Genoa, Liguria, and the Regional Development of Medieval Public Debt

Abstract

Genoa has long been noted as one of the earliest cities to develop a consolidated public debt. Genoa’s compere, or public debt, have often been deployed in long-term narratives of change to political economy and cited by social scientists. However, they are best understood as the product of regional political and economic dynamics specific to the late middle ages rather than abstract relationships between sovereign and creditor or warfare and state borrowing.