Civil Rights and Political Participation in Ancien Regime Europe

As a conclusion for this section, it has to be observed that the development of urbanization and commercialisation was a necessary condition for the emergence of representative institutions, but not a sufficient one. Popular political participation emerged and survived only in situations in which countervailing powers kept each other in balance. The inclusion of larger layers of society in political decision-making was part of the emancipatory trend which followed the inter-secular growth. Emancipated citizens and peasants sought to pursue their own goals and interests, which required their political activity. Instability of the monarchy triggered participation from “below” though it did not by itself warrant its stabilisation. Any powerholder that sees an opportunity for hegemony will grasp it: feudal lords and monarchs just as well as dominant cities.

Consolidation and Challenge. Monarchs generally held to themselves the decision when to summon and to dissolve parliamentary meetings, and to determine their agenda. Attempts to agree on regular time schedules rarely materialised. In England, Edward I in 1275 promised two sessions per year, which he respected only if the meetings of just the clergy and barons are taken into account; long periods of crisis disrupted this schedule in 1307-1327, 1376-1390, and 1449-1483. In Aragon, a yearly session was agreed upon in 1283, but no Corts were held at all between 1292 and 1300; the king then unilaterally decided to summon one meeting every three years, changed it into a two-year frequency, which did not introduce any regularity. The States General of the Low Countries stipulated the right of spontaneous assemblies in 1477, which never materialised; in 1488, they concurred that an annual session should be held to hear the grievances, which never became a regular practice. Ultimately, problems of dynastic continuity and the crown's military and financial needs determined the summoning of the assemblies, as well as their duration.

Unions of cities were entitled to meet on their own initiative, which they did in Flanders in 1127-1128, and, more regularly, from the thirteenth century until the end of the Ancien Rйgime. Since around 1300, major cities in neighbouring Brabant and Holland developed a similar pattern, albeit in a less polarised hierarchy. The regional unions of the mercantile elites in northern Germany consolidated in the course of the first half of the fifteenth century in the German Hanse, grouping around two-hundred cities. In their essence, this pattern differed from the other urban unions only with regard to the fact that their trade routes on the Baltic and North Seas shaped a stronger common interest than many different and relatively weak monarchical authorities to which they resorted. Similarly, the urban elites in the Low Countries felt free to negotiate with their trading partners in the Hanse, in England and along the North Sea and Atlantic coasts as far southward as Iberia, unhampered by their dynastic belonging. The constitutionalist tradition in the research on representative institutions disregarded this functional equivalence, but, in practical terms, the frequent regional and general meetings and the intensive diplomatic activities deployed by the Hanse dealt with economic policy, trade relations and conflict management in exactly the same way as the associated urban governments did in the Low Countries or Catalonia. Depending on the geographical characteristics, the special position of single central places such as Paris, London and Lisbon could be effectuated by direct links between the court and the local merchant elite.

Rostock and Wismar belonged to the Wendic cities that since 1259 had united with Lьbeck and others to protect their maritime trade, and that would form the core group in the German Hanse one century later. They regularly held meetings to settle their trading disputes. In that light, it is easy to understand how during ducal successions to minors in the duchy of Mecklenburg in 1282 and 1329, these two cities succeeded in forming regency councils in conjunction with members of the aristocracy. In the lands of the Crown of Castile, hermandades (confraternities) of cities met frequently in the years of instability of the Crown between 1281 and 1329. They claimed control of the finances and the chancery, submitted cuadernos, lists of grievances, and pressured rivalling pretenders to the throne to grant privileges. Up to 180 royal cities were involved, of which 78 were located in the kingdom of Castile, 45 in Leon, and the others in adjacent territories. Once King Alfonso XI (1329-1348) was well established on the throne, he didn't summon any general Cortes, and the hermandades fell apart. The territory's great extension and the relatively low density of the urban population hampered regular consultations. In the process of the Reconquista, the Catholic kings had founded cities as strongholds to control vast surrounding countryside. With a few exceptions such as Burgos, the urban elites were not primarily involved in trade, but were landholding hidalgos, enjoying a chivalric status and lifestyle. This oligarchic model helps to understand how since 1538, the Cortes could be reduced to 18 cities without the clergy and the high nobility, while the deals on the taxes were made in bilateral negotiations.

If high levels of urbanization and commercialisation were a precondition for the incorporation of new elites in representative institutions, it follows that this emancipatory drive, in some cases including the “Alleingang' (going it alone) of clusters of major cities, was weaker or even absent in the predominantly rural areas in North, Central and East Europe. An interesting case is that of the cities along the lower Vistula, from Danzig (Gdansk) and Elbing (Elblag) to Thorn (Torun), colonised by the Teutonic Order and after 1466 gradually incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland. The whole region thrived on grain export to the West, the cities as well as the Order belonged to the Hanse, and they developed a remarkably active representative activity, largely focused on economic poli- cy. In general, however, the urban density, the population of the largest cities, and the level of capital accumulation were significantly lower in Central, Northern and Eastern Europe than in Northern and Central Italy and in Western Europe. Nevertheless, major cities fulfilled central market functions for extended regions. Some of them, such as Leipzig, were crucial nodal points thanks to their international fairs.

Merchants from Brabant were arrested abroad and their goods confiscated as retaliation for the duke's accumulated debts, which prompted the cities in 1293 to unite and urge the duke, in return for their financial aid, to grant them a series of privileges, including the right of passive resistance if he violated his commitments. As the situation had not improved by 1312, the cities took the lead of a regency council that kept control of the duchy's finances and administration until 1320. The right of refusal of service and obedi-ence in the case of infringement of rights was to be monitored by a standing committee of the estates. The latter would soon be sidelined, however, as soon as the new duke was fully established in his powers. Nevertheless, the subjects' right of resistance was confirmed and even extended to the individual level, in general -- in the charters for the Low Countries of 1477 and 1488, and put into practice with the deposition of King Philip II in 158 1.

On the whole, the idea of attracting both the financial expertise and the capital from the commercialising economy, inspired many rulers in continental Europe to include the merchant elite in the orbit of their consultations. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the rapidly increasing financial needs of wars brought about frequent meetings of the English Parliament and the French States General and regional Estates, introducing new and lasting forms of direct taxation of citizens and peasants. A financial crisis prompted the Estates of Bavaria in 1356 to erect a committee drawn from their midst, to levy taxes, participate in the election of councillors and in the legislation, and to hear grievances. Dynastic problems had already led to the formation of a union between nobles and cities (Einung) to decide on all political matters in 1315 and 1324.

In Central, Nordic and Eastern Europe, the political impact of cities remained exceptional and mostly limited to critical situations of the dynasty or the finances. The wealth remained overwhelmingly in the hands of the aristocracy and their relatives in the higher clergy. Only the old capital city Cracow held a seat in the Polish Sejm, and for that reason it was considered to enjoy a noble status. Since the incorporation of Western Prussia in 1466, the three main cities Danzig, Elbing and Thorn were admitted to the Sejm, but were excluded in 1569. When the Union of Poland and Lithuania was concluded, a large number of Lithuanian noblemen were included in addition to representatives of Vilnius, were ennobled just for that occasion.

The formation of truly representative institutions, which I define as those including a decisive section of mandate holders on behalf of urban and (in some regions such as Tirol and Flanders also) rural communities, can be linked with the demographic and economic growth that led to urbanisation and commercialisation. The timing and the level of this transformation varied significantly between European regions. In Jan de Vries' computation based on population estimates around 1500, the “urban potential” varied from a factor 80 in Northern Italy, Naples and its surroundings, and the Southern Low Countries; 50 -- along the Ligurian coast and the Rhфne valley, Northern France, London and the southeast of England, and all the Low Countries; 30 -- in the rest of England and central Germany; and below that level in Iberia, Scandinavia north of Seeland, and Central Europe East of the Elbe and Trieste. This significant variation evidently found its expression in the social structures of the societies, and thus in the potential of citizens and free peasants to push for their emancipation, civil rights, and political participation. In the fourteenth century, the growth of the preceding centuries turned into a dramatic decline, with the loss of around one-third of the European population as a whole. Correspondingly, the emancipatory drive slowed down, and those who had obtained privileges now fought for their maintenance, even the members of the craft guilds in the largest cities. This trend was reinforced by the general tendency of institutions towards inertia and oligarchisation.

The late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were characterised by a gradual recovery of the demographic and economic evolutions, especially in north-western Europe. Only in some countries did this correspond with a renewed dynamism of the representative institutions, especially in England, the Low Countries, and Sweden. Elsewhere and in the long term, however, the overall tendency was to their decline, as it can be shown in the activity of the Catalan Corts. The yearly average of their meetings peaked in 1406-1458 on 172 days, slowing down to 91 in 1468-1515, and to 20 in 1519-1599. Two factors stand out to explain the nearly general decline of representative activity in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The first was that rulers strongly held on their prerogative to wage war, which they legitimated by the honour and common interest of the country; the second was that the Reformation provided rulers with a motive for extreme repression. Emancipatory movements such as that of the Hussites in Bohemia, the peasants in southwestern Germany, or the new artisanal and mercantile classes in the Low Countries, were inspired by the religious controversy. Monarchs strengthened their position by imposing a single state church, for which they applied all means of coercion. In the light of these new challenges, rulers referred to the notion that “necessity breaks law” (necessitas non habet legem), frequently repeated in canon law texts since the twelfth century, which then passed to civil law, theology and political philosophy. French kings referred to the “great necessity” in their summons to the general assemblies in the fourteenth century. In 1359, the Estates of Provence protested against the false pretence of necessity to levy troops without real justification. Rare endeavours of representative institutions to obtain the decisive voice in declaring and ending wars themselves, were systematically denied by kings who bluntly confronted the subjects with the accomplished facts against which the parliaments couldn't react adequately. Indeed, once a war had started, from whatever side, there was no way back, and subjects were obliged, and even prepared to defend their own territory, rather than to become victims of aggression.

Warfare was by far the states' highest single item of expenditure, and it rose dramatically in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. “As a general rule, the monarchical states devoted almost half of their budgets to military activity. <...> During the last decades of the seventeenth century Sicily spent 65 per cent of its total expenditure, France 76 per cent, Denmark 88 per cent and Austria 96 per cent, on war”. The public debt rose spectacularly as a means to finance warfare, and this also created accomplished facts against which the representatives saw no remedy. In Castile and Naples, the debt service rose from 12 per cent of the budget around 1500 to between 30 and 45 per cent in 1559, in Wьrttemberg -- to more than 80 percent. The unlimited demand for immediate cash to pay the troops, for the fortifications, and for the artillery, drove the interest rate in the Habsburg empire up to 48.8 per cent in the 1550s. Private investors profited grossly from these loans, even though they lost part of their gains in the ensuing so-called state bankruptcies.

Though mercantile and civic interests in general pleaded for peace and security, their political representatives proved unable to counter the consequences of the proliferating dynastic competition. The early-modern states were war-machines, with strong financial administrations built up for that purpose. Representative institutions proved unable to halt this self-strengthening process. The tendency to institutional inertia played a role in the gradual incorporation of representative elites into the state organisation. Warfare had its advocates in their midst. The clergy had a long tradition of manifestly encouraging and legitimating religious wars. The nobility could hope for individual gains, while some sections of the mercantile and entrepreneurial class saw opportunities to make exceptional profits. State administrations became strengthened through the wars, while the Estates lost in the process.

The Dutch Republic, England and Sweden showed an opposite trend: the population and economies grew, and representative institutions played a determining role. The strong involvement of the emancipating bourgeoisie in representative politics supported their vital interests in maritime trade, especially in the province of Holland. Though they were involved in the wars, these were mostly fought on foreign territories or on the seas. The losses in population and capital were by far higher in the continental countries where the troops “lived from the land”.

In the United Kingdom, the system of representation by counties and boroughs rested on election and mandate. Commercial and maritime interests were strongly represented in Parliament. Admittedly, its fixity implied distortions. The electorate in boroughs varied between a dozen men and its thousand-fold, and twenty to thirty percent of them were represented by non-resident gentlemen. Due to deals between candidates, elections were held in a minority of the districts: in 1705 only in 110 of the 266. Nevertheless, in the early eighteenth century, the electorate in England and Wales counted a total of 300 000 adult men, or 23 per cent of that population. As the population grew, that share dropped to between 14 and 17 per cent towards the end of the century. These percentages nevertheless were higher than those in the mid-nineteenth century, even after the great Reform of 1832. A similar observation was made with regard to the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though precise figures cannot be produced. Urban governments certainly were plutocratic, and in the other provinces than Holland, the landed aristocracy still weighed heavily on policies. But a wide range of civic organisations such as guilds, neighbourhoods, and militias linked the ordinary subjects to the elite, social care was provided on a large scale, and the people's voice could be heard. The Swedish monarchy played a decisive role in the country's aggressive policy and the military organisation of the state. It nevertheless succeeded in involving the estates in the political decisions, and in particular the communities of free peasants and miners.

The general demographic and economic growth of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would raise new emancipatory waves to which the oligarchic political systems gave in very reluctantly, after many and bloody upheavals, and typically under the extreme pressure of wars. Civil rights and political participation were never given for free, but the emergence of representative institutions, and their subsequent effectiveness can now be interpreted in the light of successive emancipatory waves that followed from expansive trends. Conversely, the reduction of political participation occurred in situations of stagnation or decline.

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