The City-State in Europe, 1000-1600: Hinterland, Territory, Region

This book provides the first comprehensive study of city‐states in medieval Europe for more than a century. Rather than highlighting the political and cultural achievements of city‐states, above all those of central and northern Italy, it offers a detailed comparison of city‐states in an urban belt which spanned the Alps from Italy to Switzerland, Germany, and the Low Countries, focusing on their territorial expansion: Why, how, and with what consequences did cities as communal polities succeed (or fail) in their efforts to construct landed territories and so become sovereign states in their own right. For the first time there is full coverage of the Swiss city‐states and the imperial cities of Germany. In contrast to the typologies of city‐states put forward by social and political scientists the study argues that city‐states were not a spent force in early modern Europe, but survived by transformation and adaption. Furthermore, it suggests that a historical framework for the city‐state which embraces both time and space should be sought in a regional approach which does not treat city‐states in isolation but within their wider geopolitical context.