Immigrants, cronies, clients. Incomers of carnic origin: Lending networks and spiritual kinship in Istria (17th and 18th centuries)

The author studies the ways in which immigrants coming from the mountains of Carnia – mainly weavers, tailors and shoemakers – settled in the peninsula of Istria during the 18th century. He locates the type of relationships they created with the local people, and the systems of transmission of heredity. More particularly, the inquiry is based on a systematic analysis of notarial archives from Friuli, on the notary protocols from Grisignana (Grožnjan) and on the parish birth registers kept in the State Archive of Pazin (Pisino). The confrontation between these documents with documents of other types and coming from different archives (held in Trieste, Udine and Venice), allowed the study of small-scale lending, the different forms of capital accumulation, as well as processes of social and economic advancement of some families. Finally, the study explains how, in just a few generations, the people from Friuli were able to create a tight network of patronage relationships and spiritual kinship with the locals.