Producers and smugglers: women at the Palermo customs gates in the early modern age (1598-1772)

The essay analyses the smuggling carried out by women at the customs gates of Palermo between 1598 and 1772 as a point of observation on the market-oriented economic activities of women in a large Mediterranean city in the Early Modern Age. Through the qualitative analysis of 207 complaints recorded in the archives of the Royal Custom Office of Sicily, it is shown how the low quantitative incidence of female offences is linked not only to small-scale witholding practices, but also to a cultural and institutional underestimation of women's transgressive capacity. Smuggling thus emerges as a practice integrated with informal, mainly domestic, market-oriented productive work. The analysis of smuggled goods - in particular raw silk, yarns, textiles and hosiery - makes it possible to identify forms of ‘shadow economies’ and to reconsider the role of women in the urban productive and commercial system of Early Modern Sicily, questioning historiographic interpretations that relegate them to an exclusively familial sphere.