THE ASTUDILLO PARTNERSHIP AND THE SPANISH 'NATION' IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

In approaching the study of a community of traders active away from its homeland, some preliminary questions must be posed: what was the attitude of this group towards the local society, economy and local institutions? Did they carry an awareness of belonging and a desire for external visibility? Who had the greatest advantage of this relationship, the host society or the guest community, and, in general, what was the influence of the foreign nation over the pre-existing economic fabric? Our contribution will attempt to answer these questions by using the Astudillo firm in the context of the Spanish nation present in Florence from the end of the fifteenth century until the seventeenth century. Therefore the following paragraph will present the main economic activities of the Spanish merchants in Florence during the sixteenth century. The third paragraph will analyse the Astudillo firm, the family and the relation with the Spanish Nation in Florence. In the fourth paragraph we will show the activities on the marketplace and the links they created with the main business and financial centres of Europe which will be analysed on the basis of their accounting books and business correspondence. While the large amount of business letters belonging to the Astudillo and preserved in the Naldini Archives of Florence allows, in theory, a detailed picture of the dynamics of the commercial networks operating on a European scale to be built, here it will be mainly used as a support to the study of the ledger book, which is the main source used for the research. Covering, in particular, the early years of the last decade of the sixteenth century, this dense and rich source still offers a unique overview and a precise insight into the company’s business. The fifth paragraph will focus on the relations between the firms and the urban society as well, showing the interactions of the Astudillo and the other Spanish merchants with the Florentine society. Rather than focusing on the linkages existing between the many Spanish partnerships based in Florence, the study of a single company, taken as a paradigm, will allow the analysis of all the networks (urban, regional and supranational) in which it was involved.