The tax system introduced by the Spanish government between 1543 and 1599 had become both unfair and obsolete when Emperor Charles VI assumed administration powers in the Duchy of Milan, an imperial fiefdom left vacant by the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 (Vigo, 1990; Agnoletto, 2000). Prince Eugene, President of the War Council in Vienna and Governor General of Milan from 1706, initially promoted a new tax, the diaria, intended to finance military operations. This tax knitted a number of taxes created under the Spanish government, while significantly increasing the levy (Pugliese, 1924). From the very moment it was introduced in 1707, the diaria aroused deep discontent, but also debates, as in the case of the Progetto di un nuovo sistema da taglia praticarsi nello stato di Milano, written by Count Pras Martiniana and sent to the Emperor in 1709. The proposal for a universal land tax of 12 soldi per pertica, combined with triple taxation on people, real estate and commercial profits, triggered a campaign of libels accusing Pras of being a project-maker, French books reader and particularly Vauban’s Dîme Royale. ⁶ As the Duchy of Milan definitively became an Austrian possession through the Treaties of Rastatt (6 March 1714) and Baden (7 September 1714), another solution had to be found to make the tax both more efficient and more tolerated.

Following the analysis developed by Pompeo Neri, chairman of the second Giunta, historians generally distinguish two phases: the first running from the Austrian takeover of the Stato di Milano to the beginning of the War of Polish Succession (1718-1733) and the second from the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to the promulgation of the new land register (1749-1760). Both the situation of the Duchy of Milan close to a Kingdom of Sardinia that sought France’s alliance and stood alongside France in the War of the Polish Succession and the dates on which the two boards were appointed, seem to justify this chronology. These two moments, the first devoted to mapping and land valuation, the second more dedicated to the introduction of a new administrative structure, the valuation of movable property and the calculation of taxes, attest not only to an exceptional administrative continuity for the eighteenth century, but also to the seminal nature of an undertaking that led to a number of structural reforms in the Austrian Lombardy.

Based upon the Milanese archives, Sergio Zaninelli produced the most comprehensive study of the work of the R. Giunta set up at the end of 1718 to stifle the complaints raised by the dissemination of the Pras project and then reach a new distribution of taxes (Zaninelli, 1963; Zangheri, 1980; Locatelli & Tedeschi, 2012). The Real Giunta del Censo followed on from the Giunta dei Cinque Delegati, which had already been set up to implement the tax reform ordered by Charles V in 1543 (Neri, 1750: p. 347). ⁷ These boards reported only to the Governor of Milan, who was himself in communication with the Spanish Supreme Council in Vienna, but they also communicated with all the institutions of the Stato di Milano, resulting in considerable and dispersed funds. Headed by Vincenzo Mirò and then, after his withdrawal in 1731, by his deputy Giuseppe Cavalieri, the R. Giunta continued its work until 1733, when it submitted a report on its findings, before being suspended due to hostilities in the Po plain. ⁸ Despite constant opposition from the Congregation of the State, the city of Milan and, more generally, the patricians of the Duchy of Milan, the R. Giunta nonetheless managed to do an “excellent job” (Neri, 1750: p. 347). ⁹

The first registration of land parcels with their perimeter and surface area was preceded by an important publicity and notification phase, since all landowners, regardless of their state or residence, had to declare their property where they were, not where they lived. They were also required to categorize each land parcel and plot of building they owned according to one of 19 qualities of land or 15 categories of buildings, they also had to specify the amounts paid to the tax authorities in 1717 and 1718. The entire territory was affected. After a trial phase, in 1721 the R. Giunta launched the general survey of the Stato di Milano. Meanwhile the R. Giunta continued to deliberate on the objects to be taken into account. Ovens, warehouses, mills and ditches, which were initially excluded, were eventually recorded. A note for the use of experts (periti) dated 25 August 1724 set out the basis for the new assessment, requiring each parcel to be specified for access to water and at which cost, the different uses, cultivation, wild hedges (ronco), land with mulberry trees (terreni moronati with the number of trees), rice fields, etc. ¹⁰ The community maps drawn up on the basis of the surveyors’ statements, 669 dated 25th August 1724, were gradually filled in with taxable items, while the use of colours made it possible to distinguish the use of the land. The survey was completed at the beginning of 1726. The Milanese board then estimated the value of each pertica according to quality, adjusted to the value tariff, parcel by parcel, and compiled them in a table for each community in order to begin the delicate verification phase. These assessments had to be printed out for each community and sent, along with two printed copies of the edict, to the local authorities, who were then required to make one copy of it so that the assessment could be made public and one copy kept in their offices. ¹¹ Taxpayers then had two months to submit their claims. Following this publication, a panel of twelve experts (periti) was appointed to verify the titles of ownership and, above all, immunities. According to an initial report, a quarter of the assets could be considered exempt (Neri, 1750: p. 350). At this step of the process, it was necessary to check with pre-existing documentation, particularly older maps and cadastres. As the operations progressed, the number of complaints increased and reached Vienna directly. While complying with the Italian Council’s wish to respect immunities, the R. Giunta then drew up an inventory of the remaining problems, which consisted so many blanks on the map, such as ecclesiastical emphyteusis, where it was unclear whether they had to pay tax. ¹²

A new perception of the territory then seemed to prevail, shifting the focus from the plots to the owners and the legal status of each piece of their property. In addition to surveying communities, deducting uncultivated areas, and assessing plots, this work now involved categorizing properties into three items: those that were obviously taxable, those that were exempt and those whose tax status was uncertain.

Operations, which had been interrupted since 1733, did not resume in July 1749, after the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, as P. Neri claims, but rather in 1737 when archives that had been kept safe in Mantua during the war returned to Milan. Reports show that the R. Giunta set about reorganising the territory of the communities by grouping the smaller ones together. The reproduction of this report in P. Neri’s Relazione, one of the few of its kind, attests to the importance of this undertaking, which was certainly intertwined with the reform of the land registry, but which affected the reorganisation of powers in the Duchy of Milan. ¹³ At the same time, the city of Cremona, which was interested in the redistribution of taxes inside the Stato di Milano, petitioned the emperor to resume operations. ¹⁴ Francesco Aguirre, custodian of the fund, proposed introducing the new cadastre by asking owners whose title to immunity was uncertain to establish proof themselves (Capra, 1987: p. 111). However, these initiatives remained limited until the appointment of the Genoese Gianluca Pallavicini, first as a military governor of Lombardy and then as a minister plenipotentiary in 1745, gave fresh impetus to this policy of reform against local opposition. The introduction of a land register featured prominently in the plan sent to Vienna in 1749, which proposed establishing “fair and useful rules for the Police, Commerce and Finance”. ¹⁵ Pallavicini also called on the Tuscan jurist Pompeo Neri to chair the newly created board (Giunta del censimento).

A brief report sent to Pallavicini at the end of December 1749 listed the points to be dealt with and set out a programme for the Giunta. With regard to the surveying of the territory, only marginal corrections remained to be made, particularly in areas of relief or on the borders. Similarly, the valuation of agricultural land, particularly of plots deemed exempt, was now considered complete, unlike the topographical description of the buildings (beni di seconda stazione) and the registration of their owners, which needed to be completely redone. ¹⁶ Pompeo Neri’s Relazione, published in 1750, continued to stress the need to avoid omissions on the sole grounds that the property belonged to powerful or important owners, errors in valuation because they were based on the average sale price over two years, unequal distribution of the tax due to the intervention of the provincial authorities or payment in the owner’s community of residence, where taxation favoured owners, particularly in the cities. ¹⁷ From now on, tax apportionment should be based exclusively on the communities’ geometric maps and valuation of all their plots of land.

The collection of edicts, orders and instructions relating to the introduction of the land register, published in 1760, provides the best overview of how the reform was carried out by the second Giunta. ¹⁸ At the end of 1750, each community received from a cancelliere delegato, a position created ad hoc, a reduced map and the corresponding sommario (register), as well as a 45-point questionnaire to update the legal status of property, estimate the amount of personal tax and how it was set, find out the proceeds of the entrati patrimoniali (rights of use), and find out how much the debts and, finally, the tax of each community amounted to. At the same time, between 1750 and 1753, the Giunta worked to establish an urban land register by solving the problem of estimating property values based on actual or estimated rents according to each very street, regardless of whether the owner lived there or not and regardless of its condition. As with properties in the countryside, each house was visited, parish by parish, street by street, then given a number and its plot measured, while the dissociation between ownership and use (dissociation of usufruct and ownership or livelli, long leases) was taken into account (Cogné, 2006; Mazzucchelli, 1987). Finally, religious properties were listed but no estimated value was provided. ¹⁹

At the end of the valuation process, even though the entire territory of the Stato di Milano had been surveyed, three problems remained, particularly in the city: that of property transfers (trasporti d’estimo) and updating the land register (Cogné, 2006: pp. 465, 470). that of taking into account economic activities, which remained ad hoc, limited to landing docks, warehouses and mills, excluding, for instance, dyeing factories (Cogné, 2006, p. 469) and that of distribution between pieve, which would require the aggregation of certain communities or even between cities, as between Milan and Cremona or Como.^. Despite these imperfections and uncertainties, the Sentenza d’estimo was published in February 1758 and the land register came into force on 1^er January 1760. ²⁰

From the Milanese boards to the communities, many players, often unwillingly involved in the reform process, changed both the way the territory of the Stato di Milano was understood and the territory itself, as with the rectification of the border brought about by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). Pompeo Neri evokes the immense documentation that superimposes community and individual reports, office reports and the voluminous memoirs of the R. Giunta. A landscape was captured as a taxable territory, distinguishing surfaces and goods to be taxed from hedges, coppices and uncertain riverbanks. Buildings and other sources of income, starting with chestnut trees and other productive trees, were entered in the community land register. The work did not end with this very capture of the landscape, but continued with the many reforms that profoundly assorted the administrative methods through the Stato di Milano and between its provinces (Neri, 1750: p. 351).

In his comparative history of European tax systems, the intendant of finance Moreau de Beaumont highlights the map and its plans: “The basis of this operation was a figurative and topographical plan drawn for the entire territory of Milan; this plan includes every inheritance, every hedge, every canal, represented in their natural state” (Moreau de Beaumont, 1787: p. 281). However, this technical choice was strongly criticised by the envoy of the Spanish Supreme Council, Councillor Francesco Perlongo, who considered the production of new maps by the State to be superfluous and costly. ²¹ In fact, the decision to carry out a general survey at new cost broke with the previous cartographic material, terriers and estimes, on which a contrario the Duke of Savoy had begun to base the new cadastre of his States. ²² Should this be attributed exclusively to the absolutism, when the perfectly contemporary revision of the land register in the Archduchy of Austria did not include any specific cartographic material (Hackl, 1997: p. 25). The production of geometric maps therefore needs to be viewed in the light of the development of cartography during the first half of the 18th century, between legal tradition and new uses in cabinet warfare. ²³

In fact, two traditions that had neither the same relationship with mathematics nor the same notion of accuracy - calculative geometry and topographical expertise - began to interact. ²⁴ On the initiative of Prince Eugène, an illustrious warlord, Giovanni Jacopo Marinoni, deputy director of the new school of military engineers that he himself had created, stayed in Milan in 1719-1720. ²⁵ Not only did he advocate the use of the (praetorian) plane-table, in preference to the chain, ²⁶ but he also insisted on the need to survey each parcel uniformly, i.e. with the same unit, but also with its contours, as well as the paths, ditches, streams, banks and type of cultivation, and advocated drawing up a plan on the ground, “au naturel” to use Moreau de Beaumont’s words, i.e. as nature had made it. ²⁷ The whole procedure was intended to make double-checked measures unnecessary, much to the displeasure of the city of Milan and the State Congregation. Several tests were carried out with a team of engineers and surveyors on various types of terrain. Although successful, these trials aroused the hostility of the communities and the jealousy of the local surveyors. As late as 1727, commissioner Perlongo cast doubt on the quality of the surveyors: out of 155, only 10 belonged to the Collegio degli agrimensori in Milan and 9 to the body of engineers and architects, the others not knowing how to use the tablet (Zaninelli, 1963: p. 81). Membership of the college was not required to carry out the measurements ordered by the Giunta, which provided its agents with ad hoc instructions. In 1750, P. Neri criticised the practice of double-checked measures as a useless sign of procrastination, confirming not so much the rejection of the goniometric method as the persistence of resistance to the tax reform imposed from above (Neri, 1750: p. 106).

A total of 2,387 geometric and parcel maps were produced from plans drawn up in situ, then copied and reduced to a scale of 1:2000. Each parcel is identified by a number in black ink and its area, calculated in Milanese pertice, is shown on the community map in red ink. The play of colours makes it possible to distinguish the use of the land (squadra), while the production sites are represented in pink and the contours of the community’s territory are outlined in yellow. ²⁸ There are few ornaments to add to an already rich representation: an ornate cartouche with the name of the community, a compass rose and a representation of the Milanese trabucco scale. The reports of the two boards never mention the choice of colours or the different methods of representation. This topographical language therefore seems to be shared (Dainville, 1964).

In fact, map reading is destined to play an essential role. Based on the reference map, the only copy kept at the Censorial Office and intended to remain available for consultation at all times, a “reduced” 1:8000 scale map was drawn up using the same representation criteria but on a smaller scale, then copied in two copies, one of which was bound into volumes of 30 maps and the other sent to the community concerned. ²⁹ Whether on a large or small scale, all the maps were entered in a register (sommario) containing the name of the owner, the type of crop and the quality of the product for each plot. The French envoy gives a precise list of the maps and accompanying practical writings that he obtained for the communities in the Stato di Milano that had come under the domination of the Kingdom of Sardinia: “The count of Pralorme handed over the map of the perimeter of a community, drawn in Indian ink, a plan as it stands on the ground, the same plan washed, ³⁰ a map in sheets bound together, containing the figurative drawing of all the rooms and land contained in the general plan, the control book kept by the surveyor’s assistant, another book containing the survey and report of on its the parts, another containing the land register, another containing the transport book, all bound in gilt calf on the edge and bearing the arms of the King of Sardinia, another bound notebook containing all the calculations made as a result, making six volumes in folio”. ³¹ Several old and new uses for maps coexist here. Maps had long been used to settle disputes, but when ordered and brought in by private individuals, they were only valid for the duration of a lawsuit. ³² The maps issued by the Censorial Office still make it possible to see at a glance and to provide proof from a distance. But there are several new features. The effect of the maps was redoubled by the assembly of registers and volumes of 30 maps, which made it possible to grasp a larger area. Maps and registers in concert are still the prerequisites for a long list of documents produced during the implementation of the reform, which the communities must keep. ³³ Finally, accuracy and certainty must be ensured over the long term thanks to the “transport book”, which must record all changes in ownership or use. The administration imposed a method and ruled out countermeasures, obliging the communities by making them custodians of the evidence.

The pieve (parishes) that make up the Stato di Milano were thus completely mapped and duly informed of the results by the envoys of Neri Giunta. ³⁴ But managing to measure all the parcels in the Stato di Milano did not necessarily mean that a “topographical map of the entire territory of Milan” had been produced, as Moreau de Beaumont claimed. The surveyors used the tablet to quickly obtain a chain of triangles, which then served as the basis for the maps. For small areas of about a few square kilometres, the inaccuracy of this method was no concern. But on the scale of a province, tracing the angles directly on the paper with a coarse pencil instead of measuring them introduced an initial approximation. By successively drawing other triangles from this initial line, the cartographer amplified his errors and distorted his map. ³⁵ Instead, the maps were placed end-to-end to represent the Stato di Milano. ³⁶ The geometric capture of the territory remained an undertaking carried out by the Neri Giunta and recorded in the Bureau of Censiment: the administrator’s space here remained the territory of the taxed owner. ³⁷

The decision to send each community a copy of its “reduced” map bears witness not only to the technical prowess involved, but also to the difficulty of accepting the undertaking, which profoundly altered relations between the communities and the administration through the map. Most of the first copies distributed from 1723 onwards were lost in the 1750s. ³⁸ War, but also carelessness and the desire to erase all traces of esteem can be rightly invoked. The search for simpler, more streamlined principles and the hope of having an immutable land register were not as commonly shared goals as the Milanese Giunta would have wished. For this reason, it entitled itself to choose its interlocutors by requiring each community to appoint a delegated registrar, whom it then engaged to organise an “information ceremony” to take the community as witness and make it aware of the evidence put on the map. ³⁹

Augustin Berque analysed the effects of the arrival in the human sciences of a geometrised space and, at the same time, its limits. The map of plots as an artefact is more an expression of a conception of the world than a literal transposition of a landscape (Chassagnette, 2018). Resisting to the introduction of censimento, whether actively or passively, was carefully recorded by the administration, whether in the form of petitions, disputes over use (of riverbanks, for example) or certificates stating that documents were missing, all in their own way form a ‘non-Aristotelian’ landscape that could also be mapped (Quesnot, 2021: p. 6).

Historians of absolutism interpret the introduction of the land register as the victory of centrality and uniformity over local particularities, while specialists in imperial history emphasise the need for maps in order to appropriate the territory (Mozzarelli, 1982, Schiera, 1983, Romani, 1959, Capra, 1979). From both perspectives, the Viennese court should play a leading role. But we still need to understand how and what that role should be. In the case of hereditary states, the central state did not intervene in the seigneuries (Hackl, 1997).

In fact, scale and duration of the implementation of this reform challenged the administration not only to manage its own repository, but also to maintain the course of its action. Communication with Vienna not only highlights the dual location and the need to sort the documentation, but also provides an insight into the modus operandi of the various levels upstream of the production of the edicts. ⁴⁰ Commissioner Perlongo points to the supposed lack of diligence on the part of the R. Giunta. ⁴¹ On the contrary, the Viennese archives document the regularity with which supporting documents were sent as annexes to correspondence with the minister plenipotentiary, a practice that was significantly reinforced from 1750 onwards.

The action of the Court of Vienna, and more specifically the Council of War, was decisive in the choice of men to drive forward this reform. The desire to break with the past was made public with the publication of the Pras project, followed by Neri’s Relazione, which coincided with the installation of the two boards. Prince Eugene was the addressee of the Pras project, which led to the creation of the R. Giunta, which replaced the Giunta dei cinque giudici delegati created in 1599 to deal with the distribution of taxes (Capra, 1987: p. 66). Governor Gianluca Pallavicini took the decision, against the author’s advice, to print fifty copies of what was only Pompeo Neri’s first report, demonstrating above all the restoration of order to the archives and the ability to retake the initiative. ⁴² In Vienna, Prince Eugène and Gianluca Pallavicini clashed with the Spanish Supreme Council, made up of Catalans who had followed Charles VI from Barcelona: Perlongo’s dispatch was undoubtedly the last show of force against Milan’s land registry project, even though the Council was only sparingly informed of the ongoing reform. ⁴³

We need to look again at the composition of these boards, which, in accordance with the custom of the Habsburg sovereigns in Italy, were made up of expatriate Italians who did not come from the ranks of the local aristocrats or patricians. Indeed, Vincenzo Mirò, before taking over as director of the R. Giunta, was regent of the collateral council of Naples. Like Cavalieri, who succeeded him in 1731, he was a prominent representative of the supporters of the State and the Viceroy against the Church and the baronaggio. He was succeeded by Francesco d’Aguirre, a Sicilian who had entered the service of King Victor Amédée of Savoy during the short-lived Sardinian domination of Sicily. Aguirre, who in the 1720s reformed higher education in Turin by reducing the role of the Jesuits, moved to the service of Charles VI when the King of Sardinia signed a concordat with the Pope (1729). In 1730, the same Aguirre was commissioned to reply to the Dissertatio historico-legalis de capitatione rusticane plebis written by Gabrielle Verri at the request of the Milanese patriciate (Capra, 1987: pp. 76-18). Pompeo Neri, who headed the second Giunta, was an eminent jurisconsult who had distinguished himself in the service of the Grand Duke of Tuscany by preparing a penal and civil code for Tuscany (Fratoianni & Verga, 1988). To get a clearer picture, it would be necessary to take a closer look at the college of experts, at least three of whom remained engineers under both boards, and even maintained family relations with the engineers of the Viennese School. ⁴⁴

The initial dissemination of political economy through Vauban’s Royal Tithe and legal enlightenment, embodied by Pietro Giannone and Lodovico Muratori, encouraged the development of common principles of government in the Habsburg administration between Milan and Vienna. But between distributive justice, which gives to each according to his rank, and uniformity, which imposes taxes on each according to his abilities, it is rather the principle of commutative justice that runs through relations and unites the two boards (Levi, 2003; Barbot, 2019). When Gianluca Pallavicini asserted that “the censimento that should remove the inequality that exists in the payment of contributions”, he was first and foremost looking at the duchy as a whole. ⁴⁵ The memorandum of 7 October 1730, which insists on the need for equality between the different parts of the kingdom before starting to apportion burdens individually, is also reproduced in Pompeo Neri’s Relazione. ⁴⁶ There was also an equalisation office alongside the censiment(o) or census office.

These principles were accepted in Vienna rather than being imposed from above. Pallavicini recalls in the same plan that “the censimento is a work already prepared: it is enough to know how to take advantage of the work that has been done and that has cost the State several million, that it has asked for it with eagerness because it has known that it is a resource that can alleviate its misery: If enlightened and honest people are chosen, this work will prosper”, while Beltrame Cristiani, the penultimate governor of Milan in charge of the land registry, stated that “non è materia di inquisizione, non interessa il Principe, ma li soli pubblici per l’eguaglianza fra loro”. ⁴⁷

However, the work carried out over the course of the project has enabled us to gather an impressive amount of data on the distribution and nature of settlements, cultivation choices, sources of agricultural or property income, productive tools, income from goods in use, as well as to better identify communities and their owners, to distinguish between town and country, and to assess the finances of the communities. ⁴⁸ These data were quickly converted into a “summary” of the State, like an art reduction of the Stato di Milano. The bird’s-eye view and the pedestrian’s point of view are combined here to equalise the territory, but, passed on from minister plenipotentiary to minister plenipotentiary, these summaries show the “self-interested image” of the Milanese government. ⁴⁹

In fact, we need to look more closely at the documentation preserved in Vienna in order to approach the Viennese “interested map” beyond its purely political objectives, to increase the resources of the Stato di Milano and control its elites, who occupy the instructions and correspondence. From 1750 onwards, the imperial gaze focused primarily on the territory, its boundaries and special features (relief, rivers, common areas exempt from taxation, such as roads and canals), all points and places that primarily concerned sovereignty. ⁵⁰ Although the cartographic reductions, drawn up in Milan to be transported to the communities, were not transmitted to Vienna, the Viennese archives bear witness to a particularly strong desire to have the tools of reform available in the form of models, as if it were not a question of taking in the territory at a glance but of inventing the means to achieve this. ⁵¹ Thus, when the French envoy was instructed to “take information and documents, as well as models and copies of documents that can be used to carry out the proposed object” ⁵² or when Joseph II received the “form” for the land register during his visit to Milan (figure 1). ⁵³ These were not ad hoc gifts, but a well-established practice in communication between Milan and Vienna, which took on a new usefulness when it came to introducing a land register in France or in the new kingdom of Galicia resulting from the partition of Poland. ⁵⁴

The Teresian cadastre, initially studied from a legal and administrative point of view as a successful reform in its Milanese context, also fed studies on social hierarchies in the countryside and the city. While the land register seemed set to establish a landscape ‘au naturel’ on a map, the discussions held in committee on the esteem in which it was held, the circulation of relations between offices and the resulting sifting of information brought to light different territorial logics, several ‘interested images’. Like the plan, sometimes surveyed and sometimes washed, which became a map, the representations were the product of three ways of seeing: that of the engineers and foot messengers (pedoni) who surveyed the communities and brought them instructions, that of the governors who saw the territory from a bird’s eye view and, finally, that of the imperial administrators who looked for useful “little tools” in other countries of the Monarchy. But the maps and the way they are written also bring these three scales together, and ultimately reveal an imperial dynamic, a negotiated and shared project of commutative justice.