THE RECRUITMENT OF THE 'YOUTHS' OF THE TUSCAN COMPANIES IN THE ANDALUSIAN SPAIN OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE XVII CENTURY

The essay investigates the category named 'youths', employees of trade companies who during the second half of the seventeenth century arrived from Italy in the centres of Andalusian Spain to lend their work at the companies of Florence and Lucca. Apprentices and workers of different ages and qualifications would have learned the secrets of the trade by training in daily mercantile practice. From the analysis of the company contracts of the major Tuscan companies in Atlantic Andalusia, emerges a staff recruitment model that presents elements of continuity and discontinuity with respect to the medieval Tuscan tradition.