVIII) (Milano, 1992)Google Scholar; Del Torre, Giuseppe, Venezia e la terraferma dopo la guerra di Cambrai: fiscalità e amministrazione 1515–1530 (Milan, 1986)Google Scholar.

16 Ongaro, Giulio, ‘Il problema della contabilità delle proprietà collettive nella Repubblica di Venezia tra XVI e XVII secolo: alcuni esempi nel contado vicentino’, Studi Storici Luigi Simeoni LXVI (2016), 43–54 Google Scholar.

17 Rossini, Le campagne bresciane nel Cinquecento, 247. The construction of the fortress of Palmanova in Friuli was the last step in the renewing of the Venetian defensive structure, a process started with the building of the fortress of Legnago and the renewing of the fortresses of Brescia, Bergamo and Verona. For the construction of Palmanova – the most ambitious project – all the provinces of the Mainland Dominion had to contribute with men and money. See: Mallett, Michael, and Hale, John, The military organisation of a Renaissance State: Venice from 1400 to 1617 (Cambridge, 1984), 409–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 For example, the commons owned by the community of Bedizzole, in the same province, were alienated in 1622, 1623, 1624, 1654, 1657, 1660, 1661, 1662, 1664, 1667 and in 1668, see Municipal Archive of Bedizzole (hereafter MAB), busta 4, registro 1–2. The community of Maderno, on Lake Garda, lost land in 1583, 1611, 1618, 1630, 1640, 1643, State Archive of Venice (hereafter ASVe), Compilazione delle leggi, Serie I, b. 143, fos. 1026 r-v; Municipal Archive of Maderno (hereafter MAM), registro 1612–1689 and Provvedimenti 1610–1615.

19 Municipal Archive of Gavardo (hereafter MAG), busta 57, fos. 20 r-v.

20 ASVe, Senato, Dispacci dei Rettori, Brescia e Bresciano, busta 15, letter dated 19 March 1615.

21 Ibid., 17 January 1625; busta 50, 26 November 1648 and 17 February 1649.

22 ‘Podesteria e Capitanato di Vicenza’, volume 7 of Relazioni dei rettori veneti in terraferma (Milan, 1976), 294Google Scholar.

23 ‘Podesteria e Capitanato di Brescia’, volume 11 of Relazioni dei rettori veneti in terraferma (Milan, 1978), 306Google Scholar.

24 Faccini, Luigi, La Lombardia fra ‘600 e ‘700: riconversione economica e mutamenti sociali (Milan, 1988), 107–36Google Scholar; Colombo, Emanuele, Giochi di luoghi: il territorio lombardo nel Seicento (Milan, 2008)Google Scholar.

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27 Stumpo, Enrico, Finanza e Stato Moderno nel Piemonte del Seicento (Rome, 1979)Google Scholar.

28 Kamen, Henry, ‘The economic and social consequences of the Thirty Years' War’, Past & Present 39, 1 (1968), 44–61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Friedrichs, Christopher R., Urban society in an age of war: Nördlingen, 1580–1720 (Princeton, 1979)Google Scholar.

29 de Vries, Jan, The Dutch rural economy in the Golden Age, 1500–1700 (New Haven, 1974)Google Scholar; de Vries, Jan and van der Woude, Ad, The first modern economy: success, failure, and perseverance of the Dutch economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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31 Gutmann, War and rural life, 206.

32 Ostrom, Elinor, Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action (Cambridge, 1990), 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Ibid., 93–4.

34 Alfani and Rao eds., La gestione delle risorse collettive; Ongaro, ‘Il problema della contabilità delle proprietà collettive’; Aparisi Romero and Royo Pérez eds., Beyond lord and peasants.

35 Hardin, Garrett, ‘The tragedy of the commons’, Science, New Series 162, 3859 (1968), 1243–8Google ScholarPubMed, here 1244–5.

36 Ibid., 1244.

37 Ostrom, Governing the commons, 9.

38 The ‘prisoner's dilemma’ refers to a situation in game theory whereby two individuals, with no possibility of communication, have the option to cooperate or not, with outcomes dependent upon what the other individual does. The usual example is of two prisoners, each of whom will go free if he/she betrays the other, so long as the other remains silent. If they both remain silent (cooperate), the outcome (a lighter prison sentence) is better for both than if they both betray (a longer prison sentence). The dilemma lies in trying to predict what the other will do and thus illustrates the tension between individual and collective outcomes. Dawes, M. Robyn, The commons dilemma game: an N-person mixed-motive game with a dominating strategy for defection, ORI Research Bulletin 13 (1973), 1–12 Google Scholar; Dawes, M. Robyn, Formal models of dilemma in social decision-making, ORI Research Bulletin 14, 12 (1974), 8–13 Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., 18.

40 Olson, Mancur, The logic of collective action: public goods and the theory of groups (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar. Briefly, Olson asserts that while many theories are based on the assumption that ‘groups of individuals with common interests are expected to act on behalf of their common interests’, ‘even if all of the individuals in a large group are rational and self-interested, and would gain if, as a group, they acted to achieve their common interest …, they will still not voluntarily act to achieve that common or group interest.’ (Olson, The logic of collective action, 1–2).

41 Ostrom, Governing the commons, 8–18.

42 Tabacchi, Stefano, ‘Il controllo delle finanze locali negli antichi stati italiani’, Storia Amministrazione Costituzione, Annali ISAP 4 (1993), 81–115 Google Scholar; Mannori, Luca, Il sovrano tutore: pluralismo istituzionale e accentramento amministrativo nel principato dei Medici, sec. XVI–XVIII (Milan, 1994)Google Scholar.

43 Da Mosto, Andrea, ‘Archivi dell'Amministrazione centrale della Repubblica veneta e Archivi notarili’, L'Archivio di Stato di Venezia: indice generale, storico, descrittivo ed analitico, Volume 1 (Venice, 2005), 105Google Scholar.

44 ASVe, Senato, Dispacci, Dispacci dei Rettori, Brescia e Bresciano, busta 50, 26 November 1648.

45 ASVe, Compilazione delle leggi, Serie I, busta 143, fos. 1026 r-v.

46 MAB, busta 4, registro 2, fos. 12 r-v.

47 Raccolta di Privilegi, Ducali, Giudizi, Terminazioni, e decreti pubblici sopra varie materie giurisdizionali, civili, criminali, ed economiche concernenti la città, e provincia di Brescia (Brescia, 1732), 298–301 Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., 304.

49 Raccolta di Leggi, Sindicali, ed altri Decreti, e Proclami, Promulgati per la Città, e Territorio di Vicenza (Vicenza, 1762), 9–23 Google Scholar.

50 Barbacetto, ‘La più gelosa delle pubbliche regalie’, 172–90. It is interesting to note that a similar process of the sale of state properties occurred in Spain at the same time, but the role played by local institutions in this process was probably different in the two areas. In Spain, communities tried to buy partial rights to properties – although the result was often debt and the definitive loss of these properties – while in the Republic of Venice the main buyers were Venetian aristocratic families. See: Vassberg, David E., Land and society in Golden Age Castile (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar and Alberto Marcos-Martin, ‘Before the liberal desamortizaciones: the sale of baldios in 16^th century Castile’, in Beaur, Schofield, Chevet, and Perez-Picazo eds., Property rights, 102–22.

51 Raccolta di Leggi, 38.

52 Kamen cites the example of Burgundy, where in 1667 it was established that properties that had been illegitimately acquired from 1620 onwards should be returned to their communities (Kamen, ‘The economic and social consequences’, 56). Another example is the Bavernschutz (protection of the peasant), practiced by German princes to preserve common property in rural areas, as reported in de Vries, Jan, Economy of Europe in an age of crisis (1600–1750) (London, 1976), 61Google Scholar.

53 Bulgarelli, La finanza locale sotto tutela, 247.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid., 262–4.

56 Tabacchi, Il Buon Governo, 109.

57 Ibid., 119, 247, 251–60.

58 Ibid., 251–4.

59 Faccini, La Lombardia fra ‘600 e ‘700.

60 Colombo, Giochi di luoghi, 103.

61 Ibid., 103–8.

62 Ostrom, Governing the commons, 8–12.

63 Ibid., 98–9.

64 Ibid., 102.

65 Tabacchi, Il Buon Governo, 286.

66 Bulgarelli, La finanza locale sotto tutela, 287–93.

67 Tabacchi, ‘Il controllo delle finanze locali’, 95.

68 Reinhard, Wolfgang, Power elites and state building: the origins of the modern state (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar.

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70 Di Tullio, La ricchezza delle comunità, 135–57.

71 Ibid., 154.

72 Ibid., 158.

73 Ibid., 159.

74 Putnam, Making democracy work.

75 Colombo, Giochi di luoghi, 120.

76 Faccini, La Lombardia fra ‘600 e ‘700; Colombo, Giochi di luoghi.

77 Putnam, Making democracy work.

78 Ibid., 167.

79 Ostrom, Elinor and Ahn, Toh-Kyeong eds., Foundations of social capital (Cheltenham, 2003)Google Scholar.

80 Putnam, Making democracy work, 177.

81 Curtis, Coping with crisis.

82 Ibid., 24.

83 Ibid., 60.