Economic Interest and Good Government: Foreigners and Social Control in Early Modern Genoa

This paper addresses the complex issue of attitudes toward foreigners in the early modern age, together with that of social control. Focusing on the case of Genoa, a Mediterranean port city in north-western Italy, it shows to what extent the norms and policies implemented in this domain followed a logic of economic interests and good governance, rather than an ideological one. It also highlights how a similar approach also concerned the poor, beggars, vagrants, and, more generally, people living on the margins, in a condition of “foreignness” who were thus considered as foreigners in their homeland.