We currently understand international relations in terms of states, which claim sovereignty within their borders and recognize other states as equal outside of their borders. During the High Middle Ages (~1000-1350), multiple different international systems developed. One of them, the sovereign territorial state, became dominant, first in Europe, then throughout the world.

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Prerequisites: Some basic understanding of medieval Europe would be helpful, but not necessary.

Originally Written: September 2020.

Confidence Level: Not my ideas.

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I really like how clear this book’s writing is, even though it’s designed for a scholarly audience. I think that the best way to start this book review is with the first paragraph from the book’s introduction:

History has covered its tracks well. We often take the present system of sovereign states for granted and believe that its development was inevitable. But it was not. The sovereign, territorial state had its own peculiar rivals that very well might have held the day. Now that dramatic changes within and between states are taking place, it is appropriate to rethink our explanations of the origins of the state system, analyze the forces that shaped it, and reflect on the possibility of its demise.

– p. 1

Our current international system consists of sovereign states.

A sovereign state is an institution which claims complete authority within certain lines on a map and no authority outside of those lines. It has a bureaucratic hierarchy within its borders and recognizes other states as equals outside its borders. This idea is so ubiquitous that we don’t stop to think about how weird of a claim that is or what other kinds of international systems could exist.

Sovereign states developed in Europe out of feudalism during the High Middle Ages. During this time, there were other competing systems that vied to replace feudalism: city-states and city leagues. These different systems competed with feudalism and with each other until the system of sovereign states became dominant. This process was finalized with the Peace of Westphalia (1648).

The Sovereign State and Its Competitors focuses on three regions of Europe: France, Germany, and Italy. They exemplify the development of the sovereign state (in France), city leagues (in Germany), and city-states (in Italy), between the years 1000-1400. My main criticism of the book is that it is too short. I would like to also hear Spruyt’s analysis of the Swiss cantons, which might be most similar to a city league, and the English parliamentary sovereign state.

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The first chapter is a literature review (this is a scholarly book). The second chapter describes Spruyt’s theory of system change in the context of other theories of system change. If you are a casual reader, you can skip both of these chapters and start with Ch. 3.

Before we look at how the sovereign state began, we should look at the institutions which existed in Europe beforehand. This is now referred to as feudalism, although that term wasn’t invented until later, and it suggests that there was a single system, instead of multiple: within the nobility, within the church, among the peasants, within the cities, and between all of these groups.

Politics among the nobility was based on personal relationships, formalized in oaths of fealty. A lord would have multiple vassals, and the obligations in each relationship were specified in that oath. Each vassal could have their own vassals. These relationships were non-exclusive and only weakly hierarchical. An oath of fealty to one lord did not prelude an oath of fealty to another – although you might have problems if those two lords went to war. A single individual could hold multiple titles, at different levels of the hierarchy, which implied different vassalage. Henry II, as duke of Normandy, was a vassal of the French king, but the same Henry II, as king of the English, was not.^[1]After writing this review, I learned about the count-kings of Aragon-Catalonia, which I mention in my review of The Great Sea. The right to rule was based on personal oaths, not a broader notion of sovereignty. These oaths were rarely directly broken (although people certainly did interpret them creatively) because no one would follow an oathbreaker. Since oaths were inherently religious, excommunication would also revoke all oaths involving that lord.

The church had its own hierarchy, modeled on the administration of the Roman Empire. Archbishops and bishops were the spiritual leaders of the provinces and dioceses of the Roman Empire. Bishops and monasteries anchored the urban centers that survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire and preserved much of the ancient learning. The church claimed a divine right to rule over all Christians. The sovereignty of the church was based on the sovereignty of God. Christianity should be taken to all people, so this is a universal claim. However, Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, so it is not clear how this claim pertains to political power.

Most people were part of the third estate, peasants, rather than the first two estates, warrior/nobility and clergy. Peasants were typically in subservient “manorial” relationships, where they had to pay regular taxes/rents and were legally inferior. While both the nobility and bishop could enter into feudal relationships, the peasants were forbidden from taking oaths of fealty or bearing certain weapons. While manorialism looks like local sovereignty, since serfs were legally bound to the land, it can be thought of either as territorial rule or personal rule.

On Christmas Day in 800, the Pope crowned Charlemagne emperor, promising the revival of a theocratic Roman Empire. This title was later inherited by the Germans. The Holy Roman Emperor claimed the political authority over Christendom, much like the Pope’s universal claim of religious authority. The German Emperor regularly tried to demonstrate his supremacy over Italy and only occasionally over France & England (most notably with Richard the Lionheart). This belief system was common in ancient empires. While they were aware that there were practical limits to their power, in principle, they claimed a divine right to rule over all people. Ancient empires typically would rule over their entire economic sphere – both because that was a major military goal of the empire and because they made trade within the empire much easier than trade outside of the empire.

The distinction between religion and politics was much less clear than it is today. Bishops had significant economic and political power and the emperor claimed theocratic rule. Having two universal claims was bound to lead to problems. These problems came to a head with the Investiture Controversy, which started in 1076, over whether the Pope or the Emperor had the right to appoint bishops. The controversy lasted for decades until a compromise was reached (the Pope appointed bishops, with the Emperor’s approval). These disputes helped to distinguish what issues were considered religious and what issues were considered political. The Pope was able to gradually solidify a church hierarchy centered on Rome. Politically, there was more fragmentation in both Italy and Germany, since local powers could use the competition between the Pope and Emperor to their advantage.

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Although most historians refrain from using the term ‘Dark Ages’, if you do, the Dark Ages were from about 500-1000 A.D., excluding Charlemagne’s reign. The claim that the Dark Ages lasted until the Renaissance is myth written by men during the Renaissance who wanted to feel superior to those who came immediately before. The High Middle Ages (1000-1250) marked the end of the Dark Ages:

• The population of Europe increased dramatically.
• Existing cities grew and hundreds of new cities were founded, especially in Northern Europe.
• Trade expanded: mostly luxury goods in the Mediterranean and bulk goods in the North & Baltic Seas.
• The economy became more monetized.
• Grand Gothic architecture was built, including the Notre-Dame Cathedral of Paris.
• Learning was institutionalized in the first universities.
• Major intellectuals of this era included Thomas Aquinas and Fibonacci.

The new towns not only differed from the rural feudal system institutionally, they also differed in worldview.

This can be most dramatically seen in their understanding of time. Time was largely irrelevant to most rural activities. Only the church measured time, to determine when religious services and holy days occurred. Urban businesses used a different idea of time, one precisely measured by mechanical clocks, an invention of man. These two standards of time were literally raised over most medieval towns. The two tallest buildings were the church’s bell tower and the secular clock tower.

Understanding time differently leads to more material conflicts. Usury was forbidden by the church because it was understood as charging people for time, which is a free gift from God. A similar ban was placed on paid teaching because knowledge is also a free gift of God.

There were contradictions in many other ideas as well:

• Depersonalized business relationships vs personal oaths of fealty.
• Monetary transactions vs reciprocal gift giving.
• Predictable written law (often based on Roman law) vs local customs and traditional law.
• Trial by evidence vs trial by combat.
• Status based on wealth vs status based on ancestry.

Most of the towns during the High Middle Ages were republics that mixed democratic and aristocratic institutions. The town government was typically elected by the burghers (citizens of the city). The qualifications to become a burgher varied – sometimes property ownership was required and sometimes you just had to live in the town for a year and a day. Towns were places of relative freedom, especially compared to the feudal obligations of the rural peasants.

The new international systems of the High Middle Ages developed as a consequence of the interaction between the previous feudal systems and the increasingly powerful towns.

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France

The sovereign state developed in France from an alliance between the towns and the king.

French towns did not grow as large as Italian or even German towns during the High Middle Ages. While they were not large enough to be politically independent, they were significant, especially economically. The French king promoted the political interests of the towns in exchange for increasing monetary taxes, which allowed him to further consolidate his power.

While businesses like lower taxes, it is even more important for the taxes to be predictable. The feudal tax system was especially bad for business. Because feudalism has non-exclusive rule, a town could be obligated to pay taxes to multiple lords, who collected the tax when they saw fit. Towns would much rather pay taxes directly to the king once a year, although the amount to be paid remained under continual negotiation.

The king and towns also agreed on promoting a more consistent legal regime based on Roman Law and on standardizing weights and measures, although these efforts were not completed until much later. When there were conflicts between a town and a local lord, the king would often intervene on the town’s behalf, and bring the town into territory directly controlled by the king.

Feudal obligations to the king were typically in food or in military service, offered in exchange for inheritable land. The revenue the king got from the towns was money. Money has a lot more uses.

The main thing that the French king used money for was mercenaries. He was no longer reliant on the knights of potentially disloyal feudal lords. Lords were allowed to choose to contribute money for mercenaries instead of appearing in battle themselves.

The monetary taxes from towns also meant that the French king was less reliant on feudal revenue sources. The king would give the nobles tax exemptions or even pensions in return for compliance and land. Once this system was established, the French king did not have problems with the nobles conspiring against him because they had been bought off.

The king could also establish a bureaucracy, paid in money, who reported directly to him. At the lower levels of the bureaucracy were tax farmers, local people who got a certain percentage of the revenue they raised. This aligns their incentives with the goals of the king. The higher levels of the bureaucracy were appointed and paid directly by the king. They were always from a different part of France from where they worked and moved regularly so they wouldn’t follow local interests. Most of the members of the bureaucracy were from the towns (or lower nobility) because they were literate and often had administrative experience. This further cemented the alliance between the king and the town and made the old feudal hierarchy irrelevant.

The church was initially an ally of the French King because they were common enemies of the Holy Roman Emperor. The church also provided a model of centralized administration that the king could borrow from. However, the logic of a sovereign king and of a sovereign church are contradictory and led to conflict. By the time this conflict occurred, the French king had already cemented his power and was able to force the Pope to recognize his right to tax and even arrest bishops and monasteries.

By 1400, the French king had consolidated a sovereign, territorial state.

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Germany

Germany had a weakening emperor, powerful lords, and growing leagues of cities.

German towns were in many ways similar to French towns. They were similar in size to the French towns. But there were a lot more of them. German political and religious leaders founded many new towns, especially as the Germans spread eastward, using groups of people from already established towns. Both French and German towns mostly traded bulk goods like wheat, fish, lumber, furs, and wool. But German towns traded a larger volume of goods for longer distances across the Baltic and North Seas. Both French and German towns wanted predicable taxes, consistent legal systems, and standardized weights and measures. But only the French king provided them.

The German emperor was ideologically committed to universal rule of the Holy Roman Empire. To accept that his rule should be limited only to Germany would require significantly limiting his worldview. To maintain this idea, the German emperor spent much of his time in Italy, trying to keep the Italian towns under his control. Any success he had there was opposed by stronger cooperation among the usually fractious Italian cities and with the Pope.

In order to campaign in Italy, the emperor relied on the support of the nobility. The nobility were able to claim increasing control within their own territories, including minting coins with their own facsimile, writing and enforcing laws without appeal to the emperor, setting their own weights & measures, and controlling the local towns. By 1356, the emperor officially agreed that the nobility had the right to elect his successor (instead of just approving his choice), which ensured their long-term dominance.

German towns did not like being subservient to feudal lords any more than French towns did. Bishops were particularly disliked. Not only did the towns disagree with the bishops on political and economic issues, they also disagreed on moral issues. The church forbade many business practices and found all forms of monetary transactions suspect. People should not be putting that much effort into gaining wealth.

Towns would sometimes look to the emperor for support, and occasionally he would grant it, but mostly, the towns were on their own. Individual towns were not large enough to fight the increasingly powerful lords.

So they formed leagues.

When a town wished to gain more independence, its residents would (illegally) swear oaths of mutual assistance,^[2]Recall that only nobles were allowed to swear oaths. elect a town council, and start trying to negotiate or appropriate rights and liberties from their lord. A city league formed in a similar way. Representatives from groups of towns would gather together to coordinate defense. Once established, the league would reduce tolls, regulate weights, measures, and coinage, standardize justice, and negotiate or wage wars with the lords.

By 1358, the various German city leagues had merged into the Hanseatic League. The Hansa started as a traders guild that would meet on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. At some point, the towns started sending representatives instead of individual traders.

At its height, the Hanseatic League contained about 200 towns – about 77 as full members and the rest as associates. The number is uncertain because the various towns of the Hansa had different official status. Some were free and imperial cities, which recognized no sovereign but the (uninvolved) emperor. Some were officially under the rule of a lord, but in practice set their own policies. Some local lords had a closer alliance with their towns. There were also four foreign cities (London, Bruges, Bergen, and Novgorod) which had a permanent Hanseatic trading post. Like an empire, the League sought to dominate its entire economic sphere, although the League spread by inviting new members, rather than by conquest.

The main institution of the League was the Hansetag, a meeting where all of the towns sent delegates to determine policy for the League which occurred every few years. Each town had one vote, but in practice, the major towns, especially Lübeck, dominated the League. While towns could delegate other towns to represent them, decisions made by the Hansetag were binding even for the towns that did not attend. Refusing to obey the decisions of the Hansetag would result in fines or even expulsion from the League. Along with the Hansetag, there were three or four regional groups for more local issues.

The state capacity of the Hanseatic League was similar to the contemporary sovereign, territorial states.

The Hanseatic League could raise revenue by requesting fees from the various cities. It also set tolls (and forbade others from doing so) for ships entering and leaving harbors.

The Hanseatic League monopolized trade in the North and Baltic Seas. Only Hanseatic ships could enter Hanseatic ports. They had extensive trade and tax privileges in the countries where they had permanent foreign offices. The heads of these foreign offices were authorized to negotiate treaties on behalf of the League.

The Hanseatic League could and did wage war on the same scale as sovereign states. After winning a war against Denmark, they controlled succession of the Danish king and the castles along the shipping routes. Blockade was a more common form of coercion than war. It was easier to force concessions from kings by refusing to sell food in Norway or boycotting Flanders than by going to war.

The Hanseatic League made the laws more consistent between cities. Some of this consistency occurred because new cities were often formed by groups from old cities, who brought their laws with them. Lübeck Law later spread across much of the League. Even in towns with variations in local law, Hanseatic merchants could expect to be tried according to the traditions of the League.

State capacity can also be seen from uniform culture. States don’t just standardize weight, measures, and coinage, they also standardize language and customs. French only became a single language, distinct from Spanish and Italian, through the consistent efforts of the French state. During the 1300s and 1400s, the Hansa’s dialect of Low German spread across a larger territory than the Standard French of Paris. Moving between towns was easy for Hanseatic merchants, but marrying outside the league was forbidden.

In 1400, the German city league was as successful of an institution as the sovereign, territorial state.

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Italy

Italian cities were strong enough to act as independent city-states.

The Italian cities were much larger than the either the German or French towns. Only Paris came close to their size. Individual cities obtained more revenue and fielded larger armies than burgeoning states like England or Portugal.

Italy had remained more urbanized after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and retained more of Rome’s social structures and law. Additionally, Italy’s urbanization was due to differences in trade.

Trade in the Mediterranean had a different nature than trade in the North and Baltic Seas. Merchants made most of their income from luxury goods, like spices and silk. Luxury goods had significantly higher profit margins, which allowed cities to gather more wealth, and people. Some bulk goods, especially grain, were also transported long distances. The different emphasis can be seen in the different types of ships: Mediterranean ships had less cargo space, but a larger crew, including professional soldiers. Most of a city’s wealth for the year came from a few ships traveling to a few cities in the Eastern Mediterranean. Much of the conflict between and within the Italian cities can be traced to trying to secure the exclusive rights to trade for a small volume of luxury goods.

The distinction between rural aristocracy and urban burghers did not exist in Italy because the aristocracy was also urban. Early on, the urban social classes allied to throw off imperial or ecclesiastical rule and established city-states. Instead of a bishop ruling the city, the aristocracy would make deals to choose the bishop – or even the Pope. Although the independent Italian cities mostly remained republics through the rest of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, they tended to become increasingly aristocratic.

Factions were extremely important in Italian cities. Extended aristocratic families, guilds, and neighborhoods could all have their own armed forces. Government existed for the benefit of the currently ruling faction, not for the city as a whole.

Foreign interference was also more important. The Byzantines, Arabs, Germans, Normans, French, and Spaniards all ruled part of Italy at some point during this time period. Southern Italy was almost always under foreign control, remained feudal, and didn’t develop as large or independent cities.

The city-states gradually consolidated as larger cities forcefully subjugated their neighbors. They did not, however, integrate them. Subjugated cities retained their own local customs and laws, but not independent military or trade. Rural areas had little or no political influence.

The combination of all of these factors makes Italian history extremely complicated. Even with all of the institutional diversity of the city-states, they did not develop the logic of the sovereign, territorial state. The cities did consider themselves sovereign and did recognize limits to their territorial control. They did not homogenize institutions or culture within their territory. The government did not try to rise above the fray and represent the interest of the entire people instead of a particular faction. They never established a monopoly on violence or justice.

In 1400, the Italian city-states were as powerful as the strongest sovereign states in Europe.

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Over the next 250 years (1400-1650), the sovereign, territorial state system came to dominate Europe.

How did the state system come to dominate over city leagues and city-states?

One of the most common explanations is war. Sovereign states were more effective at waging war and eliminated rival systems through conquest. There are several problems with this explanation:

• While sovereign states were militarily superior to feudal systems, they weren’t superior to either city leagues or city-states. When these institutional alternatives were at their height, they successfully waged war, even against the largest states.
• The sovereign state system did not eliminate small actors, as long as they conformed to its logic. Individual Hanseatic cities remained independent, long after the League stopped meeting. It was not until the French Revolution and Napoleon that an army marched through Europe and forced everyone to adopt similar institutions.
• Even if war were a good immediate explanation, the question of why states were more effective at waging war remains unsolved.

One reason for the sovereign state’s success was that it proved more effective at standardizing weights and measures, coinage, and judicial systems. Almost every town and major lord in Europe had their own measurement system and currency, which dramatically increased transaction and information costs for merchants. Moreover, there were a variety of legal systems, some codified and some entirely based on traditions, so there was uncertainty in how to redress wrongs. The French king continually encouraged people to exclusively use his standards, eliminating local variation. The confederated cities of the Hansa and the contested sovereignty of the Italy city-states were less effective at standardizing their weights and measures, currency, and laws. I am not as convinced by this argument as Spruyt is, both because the Hanseatic League also continually tried to create standards (Lübeck and Magdeburg law, Lübeck marks, and Rostock barrels) and because the French did not complete this process until the French Revolution. If the Hanseatic League had persisted, they might have standardized to a similar extent by 1800.

Another more important reason for the decline of the Hanseatic League is that it was unable to be as effective in international diplomacy. While the League did sign treaties, they were enforced by the individual city councils. The League’s tools to coerce the individual cities (fines, threats of expulsion) were limited. Individual cities would try to take advantage of the benefits of a treaty without respecting the limitations or would try to negotiate more preferential treaties with other powers on their own. This undermined the cohesion of the League. To try to avoid other powers’ attempts to divide them, the League refused to establish a list of what cities were members. This further undermined the League’s negotiating power. A king with final authority over his subjects could convincingly bind his entire society to treaties, allowing for more complicated international relations to develop.

Some of the League’s diplomatic problems were due to how it was organized. But some of the problems were because sovereign states preferentially dealt with other sovereign states. They would purposely empower other actors that behaved like sovereign states. This encouraged the elites in other societies to begin mimicking the sovereign state system. If they claimed regalian rights, other states would recognize them as sovereign and help them to enforce these rights. The Italian city-states were adopted into the sovereign state system as small sovereign states. In Germany, this process culminated with the Peace of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years War. Established states like France and Sweden recognized the sovereignty of the German lords like Saxony and Bavaria. The Holy Roman Emperor became a figurehead. Most of the Hanseatic cities were forcibly incorporated into these new states. A few of the largest became small states themselves. The Hansetag met one more time, but only three cities sent representatives, and they decided to disband. Two of these cities (Hamburg and Bremen) are still considered Free and Hanseatic Cities within Germany’s federal republic – Lübeck’s status was permanently revoked during WWII. Once the international system of sovereign states became partially established, it promoted itself over other rival systems, until it eventually spread over the entire world.

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Spruyt concludes by restating his general theory of change in international systems.

Most of the time, the international system is stable. Conflict occurs between and among actors, but what kind of actors exist doesn’t change. For example, both the Napoleonic Wars and World Wars changed the relative status of different states, but they did not change the fact that international politics is dominated by sovereign states. Change in the international system only occurs occasionally, so its evolution can be thought of as a punctuated equilibrium.

Occasionally, something changes that makes the current international system untenable. The increase in trade in Europe starting in 1000 is one example.

This change occurs in two steps.

First, political entrepreneurs create new institutions to meet their needs. This process is non-deterministic: different regions tend to develop differently. What alliances form between different interest groups determine what innovations occur. In Europe in the High Middle Ages, this stage of systems change led to the formation of the sovereign state in France, city-states in Italy, and city leagues in Germany.

Then, there is competition between the different sorts of institutions that have arisen. Although each of the new institutions is more effective than the previous system (feudalism), it is not clear which will become dominant over the others. This second stage of systems change occurred in Europe from 1400-1650 and ended with the dominance of the sovereign state system.

Spruyt thinks that we might experience another change in our international system soon. The sovereign state isn’t as dominant as it has been in the past. A regional association (the European Union) offers one alternative. Multinational companies and finance mean that international economic policy is no longer governed by relationships between states. Religious extremist groups explicitly reject the state system. Many of the threats we face do not respect borders. Although this was written in 1994, his examples are even more salient now. These trends do not mean that the international system of states will fail, but it does suggest the possibility. By studying how these changes occurred in the past, we can be more prepared if the international system starts to change in our lifetime.