Introduction

There are historians who spend their entire academic careers inquiring into all possible details, perspectives and angles of pretty much the same topic. Some leave the scholarly community a complete reassessment of a key aspect of history, others seem to repeatedly publish the same article. Either way, summarising the intellectual achievements of their careers is relatively straightforward, although not necessarily easy.

There are some historians, on the other hand, who seem to get intellectual satisfaction only by moving from topic to topic, by radically changing perspective and methodology, by mixing quantitative with qualitative analysis, the national with the international dimension, the domestic with the comparative view. Francesca Carnevali (1964–2013) certainly belonged to this latter category. She was primarily interested in the economy and the business environment – ‘how things are made’, she would say – but this naturally led her to engage with the impact that society, culture, politics and gender had on the world of production she wanted to understand and study. This sensitivity towards the bigger picture made her an all-round historian, whose contribution is so fascinating to read and so hard to reduce to a few consistent lines of enquiry. Nonetheless this is a challenge which is worthwhile to take on, with the hope that in this exercise in rationalisation we do justice to Francesca's creativity and originality.

This chapter is a reflection on Francesca Carnevali's academic legacy, aimed at analysing – via perspectives from her work – some key debates in economic and business history, as well as some possible further lines of inquiry. It is based on published work, reviews of her books, presentations to conferences, grant applications, and notes for future research projects, as well as some personal memories. It takes a chronological approach, starting from the beginning of Francesca's career in the UK in the mid-1990s, to her last completed paper, published in 2013.

The chapter is organised as follows. In the first section the background to Francesca's research is set out. The following two sections analyse her contribution during the early years of her career, notably the study of comparative banking and financial history, and how industrial districts function.