Charles Freeman

Thanks for your comment, nels. Sorry I did not see them earlier. The chart on p. 315 is chronological. so while the cities of Roman Europe (including the Iberian peninsula) were lively politically, they were in decay by the fifth century- but there has to be some sort of 'plus' representative government in Roman areas before then (e.g. search 'Pompeii politics'). So after the Roman collapse the main urban areas are the Arab cities and it is only slowly that urban life in Europe revives. (The shortlived (770-843 AD) Carolingian empire was not urban- rather the centres of power were the court and monasteries.) Chris Wickham sees the first representative governments in... (read more)

Rewriting Henrich’s chart on p.315.

In his recent acclaimed book The Life and Death of Ancient Cities, Greg Woolf writes that ‘the Roman urban apogee was located sometime in the early third century.’ (This was also the moment when one there is a genuine Roman collective brain as the cities were all part of the same peaceful empire, same architectural features, and  well connected with roads.)  While we know from Pompeii that local politics was very vibrant in AD 79, we don’t know how vibrant they were in 250 AD when Henrich’s chart begins. Certainly more than zero. I would guess that forty per cent of the cities still had some kind of... (read more)

' From J. SCHULZ (2019) 'Kin networks and Institutional development' ( the article cited for the chart). ' This analysis supports the hypothesis that the Church’s incest legislation fostered the formation of communes. Areas in which bishops were active in incest legislation are associated with a higher probability of cities being communes." 

 This is a complete disregard of sophisticated  study of why the  communes emerged. These cities became wealthy as a result of trade and loot. (There is an inscription on Pisa's cathedral saying that it was loot from raids on Arabs that financed it.)  One reason why Pisa was able to develop communal government in 1100 was because the bishop had gone... (read more)

Brent Shaw, the classical historian, has done an in-depth survey of this and analysed 33 Roman marriages none of which were between cousins, He makes the good point that rising aristocratic families who needed to secure their position deliberately married into established aristocratic families so that there was a good reason for avoiding cousin marriages. Of course, as with medieval Europe, we don't know what went on with the mass of sexual relationships. Henrich seems to have assumed that there was some sort of formal marriage under the auspices of the Church. This was not the case as marriages by mutual consent without even a priest in attendance were valid.

The fact that... (read more)

Peter. I am happy to agree that Roman land law was highly sophisticated- the Romans were a legally sophisticated civilization (as the northern Italians rejoiced to find when Justinian's Law Code was rediscovered in the eleventh century just when it was needed!) What is important in assessing Henrich's assumptions is to look at what actually happened on the ground. So a major problem was what to do with retired legionaries, especially after the civil wars of the first century BC. The pragmatic solution, give them a plot of land in an area where there needed to be a secure base, then they could marry, and would defend their land with  fury if... (read more)

The chart on p. 315 shows a steady rise in so-called representative governments to ninety per cent and then a small dropping off to 80 per cent by 1500. Generally after 1500 city life in northern Italy  became stagnant and most cities came under foreign rule, e.g. Milan under Spanish rule. The word commune is used of the governments in the Italian city states which emerged in the eleventh century. The cities gradually eased out the power of the Church so that commune governments were largely secular, with magistrates and the communal buildings being built apart from the Church (an excellent example is Siena). Certainly one can equate representative government with secularism,... (read more)

I agree, Peter, that  in many ways the western nations have been more individualistic than others. I have explored this in my recent book The Awakening, A History of the Western Mind AD500-1700, published in the UK with a US edition coming from Knopf under the title The Reopening of the Western Mind. This is precisely why i bought Henrich's book when it came out in the UK! As my title suggests I am concerned with the rise of the individual mind. I would argue that it lies in the relationship between an intellectual elite and the classical sources- so from 1400 onwards. This is why I like Mokyr's approach (see another... (read more)

If you access 'Pompeii and politics' you will find a vast amount of evidence of the vitality of representative government in a typical Roman town. So when Henrich  on page 315 writes 'Before the Church arrives, the estimated probability of developing ANY [ my emphasis] form of representative government is zero- making pre-Christian Europe just like everywhere else in the world' one can only gasp.  He cannot use ANY if he ignores the Roman republic but even ignoring that one can look at local Roman politics in the cities which had their own constitutions.

  What Henrich has done  in the accompanying chart is  to ASSUME  that the growth of representative governments in... (read more)