L’albatros. Ricordo di Stefano Fenoaltea

Fenoaltea (1943-2020) was one of the most brilliant economic historians in the world. Although he has focused predominantly on the economic history of liberal Italy, he has published essays on a wide variety of topics, from Roman Italy to English open fields, from the rise and fall of feudalism to the history of slavery. His research, often pioneering, has had an enormous influence on colleagues and younger scholars, including the writer. He was as hard and sharp in criticism as he was generous in his advice. Leading exponent of cliometrics, or “new economic history”, he has recently highlighted its “failures”, compared to expectations. But his choice in recent decades to devote himself almost exclusively to a single research topic, not very innovative and of little interest in the international arena (the reconstruction of the Italian production index from 1861 to 1913), is an example of those failures.