Early Modern Italian history has traditionally been presented in the context of the absence of a unified Italian state, foreign domination and of relative decline to former wealth and power. This new volume calls on a wealth of recent research to portray the complex history of the early modern Italian states on their own terms. A leading team of historians traces Italian material and cultural bonds of identity and solidarity beyond their common political narrative - from the Reformation through the hopes and frustrations of reform, renewal and restructuring of social and economic power to the eventual collapse of the Old Regime.