Sleepwalking Into A New World by Chris Wickham
The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century
An account of how twelfth-century Italian towns gradually became self-governing communes through pragmatic, piecemeal decisions by local elites rather than a planned revolution. Drawing on charters, court records, and administrative documents, it reconstructs everyday politics—dispute settlement, taxation, office-holding, and military organization—that slowly displaced older hierarchies. The narrative shows participants improvising solutions to immediate problems and only gradually realizing they had created a new political order. It offers a ground-level view of institutional innovation, social conflict, and the emergence of civic identity in a formative century.
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- Published
- 2015
- Nationality
- British
- Length
- Medium
- Pages
- 340-350
- Original Language
- English
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