Traffici finanziari e mercantili tra Milano e Lisbona nella seconda metà del XVI secolo

During the XVI century the maritime explorations to India allowed the small kingdom of Portugal to assume an imperial dimension. In the last twenty years of the century, the dynastic crisis, that followed the disappearance of D. Sebastião I and the union of the Iberian crowns under the reign of Philip II of Spain, led to the inclusion of Portugal into the boundaries of the so-called Composite Monarchy whose centre is the Court of Spain. Within this political and geographical context, in the second half of the XVI century, groups of Milanese merchants, who moved to Lisbon to dedicate themselves to pepper trade, were conducing their trades. This work aims at tracing the commercial paths of these financial agents from Milan towards the Iberian Peninsula, up to Lisbon. Within those merchants, the figure of Giovanni Battista Rovellasca is isolated and studied. Once the historical background of the union of the Iberian crowns and the establishment of Estado da Ìndia are defined, this work analyzes the building of social networks and the importance of creation of networks relations based on trust and reputation. From this initial analysis, the path that led Giovanni Battista Rovellasca to abandon Milan and to dedicate himself to the activities of importing and re-exporting of Indian pepper, and, subsequently, to enlarge his commercial interests to other kinds of commerce such of slave trade, is traced chronologically. The relations with communities of origin of financial elites, from whom Rovellasca collected the funding for his activities, and the links with groups of local or strangers merchants that operated in the Iberian Peninsula, are at the centre of documentary research that supported this work. Another theme is the relation with the imperial power and the support to impaired sovereign finances, since trading with India was subjected to a monopolistic control from Fazenda Real. The importance of the recourse to credit to financing oceanic commerce is fundamental to understand the development of this kind of commercial activities that knew many successes, but also undeniable failures.