The Question of Economic Decline in Seventeenth‐Century Italy: Myth or Reality?

Was the Italian economic crisis of the seventeenth century an irreversible decline or a readjustment of the socio‐economic structures? Did the prosperous Italian cities lose forever their economic role or were they able to adapt to the changing demands of the international markets? This article examines the main phases of the historiographical debate on these issues from its beginning in the 1950s to the most recent developments.