The Transformation of the Alpine Economy in the Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries: Harvesting 'Wild Hay' in the High Mountains

Abstract

By the end of the eighteenth century, in the northern valleys of the Central Alps, the economy was driven by raising cattle and providing dairy products for export. In the Middle Ages, however, subsistence economy based on grain, sheep and goat had become predominant. In this article, the transformation between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries is reevaluated by focusing on one aspect of mountain pastoralism: haymaking on remote mountain precipices even beyond the reach of livestock – the so called Wildheuen or harvesting wild hay. Its development coincided with the recovery of the economy of the cities in the plains of northern Italy in the 1660s, illustrating how strongly intertwined both the alpine husbandry and the Italian urban industries were on their path to modernity.