This article innovatively analyses the economic structure of sixteenth century Venetian rural areas, specifically the countryside of the province of Vicenza. Many studies have proposed general ...reconstructions of the manufacturing and agricultural characterisation of the Venetian rural areas in the Early Modern period, but little is known about the behaviour of the rural merchants, organisation of rural enterprises, scope of their businesses, and their relationship with urban entrepreneurs. Apart from shedding new light on these topics, this article will also permit a comparison of the characteristics of Vicentine rural merchants with those of rural entrepreneurs operating in other European regions, based on information gathered from accounting books and trials. Consequently, this article will contribute to the discussion of Mendel's proto-industrialization theory and, more generally, it will offer new insights into the 'ruralization' of the Italian economy during the sixteenth century.
This article outlines how citizens of socialist Slovenia spent their leisure time, where and when they went on holidays, and what role consumption played during those times. It is based on the ...argument that tourism as a form of modern leisure is associated with consumption, wherefore consumerism and tourism are interconnected phenomena. While also arguing that labour and leisure are entwined, the article studies the mutually constructive relationship between work and leisure through the perspective of holidays and the consumption of goods and services in the form of trade-union tourism and cross-border shopping. As regards the tourism sector development process, this article also fills a gap in our understanding of the intersection between domestic and commercial tourism. This contribution to the social history of tourism in Yugoslav socialism is based on both archival sources and oral history, with semi-structured interviews conducted with interlocutors.
