Hamlets: commons, communes, and charity in the Western Alps (Biella and Ossola, 16th-19th centuries)

Based on jurisdictional and administrative documentation, the article attempts to define the social, legal and cultural aspects of village hamlets in an area of the Italian Western Alps between the 16th and 19th centuries. The author reads in a morphological key the management of commons, the formation of administrative communes and redistributive activities and identifies some matrices of the singularity of the different local configurations. The history of the peripheries thus reveals a complexity and richness of situations that is extremely useful for resuming the analysis of local government in the current European political crisis.