Creating the Florentine State: Peasants and Rebellion, 1348–1434

This book offers a new 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.

Table of Contents:
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.

Review :
From the hardback review: 'Rebellious mountain peasants as founders of Medici Florence? That is the contention of this remarkable piece of 'history from below', which is also a major contribution to the debate on state formation and the future of social history.' E. J. Hobsbawm, Emeritus, University of London From the hardback review: 'This original and exciting book opens new questions and will give rise to valuable scholarship. Based on solid archival research, it approaches the Florentine state in an original and effective way and deals imaginatively with an important subject.' William M. Bowsky, University of California, Davis From the hardback review: '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