The title of this book informs the reader of its purpose: to examine the ways immigration, the professions, and acquired citizenship were instrumental in the integration of outsiders into host communities. As such it is a handy source for people interested in urban history, the occupations, and immigration and social integration in the late medieval and early modern periods. The book is divided into two sections with eight essays in the first part and six essays in the second. There is also an introduction, a conclusion, and a detailed index of names and places.

The first essay in part 1, by Paolo Grillo, sets the tone. Grillo takes a look at the impact of immigration on urban space in the period 1200–1600, and in this way provides a context for the essays that follow. He analyzes the ways citizenship evolved from a right into a privilege granted by the civil authorities upon the fulfillment of a set of criteria. The most common of these involved meeting residency, taxation, and work requirements. The eight essays in part 1 examine the reasons people applied for citizenship and the conditions local authorities insisted petitioners meet in order to acquire it. For those familiar with the period, it should come as no surprise that each city had its own set of rules; in some instances, urban authorities asked that unmarried applicants wed local women and in this way signal their intention to stay. At the same time, there were conditions common to all cities. For example, all applicants had to meet residency requirements, which could be anywhere between five and twenty-five years. To quote Grillo, “For all of the twelfth century and a great part of the thirteenth, the one criterion for acquiring citizenship was residency, at least in an urban territory” (28). At the same time, urban authorities also favored immigrants who had a trade, as many communes were in need of artisans.

The essays in part 2 look at two phenomena: the number and influence of foreign artisans, bankers, and merchants working in cities like Pisa and Rome, and the establishment of ethnic and/or foreign social and cultural organizations in host cities. All immigrant associations were based on local models and reflected their structure and regulations. Ethnic confraternities were popular and provided a venue where people from the same city could meet. Ceriana and Mueller’s article looks at the chapels, hospices, and confraternal houses in Venice established by the Lucchese, Florentines, Albanians, and Dalmatians among others.

All but two cities were Central or Northern Italian (Rome, Florence, Milan, Genoa, Venice, and some smaller towns such as Viterbo, Pisa, and Aquileia). The two non-Italian are Barcelona and Lyons. Barcelona was an important commercial center and for this reason attracted a large number of foreign merchants and artisans. The two essays on Barcelona look at integration, citizenship, and social mobility rates among foreigners. The final essay is a close study of how a Florentine merchant-banker family, the Gondi, established themselves in Lyons in the early 1400s, eventually becoming French subjects and then nobility with close ties to the Church and the French Crown.

This collection of essays goes a long way to explaining the different approaches to citizenship adopted by civic authorities. It examines the many reasons artisans, merchants, bankers, and others emigrated from their homelands to places where work was readily available, and the communal bodies such as confraternities and chapels that they set up, places where they could maintain the traditions and rituals of the homeland. It explains the many manifestations of citizenship and illustrates the international nature of late medieval and early modern urban centers. The essays in this volume are some of the most informative I have read on immigration, integration, work, citizenship, and social networks.