A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

The Emergence of Early Modern Europe 25

Town governments were dominated by oligarchies of rich merchants, guild
masters, and property owners (in Italian towns, nobles were part of these
oligarchies). Despite the fact that many peasants still lived in towns, working
fields outside town walls during the day and returning home before the gates
slammed shut at nightfall, town and country seemed in some ways worlds
apart.

Municipal Liberties

In feudal Europe, towns stood as zones of freedom, because their residents
were not, in most cases, bound by service obligations to lords. Contempo­
raries held that “town air makes [one] free.” No town person in Western Eu­
rope could be a serf. Urban freedoms had to be obtained from lords,
however. Towns purchased charters of exemption from taxes in exchange for
payments. Urban oligarchs jealously guarded this municipal independence
against nobles and rulers eager to attain revenue and political consolidation.
In some cases, rulers actively sought alliances with towns against nobles.
Towns could also loan money to kings waging war against recalcitrant vassals
or other rulers, including popes. Where territorial rulers were weak, as in
Italy and the German states, towns obtained the greatest degree of freedom.
Towns developed less rapidly in areas where rulers and nobles exercised
strong authority.
Traditions of municipal liberties would leave a significant heritage in
Western Europe, ultimately shaping the emergence of constitutional forms
of government. Whereas social relationships in the countryside were largely
defined by personal obligations, in towns these were replaced by collective
rights through guilds and other associations. In England, northern France,
the Netherlands, Flanders, and Switzerland, urban medieval confraternities
struggled to maintain their independence from rulers and rural nobles.
Lacking the associational infrastructure of many towns in Western Europe,
however, Eastern European towns were not able to stem the tide of the
increasing power of nobles and, in the case of Russia, the tsars. As the Mus­
covite state expanded its authority, the tsars ran roughshod over urban pre­
tensions. Most towns in the East enjoyed none of the special charters of
rights that characterized towns in the West. Russian rulers considered towns
their personal property, and Russian lords demanded the service and alle­
giance of townspeople.

The Emergence of Sovereign States

Although the term “state” was not yet being used to denote a political

entity, by 1500 the largest monarchical kingdoms (see Map 1.2) were tak­

ing on some of the characteristics of the modern state. During the late fif­

teenth century, France, Spain, and England evolved into “new monarchies.”

What was “new” about them was their growing reach, an evolution begun