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This article concerns a central issue in Italian history and historiog-raphy: the economic transformation of the State of Milan in the 17thcentury as a turning point that structurally influenced the develop-ment of the Italian economy in subsequent centuries.The hypothesis maintained here is that the State of Milan becameone of the leading areas at the origins of Italian industrialization, asan apparently paradoxical consequence of the supposed economicdecline that had affected Lombardy’s urban economy during the17thcentury. The idea is that capitalism needed a “restorative crisis”in order to continue on its original path.The article does not propose a new theoretical framework or a rad-ical historiographic innovation. It aims to provide a systematic bibli-ographic review and an original analytical category that is usefulboth for new approaches to established ideas and for new researchperspectives.The theoretical point is not only to confirm the gener-ally accepted thesis that the State of Milan underwent a metamor-phosis and not a decline in the 17thcentury but also to insert theelements of undeniable crisis into a framework of capitalistic devel-opment.
