31. Federico Chabod, Scritti sul Rinascimento, Turin 1967, p. 617. The Milanese functionaries refused the demand of their governor: but their homologues elsewhere might not have been so resolute.
32. Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Mediaeval West, p. 333.
33. B. F. Porshnev, Les Soulèvements Populaires en France de 1623 à 1648, Paris 1965, pp. 395–6.
34. Hecksher argued that the object of mercantilism was to increase the ‘power of the State’ rather than the ‘wealth of nations’, and that this meant a subordination, in Bacon’s words, of ‘considerations of plenty’ to ‘considerations of power’ (Bacon praised Henry VII for having restricted wine imports to English ships on these grounds). Viner, in an effective reply, had no difficulty in showing that most mercantilist writers on the contrary gave equal emphasis to both, and believed the two to be compatible. Tower versus Plenty as Objectives of Foreign Policy in the 17th and 18th Centuries’, World Politics, I, No. I, 1948, now reprinted in D. C. Coleman (ed.), Revisions in Mercantilism, London 1969, pp. 61–91. At the same time, Viner plainly underestimated the difference between mercantilist theory and practice, and those of the laissez-faire which followed it. In fact, both Hecksher and Viner in different ways miss the essential point, which is the indistinction of economy and polity in the transitional epoch which produced mercantilist theories. Dispute as to whether either of the two had ‘primacy’ over the other is an anachronism, because there was no such rigid separation of them in practice until the advent of laissez-faire.
35. E. Silberner, La Guerre dans La Pensée Economique du XVIe au XVIIIe Siècle, Paris 1939, pp. 7–122.
36. Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV et Vingt Millions de Français, Paris 1966, p. 95.
37. B. F. Porshnev, ‘Les Rapports Politiques de l’Europe Occidentale et de l’Europe Orientale a l’Epoque de la Guerre de Trente Ans’, XIe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, Uppsala 1960, p. 161: an extremely speculative foray into the Thirty Years War, that is a good example of Porshnev’s strengths and weaknesses. Contrary to the intimations of his Western colleagues, it is not a rigid ‘dogmatism’ that is his major failing, but an over-fertile ‘ingenuity’ not always adequately restrained by the discipline of evidence; yet the same trait is in another respect what makes him an original and imaginative historian. The brief suggestions at the end of his essay on the concept of ‘an international state system’ are well-taken.
38. Engels liked to cite the example of Burgundy: ‘Charles the Bold, for example, was the feoffee of the Emperor for a part of his lands, and the feoffee of the French king for another part of them; on the other hand, the King of France, his feoffor, was at the same time the feoffee of Charles the Bold, his own vassal, for certain regions’. See his important manuscript, posthumously entitled Uber den Verfall des Feudalismus und das Aufkommen der Bourgeoisie, in Werke, Bd 21, p. 396.
39. For this whole development of the new diplomacy in early modern Europe, see Garrett Mattingly’s great work, Renaissance Diplomacy, London 1955, passim. The quotation from Barbaro is cited on p. 109.
40. The rural and urban masses themselves, of course, evinced spontaneous forms of xenophobia: but this traditional negative reaction to alien communities was quite distinct from the positive national identification that started to emerge within literate bourgeois milieux in the early modern epoch. The fusion of the two could, in crisis situations, produce patriotic outbursts from below of an uncontrolled and seditious character: the Comuneros in Spain or the League in France.
41. Cited by Gerald Graham, The Politics of Naval Supremacy, Cambridge 1965, p. 17.
Class and State: Problems of Periodization
The typical institutional complex of the Absolutist State in the West has now been outlined. It remains to sketch very briefly some aspects of the trajectory of this historical form, which naturally underwent significant modifications in the three or more centuries of its existence. At the same time, it is necessary to give some account of the relationship between the noble class and Absolutism, because nothing could be less justified than to assume that this was an unproblematic one of natural harmony from the start. On the contrary, it may be argued that the real periodization of Absolutism in the West is at bottom to be found precisely in the changing rapport between the nobility and the monarchy, and the multiple attendant political shifts which were correlated with it. At any rate, a provisional periodization of the State and an attempt to trace the relationship of the dominant class to it, will be proposed below.
The mediaeval monarchies, as we have seen, were an unstable amalgam of feudal suzerains and anointed kings. The extraordinary regalian rights of the latter function were, of course, a necessary counterweight against the structural weakness and limitations of the former: the contradiction between these two alternate principles of royalty was the central tension of the feudal State in the Middle Ages. The role of the feudal suzerain at the summit of a vassal hierarchy was ultimately the dominant component of this monarchical model, as the retrospective light shed on it by the contrasting structure of Absolutism was to show. This role dictated very narrow limits to the economic base of monarchy in the early mediaeval period. In effect, the feudal ruler of this epoch had to raise his revenues primarily from his own estates, in his capacity as a particular landlord. The dues from his demesne would initially be delivered in kind, and then increasingly in cash.1 In addition to this income, he would normally enjoy certain financial privileges from his territorial lordship: above all, feudal ‘incidences’ and special ‘aids’ from his vassals, tied to investiture in their fiefs, plus seigneurial tolls exacted on markets or trade-routes, plus emergency levies from the Church, plus the profits of royal justice in the forms of fines and confiscations. Naturally, these fragmented and restricted forms of revenue were soon inadequate even for the exiguous governmental duties characteristic of the mediaeval polity. Recourse could be had, of course, to credit from merchants and bankers in the towns, who controlled relatively large reserves of liquid capital: this was the earliest and most widespread expedient of feudal monarchs when confronted with shortage of income for the conduct of affairs of State. But borrowing only postponed the problem, since bankers normally demanded secure pledges from future royal income against their loans.
The pressing and permanent need to acquire substantial sums outside the range of their traditional revenues thus led virtually all mediaeval monarchies to summon the ‘Estates’ of their realm from time to time, in order to raise taxes. These Estates became increasingly frequent and prominent from the 13th century onwards in Western Europe, when the tasks of feudal government had become more complex and the scale of finance involved in them correspondingly demanding.2 They nowhere acquired a regular basis of recall, independent of the will of the ruler, and hence their periodicity varied enormously from country to country, and within countries. However, these institutions should not be regarded as contingent or extrinsic growths on the mediaeval body politic. On the contrary, they constituted an intermittent mechanism that was an inevitable consequence of the structure of the early feudal State as such. For precisely because the political and economic orders were fused in a chain of personal obligations and dues, there was never any legal basis for general economic levies by the monarch outside the hierarchy of mediate sovereignties. In fact, it is striking that the very idea of universal taxation – so central to the whole edifice of the Roman Empire – lapsed altogether during the Dark Ages.3 Thus no feudal king could decree imposts at will. Every ruler had to obtain the ‘consent’ of specially assembled bodies – Estates – for major taxation, under the rubric of the legal principle quod omnes tangit.4 It is significant that most of the direct general taxes which were slowly introduced into Western Europe, subject to the assent of mediaeval parliaments, had been initially pioneered in Italy, where the initial feudal synthesis was most tilted towards the Roman and urban heritage. Not only did the Church levy general taxation on the faithful for the Crusades; municipal governments – compact councils