Creating the Florentine State
Peasants and Rebellion, 1348–1434

A comprehensive approach to the political history of the Renaissance, examining the mountainous periphery of the Florentine state.

Samuel K. Cohn, Jr (Author)

9780521663373, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 December 1999

324 pages, 5 maps 5 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.65 kg

Review of the hardback: 'By challenging so many themes in the current orthodoxy, Professor Cohn's book invites a fundamental reconsideration of the historiography on the evolution of the Florentine 'Renaissance' … a significant contribution to the literature of Florentine (and Italian) state-building in the late medieval and Renaissance era.' Professor Gene Brucker, University of California, Berkeley

This book offers a comprehensive approach to the study of the political history of the Renaissance: its analysis of government is embedded in the context of geography and social conflict. Instead of the usual institutional history, it examines the Florentine state from the mountainous periphery - a periphery both of geography and class - where Florence met its most strenuous opposition to territorial incorporation. Yet, far from being acted upon, Florence's highlanders were instrumental in changing the attitudes of the Florentine ruling class: the city began to see its own self-interest as intertwined with that of its region and the welfare of its rural subjects at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Contemporaries either remained silent or purposely obscured the reasons for this change, which rested on widespread and successful peasant uprisings across the mountainous periphery of the Florentine state, hitherto unrecorded by historians.

Introduction
Part I. Culture, Demography, and Fiscality: 1. Networks of culture and the mountains
2. Mountain civilization and fiscality, 1393
3. Fiscality and change, 1355–1487
Part II. Peasant Protest in the Mountains: Three Views: 4. Peasant insurrection in the mountains: the chroniclers' view
5. Peasant insurrection in the mountains as seen in the criminal records
6. Rebellion as seen from the provvisioni
Part III. Governmental Clemency and the Hinterland: 7. Florentine peasant petitions: an institutional perspective
8. The reasons for assistance
9. What the peasants won
Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]