The Wealth of Periphery? Food Provisioning, Merchants, and Cereals in the Papal States: The Case of the March of Ancona

The purpose of this chapter is the reconstruction of the fundamental traits of the provisioning system of the March of Ancona in the Papal States (or simply the March—Marca—in the heart of today’s Marche region), during the Early Modern Age. That is to say, to try to understand the mechanisms of the administration and the practices put in place to achieve the ideal of the good remuneration for producers and the market access for consumers. It seems appropriate to divide our analysis in three parts, devoted to the different institutional and economic aspects that the polysemy of the research object implies. First, the organisational structures of the victualling system are taken into account, starting from certain specific cases. After this ‘horizontal’ and comparative analysis conducted on the municipal statutes and official regulations instituting the victualling offices, in the second part a ‘vertical’ analysis follows, in which the mechanism of cereals accumulation and distribution in the region is analysed in detail. In the third and final part, instead, we suggest some concluding reflections on the role of trade in this victualling system.