The City: A Global History (Modern Library Chronicles Series Book 21) by Joel Kotkin Page A
Authors: Joel Kotkin
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intolerance and violence toward strangers, Venice offered foreigners a “haven of comparative security.” 17 Merchants from Germany, Jews and Greek Christians from the Levant, and other outsiders crowded Venice’s streets, bringing goods, ideas, and techniques to the city. 18
FLORENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN URBAN POLITICS
The other Italian cities vied with Venice in the competition for money, talent, and industrial supremacy. Florence challenged Venetian supremacy in everything from banking to the textile trade. The Genoese battled for control of Mediterranean commerce. Smaller cities such as Prato concentrated on dominating specific industrial niches. 19
The city-states were governed in many ways, more often than not despotically. Rival factions among the guilds, merchants, aristocrats, and clergy vied for control of the cities, often overturning one another with frequency. Yet the break with imperial and ecclesiastical traditions was clear; once again the city remained the supreme value, the basis for all political decisions. Regulations, particularly in reference to commerce, were designed for the economic benefit of the city, or its most powerful citizens, even if they violated traditional concepts of canon law. 20
In this often contentious setting, urban politics of a distinctly modern type now arose. The Medicis of Florence can be seen as precursors of modern urban political bosses. Their power rested largely on their ability to deliver largesse to their factions and the populace at large. They were acutely opportunistic: The Medicis’ primary goal was not the propagation of faith or even the building of a great empire, but achieving for themselves and their city the highest possible level of material wealth.
Throughout northern Italy, urbanites now began to experience a level of affluence that by some modern estimates exceeded that of classical Rome. 21 Niccolò de Rossi, a nobleman studying law in Bologna in the fourteenth century, captured the frankly materialistic spirit of the times:
Money makes the man,
Money makes the stupid pass for bright,
Money buys the treasury of sins,
Money shows. 22
IMPERIAL CITIES OVERCOME THE CITY-STATES
Such cynicism revealed what was becoming a critical weakness of the Italian city-states. As they grew more affluent, the Italian cities gradually lost the internal cohesion and intense civic spirit that had undergirded their rise. Having cut themselves off from the ecclesiastical orientation of their medieval past, they also began to lose their classical sense of virtue and moral cohesion. “Blind cupidity,” warned Dante early in the fourteenth century, would doom them:
The new people and sudden gains have begot in Thee, Florence, arrogance and excess so that Thou weepest for it! 23
By Dante’s time, many prominent Florentines, Venetians, and Genoese inherited most of their wealth from previous generations. Seeking higher returns, and contemptuous of work, they spent their fortunes either on their pastoral estates or in ventures outside the city. 24 As capital flowed elsewhere, formerly comfortable artisans descended into a growing propertyless proletariat. The old guild structure buckled further as the remaining industrialists farmed out their work to unorganized peasants in the countryside or to other countries. 25
These internal problems weakened the city-states just as they faced the revival of new imperial centers that were increasingly stirred by strong nationalistic sentiments. By the 1600s, these cities—London, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Vienna—increasingly challenged the supremacy of the city-states. Other, more modest capitals such as Berlin, 26 Copenhagen, and Warsaw also began to achieve significant size. 27
Like the Sumerian, Phoenician, and Greek city-states before them, Italy’s independent municipalities, particularly as they lost their moral cohesion, could not compete alone against urban centers drawing on broader human and
FLORENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN URBAN POLITICS
The other Italian cities vied with Venice in the competition for money, talent, and industrial supremacy. Florence challenged Venetian supremacy in everything from banking to the textile trade. The Genoese battled for control of Mediterranean commerce. Smaller cities such as Prato concentrated on dominating specific industrial niches. 19
The city-states were governed in many ways, more often than not despotically. Rival factions among the guilds, merchants, aristocrats, and clergy vied for control of the cities, often overturning one another with frequency. Yet the break with imperial and ecclesiastical traditions was clear; once again the city remained the supreme value, the basis for all political decisions. Regulations, particularly in reference to commerce, were designed for the economic benefit of the city, or its most powerful citizens, even if they violated traditional concepts of canon law. 20
In this often contentious setting, urban politics of a distinctly modern type now arose. The Medicis of Florence can be seen as precursors of modern urban political bosses. Their power rested largely on their ability to deliver largesse to their factions and the populace at large. They were acutely opportunistic: The Medicis’ primary goal was not the propagation of faith or even the building of a great empire, but achieving for themselves and their city the highest possible level of material wealth.
Throughout northern Italy, urbanites now began to experience a level of affluence that by some modern estimates exceeded that of classical Rome. 21 Niccolò de Rossi, a nobleman studying law in Bologna in the fourteenth century, captured the frankly materialistic spirit of the times:
Money makes the man,
Money makes the stupid pass for bright,
Money buys the treasury of sins,
Money shows. 22
IMPERIAL CITIES OVERCOME THE CITY-STATES
Such cynicism revealed what was becoming a critical weakness of the Italian city-states. As they grew more affluent, the Italian cities gradually lost the internal cohesion and intense civic spirit that had undergirded their rise. Having cut themselves off from the ecclesiastical orientation of their medieval past, they also began to lose their classical sense of virtue and moral cohesion. “Blind cupidity,” warned Dante early in the fourteenth century, would doom them:
The new people and sudden gains have begot in Thee, Florence, arrogance and excess so that Thou weepest for it! 23
By Dante’s time, many prominent Florentines, Venetians, and Genoese inherited most of their wealth from previous generations. Seeking higher returns, and contemptuous of work, they spent their fortunes either on their pastoral estates or in ventures outside the city. 24 As capital flowed elsewhere, formerly comfortable artisans descended into a growing propertyless proletariat. The old guild structure buckled further as the remaining industrialists farmed out their work to unorganized peasants in the countryside or to other countries. 25
These internal problems weakened the city-states just as they faced the revival of new imperial centers that were increasingly stirred by strong nationalistic sentiments. By the 1600s, these cities—London, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Vienna—increasingly challenged the supremacy of the city-states. Other, more modest capitals such as Berlin, 26 Copenhagen, and Warsaw also began to achieve significant size. 27
Like the Sumerian, Phoenician, and Greek city-states before them, Italy’s independent municipalities, particularly as they lost their moral cohesion, could not compete alone against urban centers drawing on broader human and
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