233. Formation of Cities

Link to Table of Contents

Pirenne continued 

A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War

It is hardly surprising that I keep going back and forth between Pirenne and Braudel, as Pirenne influenced the Annales School of social history. According to Wiki, Pirenne's ideas about the linked rise of the Bourgeoisie and of cities, has survived best when it comes to his academic reputation today. 

What I think is interesting is that I remembered Pirenne more than Braudel. (At least I think this is true. I still haven't found other parts of what I remember about the markets, so it may have been a mix of the two authors.) I suspect one reason for my preference for Pirenne is that his books are based on his lectures. They are a literary version of an oral tradition. No one would sit through a lecture of Capitalism and Material Life. Even I would consider that cruel and unusual punishment. 

I'm going to continue and read a chapter or two about cities, but I may try to get my hands on a copy of Pirenne's Medieval Cities. The final chapters of this book are about the Renaissance and Reformation, extending into the middle of the 16th century. That may be worth a quick re-read.

I thought I could just skim the chapter on cities... wrong.

The Formation of the Cities
I. The Episcopal "Cities" and Fortresses
p215 A society in which the population lives by the soil which it exploits, and whose produce it consumes on the spot, cannot give rise to important agglomerations of human beings; each inhabitant being tied, by the necessities of life, to the soil which he cultivates. Commerce, on the other hand, necessarily involves the formation of centres in which it obtains its supplies and from which it sends them forth into the outer world. The natural result of importation and exportation is the formation in the social body of what might be called nodes of transit. In Western Europe, in the 10th and 11th centuries, their appearance was contemporaneous with the renewal of urban life.

...almost invariably these sites were already inhabited when the afflux of merchants restored them to renewed activity. Some -- and this was the case in Italy, Spain, and Gaul [within the old Roman Empire] -- were already occupied by an episcopal "city"; others -- for example in the Low Countries and... [outside the borders of the Roman Empire] were already the site of a bourg -- that is a fortress... But neither the "cities" nor the bourgs presented the faintest trace of urban life... they contained nothing that resembled a bourgeoisie...

p216 It was in the "cities" of Northern Italy and Provence... and in the bourgs of the Flemish region, that the first merchant colonies were established... in the 10th century... ...in the 11th century... in the "city" as in the bourg, the merchant colony was beginning to play the leading part. The immigrants dominated the old inhabitants just as the commercial life of the place dominated the old agricultural life, and the opposition of these two interests gave rise to conflicts and necessitated expedients by force of which... a new order of things was elaborated.

p217 If we are to understand this phenomenon of the formation of the middle classes, a development so pregnant with consequences, we must try to realize clearly the full extent of the contrast which existed... between the old population and the new. The old population, consisting of clergy, knights, and serfs, lived by the soil, the lower class working for the upper classes, who, from the economic point of view, were consumers who produced nothing...

In this tiny, changeless world the arrival of the merchants suddenly disarranged all the habits of life, and produced, in every domain, a veritable revolution. To tell the truth, they were intruders, and the traditional order could find no place for them. In the midst of these people who lived by the soil, and whose families were maintained by labors which were always the same, and revenues that did not vary, they seemed in some way scandalous, being as they were without roots in the soil, and because of the strange and restless nature of their way of life. With them came not only the spirit of gain and of enterprise, but also the free laborer, the man of independent trade, detached alike from the soil and from the authority of the seigneur: and above all, the circulation of money.

p218 It was not only the work of the merchant that was free: by a no less astonishing innovation, his person also was free. But what could anyone really know concerning the legal status of these newcomers, whom no one had ever seen before? Very probably the majority of them were the children of serfs, but no one knew this for certain, and as their condition of servage could not be presumed, they had of necessity to be treated as free men. It was a curious result of their social condition that these forebears of the future bourgeoisie did not have to demand their liberty. It came to them quite naturally; it existed as a fact even before it was recognized as a right.

This passivity of the Medieval Establishment is a little surprising. And returning for a moment to Pirenne's assumptions about origin of these Free Men, wouldn't it make at least as much sense to think that some at least of them were the superfluous sons of the gentry? Wouldn't that better explain why the Establishment let them be? But then they didn't just let them be, they sold or rented accommodations in these proto-cities where transactions like this must have been an unusual thing. Yes, they had ready cash, but in the kind of stable and conservative local economy Pirenne has described, housing these "new men" would require some local initiative (enterprise) or a profound need for cash.

All this would make more sense if these "new men" were, at least assumed to be, the sons (if only the natural sons) of the gentry. This would not have upset the proprieties of the day. And who did own the land the cities grew onto?

To these characteristics of the merchant colony... another must be added: the rapidity of its growth. It presently exercised, upon the surrounding region, an attraction compatible to that which the modern factory exercises over the rural population. By the lure of gain, it awakened the spirit of enterprise and adventure that lay dormant in the hearts of the domainal serfs, and it attracted fresh recruits from all directions... the merchant colony... provided employment for a host of workers -- boatmen, carters, lumpers, etc. At the same time artisans of every kind came to settle in the town. Some of them -- bakers, brewers, shoemakers -- found an assured livelihood there, thanks to the constant increase of the population. Others worked up the raw materials imported by the merchants, and the wares which they produced swelled the export trade. In this way industry took its place beside commerce. By the end of the 11th century, in Flanders, the weavers of woolen stuffs were beginning to flock from the country into the towns, and the Flemish cloth trade, being thus centralized under the direction of the merchants, became what it was to remain until the end of the Middle Ages, the most flourishing industry in Europe.

...neither the ancient "cities" nor the ancient bourgs could contain within the narrow circumference of their walls the increasing influx of these newcomers. They were forced to settle outside the gates... Like the original "city" or bourg, the new town was itself a fortress: it was called "nouveau-bourg" or "faubourg" -- that is to say, outer fortress, for which reason its inhabitants were known, from the beginning of the 11th century, by the name bourgeois. The bourgeoisie underwent the same development as the nobility in this medieval society, which enjoyed, thanks to the abstention of the State, [?] the advantage of complete plasticity. Before long its social function had transformed it into a juridical class. It is obvious that the law and administrative measures then in force, which had come into existence in the heart of a purely agricultural society, could no longer suffice for the needs of a merchant population. The formalistic apparatus of legal procedure, with its primitive means of proof, bailment, and seizure, had to give way to simpler and more expeditious rules. The judicial duel [Blogger won't let me make a link today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat], that ultima ratio of the litigants, appeared to the merchants the very negation of justice. To ensure the maintenance of order in their faubourg, which was swarming with adventurers and jailbirds of every kind, such as had hitherto been unknown in the tranquil environment of the ancient Bourg or "city," they demanded that the ancient system of fines and compositions should be replaced by punishments capable of inspiring a salutary terror: hanging, mutilation of every kind, [I wonder if Foucault wrote about this?] and the putting out of the eyes. They protested against the prestations in kind ["feudal law : a rent, tax, or due paid in kind or in services"] which the collectors of tolls demanded before they would pass the merchandise that the merchants were exporting or importing. If it happened that one of their number was recognized as a serf, they would not suffer his seigneur to reclaim him. As for their children, whose mothers were necessarily almost always of servile condition, they refused to admit that such offspring should be regarded as servile. Thus the encounter of these new men with the ancient society resulted in all sorts of clashes and conflicts, due to the opposition of the domainal law and the commercial law, of exchange in kind and exchange for monetary payment, of servitude and liberty.

p220 Naturally, the social authorities did not accept the claims of the nascent bourgeoisie without resistance. As always, they endeavored first of all to conserve the established order of things: this is to say, to impose it upon these merchants, although it was in absolute opposition to their condition of life: and as always, their conduct was inspired as much by good faith as by personal interest. It is evident that it took the princes a long time to understand the necessity of modifying, for the merchant population, the authoritarian and patriarchial regime which they had hitherto applied to their serfs. The ecclesiastical princes especially displayed, in the beginning, a very marked hostility. To them it seemed that commerce endangered the salvation of the soul, and they regarded with mistrust, as a criminal derogation from obedience, all these innovations whose contagion was spreading from day to day. Their resistance inevitably led to revolts. In Italy and the Low Countries, and on the banks of the Rhine, the War of Investitures provided the bourgeois with an occasion or a pretext for rebellion against their bishops; here in the name of the Pope, and there in that of the Emperor. The first commune of which history makes mention, that of Cambrai, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrai] in 1077, was sworn by the people, led by the merchants, against the Imperialist prelate of the city. 

We just this week marked the historic Battle of Cambrai during the Great War. The first coordinated experiment in armored warfare by the British Army -- and successfully countered by the German Army.

Dreams

This morning (last night) our landfill and recycling were picked up. This means that I was sleeping "on alert." I woke at 5:15 with the first noises out on Powell and went out to investigate. I awoke again around 5:30 when our usual scavenger was going through the toters in our alley. I woke again at 6:00 to haul up our recycling toter and to clean up most of the mess the scavenger made of my neighbor's trash. And I woke around 7:00 when the trash was collected, and then hauled our toters back down into the laundry room. 

All this to say that my sleep -- and dreams -- were often interrupted which caused me to recall them more than normal. The first dream I remember I was driving by a cluster of four small houses I had seen articles or videos about. They were at the end of a long road on the edge of the ocean. I was surprised, cruising by, to see actual people lounging about in the two that were most open to view. I was both pleased to see that people were actually enjoying these curious houses -- they seemed to be either reading or napping or just lounging about like dogs -- but also afraid I was being intrusive, so I headed back the way I must have come. A couple hundred yards down the road, however, I came to the point where the road cascaded down from the ridge above. There was the merest hint of a road. Or half a road as most of the roadway had eroded away. Since there were no other cars down there, I concluded that it was somehow possible to defy the laws of physics and race up the impossible road. Unfortunately, again, my car was both under-powered and running poorly. I was trying to get in position to try to get up the slope when I segued into the next dream. 

I awoke from that dream walking down a street in what I recognized as the Mission district here in SF, though I saw nothing to give me a specific street or block. I think I was carrying laundry. I didn't think I had blacked out because I remembered the dream so clearly (do people with multiple personalities dream when they aren't in control? I think not.) I was concerned that I had been sleep walking to this random point in the city. As I walked along trying to get oriented, a crazy person cruised by making me feel vulnerable since my hands were full. In response (?) I tried to pull the car I was now in (same under-powered beast) out across and into traffic. Since in my dreams my brakes and transmission never work properly, I ended up rolling helplessly into an oncoming car.

Next scene, I am on a gurney in a hospital
(?) corridor. I seem to be paralyzed. The hospital person is saying, "There's one more thing we can try" when that dream ends.

The next scene, and I'm pretty sure this was after one of the interruptions listed above, I am a passenger in a car driven by my father. I don't know what we are talking about, but, when we come to a cross street, the driver appears not to notice the car ahead of us and just plows into it full speed. I am unhurt. There was a whole other, confused, section after the second accident, and that I have lost. Which is too bad as there was something in there that I found interesting. I assumed since I was remembering all this earlier stuff, I would retain the end as well. Wrong.

All four settings were completely different. In two I was by myself. In two I was with a number of other people. None of it was particularly disturbing in the context of the dream.

I don't understand why I couldn't have dreamed that I was beating in the head of our annoying scavenger with a rock. That would seem to be both possible and a relatively healthy way to work out stress and aggravation.