italian city states

[nokhor]

in the early medieval period, northern italy was a part of the feudal system like most of europe say around charlemagne's time and was part of what became the HRE. by the time of the late medieval period, northern italy was a collection of independent city states. there were no other region of western europe, except for the northern italian's neighbors, the swiss, who managed to break away as completely as they did from one of the major feudal states. there were free city states in other parts of the continent, as for example in germany, but they weren't heavily concentrated in one region like they were in northern italy.

so what were the causes that enabled northern italy to break away and stay independent from powerful neighbors like the HRE, the byzantines, the french and the papacy?

1. was it economic? if so, there were other rich cities regions (flanders, holland) that were usually under the control of some major power.

2. was it military? did their expertise with crossbows make them too dangerous for knights, the way the pikes helped the swiss?

3. was it religious? the papacy needed some weak buffer zone between them and the HRE and fought to keep it so?

or something else entirely?

[Cangrande]

A mix of all three, the Communes were extremely wealthy and for the most part supporters of and supported by the Papacy against Imperial pretensions.

There is also a fourth factor, politics, the Italian city states were adept at playing one of against the other, tactic that only really began to fail with the development of the nation state.

However, it wasn't long after the 'late' medieval period that Italy began to fall to 'foreign' rulers including the Pope.

To be fair tho', it's a bloody complicated story with so many twists and turns it's worthy of the Byzantines themselves.

[Conradus]

I think the Alps also considerably decreased the chances of invasion, and hence of a central authority, based in Germany, having any power in N-Italy

[MilesGregarius]

from powerful neighbors like the HRE, the byzantines, the french and the papacy?

None of the four powers you mentioned really had the capacity to enforce their will upon the Italians through most of the period, and once they did, the Italians' independence was indeed short-lived.

The HRE, even at this stage was "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire". Though the emperor was truly a force with which to be reckoned at this time, as opposed to when the above 19th Century qote was made, the Empire remained more a fractious confederacy of multiple and conflicting loyalties. Unlike France, the HRE never got its act together sufficiently to become a true power until much later when the Habsburgs replaced the Hohenstauffens as the primary imperial family.

The Byzantines were an essentially dead issue. Constantinople and the last Byzantine remnants would fall before the Italians would lose their independence.

France was almost as fractious as the HRE and was consumed with an external invasion in the form of the English. The French king couldn't even impose his will open Normandy, Gascony, or, most significantly, Burgundy until the end of the 15th Century. Once the French court did consolidate power over the whole of France, the Italian city-states were doomed.

The Papacy, never had much hope of real imperial expansion. For all the power of the pulpit it could wield, attempts to directly control, as opposed to bluntly cajole, temporal power would rapidly erode its standing. Further, the pope as an elected leader, was limited in the options available to him and was beholden to the power, usually France, that backed his candidacy. One pope, Julius(?) or Alexander(?) methinks, actually did try leading armies against other Italian powers, but this essentially crippled his papacy and assured that a more traditional, docile pope followed.

The eventual winner in Italy, Spain, like France, was not a unified force during most of the period. Following the Reconquista, Spain was finally in a position to influence politics in Italy. It is no accident that the Italian Wars, which spelled the end of the city-states, were fought mainly between France and Spain, and that they happened almost immediately after the final subdual of Burgundy and the Reconquista.

And like Cangrande said the Italians were very adept at playing themselves off one against the other. More particulary, the Italians excelled at using French and Imperial power to stifle any of their compatriots' bids to unify the peninsula. In fact, the sigificant, but limited power, of the French and Imperial thrones, was the key factor in preventing one city-state from dominating the region and eventually creating a unified state, which is what left them vulneravle to eventual French, Spanish, and Austrian domination.

[nokhor]

thanks for the responses guys. i have a follow up question. i can understand a region playing power politics and gaining independence like burgundy and being reabsorbed as the feudal state transformed into the nation state and got stronger.

but what i don't understand is why northern italy didn't follow the normal feudal pattern, why didn't it become the mini-kingdom of milan like burgundy or bohemia, or for an even closer analogy, why didn't it become a unified north italian republic along the lines of the dutch? instead, surrounded by powerful adversaries like the french, the HRE, and the papacy, the northern italians could sucessfully maintain sovereign and competing city states that often went to war against each other. another comparison would be the swiss with their rural based confederacy, yet even they did not go to war amongst themselves, whereas the northern italians would fight the kaiser and the pope and each other and they could do that successfully for so long without being permanently absorbed by one of the major powers is the thing that puzzles me.

[Cangrande]

It's more a case of northern Italy evolving different forms of feudalism. At the time that her neighbours were evolving the feudal system northern Italy was still a comparatively urban society. The towns at first put a check on the would-be feudal lords and then defeated them and the Emperor. The rise of the towns or 'communes' dictated the path for Italian development for several centuries to follow, although in many cases individual pseudo-feudal dynasties prevailed e.g. the Della Scala or Scaligeri family in Verona and this was only made possible by usurping the authority of the commune from the inside.

The Italian city states were almost oriental in their political acumen, combining the Byzantine political skill with an almost Br'er Rabbit brinkmanship. It's also important to remember that the Italian states were extremely wealthy and while this could have made them a target for outside aggression, they were protected, as MilesGregarius says, both by the barrier of the Alps and by an intangible barrier to the east. Italy was a crucial jump-off for the Crusades and for trade; by her involvement in and exploitation of the eastern adventure, the Italian city states made themselves too powerful to attack and too valuable to want to destroy.

Having said that, several 'houses' made the attempt on the southern parts, and usually coming to grief because of the disturbance in the balance of power. The Normans, Aragon, the Hohenstaufen and Anjou all made successful attacks in the south, which ultimately proved to be the peninsula's Achilles heel.

[MilesGregarius]

but what i don't understand is why northern italy didn't follow the normal feudal pattern, why didn't it become the mini-kingdom of milan like burgundy or bohemia, or for an even closer analogy, why didn't it become a unified north italian republic along the lines of the dutch? instead, surrounded by powerful adversaries like the french, the HRE, and the papacy, the northern italians could sucessfully maintain sovereign and competing city states that often went to war against each other. another comparison would be the swiss with their rural based confederacy, yet even they did not go to war amongst themselves, whereas the northern italians would fight the kaiser and the pope and each other and they could do that successfully for so long without being permanently absorbed by one of the major powers is the thing that puzzles me.

In essence, money, money, and more money. While the Italians were not a military power, they were the mercantile superpower of their day. Add to this the banking empires of the likes of the de Medicis, to whom the great feudal lords were often beholden to for funding for there wars, and the Italians could almost literally shield themselves with florins. Once the Spanish and Portuguese reached the New World and rounded the Cape of Good Hope, thereby breaking the Italian stranglehold on trade with the Near and Far East, the Italian city-states quickly withered.

[Geoffrey S]

In essence, where feudal lords elsewhere in Europe remained largely based in the countryside, such lords in Italy found themselves drawn by the economic potential of the cities and became a city-based nobility. They, and their subjects, identified themselves very strongly with their own city-state, leading to continued warfare which they could keep up largely due to the vast amounts of money made. In the meantime, the rest of Europe couldn't spare the time to conquer Italy; remember that most states in Northern Europe weren't centralised and spent a lot of their time, when not engaged in war with neighbours, in internal conflicts between the nobility and the kings. Once more centralised states did develop, Italy didn't stand a chance.

[MilesGregarius]

Once more centralised states did develop, Italy didn't stand a chance.

The fall of Burgundy (allowing for a more unified France), the Cortes of Toledo (formalizing the union of Aragon and Castile), Bartolomeu Dias' rounding the Cape of Good Hope, the fall of Granada (allowing a unified Spain), and the discovery of the New World all happened in a fifteen year period ending in 1492. Not coincidentally, two years later, the long series of Italian Wars begin which eventully resulted in Valois France and Habsburg Spain/HRE duking it out for supremacy and trampling the Italian city-states in the process.

[Cangrande]

Much of this is later in the day, the Medici, Sforza etc replaced the communes or city states, sometimes by unwitting invitation (Scaligeri in Verona) or by gradually usurping the power of the state (Medici). In the early days the victorious urban centres forced the nobles to move into the towns. This led to some odd situations, where nobles built their fortresses inside the city! Many examples remain today e.g. Lucca and the 'Medieval Manhattan' San Gimignano. There are even records of nobles besieging each other within the town.

The principle reasons why northern Italy managed to retain it's 'independence' are:

Geographical position
Economic power (mercantile and perhaps more importantly, banking)
Rivals otherwise occupied
Political acumen

With the coming of the nation state Italy's independence was doomed

San Gimignano

http://www.sangimignano.com/sangihp.jpg

The towers were constructed by the nobles, and weren't part of the towns 'official' defences.

[Watchman]

With the coming of the nation state Italy's independence was doomedThe word I've seen used is "territorial state", which rings more right to my ears in a 1500s context. The "nation-state" (or in any case the prototype thereof) is more of a 1600s and later thing - the "second generation" model you might say, that handily usurped the positions of the old-style "territorial state" empires like Spain and the Ottomans.

Mind you, the Italian peninsula remained a patchwork of assorted little statelets and territories well into the 1800s didn't it ?


Once the Spanish and Portuguese reached the New World and rounded the Cape of Good Hope, thereby breaking the Italian stranglehold on trade with the Near and Far East, the Italian city-states quickly withered.Not really. The Iberians were never quite able to properly control the spice market (the big cash cow of Asian trade routes); they were too greedy, too crude, too unsophisticated, and the merchants of the East learned how to deal with or avoid them, in fact partially revitalizing the old Silk Road overland routes in the process.

And the Italians still had a virtual monopoly on the Levant trade, where cargoes of spice and other luxury goods still arrived in bulk by ship and caravan. Although the Dutch, English and French started horning in on the market by mid-late 1500s...

Plus the Italians were the economic sophisticates par excellence of the time. When it came to banking, loansharking, money exchange and similar fields of doing business with money itself, they were long the top players all others watched in stupefied awe. The Genoan bankers for example had a virtual lockdown on Spanish state finances for quite a while and bled some scary amounts of New World silver out of the peninsula as interests and whatnot. Mind you, New World bullion had a funny habit of flowing to Italy in any case, although the war in Netherlands and excess at court also consumed some pretty mind-boggling sums over the years.

On the other hand, monarchs had a pesky habit of declaring bankruptcy and defaulting on their debts every now and then, which could be a major low hit for the big money men. Which is why they liked to invest in estates and noble ranks, as solid capital largely unaffected by troublesome things like inflation, price fluctuations, mismanaged royal finances and whatever. Ironically enough this is still being done today - you can tell an economy boom-time by the proliferation of construction yards, when people and firms build up and develop real estate to have something solid to fall back on in the case of a crisis.

Which in any case in practice meant a proliferation of huge latifundia-esque cash-crop estates tilled by serfs (or poor buggers close enough as makes no real difference), producing vast amounts of cereals, fruit, olives and whatever for trade. Funny thing is, Ottoman bigwigs were investing the profits they pulled partly from their middleman position along the Eastern trade routes the exact same way the same time...

[Cangrande]

The word I've seen used is "territorial state", which rings more right to my ears in a 1500s context. The "nation-state" (or in any case the prototype thereof) is more of a 1600s and later thing - the "second generation" model you might say, that handily usurped the positions of the old-style "territorial state" empires like Spain and the Ottomans.



Maybe it depends on what they call it, where you're taught it :)

In the UK we tend to see the rise of the nation state beginning at the end of the Hundred Years War and going into the Habsburg/Valois rivalry. It was different in central Europe where the idea of 'nation' was largely stifled until the C19. Italy didn't become a nation until 1860, some say that she became a nation only in 1919 and it's still debated where she is in fact a nation or 25 'statelets'.

I think it's important not to confuse 'nation' with 'nationality', for many countries ideas of 'nationality' and 'nationalism' came late, for many only after the Napoleonic Wars.

[Watchman]

Well, if one by "nation-state" were to mean a centralized state of the modern pattern, that'd most definitely be 1600s.

[Cangrande]

No I don't. :D

However, the 'centralized' states were also in being by the C16th e.g England, Spain and to an extent France were all well on the way to being 'modern' centralized states, as were several of the Italian states.

Wasn't the original post about early medieval Italy?

[Watchman]

Wasn't the original post about early medieval Italy?Sure, but did that sort of thing ever bother anyone ? And wasn't that largely covered already ?


However, the 'centralized' states were also in being by the C16th e.g England, Spain and to an extent France were all well on the way to being 'modern' centralized states, as were several of the Italian states.Spain never managed to become a proper "modern centralized" state actually (or within a time period even rmotely relevant to the discussion anyway). I figure it was because it was too big an prosperous - it didn't have to develop a true bureaucracy, the way the smaller fries had to if they were going to achieve anything with their more limited resources ("limited" being a tad relative term in the case of France though). It made do pretty well with the earlier "centralized feudalism" model for a while, but that one turned out to be something of a trap in the long run. The higher aristocracy and major landowners grew so wealthy and powerful they blocked further developement, and in the absence of true bureaucratic apparatus the monarchs couldn't actually do anything about it.

The other properly Mediterranean statelets either stagnated due to their own circumstances (eg. the Northern Italian city-states) or never really got past the feudal latifundia stage to begin with (eg. Sicily and Southern Italy) - mutatis mutandis the Ottomans more or less followed the Spanish pattern of affluent imperial decay.

The English and French were comparative latecomers of middle size, leaner and meaner, and had to develop a bit better governing systems to become big players; this allowed them to largely duck the "refeudalization" process, although in the case of the French only incompletely which down the road led to the Revolution. Really small fries with big ambitions and little resources, such as Sweden in the far cold north or Brandenburg (later better known as Prussia) somewhat in the middle of nowhere (or, as one joke in different context has it, "between centers; far from everything"), had to come up with scarily well-run state bureaucracies to make the utmost from their limited resources. Towards the later 17th century the Swedish crown was actually capable of carrying out what around here is called the "Great Reduction", recovering large amounts of Crown lands granted to aristocrats over the decades to help fix state finances (and lessen the burden on the peasants); something for example the Spanish King at the height of his power could not have even dreamt of.

Which sort of illustrates a pretty important difference between the "territorial states" of the old school like Spain and the next-generation "nation-states", which took over the world.

[Cangrande]

Wasn't that one of the main points of Escorial, to centralize the state?

[Watchman]

Probably did, too.

Compared to what was before. Which doesn't mean the result could hold a candle to the adminstrational clockworks of the next phase (QED, those walked all over it...), just that the ruler could at least concentrate on real politics instead of having to arm-wrestle feudal barons all the time like back in them Middle Ages.

[Mooks]

I also read somewhere a couple times that the italian city states had very weak militarys. Not men, armour, supplies wise. But theyre forces werent that great at fighting.

[Archayon]

1. was it economic? if so, there were other rich cities regions (flanders, holland) that were usually under the control of some major power.




- Holland (the most central - and a little bit to the west - province in the Netherlands) was not that rich, compared to Flanders or the Northern Italian city states. Amsterdam, it's main port, became rich especially during the 16th and 17th century.


- Flanders was not under control of some major power until the late MA (neither was Holland as well). However, in 1369 it became part of Burgundy, because of a marriage alliance. Burgundy, being one of the major provinces in France, wanted to possess Flanders because it always was a thorn in the eye of the French king, and the Duke of Burgundy hoped to increase his stance with the French king in that way.
Compared to the N-Italian city states: they were not ruled by a count, so less marriage alliances, so less chance of being incorporated into something bigger.

Maybe that's a reason why the N-It city states stayed independent, and other strong economic regions did not?



:idea2:

Arch

[Cangrande]

I also read somewhere a couple times that the italian city states had very weak militarys. Not men, armour, supplies wise. But theyre forces werent that great at fighting.

I believe the northern Italians did have some good troops but they suffered in that they were forced to hire mercenaries. Not in itself that unusual. The town militias were of variable quality - something that Machiavelli later railed against - few towns had 'standing' armies, tho Milan, Venice and the Papal forces were effective. The nobles weren't as powerful in the north and feudal forces were fewer in number.