The Pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

The Business of War in Europe, 1000–1600 79

Put differently, efficient tax collection, debt-funding, and skilled,
professional military management kept peace at home, and exported
the uncertainties of organized violence to the realm of foreign affairs,
diplomacy, and war. States that lagged in developing an efficient inter­
nal administration of armed force, like Florence and Genoa, continued
to experience sporadic outbreaks of civil violence. Venice, the most
successful innovator in the management of armed force, entirely
escaped domestic upheavals, though it barely survived external attacks
provoked by the Republic’s long series of diplomatic and military
successes on Italian soil.

The Gunpowder Revolution

and the Rise of Atlantic Europe

The Italian state system as a whole (together with the economic rela­
tionships that concentrated financial resources so remarkably in a few
Italian cities) was vulnerable to two different, yet interconnected, pro­
cesses of change. First the most obvious: political rivalries and diplo­
matic alliances among competing states could not be confined to the
Italian peninsula itself. When newly consolidated monarchies, com­
manding comparatively vast territories, chose to intervene in Italian
affairs, the sovereignty of mere city-states, however skillfully man­
aged, could not permanently be maintained. This was signaled towards
the close of the fifteenth century, when first the Ottoman Empire
(1480) and then France (1494) dispatched powerful expeditionary
forces to Italian soil. Though both soon withdrew, divided Italy’s in­
ability to check massive outside intervention became clear to all con­
cerned. In the next century the peninsula accordingly became a
theater of war where foreign powers competed for control of Italians’
superior wealth and skill.
The second source of instability was technological. Commercializa­
tion of military service depended upon, and simultaneously helped to
sustain, the commercialization of weapons’ manufacture and supply.
After all, a soldier without appropriate arms was of little value,
whereas an armed man might sell his services at a price related to the
kind of arms he possessed and the skill with which he could use them.
Easy and open access to arms was therefore a sine qua non of merce­
nary war.
Ordinary long-distance trade also depended upon free access to
weapons, for an unarmed ship or caravan could not expect to arrive
safely at its destination. Indeed, successful trade across political fron­