La citta dei crucci: Fazioni e clientele in uno stato repubblicano del '400 (review)

Connell's book traces the development of the Florentine territorial state during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by focusing on Pistoia, a provincial town on the outskirt of Florence. Pistoia was ridden by factional strife between two powerful local families for most of the medieval time. In addition to examining factionalism within the town, Connell's study looks at clientelism between Florence, the capital city, and Pistoia. Placing both factionalism and clientelism within a broader sociopolitical context, the author demonstrates how power was exercised in the new territorial state. According to Connell, the relationship between the Florentine government and Pistoia was punctuated by three main phases. In the first phase, which ended in 1351, Pistoia called in a Florentine officer (Podestà) in the hope of solving its persistent state of civil war. During the following fifty years, Florentine intervention into the municipal administration increased and by 1401, Pistoia was formally subjected to Florence. What happened during the fifteenth century until the formal establishment of the Medici Regime in the 1530s is the main focus of Connell's book.

The study of the formation of territorial and national states has occupied scholars for a long time. Traditionally, as Connell argues, most studies have examined the fiscal, economic, and demographic development of the growing state and have highlighted the Florentine government's centralizing tendency. Contrary to well-established interpret- ations, according to Connell, Florentine domination of Pistoia did not result in an increased centralization of administrative structures and subordination of local autonomies to central powers. Connell shows how, by the late fifteenth century, the Pistoia patriciates achieved increased autonomy at the local level. As evidence of this trend, Connell underlines Pistoia's independence from many of the new offices traditionally associated with the process of centralization, such as the Cinque Conservatori del Dominio. Other privileges gained by Pistoia during the second half of the fifteenth century included the immunity of its citizens from appearing in front of one of the central offices unless directly ordered by the rulers, exemption from extraordinary taxes, and protection against Florentine citizens' buying land in the territory surrounding Pistoia.

By demonstrating that Florence's initial attempts at centralization slowed down and actually weakened at the end of the fifteenth century, Connell interprets the formation of the Florentine territorial state as a process of political decentralization. But, mindful that power has its own logic and justification, questions remain: What principles shaped the relations of power between the central and the municipal governments? How did the interactions between Florence and Pistoia shape the new territorial state? Whose interests did decentralization of authority reflect? A more thorough engagement on the part of the author with the substantial amount of literature that now exists on the socioeconomic and political changes surrounding the consolidation of the state and their effects on the subject communities would have provided answers.

During the last thirty years, scholarship has begun to explore the development of Italian territorial states within a broader political and social context. In the process, the traditional emphasis on political and administrative centralization as the inevitable outcome of state building has given away to more subtle and complex interpretations, that emphasize the interconnectedness of centralizing and decentralizing tendencies. During the 1970s, Italian and European scholarship on state formation began to redefine the meaning of political centralization, arguing that the reforms emanating from central governments coexisted with persistent local autonomy in the provinces of Italian regional states. In their studies, Chittolini and Guarini (the forerunners of this trend in Italy) found evidence of this persistent duality of power. ¹ During the fifteenth century, central governments strengthened their authority, enforced their control, and maintained social order by promoting the politico- administrative tradition of peripheral towns and territories. The Florentine republican government aimed at establishing new channels through which...