La 'resistenza' del feudo in Lombardia tra Sette e Ottocento

Historians have shown insufficient interest in studying the Lombard feudalism in the late Old Regime. However it proves to be particularly interesting to analyze the history of feudalism between the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Although one of the most important achievement of the French Revolution was the suppression of those political institutions commonly described as feudal, the disintegration of that system run slow, at least in Lombardy. The legal abolition of the fief was faster than the demise of feudalism, understood as a social practice of power. Before Napoleon conquered the North of Italy, the Habsburg had reformed the economic profile of the fief throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. In any case, after 1796 the new governments imposed to Lombardy by Napoleon were not able to legislate to delete some feudal related to the land tenure. The landownership continued being the main tool with which the elites turned their social rule.