“Estrema Ruina”: Rice and Its Ambiguities in the Sixteenth-Century Duchy of Milan

This article explores responses to the expansion of rice cultivation in the sixteenth-century Duchy of Milan. Unlike newly introduced crops such as maize, for example, rice was seen as an ambiguous resource, productive and disruptive, capable of fostering growth while also generating violence, bodily disorder, and demographic decline. Relying on archival documents by administrators, clergymen, engineers, and physicians; on legislation; and on agricultural, political, and medical treatises, the article reflects on how this resource was appropriated by several actors and how these appropriations went hand in hand with ways of seeing the landscape and understanding improvement.