One-mode multiplex network of Florentine families (Padgett and Ansell 1993)

Source: R/data_ison.R

Marriage alliances and business dealings among 16 Renaissance Florentine families, coded by John Padgett from historical documents and analysed by Padgett and Ansell (1993) as an account of how the Medici came to control the city around 1430. Two factions dominated that struggle, one around the Medici and one around the Strozzi.

Two layers of tie are recorded:

  • business: recorded financial ties such as loans, credits, and joint partnerships

  • marriage: marriage alliances between the families

Three nodal attributes are included:

  • wealth: each family's net wealth in 1427, in thousands of lira

  • priorates: the number of seats on the civic council held between 1282 and 1344

  • totalties: the number of business or marriage ties the family has in the larger dataset of 116 families used by Breiger and Pattison (1986)

data(ison_florentine)

Format

#> -- # Florentine Families -------------------------------------------------------
#> # A labelled, multiplex, undirected network of 16 families and 15 business ties
#> and 20 marriage ties
#>
#> -- Nodes
#> # A tibble: 16 x 4
#>   label      wealth priorates totalties
#>   <chr>       <int>     <int>     <int>
#> 1 Acciaiuoli     10        53         2
#> 2 Albizzi        36        65         3
#> 3 Barbadori      55         0        14
#> 4 Bischeri       44        12         9
#> 5 Castellani     20        22        18
#> 6 Ginori         32         0         9
#> # i 10 more rows
#>
#> -- Ties
#> # A tibble: 35 x 3
#>    from    to layer
#>   <int> <int> <chr>
#> 1     3     5 business
#> 2     3     6 business
#> 3     4     7 business
#> 4     4     8 business
#> 5     5     8 business
#> 6     7     8 business
#> # i 29 more rows
#>

Details

Both relations are recorded symmetrically here, as in the original coding. As Breiger & Pattison (1986) point out, this is defensible for marriage ties but unfortunate for the financial ties, which were almost certainly directed. Because both layers are symmetric, each tie is stored once per dyad rather than as a pair of reciprocated arcs. The Pucci family is an isolate in both relations.

References

Padgett, John F., and Christopher K. Ansell. 1993. "Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400-1434". American Journal of Sociology 98(6): 1259-1319. doi:10.1086/230190

Breiger, Ron, and Philippa Pattison. 1986. "Cumulated social roles: The duality of persons and their algebras." Social Networks, 8: 215-256. doi:10.1016/0378-8733(86)90006-7