TOM SCOTT. The City-State in Europe, 1000-1600

This is a synthesis of a topic that has occupied historians for generations. An introductory chapter on urban Europe around 1000 is followed by the rise of the Italian communes (1000–1150) and cities and their adversaries (1150–1300), where the focus expands to include northern Europe. The core of Tom Scott's discussion is city-states at the crossroads (1300–1450), to which he devotes separate chapters on north and south. A brief chapter on survival and transformation (1450–1600) is followed by a conclusion that discusses and rejects models and typologies constructed by sociologists, political scientists, and economists. Scott sees city-states evolving in response to challenges from local situations, not with a teleology that sees them as forerunners of the modern state or in terms of their cultural significance. Providing a wealth of detail on each city discussed, he asks why cities in a broad region extending from central and northern Italy to Germany and the Low Countries established territories over which they exercised control by economic and legal means that varied both between cities and within the same city-state. Scott does not consider seriously why few cities outside these areas developed territories, but he does note that at Cologne and Augsburg the central city gained regional domination without ever constituting a formal “territory” in legal subjection to the city.

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