Geoffrey Parker's book The Military Revolution and the resulting animated debate have undoubtedly clarified the influence of technological innovation on European internal and international political structures in the Early modern age. An inescapable paradigm today, which in the empirical, mutual chase between the advances of offensive and defensive military science and practice traces the origin of profound changes in the organization of political power, as well as the motive for the adoption of increasingly complex instruments and institutions to manage the war effort, but above all the relationship between sovereign powers and their subjects. A perspective, that introduced by Michael Roberts and Geoffrey Parker, which shows a persistent vitality in today panorama of modernist historiographical studies, enriched by interdisciplinary research about imperial systems in the Early modern age, about the relationships between sovereign power, elites and commoners, about the coexistence of different powers by nature, origin and range of action within composite States, and finally about the international balances that European monarchies - engaged in a permanent competition for supremacy - aim to preserve or to break. Starting from the first half of the Sixteenth Century, therefore, political, social and military factors generated the expansion of institutional systems such as central and peripheral courts, financial and administrative bureaucracies and judicial apparatus. By no means these institutions' purpose was to ensure centralized management of prolonged conflicts - mostly costly wars of attrition, by virtue of advances in firearms and in fortifying technique -, but to aggregate and manage the contribution to the war effort of those stakeholders admitted in the sovereign's clientele: feudal families, high-ranking members of the clergy, municipalities, town patriciates, companies of financiers, merchant guilds. It was precisely the continued competition for hegemony on the continent - along with the increasing costs associated with the introduction of new offensive and defensive technologies - to encourage the European dynastic leaders to increase consensus in their respective territories and to seek the cooperation of their own subjects (and of the enemy's subjects), claiming to the sovereign power the monopoly of political opportunities and the role of internal conflicts' supreme mediator. Political opportunities - feudal jurisdictions, high ranks in the royal courts, bureaucracies and armies, benefices, legal and material support in local confrontations - granted by the sovereign to his most powerful supporters according to the same dynamics that governed at every level of society the relationship between superiors (patrons) and subordinates (clients): the exchange of favors and protection, from above, and services, from below. In the case of the sovereign patronage, the subjects closest to the throne were eminently requested to provide services useful to support the war effort: that is, the mobilization of individual and family economic resources, and of the extensive patronage networks headed by the great nobles, through which the consenus to the dynastic leadership spreaded throughout the society of the subjects up to the lowest ranks, as well as in the enemy society. In the present contribution, the political and military struggle between the Habsburgs and the Valois for hegemony on the Italian peninsula (1521-1558) will be considered as a magnifying glass on the link between technological progress and the strengthening of the involved territories' governance structures. Strengthening that in the considered period did coincide with the constant improvement of the dynastic (central and peripheral) establishments' capacity to establish profitable relations with militarily, politically, economically and socially most relevant actors.
Technological innovation and search for consensus. The Military Revolution and the necessary cooperation between sovereigns and their subjects: the Italian Wars (1521-1559).
Michele Maria Rabà
2021
Abstract
Geoffrey Parker's book The Military Revolution and the resulting animated debate have undoubtedly clarified the influence of technological innovation on European internal and international political structures in the Early modern age. An inescapable paradigm today, which in the empirical, mutual chase between the advances of offensive and defensive military science and practice traces the origin of profound changes in the organization of political power, as well as the motive for the adoption of increasingly complex instruments and institutions to manage the war effort, but above all the relationship between sovereign powers and their subjects. A perspective, that introduced by Michael Roberts and Geoffrey Parker, which shows a persistent vitality in today panorama of modernist historiographical studies, enriched by interdisciplinary research about imperial systems in the Early modern age, about the relationships between sovereign power, elites and commoners, about the coexistence of different powers by nature, origin and range of action within composite States, and finally about the international balances that European monarchies - engaged in a permanent competition for supremacy - aim to preserve or to break. Starting from the first half of the Sixteenth Century, therefore, political, social and military factors generated the expansion of institutional systems such as central and peripheral courts, financial and administrative bureaucracies and judicial apparatus. By no means these institutions' purpose was to ensure centralized management of prolonged conflicts - mostly costly wars of attrition, by virtue of advances in firearms and in fortifying technique -, but to aggregate and manage the contribution to the war effort of those stakeholders admitted in the sovereign's clientele: feudal families, high-ranking members of the clergy, municipalities, town patriciates, companies of financiers, merchant guilds. It was precisely the continued competition for hegemony on the continent - along with the increasing costs associated with the introduction of new offensive and defensive technologies - to encourage the European dynastic leaders to increase consensus in their respective territories and to seek the cooperation of their own subjects (and of the enemy's subjects), claiming to the sovereign power the monopoly of political opportunities and the role of internal conflicts' supreme mediator. Political opportunities - feudal jurisdictions, high ranks in the royal courts, bureaucracies and armies, benefices, legal and material support in local confrontations - granted by the sovereign to his most powerful supporters according to the same dynamics that governed at every level of society the relationship between superiors (patrons) and subordinates (clients): the exchange of favors and protection, from above, and services, from below. In the case of the sovereign patronage, the subjects closest to the throne were eminently requested to provide services useful to support the war effort: that is, the mobilization of individual and family economic resources, and of the extensive patronage networks headed by the great nobles, through which the consenus to the dynastic leadership spreaded throughout the society of the subjects up to the lowest ranks, as well as in the enemy society. In the present contribution, the political and military struggle between the Habsburgs and the Valois for hegemony on the Italian peninsula (1521-1558) will be considered as a magnifying glass on the link between technological progress and the strengthening of the involved territories' governance structures. Strengthening that in the considered period did coincide with the constant improvement of the dynastic (central and peripheral) establishments' capacity to establish profitable relations with militarily, politically, economically and socially most relevant actors.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
