When the Republic of Genoa emerged as a territorial state in north-western Italy over the course of the twelfth century, the area it controlled was far from homogeneous, or even continuous. There were a number of gaps in its midst, imperial fiefs and pockets that remained under the control of feudal overlords. An ongoing task that the republic set for itself, then, was to extend its control over such areas so as to create a seamless territorial state. In this book Andrea Zanini chronicles the process, dividing it into two distinct phases, and discusses the republic's administration of such lands. In so doing he provides a wealth of information about the economies of such areas, a number of insights into the internal structure of the republic of Genoa and illustrations of the workings of a number of early modern enterprises.

First of all, the distinction between the two phases of the process is important as it usually determined the degree to which the republic's central government was able to intervene in local affairs. During the first of these, running from the origins of the republic to the end of the fourteenth century, Genoa tended to buy sovereignty over a particular area from the local lord, under the agreement that the land would then be returned to the former lord as a fief of the republic. In other words Genoa acquired the “naked sovereignty” over various areas. The second phase individuated by Zanini began in the sixteenth century and lasted through much of the seventeenth. This phase was characterized by an interest in imperial fiefs embedded in the republic's territory or along its borders, often controlling important lines of communication. In these cases the republic, in return for consistent sums of money paid to the imperial court in Vienna, was granted investiture of the lands in question. Thus sovereignty with little direct control was acquired during the first phase whereas considerable control without sovereignty was gained in the second.

Although these territories accounted for 22 percent of the area governed by the republic, they could not be integrated with the rest. The republic, in fact, assumed the role of feudal overlord and was limited to exercising the traditional feudal privileges within the various jurisdictions. The remainder of Zanini's study is dedicated to an analysis of the exercise of such feudal privileges, the costs associated with them, their profitability, and the political strategies adopted by the republic within this context. An ample section is dedicated to grain mills, another to olive oil presses, and shorter passages to iron smelting and to agricultural production. Each of these sections is thorough and informative within the limits of the available archival material—and those limits lie at the basis of the work's most serious shortcoming. Two important historical factors have conditioned the usefulness of the extant archival sources. The first of these is common to a great deal of Genoese documentation, and that is the republic's reliance on private contractors to carry out many of the state's tasks, from the collection of taxes to, in this case, the operation of mills and presses in its feudal possessions. Contracts were often granted for several years at a time, so that the income from the activities in question can only be roughly estimated from the value of the contract. The other conditioning factor that comes into play here is that the feudal privileges acquired by the republic varied from one fief to another, making meaningful comparisons between regions difficult at best.

In the end, Zanini's work provides a great deal of information, and precious information regarding the running of some specific enterprises, mills for example, but its surprisingly narrow scope raises more questions than it answers. Attention is focused on the state management of one-fifth of the territory of a relatively small regional state. Although the author himself points out that the problem of territorial consolidation was one faced by a number of contemporary states, both within Italy and in Europe at large, some comparison of approaches would have made this book much richer, as would a more fully developed analysis of the political context within which such questions were decided (a topic mentioned briefly in the book's conclusion). The degree to which the areas studied were integrated into the broader regional economy is another question raised and left unanswered.

In short, Zanini's extensive archival work provides a wealth of material on a limited and anomalous group of territories controlled by the early modern Republic of Genoa. While it is not itself an economic history of the republic or of Liguria, his work will prove to be an invaluable resource to historians working on the economy of the region.