In recent years, social mobility has been at the forefront of historical research, notably in Continental Europe. Scholars working on the late Middle Ages, in particular, have started to explore the dynamism of medieval society with renewed interest, often drawing from more fluid notions of social spaces provided by anthropologists and sociologists. This has brought specialists to adopt more flexible interpretations of the factors that led to social promotion, while also reflecting on the interplay between individual agency and social structures, and on the performative role of social representations. Italian historiography has been playing a prominent part in this revived interest in social mobility, largely thanks to a national research project of which the volume in question represents but the first outcome (http://prin.mobilitasociale.uniroma2.it/en/).

The volume collects papers that were delivered over the course of one year at the University of Cagliari. The papers were presented at different seminars, but they are all concerned with assessing how and to what extent intellectual knowledge, professional expertise, and technical skills functioned as channels of social mobility. This is evident from the very structure of the book, which is divided into four subsections, each focusing on the theme of a single seminar. In the end, this makes the volume very accessible and informative not just to scholars working on social mobility, but to a wider audience whose interests overlap only with one of these four subthemes.

The first one is the world of craftsmanship, which is addressed in two comprehensive essays in relation to both cities (Franceschi) and rural centers (Pinto). Together, the two essays show that artisans, builders, and textile workers did climb the social ladder, but only within the boundaries of their own social group. To undergo a more substantial ascent, urban workers had to specialize in luxury goods, while rural laborers had first to move to the city. Spatial mobility was central also to the promotion of highly specialized technicians, such as the mining experts tracked down over the whole of Italy—and beyond—by Degrassi. In contrast, a more static social condition is outlined by Zanoboni in respect to women, whose extensive involvement in medieval crafts is now being studied in full detail.

Part 2 considers the cities of Southern Italy to explore the correlation between upward mobility and the intervention of superior powers—notably, the king of Aragon. Feniello and Terenzi demonstrate that the intensity and reach of royal intervention varied markedly across the kingdom, with Naples and its court being a fertile ground for personal advancement and peripheral centers such as L’Aquila featuring more autonomous social structures. In the two major islands of the Mediterranean, by contrast, the dynamics of social mobility seem to have been very much alike: in Cagliari (Oliva) as well as in Messina and Palermo (Tocco), new merchant families—sometimes coming from continental Italy or even from overseas—were continually seeking to carve out a position for themselves in both the urban patriciate and local royal offices.

By looking at the men of diplomacy and of legal professions, part 3 brings the focus of the volume back to the both practical and intellectual knowledge that was conducive to social promotion. Luongo argues that notaries could see a rise in status not just because of their technical abilities, but because of the social capital they accumulated by building ties with their (institutional) clients. Forms of both social and cultural capital, which were often previously acquired by exercising trade, were also key to the success of diplomatic careers, as explained by Lazzarini with respect to the Florentine court. Jurists were another professional group that centered on the court: Covini shows that these legal counselors often came from provincial families, but managed nonetheless to integrate themselves among the elites of the state due to their proximity to the prince.

Part 4 completes this rich and varied book by examining the mobility of foreigners in Italy and of Italians elsewhere. With the exception of Veratelli’s original study on the commissioning of Flemish portraits by Tuscan travelers, this leads the last three papers to explore social mobility in connection with processes of integration. Employing an impressive array of primary sources, the essays by Soldani and Böninger both highlight the importance of conjunctural factors (economic slowdown, increased competition) in limiting the advancement and inclusion of Spanish merchants in Sardinia and German artisans in Florence. However, by outlining the various fates of different Italian groups in Andalusia, the final essay by González Arévalo reminds us that personal choices also played an important role: while Genoese merchants were prone to settle and integrate, many Venetians sought to return home and take up office at the end of their journey. This challenges us, by way of conclusion, to consider the potential of both structural and individual factors in shaping patterns of integration and social promotion.