The essays in this volume take the readers into the complex world of work in early modern Europe. Carlo Poni explores this theme from multiple perspectives, examining work practices in agriculture, artisan production and the silk industry. Extensive archival material, analyzed with theories derived from Economics, illuminates the social relations and conflicts that arose from different work practices in agriculture, artisan production and the silk industry.

The author presents the ideas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theorists: Galileo Galilei's theory of mechanics as a way to understand how machines work; the Venetian engineer Vittorio Zonca on mechanics; the natural philosopher John Theophilus Desaguliers on bodily movements; and, with an incisive critique, Denis Diderot on workers and their practices in the Encyclopédie.



Contributors are: Carlo Ginzburg, Alberto Guenzi, Steven L. Kaplan, Edmund Leites and Roberto Scazzieri.