Its a depends who you ask kinda thing it really depends how you define mechantilism, because the medici & friends aren't really doing captlistic investment cycles as much as they are just exploteing price differences, making a lot of money and cashing out. It wouldn't be unfair to say maybe this is just the preamble to what others would say is real beginning a little later in the Netherlands with the burgers 🍔 😉 then eventruly the anglos 🤢 catch their disease and essentially force/ challenge every other monarchy to mirror them to compete. Ultimately captlism is really only attractive if things are not going well for you, ie there's nothing to sell and nothing anyone wanted to buy. No bs there is a reason that Europe was considered a backwater of stagnate monarchys really from the fall of Rome to beginning of captlism. Why? Simple no one could invade easily and really the euros just lucked out as almost every euro country is protected by Almost impassable then mountains, water ways, being Italy is a essentaly fortress with mountains at the top and ocean all around. France is a pentagon of walled mountains, same with Spain. Angloland is a island so water fort.
I'd argue that what the Medicis started formalizing were the antecedents of modern finance, which is distinct from capitalism itself. We don't really get to what we know as capitalism until automation starts becoming a reality, paving the way for the birth of the proletariat and economic enclosure.
I think that's completely fair as long as we can both agree that Italians are the original finance bros :stonks-down:
As a man of Italian blood I am fond of the theory that God turned the Romans into Italians to punish them for their arrogance
it's a process that well predates the Medicis, though. If Italy is the birthplace of mercantilism, then it happened in like the 1100s, when they started to dominate mediterranean trade. it's a major reason for the fall of the byzantines, in that they let the Italians handle all their trade, which led to a lot of latins in contantinople, to them being massacred and then to 1204.
If only the Medicis wrote down what year they invented capitalism, and who did it (probably someone named Capitalismo Medici)
Also I meant more the normalizing of conventions that are cornerstones of finance today. As I understand it the interpretation of usury started relaxing as corruption set into the Church and little "gifts" to church accounts were expected, based on a percentage of the deposited funds, but it definitely wasn't interest, no sir, no need to tell Jesus. Eventually it became a non-issue, and now interest-based debt and lending is just a feature of the system that the economies of entire nations rest upon to assert their supremacy.
I could be wrong though, I ain't got no degree in bankology
Well, it's presumably an iterative process.
Italian domination of mediterranean trade means there's more need for capital, that leads to inventing new forms of financing, this financing drives a need for new markets, this drive for new markets leads to italians expeditions to America and around Africa. They're doing that as contractors for other states though, as Italy both doesn't have a presence in atlantic and is the battleground for other powers rather than a state in of itself.
being Italy is a essentaly fortress with mountains at the top and ocean all around
Enh, it was pretty vulnerable for most the middle ages. Magyars could simply avoid the border forts, the german Kings/Emperors would either control or bribe the castles in the passes and the Med was basically a highway to funnel islamic raiders towards Italy. Hell, they even had permanent presences up to Provence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraxinetum
Yeah, it 's definitelty arguable. Certainly, commericalization first started in the reaches of the HRE, where the Emperor had little reach, and was then exported to England via the Hanseatic league.
