The crises of the 1340s were felt throughout the entirety of Florentine society and no group or class of people would escape its paradigm-shifting effects. Although there was much suffering and tumult, the city adapted to its harsh reality and, thanks to bold reforms, new people were able to rise economically to replace those who fell. This mobility, unusual for Europe in the time period, would be key to Florence’s ability to regenerate and continue.
The shockwave felt across society in Florence seemed remarkably similar to another crisis that is still in the living memory of Americans everywhere: The Great Recession of 2008. Like the Peruzzi company, a few big companies like Lehman Brothers were failing. The poor were hit hard as unemployment rose and protest movements like Occupy Wall Street took off. The government took drastic measures to implement a Stimulus Package of hundreds of billions of dollars and the country’s debt ballooned to over 10 trillion dollars. Yet there are some striking differences. Whereas a new class of “new men” climbed the socioeconomic ladder, inequality has grown, and mobility has decreased in the US. Florence never fully recovered due to the plague, but in some ways the United States, without a plague, hasn’t fully recovered and didn’t change structurally to the degree that Florence did.
With a greater understanding of the intricacies of the modern Great Recession, perhaps more concrete lessons can be drawn from the earlier Florentine example. Also fascinating is the psychology of debt and the effect it has on people’s mental health. By continuing to hone our understanding of Renaissance Florence (especially the phenomenon of medieval economic mobility and its importance to their economy) and deepening our understanding of the effects the Great Recession had on our society, especially the wealthy, we may see subtle differences that explain the divergence in the aftermath for Renaissance Florence and the modern United States. Perhaps these new lessons can help inspire the structural policy changes needed in the United States to increase economic mobility and equity. Florentine innovations like debt consolidation should be studied further because their creative and drastic measures could lead to avenues of policy that modern academia has mostly forgotten.
