L'area economica altovicentina nel primo Ottocento. La lenta reindustrializzazione

During the second Austrian rule the area called altovicentino suffered a sharp economic contraction with special regard to textile processes. After a huge protoindustrial rise at the end of the eighteenth century, the course had a quick and marked fall. State policy did not have particular effect in order to determine the new socio-economic structure, which was characterized by a real weakness in the industries of the Monarchy, and especially those of Bohemian and Moravian together with a measurable reduction of human resources with particular reference to the manufacturing center of Schio. The causes are to be found in the supplied energy required needed in the production machinery which had replaced energy until then for almost the entire first half of the nineteenth century produced by human beings. With regard to these reasons, they move from a strictly human level (entrepreneurship) to that physical where should be considered the constraints that prevented the redemption from the natural forces that for the altovicentino, and not only, determined nearly the incapability of reaching at least a simulacrum of the Industrial Revolution. The geographic location (proximity to the areas of water loading ), the presence of irrigation ditches with low vectorial speed, the modesty of waterfalls, the recurrent lack of the liquid , the traditional mechanisms replaced only in the mid-century by the modern hydraulic turbines, the steam engine that arrived too late, the prolonged use of raw materials of local and unfit mountain sheep, were all reasons for the slow and inefficient pursue of European economies. Among other restrictions , the area was recent from a geological point of view and offered a little fossil deposit of lignite, which was a source of thermal energy with heating value and carbon content of coal shorter than that of foreign origin. Another constraint was the scarcity of wood whose costs continued to rise and is intended, therefore, to civilian use and small manufacturing. To add, then, the road structure and waterways that they did not join quickly altovicentino with the other markets. Even the more traditional manufacturing (silk and pottery) were to have little technological value and therefore intended for less demanding customers. The financial support of the population remained linked to agriculture for decades. On a biological level, despite the historiographical appearances, the absence of a modern industry moved forward the demographic transition and, from the sanitary point of view, it did not determine specific related pathocenosis.