Let's work those history muscles and see if we can nail it down to at least a specific decade while still trying to stay on the right side of the evolutionary theory literature
Let's work those history muscles and see if we can nail it down to at least a specific decade while still trying to stay on the right side of the evolutionary theory literature
I would argue the Italian city-states during the Renaissance were more or less capitalist. They represented an extremely early form of capitalism, pre-industrial capitalism and pre-mercantile capitalism. And like the many inane arguments surrounding whether China is socialist or not, the same could be said for these Italian city-states, endless arguments over whether they are capitalist or proto-capitalist or capitalist with feudal characteristics or feudal with capitalist characteristics. Here is my argument:
The source of power for all feudal states is territory and land. It is through land that they can support a large peasant population via agriculture. A large population means feudal lords can draw upon a large labor force to maintain public works and infrastructural projects through corvee labor. Peasants didn't pay taxes by giving their single gold coin to the tax collector, at least not in societies where feudalism was at its peak. They fulfilled their feudal obligations through tax-in-kind and annual corvee labor instead. A large population also meant the potential to conscript a large feudal army. But a cursory glance at Italian city-states like the Republic of Venice shows they didn't have the landmass to justify their status as Great Powers. In contrast to what you would expect from feudal states but perfectly in line with capitalist states, their power and wealth was accumulated through trade, not through land.
The Renaissance as an intellectual movement was anti-feudal, and part of the reason why there was renewed fascination with ancient Greek and Roman culture was because they represented a form of culture that wasn't feudal by virtue of pre-existing feudalism. It's similar to how modern trad-caths cling to Catholicism due to it being illiberal by virtue of it being feudal. Ideology springs forth from a material base, so the reason why the Renaissance was anti-feudal was because the material base in which it sprang from wasn't feudal. At the height of feudal hegemony and feudal realism, the ancient Greeks and Romans were seen as a bunch of pagans whose pagan un-Christian and un-feudal empires were destined to crumble away and be replaced by godly feudal kingdoms where everyone understood their feudal obligations within the feudal hierarchy. The feudal realism bubble popped in those (proto) capitalist Italian city-states, which meant a new intellectual movement that opposed feudalism, even if unconsciously, could be born. The Renaissance would pave the way for the Reformation, which would then pave the way for the Enlightenment.
I know that many of the Italian city states like Venice, Genoa, Florence were oligarchical republics unlike the monarchies surrounding them. Would it be fair to say they were similar to, if not an example of, a DotB?
From quickly scanning Wikipedia articles, their governments seem to have a bizarre mixture of feudal and liberal elements. For example, the Venetian doge was styled similar to a monarch, but he was also an elected official and had increasingly diminished political power. They had a legislative body that was filled with oligarchs, but the oligarchs then conspired to make the legislative body de facto hereditary, turning themselves into a form of aristocracy. Overall, they feel like republics with feudal characteristics.
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