Similarities: Common Origins in Central Power and Justice

Representative and republican regimes differed in how power was distrib­uted and governing structures were ordered but they shared a prehistory of effective centralization. This similar prehistory solved collective action problems and enabled communal institutions.

7.2.1 City-States in Northern Italy

The Italian cities reflect the logic presented in this book in three ways. First, a feudal prehistory was critical for the emergence of communal institutions (though regional variation, especially between the Po Valley and Tuscany, was strong). Judicial institutions were also crucial. Finally, equally important was communal power over the most powerful. However, as noted, to the degree that many of these polities established a more bottom-up, commercial foundation without a strong executive, they were unable to effectively resolve tensions and control their country­side and eventually lapsed into more signorial forms of government.

The importance of feudal precedents becomes apparent when we examine explanations of institutional origins. The economist Avner Greif explained two key communal institutions in Genoa from the 1100s, the consuls and the podesta, as an effort to address economic inefficiencies produced by family rivalries and power competitions.^[781] The consuls were elected officials and the podesta was an outsider placed as “an executive administrator, above all the head of the judiciary”^[782] to transcend local rivalries - which they did for some time. These were common practices throughout Tuscany and Lombardy. Genoa’s wealth rose exponentially in this period; its nominal trade grew fifty times between the 1160s and the 1300s and was “roughly ten times the receipts of the French royal treasury.”⁴⁴ Greif connects these political institutions to commercial needs in a persuasive way, whilst critiquing the functionalism of old economic history that saw political systems as “a response to the gains to be attained from establishing them.”^[783]

However, neither consuls nor, certainly, the podesteria are in themselves definitive of the participatory nature of republican governance.

The new communal assembly, called concio, arengum, occasionally even parlamentum, also “undoubtedly” operated as a court of law especially for landholding cases in the first half of the twelfth century, as the historian Edward Coleman pointed out, though specialized courts also later emerged.^[787] Continuity with judicial practice similarly existed at the level of elected consuls, many of whom were increasingly iudices, judges who “controlled public acts,” especially from the 1130s.^[788] Assemblies acquired broader roles, both in political decision-making and legislation; only criminal cases continued to be judged there. Taxation, here too, is not included in the list of main functions until later.^[789] Ultimately, com­munal assemblies differed from the old judicial assemblies on a dimension that will recur in this analysis as causing regime weakness: no single executive convoked them, as the bishop of old, unlike in parliamentary cases.⁵² As discussed below and also seen in Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere, the lack of executive only facilitated capture by elites, leading to oligarchy and instability.

Assembly practices thus drew both from historical traditions dating back to the seventh century⁵³ and from feudalism, which endowed lords with judicial powers and was very strong in Northern Italy.⁵⁴ Lombardy produced one of the most important European law-books treating the feudal transmission of land, the Libri Feudorum.^[790] It recorded legal prac­tice in northern Italy: eleventh-century lands were granted by the major landholders, whether secular or ecclesiastical, typically conditionally.^[791] Even a strong critic of the concept of feudalism, medievalist Susan Reynolds, claimed that the “whole idea of feudalism originated from [it]”;^[792] it was the concept’s application to northern Europe, not Italy, she deemed contentious.

The medieval/Renaissance communal and republican stages were thus interjected in a feudal landscape.^[793] Rulers, both secular and ecclesiastical, were important in the early stage. Bishops frequently filled the vacuum of secular authority, particularly in the administration of justice. Bishops and lay lords originally oversaw the urban consuls administering justice, as in Milan: the status of consuls originally “derived from a place in the court or entourage of kings, counts, and bishops,”^[794]though they eventu­ally “overshadowed” the lords. Practices varied widely, but the “presence of the Count” was necessary for the final resolution of conflict in the early period, as urban consuls could not adjudicate. Counts “continued to hear some suits” into the 1150s at Pavia.^[795]

In most social science accounts, however, the early period receives little attention. Even when origins are examined, the narrative is typically one of cities overthrowing the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor or of local princes, counts, and bishops.^[796] Lords appear almost incidentally, typically as the grantors of emancipation or as the owners of the land in which towns had free tenure.⁶² Further, arguments about the feudal origins of government were associated with a conservative, reactionary view of politics in the early twentieth century, as it placed government origins in private associations rather than public authority.⁶³

The topic remains controversial, with some historians emphasizing the communal aspect and others identifying feudo-vassalic elements.

Further, cities may have lacked kings or princes, but they had a judge, the podesta, demonstrating again the centrality of justice in integrating polities. He was typically an outsider brought in by communes when internal strife had become unmanageable. However, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa was important in establishing the institution, as he appointed many officials in Lombardy and Emilia after 1160.^[800] Further, many “of these early officials were feudatories,” either counts, as in Verona, or lords of surrounding lands. Landholding was thus a critical component of the arrangement. The powers of the office, however, declined during the thirteenth century until it devolved into a “chief justice with police powers.”^[801] The weakening of some central coordinat­ing figure contributed to the centrifugal tendencies that eventually under­mined the republics.

Most critically perhaps, communes also achieved what this account has identified as another key condition for representative emergence: power over the most powerful, at least initially. In fact, many popolo revolts in the mid-to-late thirteenth century ensured that “magnates were required to post a large security against the possibility that they might commit a crime, and were subject to severe penalties if they did harm a popolano.

This power over the most powerful was indeed achieved without a ruler; however, it did not produce enduring institutions. Despite these (and other) precautions, the communal phase was not self-sustaining over the long term, as city-states did not remain autonomous.⁷² From the 1250s, feudal lords slowly reemerged in response to civil strife:

at the height of commercialization, city after city in anti-feudal Italy began surrendering liberty again for lordship, for government by “domini” or “tyrants” preponderantly feudal, not merchant but landed magnates, barons, nobles, prel­ates. The land of merchant republics was a land also of despots.⁷³

The concept of a despot is more fluid than what stereotypical understand­ings imply, as historians have cautioned.^[802] Nonetheless, lordship and conditional forms of landholding remained prevalent in Northern Italy into the modern period. In Lombardy, “a large number of fief-holders enjoyed, as late as the eighteenth century, civil and criminal jurisdiction and the right to make laws and even to coin money. They were usually entitled to... taxation as well as to the profits of justice, in the form of levies for the administration of the courts and penal fines and confisca­tions.” By 1714, two-thirds of the duchy of Milan still consisted of fiefs and the powers of central government were limited in those domains. Lands were still held “of the duke,” as in England.^[803] Contemporary accounts seek the higher social capital of the North in its civic component, but the feudal one may be as important.^{[804] [805]}

7.2.1.1 An Exception? Venice¹¹ Devolution to oligarchy is also observ­able in a case that did retain a semi-executive, Venice; together with Genoa, it was also the most long-lasting city-state, as this account pre­dicts, though only until the Napoleonic invasion in 1797.^[806] In some ways, however, early Venice seems to reflect the narrative contested here.

Venice thus seems to confirm the model of mercantile power creating open economic and political orders. In fact, however, mercantile control eventually restricted participation to a section of the elite, especially after 1297. The nobility became a closed order, limiting access to maritime trade, and thus generating “political closure, extreme inequality, and social stratification.”⁸¹ Mercantile origins did not endogenously produce greater participation. Venice’s longevity is, however, probably also tied to its more successful reorientation after the fourteenth century towards the surrounding countryside (the terraferma) than other city-states. It also crucially renegotiated the tax burden after the fifteenth century, reducing inequalities.^[809] The implication of this argument is that an executive power, even of limited powers, contributed to these differences.

Some city-states, as in Lombardy, were unable to dismantle rural federations operating under quasi-feudal conditions. The more ruthless domination of the countryside, the contado, by Florence, produced “a peculiarly inactive countryside,” ridden with “anomie.”^[810] In all cases, the rural population was not integrated into the civic machinery of govern­ance. “Inequality between town and country was intrinsic to city-states.” About 5 percent of taxed population held up to half or more of property or wealth and 50 percent held as little as one-twentieth or less in the 1280s.84 The tax burden was overall much higher in the country.^[811] For many historians, inequality explains the gradual decline of communal and republican regimes: “Without a widened franchise the culmination of divided oligarchy seemed fated to be dictatorship, party or personal dominion.”^[812]

In short, to the degree that Italian city-states were able to mobilize similar mechanisms to England, especially power over the most powerful and some judicial centralization, they developed striking participatory institutions; to the degree that executive power was weak or dispersed, their regimes did not survive - a pattern that will be echoed in cases like Hungary and Poland as well.

7.2.2 Cities in the Low Countries

Cities in the Low Countries also achieved robust civic government from the early Middle Ages. Many accounts focus on Holland, but until the fifteenth century Flanders was the most developed region. In 1400, its urbanization, at almost 40 percent, was double that of Holland; it was only in 1500 that the latter edged ahead.^[813] In both cases, though, comital power was fundamental in creating the conditions for participatory polit­ics at the polity level.

Their constitutionalism is typically attributed to economic factors, for instance, “rich soils” and “agriculturally suitable areas” that created population densities and urban growth, making institutions endogenous to technological and economic change.^[814] However, these agricultural condi­tions in the Low Countries were the result of a precocious feat over nature, as discussed below, that depended on political power structures. Further, agricultural, urban, and commercial growth also occurred in fertile parts of premodern China and India, such as the Yangzi Delta and Gujarat,^[815] so how the European urban belt avoided both absolutism and underdevelop­ment must yet be explained. Military technology often serves this purpose. Towns with sufficient wealth could defeat the reactionary, land-based forces, ensuring the survival of parliamentarism, in such accounts.^[816] But these developments date at best from the early 1300s and the potentially equalizing effects of the gunpowder revolution only operated from the 1450s. Institutions were formed by both those points.

Other economic approaches see political institutions as endogenous to market exchange earlier than the fifteenth century. The stable conditions necessary for trade were created by city competition from the 1250s, Oscar Gelderblom has argued.⁹¹ This is a non-state alternative to the neo­institutionalism of Douglass North that saw an effectively constrained state as a key actor.⁹² Similarly, for van Zanden, Buringh, and Bosker, institutional constraints emerged by incorporating new economic classes after 1200.⁹³ These are compelling narratives, but both trade and institu­tions were present before 1200.⁹⁴ Economic growth was underway by 1050 and trade already flourished in the 1100s, but so did comital authority.

The question is whether this prior growth had commercial, bottom-up propulsion or whether political authority, either of counts or bishops, was instrumental. Although some commercial growth can be explained with­out much reference to central authority, its extension over a whole region cannot. The alternative proposed here is threefold. Public authorities provided the necessary infrastructure, as economic historian Sheilagh Ogilvie has argued in her major work.⁹⁵ The weaker comital power was and the more autonomous the cities, the more conditions for long-term economic and institutional growth weakened. Second, rulers’ capacity to compel subjects under fairly uniform legal frameworks owed much to conditional patterns of relations, which shaped representation as well. Finally, since Flemish counts were weaker than English kings, represen­tative practice was more uneven in the Low Countries. The pattern in early Holland was similar.

Counts provided infrastructure in two main ways. First, in both Flanders and Holland, rich soils were not a natural given but the product of an astonishing program of intervention, the reclamation of land from the marshes below sea level, the building of dikes, canals, and dams - “taming the Waterwolf,” as the Dutch termed it.^[817] This land provided a tabula rasa that was not burdened by local strongmen possessing ancient rights. Available land was originally unable to feed its population.^[818] Historians differ on the role of counts before the 1110s,^[819]8 but the question is not simply how initiatives begin (for which counts may have been less important) but how they extend polity-wide to lift an entire region. Even if counts lacked the power to carry out these large hydraulic projects alone early on, their role was crucial.^[820] They had regalian rights over land and “gave the coasts to the abbeys on condition of diking and turning them into agricultural or pasture land.”^[821] Counts also offered personal free­dom and the right to own land or to self-government.^[822]

Further, for trade to grow the coasts had to be connected to the interior: “Philip of Alsace [1168-91] accordingly evolved a master plan to provide the Flemish coast with ports that could be linked with interior towns such as Bruges.” Moreover, “counts had sponsored most canal construction before 1200,” though cities undertook the task subsequently.^[823] Comital intervention also varied by region, occurring late only in the northeast, after 1230.^[824]

Similarly, in Holland, a “centralized, bureaucratized state” may not have existed,¹⁰⁴ but this did not mean the absence of central authority. Even when initiative for such communal works lay with the communities, resolution of conflict depended on higher authority.¹⁰⁵ Faced with need, collective action is not hard to mobilize; instead, action stalls when conflicting interests cannot be resolved. But in Holland, the board formed by communities to regulate such conflicts, the Rijnland Water Board, was led by the bailiff, the highest-ranking officer of the count. This was particularly necessary already since 1150, because simple drainage tech­niques could not address soil subsidence - complex hydraulic works were required.¹⁰⁶ Dutch fertile soils were as endogenous to political authority as Flanders’.

Second, city growth was also dependent on comital authority - com­mercial activity did not suffice to turn settlements into the major trading urban centers that many Flemish towns became, concentrating between 20 and 36 percent of the population by 1500. Cities became more independent from the 1100s, but this followed the imposition of peace, first through the Church (Truce and Peace of God), then through the Peace of the Count (pax comitis) before the 1120s.¹⁰9 It was also predi­cated on counts granting charters that provided crucial rights to all major cities, including relating to trade.^{[825] [826] [827] [828]} In Holland, towns lacked coercive powers over the countryside, a crucial precondition for market growth.^[829] Though historians take such lack as given, it was not a natural outcome; the strong jurisdictional powers of the count described below were instru­mental. These patterns shaped the legal and judicial structure of Flemish and Dutch cities, in ways discussed separately next.

7.2.2.1 Flanders and the Power of the Count: Conditional Landholding, Justice, and Assemblies Early Flanders shows connections between con­ditional landholding, ruler penetration of localities through judicial struc­tures, and representative activity that resemble England’s, already from the 1100s. Counts controlled the land, although the nobility eventually weakened as most wealth was controlled by the towns. Evidence on noble service and fiscal dependence is not as readily available, though nobles were taxed. But relations with towns were forged through the count’s increasing judicial centralization. This involved both collective responsi­bility and the petitioning identified as key. To the degree that judicial integration was limited by the strength of urban courts and assemblies, the functional layering and institutional fusion observed in England did not materialize. As this section shows, the increased autonomy of towns therefore simply inhibited polity-wide integration and representation, eventually weakening the regime.

In Flanders, like Italy, the urban efflorescence of the 1200s was pre­ceded by institutional learning under central authority. The count was “the most eminent warlord in Flanders, the wealthiest landowner, and the feudal lord of the most prominent men of the land.”¹¹² By 1200, his territorial holdings were considered “immense” by local standards:¹¹³ they were about the size of Catalonia or Burgundy (about 12,000 square km). They included some of the most important commercial centers, such as Ghent, Saint-Omer, Bruges, and Ypres. Counts were originally weak, but they increased their power over the cities after 1128.^[830] This secured the de jure monopoly on violence and establishing peace, just as English kings had done.^[831] In the twelfth century, Flemish counts only trailed after Henry II of England and Frederick Barbarossa.^[832]

Counts granted fiefs to local lords, whilst retaining an advantage over them and curtailing their autonomy, as in England.^[833] But as the legal historian Dirk Heirbaut has argued, Flemish counts exploited feudalism “as an instrument of princely power” mainly in terms of service, whilst retaining control of castle land for instance.^[834] Below the nobility, sub­jects gradually “received the right to construct their houses on land which the Count or the landlord owned, as long as they paid a ground rent (Iandcijns) for the use of the land occupied” - paralleling the English legal structure and also observed in Holland.^[835] Term leaseholds were widely spread by the fourteenth century.^[836]

The land regime also shaped how the count controlled the judicial system. Twelfth-century counts replaced the hereditary feudal viscounts, who administered justice in both cities and countryside in the old system of castellanies, with comital bailiffs.^[837] Vassals performed judicial service within this framework, as in England.^[838] Seigneurial courts did not have the independence observed in France - comital institutions prevailed.^[839] Flemish fiscal organization accordingly has been compared to that of the English in the early twelfth century, “ahead of that in Normandy and the French royal domain.”^[840]

Nonetheless, unlike in England and France, the towns were so wealthy that the landed nobility was weak in comparison.^[841] Unlike Italy, however, the towns were not as dominant over the countryside because the count’s power penetrated polity-wide, especially through legislation. Urban law was standardized from the 1160s, especially by Philip of Alsace, “a legal innovator” in many respects.¹²⁶ These comital law codes were crucial for commercial growth, not least by changing marital laws, as the historian David Nicholas has argued.^[842] Law was gradually homogenized under the banner of the utilitas publica, which based the count’s superior right to impose the peace on Roman law. Major crimes became offenses against the count and his pax comitis, so he alone had jurisdiction over them. This state-building enterprise in the twelfth century produced a communal identity that transcended local urban contexts - though not as effectively as in England, as we will see.^[843] As historian Jan Dumolyn noted, the basis of this identity was “the eleventh- or twelfth-century urban sworn association partially empowered to regulate and govern its own affairs by a contractual relationship with the prince.”^[844]

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Counts restricted urban autonomy by intervening in urban tribunals, unlike in France or Germany.^[845] They originally chose the aldermen (schepenen, scabini Flandrie),^[846] who were judicial officials, with jurisdic­tion initially over crimes and wrongs but eventually also over administra­tive and economic matters. Aldermen particularly regulated the critical wool trade with England, probably since the 1160s, certainly since the 1240s.^[847] Though originally appointed for life, by the 1240s annual selection prevailed^[848] - but this allowed the count more power to contain the patriciate, not greater municipal independence.^[849]

Urban independence gradually grew: new aldermen were selected by sitting members, not the count, though some remained at his discretion.¹³⁵ After the 1240s, the count’s control over aldermen had weakened, and later fluctuated.¹³⁶ In other words, periods of institutional gestation under the leadership of the count occurred before the institu­tions begun to develop relative self-rule.¹³⁷ Urban autonomy looms large in accounts of commercial growth, such as Gelderblom’s, but these ignore how embedded mercantile institutions were in comital structures.¹³⁸ They also ignore how important the counts were for inter­national trade: counts forged agreements for safe conduct with the English that were vital for trade after 1200 - a crisis in Anglo-Flemish ruler relations in 1270-74 was, for instance, “catastrophic” for the Flemish economy.¹³⁹

Even if urban courts had been sufficient for commercial growth, their autonomy was certainly in tension with a polity-wide representative regime. To the degree that supra-local institutions emerged it was instead because their early stages display the themes identified throughout the book, judicial integration, ruler imposition of collective responsibility, and petitions. This is obscured because, as for Italy, scholars tackle assemblies only in their mature form, after 1300, when indeed commer­cial growth had strengthened cities.^[850] Yet, an itinerant comital council is observed at least since the 1050s, just as in England and France (the curia comitis or “het hof”), originally composed of the count’s vassals. It par­ticularly dealt with infractions of the count’s peace.^[851] Trade required at least pockets of peace beyond the city walls, at the supra-local level, and this too depended on the count. He created jurisdictional homogeneity by judging any affair related to fiefs and vassalic obligations, as with the English Parliament. Vassals also had judicial duties and accompanied comital officers in itinerant inquests.^[852] A structure of obligation bound the towns as well. When the count recognized the “commune” or sworn association of Saint-Omer in 1127, for instance, he “imposed a duty of collective vengeance if a citizen’s injuries at the hands of an outsider were not redressed.”^[853] The capacity to impose a collective frame of responsi­bility was thus key for Flemish institutional development too.

As noted previously, collective responsibility engenders collective demands. Collective action from the 1270s was tied to the same wave of petitions we have seen in England and France in the same period. Social unrest escalated in response to the economic crisis of the period. It triggered strong conflict, not just violent riots (enemies would be expelled and their houses demolished), but also in the judicial and legislative arena via petitions.¹⁴⁴ These grievances were presented to the count, often in assembly or in the alderman’s court; they brought together the social groups that economic approaches see as independent agents of institu­tional change. These petitions, as well as the rebellions they precipitated, presented familiar grievances, as Dumolyn has extensively shown: taxes that were regressive and misapplied, corruption of comital officials, and participation in the council through nomination of aldermen, among others.¹⁴⁵

Accordingly, a trade-based approach must be qualified. First, the communal spirit was forged in relation to the count. Once again, collect­ive action that appears to be born though commercial interest alone emerges through a preceding structure of obligation, imposed from above. And it is typically artisans, i.e. dependent workers, not merchants that spearhead these demands. After all, the government of the thir­teenth-century Flemish cities was not exclusively mercantile, but was instead “patrician,” composed also of urban landowners, as in Ghent.^[854] Finally, in as much as cities became too powerful to remain in a system under the count’s direction, integration was impeded and a polity-wide regime less effective. In fact, much of the period can be examined through the conflict between the “Three Cities” (Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres) and the “Commun Pays” of Flanders brought together by the count.

As towns became increasingly assertive in the thirteenth century, com- ital power fluctuated greatly:^[855] by the 1300s, the cities were referred to collectively as the “bonnes villes” rather than by reference to the “scabini Flandrie,” which had expressed urban corporate identity under comital authority since the 1200s.^[856] Commercial growth indeed empowered the artisanal class and the guilds, ushering the “corporative” stage in Flemish politics, which spread across cities.^[857] But this left the count unable to deal with the Three Cities when they attempted to divide the county in the early 1300s.^[858]5⁰

In some arguments, this juncture illustrates how war helped Flanders transition from an aristocratic to a popular regime.^[859] At the famous battle at Courtrai in 1302, Flemish urban groups indeed routed the French cavalry and Flemish aristocracy. However, although guild corpor­ations acquired a position in city government, what was almost “demo­cratic” within a city was not the same as polity-wide representation. Instead, city divisions produced conflict and defeat.¹⁵² They allowed the French to prevail in 1304. While the Brugeois were winning, the other cities “left the field, a pattern that would recur and plague concerted Flemish military actions for the rest of the medieval period,” leading to a punitive peace with the French.¹⁵³ The background to this crisis had been the Flemish count’s inability to manage the Anglo-French rivalry or control his nobles who defected to the French.¹⁵⁴

Ironically, the first polity-wide system of revenue for the count was ushered by the heavy taxation raised to meet the French fines for the urban feat in 1302.¹⁵⁵ Representative activity picked up in response to these pressures. But it included the “commun pays de Flandre,” which integrated all three orders, clergy and nobility included.¹⁵⁶ Assemblies also included smaller towns and the castellanies, which together shoul­dered 70 percent of the tax burden. Only a third of taxation was paid by the Three Cities and the artisanal groups increasingly leading them, though more countryside was included through the Franc of Bruges and that contribution rose to half in the fifteenth century.^[860] Crucially, by “the fourteenth century, the counts of Flanders taxed all inhabitants directly, forbidding lesser lords to ask for aides.”^[861]

It cannot therefore be asserted that representative institutions “emerged and remained in place in those areas that had a sufficiently wealthy and cohesive class of �burghers’ that could block the landed and monarchical elites and sustain the process of endogenous growth that eventually led to the industrial revolution. ”^[862] Burghers may have created precocious pockets of radical politics, as Flemish cities had a continuous history of informal meetings averaging at about thirty per year in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,^[863] dealing mostly with commercial policy.^[864] But that is not the same as polity-wide representation for governance. For the latter, input was necessary from groups across society, the rural population, clergy, and nobility, which occurred in less than 6 percent of total meetings^[865] - foremost, legislation and justice was necessary.

The count’s role was increasingly key here. Steep conflict with the big cities in the 1300s was handled judicially, with charters confiscated after 1328, making sessions of the comital council, the Audientie, the final point of appeal even for citizens of smaller towns against their own governments.^[866] But existing institutional proliferation meant that no single forum was available where both judicial and political/fiscal func­tions were fused, as in England, weakening central institutions.¹⁶⁴

Later Flemish history was complicated as the county was subsumed under the Burgundian Netherlands and ruled first by the Valois (from 1384) and then the Habsburgs (from 1477). Explaining this trajectory exceeds the scope of this account, but some observations can illustrate the implications that flow from it. Representative activity continued at the provincial level; after 1464 it also occurred in the Estates-General that brought all Burgundian provinces together. Yet, Blockmans, for instance, posits a “decline of the representative system in the Low Countries” already from the 1430s, which presumably laid the ground for the col­lapse of the constitutional framework after the northern provinces split (and the Dutch Republic was born) in the 1570s, with Flanders remain­ing under imperial control. The familiar narrative of powerful rulers exploiting outside resources to suppress representation is particularly apt here.^[867]

Yet Burgundian representative activity in the early 1500s was still higher in frequency than anywhere in Europe, even England.^[868] This argument suggests that to the degree that we see such activity at all, ruler power must be enabling it and that such power should be encour­aging greater collective action among groups. However, to the degree that such activity fails to shape the regime at the polity level, that power must have been ultimately insufficient; a key indicator of such failure was the lack of plenipotentiary powers among representatives. The Burgundian period displays all these traits.

The dukes of Burgundy returned to the institution of the “Pays Commun,” not the “Bonnes Villes,” i.e. they upheld an inclusive institu­tion in Flanders, not one confined to the urban sector. Flanders was exceptional in including small cities and the rural sector, echoing English patterns.^[869] This is when we see estate representation, including the nobility and clergy, from 1384.^[870] Critically, the expanding Flemish elites were now committed to supporting “the common good” of the Burgundian state, “abandoning [their] traditional autonomism.”^[871] Feudal relations remained crucial, since failure to perform obligations led to confiscation of property, as attested by many confiscation registers.¹⁷⁰ But various local entities had their own Estates (Brabant, Hainault, Liege for instance).¹⁷¹ Polity-wide representation faltered as cities adopted the imperative mandate, not full powers, for their repre­sentatives - the center of authority remained local.¹⁷²

This feature undercut the capacity of the Estates to operate effectively at the supra-local level of the Estates-General after 1464. Participation was indeed propelled by the deep social conflicts that trade generated. However, as Blockmans argued, economic and social differences kept groups separated, and it was the Habsburg princes that brought them together to the extent they did.¹⁷³ Crucially, whilst they voted on taxes, they never legislated. So, technically, this institution does not even conform to the definition of this study. Even though it governed as an executive for a brief period in the sixteenth century, particularism under­cut its power; it was more of an “assembly of Parlements” than a parliament, leading to its eventual eclipse in 1632.^[872]

In short, precocious commercial activity and assembly practices to deal with the needs of trade did not generate an enduring polity-wide regime that translated local preferences into applied law. Accordingly, city inde­pendence was not the crucial factor nor what distinguished East from West; in fact, the greater the city independence, the less constitutional the polity-wide outcome.^[873] Moreover, to the degree that the Flemish assem­blies focused on by social scientists after 1300 were effective, they had a prehistory of institutional interaction which became polity-wide only when counts had an advantage in power and recognized the benefits of accommodating the demands of merchants. This led to less conflictual relations with the communal movements than in Italy, Germany, or France.^[874]

7.2.2.2 Holland: Landholding, Comital Power, and Collective Responsibility Similar patterns are observed in Holland. International trade shifted from Bruges in the 1200s to Antwerp in the late 1400s and Amsterdam by 1585.^[875] After 1579, Holland became the leader among the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic, which often outshone England in economic performance. It exemplified a rather exceptional combination of bottom-up rule with commercial interests. This combin­ation depended on a “social discipline” that was predicated on family networks and Calvinism, as argued by sociologists Julia Adams and Philip Gorski respectively.^[876] Nonetheless, the decentralized nature of the Dutch Republic has also made economic growth, fragmentation, and representation appear associated.^[877] The economic historian de Vries has emphasized however that, although the Republic was decentralized, it functioned “as a single economy.”¹⁸⁰ Holland dominated the union, as it provided almost 60 percent of its budget.¹⁸¹ The foundations for this condition went back to the medieval period, as van Zanden noted.¹⁸² These insights echo the main claims advanced in this book.

Holland early on displayed key features highlighted in this account: relatively strong comital power, a weakened nobility (and clergy) often conscripted to judicial service, land held from the count, effective struc­tures of collective responsibility, and exceptional taxing powers. Comital power was not strong enough to prevent institutional proliferation, espe­cially at the supra-local level. This precluded the formation of a single polity-wide representative that governed, so no institutional fusion occurred at the center.

Nonetheless, relative comital power is evidenced in the neglected “pre­history” of the county of Holland. As discussed, this authority was already displayed during the marshland reclamations between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries - land cleared was held in tenure from the count.^[878] Conditionality was also important. When Holland is noted as lacking a “truly feudal past,” this meant the absence of manorialism (i.e. the subjection of peasants to a lord) and local lordships, not the conditionality invoked in this account.^[879] This absence is contested for many regions.^[880] In any case, manorialism was absent and peasants free when the power of manorial lords was undercut, typically by a higher authority.

Holland in the Middle Ages was no “society of orders”^[881] - perhaps more than England - because counts limited the jurisdictional powers of the nobility and the Church.^[882] Cities also remained small in size, as “the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century counts were strong enough to prevent the towns from extending their jurisdiction over the country-side.”^[883] By the mid-seventeenth century, “only 8 per cent of the villages in Holland had become subject to urban jurisdiction.”¹⁸⁹ When rural areas were integrated, the regimes achieved greater territorial anchoring.

Did urban competition cause these conditions, via growth?¹⁹⁰ Would it thus also lie behind the representative activity that flourished? Though competition was certainly operating, it cannot explain the emergence of the “incipient national economy” noted by de Vries.¹⁹¹ Integration required rather, first, that neither nobles nor cities dominated property rights.¹⁹² In fact, from “the tenth to thirteenth centuries, the counts and bishops established a political structure consisting of local jurisdictions administered by government agents (sheriffs) and villagers.” As in England, “nobles and clergymen did not preside over jurisdictions of their own,” with some limited exceptions.^[884] In 1351, count William V forbade both groups from settling disputes. They did, however, serve as judges in regional courts.^[885] As in England, a sheriff ensured compli­ance throughout the county; he and other officials were checked by the inquests we’ve seen elsewhere.^[886] The system was thus polity-wide, but more fragmented than in England, “consisting of regional courts of appeal and a supreme court in The Hague, and later in Malines.”^[887]

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Second, integration of a “national” economy also required the integra­tion of land markets.^[888] These depended on secure property rights, such as registration of transactions, mortgages, and fewer transaction costs. All these were handled by public courts.^[889] In most of Holland, private registration by “lords and notaries... was almost non-existent,” unlike France and Flanders, even England. Public registration was in some parts compulsory,¹⁹⁹ making mortgages more secure.²⁰⁰ By the sixteenth cen­tury, village courts seem “interchangeable” with public ones.²⁰¹ This integration homogenized interest rates and wages across town and coun­tryside - thus generating a “national” economy.²⁰² City courts may have been vital for the precocious growth of urban trade, but polity-wide integration was necessary for overall growth.

Ultimately, the “real question,” as Gelderblom noted, “is under which circumstances local magistrates, whether traders, artisans, lawyers, or otherwise, were willing to put aside their private concerns and serve the merchant community at large.”²⁰³ The explanation he provides - that “they expected to gain” - shares the functionalism questioned already. This book’s argument suggests that such collective action was a response to collective obligation. Some critical collective action between cities, in fact, responded to sovereign demands for loans on the basis of collective responsibility.

As the economic historian Jaco Zuijderduijn has argued, counts of Holland used cities as intermediary corporate bodies bound by collective responsibility to raise loans in capital markets already by 1300. Foreign creditors thus knew that public debt was secured by all towns contract­ing - the law of reprisals was harsh. IfHaarlem reneged, Delft merchants were also responsible. The towns of Holland and Zeeland were forced “to formulate common goals to bargain for during negotiations with the sovereign.” In the 1500s, Charles V and the States of Holland (the Estate representatives to the court of the Count of Holland) developed a more centralized system of province-wide debt by extending this sys­tem, which bound the cities to a common frame.^[890] The superior capacity of the Dutch Republic to mobilize domestic and foreign resources rightly identified by Downing as key to preserving its constitutionalism was endogenous to a previous advantage of ruling authorities.^[891]

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How did this advantage affect representative practice? Representative origins lie in the medieval period, though accessible sources are still limited.^[892] The Count of Holland held a Common Council (commune concilium), which subjects could petition from at least the thirteenth century. The count acted as judge, as surviving registers attest. But the institution became increasingly professionalized. It was also distinct from the broader feudal council that was composed of vassals.^[893] Moreover, when the Estates-General emerged under the Burgundians, continuing under the Habsburgs after 1477, as we saw, they assembled the States (representatives) of all individual counties, which remained fragmented. They were exemplary of what the historian Koenigsberger called “com­posite assemblies,” agglomerations of widely varying political institutions.^[894] Dutch representatives also had imperative mandates^[895] - to the consternation of authorities.^[896] Institutional proliferation, not fusion, occurred. This is partly why, as noted already, the “Estates of the central provinces never obtained the competence to legislate” in the Burgundian-Habsburg period either - meaning that the composite Estates-General also does not qualify as a polity-wide organ of govern­ance, as defined in this analysis.^[897]

Even taxation was initially handled by the provincial Estates.^[898] The voting system at the local level procured impressive results; it provided about 80 percent of the Republic’s revenue, with Holland producing 60 percent of that.²¹³ Data suggest that this was the most impressive premodern per capita revenue extraction, exceeding England’s.²¹⁴ Such collective action was possible because of the structures of provincial collective responsibility outlined above, but it was also enhanced after the Burgundians erected “a whole hierarchy” of judicial institutions. They dispatched an itinerant Aulic Council in the fifteenth century, and “put an end to the sovereignty of customary justice in civil and feudal matters,” by harnessing the appeal process, as in France. All this flowed from the monarch’s status as “supreme judge,”^[899] with, however, more limited powers of execution than in England. The Netherlands thus also shows how radical practices at the local level do not naturally scale up to the polity level - judicial integration was key. Whether the decentralized nature of the regime also accounts for Dutch decline after the seventeenth century, as Julia Adams has argued and this account implies, can be corroborated when the political underpinnings of economic sustainability are further probed.

7.2.2.3 Swiss Cantons The Swiss cantons also appear as exceptions to this account and suggest even more strongly a bottom-up organization, as well as a capacity to survive without a unified executive. Some important qualifications must be made, however, albeit briefly. The cantons had small populations, ranging between 400,000 and 600,000 inhabitants by 1500.^[900] As argued already, coordinating small groups of people is easier compared to large populations across extended territories.

Second, they did not have a truly representative regime as defined in this account beyond the local level. The Swiss Diet, the Tagsatzung, assembled since the 1400s canton delegates to deliberate mainly on foreign policy and administration; it had only rudimentary (i.e. excep­tional) legislative and judicial duties.^[901] The confederation instead func­tioned as an alliance of semi-sovereign communes, with independent jurisdiction. Crucially, however, to the degree that it did operate as a unit, it was predicated on a key condition identified in this account and seen in both the Italian and Low Country cases: power over the most powerful. The Swiss cantons achieved “the elimination of the nobility” to a degree “found in no other region in Europe.”^[902] The corollary to this is that, as in England, both urban and rural communes had independent representation: the nobility was not able to control the countryside as in France and Castile.^[903] Military pressures seem not have been a major impetus early on, as defense expenditures only amounted to about 5 per­cent of total expenditures.²²⁰

Finally, communes attained greater independence whilst remaining under the jurisdiction of the emperor, though sources focus on their conflict not the interdependence that caused it.^[904] As in other cases, the emperor’s powers must have structured judicial relations early on. Even for the survival of the confederation into the modern period, some histor­ians argue that an external executive was necessary to suppress the canton quarrels of the 1700s, provided by French intervention.^[905] Another case that merits a full comparison, that of the early American states, also suggests the necessity of central executive power: after 1787, the attempt to build a bottom-up, decentralized union gave way to the need to install a more powerful executive, echoing the argument of this book.^[906] Even if early forms of representation emerged in a decentralized way, some level of central executive intervention was necessary at the polity level.

7.3