From Manor to City

* From manor to village to town

- Manors were fiefs of the nobility

-> sub-divided from kings to knights

-> land of loyalty

-> very hard for the king to control or milk for taxes

- kings wanted a better source of revenue

- villages on the fringes of the feudal system

-> traders and merchants don't fit feudalism

=> they aren't nobles, they don't like land

=> nobles owe them money, can't fully control them

-> king's charters for villages

=> paying for the right to have a village on the king's land

=> pay taxes

=> supply levies of troops

=> grow wealthy, expand trade and communication

- inevitable some villages grow to be towns

-> 10,000 to 30,000 people

-> relatively enormous resources

-> merchants with private armies

-> town walls, weapons, and militias make them sources of power and unrest

-> sometimes they support the kings against the nobles, sometimes the opposite

* Towns and political complexity

- The manor is a simple question of blood and power

- towns have all manner of complex issues

-> merchants richer than the nobles

-> nobles not capable of dealing with crime

-> trade, communication, and production require learning and writing

-> large numbers of poor people no longer isolated and easy to crush

-> huge supplies of money for kings, but also bankers to whom kings owe

- many towns end up as oligarchies or aristocratic republics

-> the rich and powerful run the town as burgesses, aldermen, etc.

-> blood not such an issue in power, money and influence are

-> even this level of democracy a dangerous precedent for kings

- in the stronger monarchies (France and England), cities grow as centers of royal power

- in places like the Holy Roman Empire, The Netherlands, and Italy, cities become a power unto themselves

-> the nobles as the resident army in the countryside

=> specialized fighters at the beck and call of merchant elites

-> Italy as the center of the new city-state