In recent years the topic of kinship has once again become a focus of attention, not only for historians and anthropologists, but also for demographers, sociologists and geneticists, echoing the growing social interest in issues concerning the family, social connections or identity. The aim of this study is to examine society in San Marino in the early modern period from the point of view of kinship. The main themes dealt with are social mobility and dynamics, marriage practices, the lack of stability and the consolidation of the family name, and the ways it has been transmitted and has survived, and also the phenomenon of migration, in order to follow along the lines of the studies already carried out and published in the San Marino Series of Historical Studies.

The research highlights some of the succession of phases concerning the dynamics of kinship in San Marino in the early modern era. After an initial period of relative fluidity in social relationships, there was a considerable change in the years 1650-1770, when society contracted, and the upper class that was becoming more ‘aristocratic’ closed in on itself. It was only later that the dominating class in San Marino opened up again to new relationships, no longer with the lower classes, but rather with others outside the Republic. The end of the eighteenth century, however, emerged as a contradictory period, characterized on the one hand by an aristocratic heritage, and on the other by the beginning of a new era with the nobles becoming open once more to the lower classes within the Republic. Thus a certain amount of social mobility started up again, in conjunction with the transformation of the peasantry, largely based until then on smallholdings, into the working class, and as a result the characteristics of migration changed as well. Mobility gradually became constant, almost structural, seeming to foreshadow what was going to happen from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards: the change from the migration of single individuals to mass emigration.

A compact biographical dictionary of the families in San Marino, which has purposely been made simple and easily accessible, will give scholars, local history enthusiasts or those who are simply curious a brief overview of the history of hundreds of families that had a part in the destiny of the Republic of San Marino. Finally, the CD ROM that comes with it has an extensive genealogical database and various archive sources which have been edited, recopied and annotated so that the data can be used by each person according to their needs.