The very mountainous nature of Italy's landscape was a barrier to effective inter-city communication. Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel have argued that geography determined the history of the region other scholars emphasize the absence of central political structures. The Peninsula was a melange of political and cultural elements, not a unified state. Difference from northern Europe īetween the 12th and 13th centuries, Italy was vastly different from feudal Europe north of the Alps. Around 1100, Genoa, Pisa and Ancona emerged as independent maritime republics too: trade, shipbuilding and banking helped support their powerful navies in the Mediterranean in those medieval centuries. Maritime republics Īmalfi, Gaeta and Venice in the 11th century were already autonomous maritime republics. Other independent cities were Bari and Trani, which in 1130 were united in the newly created Norman Kingdom of Sicily. South of Rome and the Papal States were the duchies of Salerno, Amalfi, Duchy of Naples and Duchy of Gaeta. Other city-states were associated to these "commune" cities, like Genoa, Turin and, in central Italy, the city states of Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Ancona, Città di Castello, Perugia, Assisi among others. The Lombard League was an alliance that included at its apex most of the cities of northern Italy including Milan, Piacenza, Cremona, Mantua, Crema, Bergamo, Brescia, Bologna, Padua, Treviso, Vicenza, Verona, Lodi, Reggio Emilia and Parma, although its membership changed through time. The other early Italian city-states to appear in northern and central Italy arose as a result of a struggle to gain greater autonomy during the rule of the Holy Roman Empire. The Duchy of Spoleto and the Duchy of Benevento were under Lombard control. Some feudal lords existed with a servile labour force and huge tracts of land, but by the 11th century, many cities, including Venice, Milan, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Lucca, Cremona, Siena, Città di Castello, Perugia, and many others, had become large trading metropoles, able to obtain independence from their formal sovereigns.įlorence was one of the most important Italian city-statesĪmong the earliest city-states of Italy, that already started to emerge in the 7th century, were the Duchy of Naples, Duchy of Amalfi, Gaeta and the Republic of Venice which, although nominally under Byzantine control, were effectively independent. The republican institutions of Rome had also survived. Many of these cities were survivors of earlier Etruscan, Umbrian and Roman towns which had existed within the Roman Empire. The Italian city-states were numerous political and independent territorial entities that existed in the Italian Peninsula from the beginning of the Middle Ages until the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, which took place in 1861.Īfter the fall of the Western Roman Empire, urban settlements in Italy generally enjoyed a greater continuity than settlements in western Europe. ( August 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. This article possibly contains original research.
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