Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

The evolution of tariffs 

 

[BERGAMO]. TARIFFA GENERALE DI TUTTI LI PUBLICI DACII vecchi, e nuovi, Che di presente corrono Nella Magnifica Camera Fiscal di Berg. Per questa Città, e suo Territorio, Ridotti tutti li pagamenti in Valuyta corrente di Camera Comprese tutte le Aggionte, & Aggi di moneta: decretata Con Ducali dell’ Ecc.mo Senato 13. Marzo 1697. Formata, e presentata a gl’ill. mi et ecc.mi SS. Rettori Alvise Malipiero Podesta, & Andrea Badoer Capitanio. Da Andrea Valle specialmente deputato, Confermata, & approvata dal medemo Ecc.mo. Senato Con Ducali 6. Apriler 1702. In Bergamo, per li fratelli Rossi MDCCII [1702].

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[bound with]: CAPITOLI GENERALI per la deliberazione, e governo delle imprese de’ dazi delle camere della terra ferma. Sotto l’ispezione del Magistrato de’ revisori regolatori dell’ entrade pubbliche. [Venice], per li figliuoli del Qu. Z. Antonio Pinelli Stampatori Ducali, MDCCLXXXIV [1784].

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[bound with]: CAPITOLI, E TARIFFE PARZIALI per li dazi di consumo della fiscal camera di Bergamo, e delli luoghi di Romano, e Martinengo. Approvati dal Decreto dell’ eccellentissimo senato 21. Maggio 1785. [Venice], per li figliuoli del Qu. Z. Antonio Pinelli Stampatori Ducali, MDCCLXXXV [1785].

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[bound with]: MODALITÀ ALLI CAPITOLI PARZIALI riguardanti li dazi di consumo della fiscal camera di Bergamo, e delli luoghi di Romano, e Martinengo Approvati dal Decreto dell’ eccellentissimo senato 21. Maggio 1785. Estese in Conferenza degl’ Illustrissimi, ed Eccellentissimi Signori revisori regolatori dell’ entrade pubbliche, deputati, ed aggionti alla provision del dinaro, e savi cassieri attuale, ed uscito In seguito al Decreto dell’ Eccellentissimo Senato 1787. 20. Settembre. [Venice], per lifigliuoli del Qu. Z. Antonio Pinelli Stampatori Ducali, MDCCLXXXVIII [1788].

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[bound with]: REGOLAMENTO E TARIFFA per li Dazj della Mercanzia nella Lombardia austriaca. Milano: Nella Stamperia del fu Antonio Agnelli, MDCCLXXXVI [1786]. £1,750

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Five works in one volume, 4to. [I]: pp. 72, [2] blank; Folding table from 1706 showing tariffs on goods from Bergamo attached to end, central tear partially repaired using strip of paper. Ms. notes in early eighteenth-century hand in brown ink on title-page. and covering final 2 blanks; [II]: pp. 74, [2] blank; [III]: pp. iv, 116; [IV]: pp. 11, [1] blank; [V]: pp. [4], 89, [1] blank; woodcut lion of St Mark to first four title-pages. and Habsburg emblem to last; headpieces, tailpieces and ornamented, sometimes historiated initials throughout, as well as tables; good interior condition, pages very clean, creases to first volume, occasional damp-staining; contemporary (late 18th-century) binding in mottled calf over boards, back in compartments with raised bands with gilt decoration to edges, red morocco title-piece with gilt lettering, all edges red, marbled endpapers, late 19th-/early 20th-century library bookplate of Picinelli to front pastedown, library stickers to head and tail of back indicating shelf-mark; boards and back rubbed, larger areas worn off upper board, joints cracked, corners bumped, lettering-piece partially missing.

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Unique late eighteenth-century collection of five rare official documents on duties and tariffs in Bergamo and other parts of Lombardy, spanning the period from 1702 to 1788.

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The especially rare first treatise was published to provide an overview of which new taxes (dazi) would be imposed, in line with the decree of the Venetian Senate from March 1697. As Andrea Valle, minister in the Officio di Scontro della Camera Fiscale, explains in the introduction, the book outlines the new dazi and additions to pre-existing ones. The book consists mostly of tables showing the import and export tariffs on manufactured wares as various as silk buttons, old books, horn-handled knives and baptismal cloths, and on raw goods from wool of all kinds (with new duties on foreign wool) to arsenic, fennel, lapis lazuli and tamarind. At the end, a contemporary reader has drawn up a table of contents and added a note on regulations which have remained the same after 1706: ‘Li seguenti datij poi novamenti imposti restano apaltati in Venetia et sono: tabacco, aqua vita, sali [...] In che all’espresso nelle Tariffe, sicome poi nell’anno 1706: [...]’. The inserted folding table appears to be a broadside, providing an update on tariffs on various goods in Bergamo in 1706.

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The second document consists of a series of regulations around the duties in the Terraferma in 1784, signed by the Revisori Regolatori of the Venetian Entrade Pubbliche (office for public revenues). The third (1785) and the (brief) fourth document (1788) are both arranged into sections on specific categories of levies (the dazio paid on grain mills, on the pestrino, per barrel, on wine on tap, per pound of meat, legal instruments and wills etc...). Unlike the rest, the final volume in this book pertains to the parts of Lombardy under Habsburg rule. It contains a list of local customs offices, as well as an exhaustive alphabetical list of items with their import and export duties, from cinnamon, to weighing scales, to ‘robe di seta con oro o con argento, tanto con fodera di qualunque sorta [...]’ (p.65). 

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See Hocquet, Jean-Claude, ‘Venice’, in The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c.1200–1815, ed. Richard Bonney (Oxford: OUP, 1999), pp.381-415. The first work is neither in OCLC nor in OPAC SBN. Outside Italy, the only institutional copy of the second work is at Yale Law Library. OCLC does not identify any institutional copies of the third work outside Italy (OPAC SBN finds copies at the Biblioteca Diocesana del Seminario Vescovile Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo and in the Milan archives). The fourth work is not in OCLC, and OPAC SBN identifies only one copy in the Milan archives. Outside Italy, the only institutional copy of the fifth work is at the University of Illinois. 

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[ref: 2634 ]