A MOST POWERFUL INVENTION: THE “NATION STATE” (Teaching Guide 6)

 

1. Introduction 

 In Teaching Guide 5 we have analyzed how monarchies transformed the political panorama of Europe since the Late Middle Ages.  Now we have to study how these monarchies were transformed in “states” during the long period that goes from the 16th to the 18th centuries. In fact it did not work like this. It was the other way round. The “state” appeared in a context where there were no kings. Concretely in Medici's Florence where Niccolò Machiavelli was born. A context of chaos, and it was precisely this anarchy that brought the state as political and legal organization. But as soon as the monarchs discovered the state they considered that it was an extremely useful tool to consolidate their power ant transforms their realms in extremely solid kingdoms. And 500 years later the whole world is divided in states. 

Lorenzo de' Medici "The Magnificent"(1469-1492)

One of the models of Machiavelli's Prince

“A world of states

Although we live in a globalized world, our planet in the 21st century continues to be divided into "states," with the UN today listing 193 member states; though, in addition to these ″official″ ones, there also exist others that do not enjoy full recognition. 

Even when the international community generally recognizes a given state, certain states refuse to: South Korea and North Korea do not recognize each other; the People's Republic of China remains unrecognized by 19 countries that, nevertheless, recognize the ROC (Republic of China) of Taiwan; the State of Israel is not recognized by 32 countries, and the Republic of Palestine is only recognized by 136; Turkey does not recognize the Republic of Cyprus, which is, nevertheless, a member of the European Union, but it does recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is not recognized by any other state; Pakistan does not recognize the Republic of Armenia; the Republic of Abkhazia has, so far, only been recognized by 6 countries; and the Republic of Kosovo just by 104 of the 193 UN countries. Meanwhile, there are territories struggling to become members of the UN, such as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, South Ossetia, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, and Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, aka Transnistria. Perhaps the most unique case, however, is that of Somaliland, which remains unrecognized by any state (!) despite having declared itself an independent state, and effectively functioning as one. 

We ought not forget that states are like living organisms, which are born, exist, and die, as the Norwegian architect Bjorn Berge reminds us in Nowherelands: An Atlas of Vanished Countries 1840-1975, in which he traces the borders and tells the stories of 50 countries that history has erased from maps.

Not simple, is it?  The only thing that seems clear in all this is that states seem to remain inevitable, and one has to wonder why. Are they imposed on us, or do we crave them?

A very successful western invention

At a time when the "woke" movement is questioning everything Western, perpetrating, among other actions, the spectacular toppling of statues of colonizers, it is striking that a thoroughly Western invention such as the state, first conceived by Machiavelli more than 500 years ago, has been imposed worldwide, and that, regardless of ethnicity, religion or culture, today there are people willing to kill and die to have their own states. 

It is highly significant that the latest addition to the UN list of states came after many years of wars and violence: on 9 July, 2011 South Sudan became the 54th independent country in Africa, five days later becoming the 193rd member of the United Nations. It had seceded  after seceding from Sudan (an independent state since 1956) after a bloody, decades-long civil war.  Independence, unfortunately, did not prevent violence there, as at the end of 2011 the new government of South Sudan was at war with at least seven armed groups in 9 of its 10 states, with tens of thousands of people displaced as a result.

Sadly, Sudan is not an isolated case. In other areas of the world the western invention of the state has also generated great conflicts, often due to the fabrication of artificial states by colonial powers, with disastrous results. Let’s take a look at some examples.

 Europe is no longer the pre-eminent power on the planet; not in terms of hard power, at least, as the Continent pales in comparison to the USA, China, and even Russia. Our economies and armies are much less powerful. And yet, if we turn to the realm of soft power, Europe remains a formidable force in today's globalized world, because it invented most of the narratives, ideas and institutions that prevail in a manifestly "westernized" world, beginning with the state model and the peculiar conception of law stemming from it”. 

(Extracted from B. Aguilera Barchet. Demistifying the Legal Art of Order, Power and Fun. An Introduction to Pop Law. (2025) New Castle Upon Tyne UK:  Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 317-318). 

 For understanding such a revolutionary idea as the state, that by far is the most relevant European contribution to the World order, in today’s Teaching Guide we are going to see why the idea of “state” appeared and how the kings first and the nations later developed it to give form to the way in which the overwhelmingly majority of Humanity lives today. 

Late medieval kings in Spain, France and England

ended up imposing themselves to the Feudal order

The consolidation of king’s authority

 To start with we will analyze how late medieval monarchs in Spain, England or France consolidated their constitutional positions as the supreme authorities within their kingdoms. Firstly, after becoming independent from emperors and popes, and secondly, because those monarchs reigned supreme as they abandoned medieval, pact-based law and were able to impose their authority upon cities, the nobility, the church, and therefore, upon the assemblies of the estates. Legally speaking that was possible because for the first time kings could legislate. 

Charles III of England and Queen Camilla

 presiding the State Opening of Parliament on July 17. 2024

In Teaching Guide 5 we saw how initially the kings consolidated their power expanding royal jurisdiction. The following step was to convince their subjects that they could create new legislative rules and modify the traditional customary law that prevailed in the Early Middle Ages. 

 Besides remaining judge-kings, monarchs ended up becoming legislators as they were recognized the power to create new laws, that is to change and adapt the legal order. The old medieval roi justicier from the Early Modern Period would become a roi législateur in the last medieval centuries.  Thanks to their new legislative power, kings had much more power and could consolidate a new model of political organization termed absolute monarchy. 

The Absolute monarchies as precedent of modern states

  Thanks to their new legislative power, kings had much more power and could consolidate a new model of political organization termed absolute monarchy, which would end up transforming their kingdoms in the precedent of modern states. The identification of the monarch with the state appears in the famous phrase attributed to Louis XIV: “I am the state” ("L´État c’est moi"), conveying the complete identification of the state with the figure of the king.

Louis XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1701)

But European monarchs were not at the origin of the state as a model of political, legal and social organization. Even if they became the great protagonists of political history since the Late Middle Ages, the idea of the state model came initially from a territory which had no kings: Northern Italy, a land that officially was under the scope of the Holy Roman Empire and its two heads: the pope and the emperor.  In fact however it was precisely the confrontation between the Papacy and the emperor that favored the appearance of almost independent cities that became very wealthy because they were the main force of the Commercial Revolution. Unfortunately the lack of a strong monarchical authority provoked that these wealthy cities were in a constant political turmoil. And it was this situation which enabled the citizens of these urban centers to invent a new model of political organization: the state, as a way of putting a halt to chaos and anarchy. It is a fascinating history that proves that anarchy always bring order as a reaction.

Political map of the italian peninsula around 1500

The Italian case and the urban origins of the state

In the early Middle Ages, cities virtually disappeared in the rural universe of Feudal Europe. However things started to change since 11th century, when started an urban renaissance all over the European continent, especially in the Iberian Peninsula, Germany, Northern Italy and Flanders. Cities regained undeniable political importance because in those cities lived wealthy merchants as consequence of the Commercial Revolution. This urban revolution had legal consequences as these cities ended up getting a special legal status, when they received privileges consolidating their legal autonomy. In some cases, one could even speak of “constitutional” texts in the modern sense of the term, as certain municipal privileges were to be respected by monarchs.

The Statutes of Florence of 1564

Northern Italy was without any doubt the most urbanized area in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, as it featured cities with populations of over 100,000, which were practically independent, having managed to exploit the struggles between popes and emperors. Thus, appeared urban republics with their own autonomous governments and legal systems based on lengthy documents called “statutes” which, in a way, functioned on a local level very much like the constitutions of contemporary states.  However, the absence of a strong power generated permanent internal strife between families grappling for control of city governments, and wars with other cities, which in some cases led to the formation of leagues, as cities conducted independent relations with other cities, whether to negotiate agreements over issues such as boundaries or coinage, or to pursue expansion through warfare.

The city of Florence in the Renaissance

One of these autonomous Italian cities was Florence, a city that fought fiercely for its autonomy. And has become one of the symbols of Europe as proves the foundation of the European University Institute (EUI) in Fiesole. 

The fight for political autonomy in Florence started in the time of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), who like most Florentines of his day, was embroiled in the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict and as a result of it was expelled from Florence and died in exile in Ravenna, where he wrote his canonical Divine Comedy.  

Florence in the time of Machiavel

The city of Florence, from which Dante was expelled at the beginning of the 14th century, had already become a prosperous city at the time of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), controlled by the Medici. Machiavelli witnessed all the political turmoil of Italy he had the opportunity to develop his ideas of how to establish a stable government. From anarchy arose the model of the state, which Machiavelli was the first to describe in his landmark work The Prince which he finished around 1513, but was only printed posthumously in 1532. 

 In his political treaty Machiavelli offers rulers a series of formulas and pieces of advice to maintain, at any price, the power which guarantees social order. The “prince” no longer justifies his power on the premise that he is the legitimate representative of God on Earth, or by tracing his authority back to the Roman emperors, but rather exclusively on his capacity for political survival.

Jean Bodin

The consolidation of the state in the works of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes

But Machiavelli’s Italy was not the only land in which government was complicated. Chaos would appear also in other parts of Europe, and as a reaction, again, some political thinkers and legists would propose solutions for consolidating the State as political organization in order to prevent the resulting anarchy. Let’s see two concrete examples: in France the figure of Jean Bodin, who witnessed the convulsions of the horrendous Wars of religions from 1560 to 1570, and in England the case of Thomas Hobbes who lived under the turmoil of the awful civil war, fought between the Parliament and the Royal armies from 1642 to 1651, leaded respectively by Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) and Charles I (1600-1649), and was finally horrified by the beheading of his king, that for him put the world upside down.

Thomas Hobbes

In any case The prince  of Machiavelli, The Six Books of the Commonwealth of Bodin and Hobbes Leviathan, became the great protagonists of a new era in European constitutional history:  Royal Absolutism

The Royal Absolutist State

Despite their different approaches, Machiavelli, Bodin and Hobbes all came to the same conclusion: the state should be placed in the hands of a single authority, preferably a monarch whose power ought not to be contested in any way. 

Although in some kingdoms royal absolutism appeared early, such as in Castile, where the kings imposed their supremacy as of the late 14th century, the era of classic absolutism (hoch Absolutismus) would span the 16th and 17th centuries. And even in some countries, such as France, it would last until the second half of the 18th. This period of the history of Western Public Law is also known in German historiography as the Fürstenstaat, literally the “State of the Prince,” because all branches of the state – executive, legislative and judicial – relied upon the monarch and exercised their powers in his name. 

King Charles II (1660-1685):

 the height of Absolutism in England.

Coronation portrait

  Absolutists states model would 30 Years War (1618-1648). Initially a religious conflict between the Catholic and the Protestant princes, it ended up becoming a reaction against the universalism of the popes and emperors. Instead of a unique authority that ruled the whole of the European continent, appeared a multitude of “states”, mostly kingdoms, as the idea of a Republic would not appear in the Western constitutional tradition until the end of the 18th century.   

 From this perspective it is quite clear that after the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the idea of a universal Christian empire was replaced by an international order based on the struggle between different secular “national monarchies” that would struggle to impose their hegemony through successive wars during the next three centuries. 

Paris 14 July 1790: "Fête de la Fédération"

the mob celebrate that French people have become a "Nation"

From State to Nation-State

The state was an efficient organization for avoiding chaos and anarchy. The problem was that it was too abstract, a cold rational structure difficult to grasp. As Harari would say it was not a fiction that people could adhere to and share in large numbers. In fact it required a new language to become powerful. It therefore was necessary to add to the cold organization a moving narrative. And this narrative was the “national feeling” that passionate crowds supporting their national teams in sportive competitions. 

The use of the word “national” bring us back to Teaching Guide 3 in which we studied the establishment of Germanic Nations in the geographic space of the former Western Roman Empire. After these Germanic Tribes settled in a concrete territory they ended up having “National Laws” according to the “Principle of personality” of the Law (opposed to the Principle of territoriality: one law for the whole territory). In the Germanic Kingdoms every human group had its own law: the Visigoths, the Franks, the Angles, the Lombards and, of course, the Romans, that were the largest majority of the population. 

European Germanic Kingdoms in the 6th century

 Despite the fact that some authors in the 19th and early 20th century considered that these Germanic Kingdoms were the precedent of the actual European Nation-States, in reality the use of the word “nation” to describe a group of people living in a certain territory with a sense of collectivity came much later. 

If during absolutism it is possible to affirm that the inhabitants of a kingdom started having to a certain degree a “National sentiment”, it is clear that this feeling was not strong enough to become a powerful narrative enhancing the notion of state. The “popularization of the national feeling” would only appear as a consequence of the ideas of the Enlightenment, developed by some smart “philosophes”.

Voltaire dining with Diderot, d'Alembert and Condorcet

Concretely those great writers considered that e conception of absolute royal sovereignty developed by Macchiavelli, Bodin and Hobbes ought to be transferred to a group of people that would become the legitimate protagonists of political life. Concretely the whole set of the king’s subjects that appear in the engraving of that Abraham Bosse created for the front page of the first edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan of 1651. This is the real origin of the model called “Nation-State”, word that refers to a state in which population becomes a relevant issue in political terms, as citizens decide who should rule them. 

Of course all this ideas departed from the idea that sovereignty was vested on the Nation, and that consequently the government of the state depended on people, as expressed by Abraham Lincoln who in 1863 in his Gettysburg address expressed publicly that:   “… government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.

The fight for national sovereignty

 Of course this revolutionary idea was not accepted overnight. Kings resisted relinquishing their monopoly on absolute power. In some cases some monarchs were convinced that only them had the capacities of ameliorating the life of their subjects and decide to change the state of things by themselves, becoming the engines of the reforms. And certainly in many cases it is fair to recognize that they did a great job as those enlightened monarchs did transform their kingdoms forever. The only problem was fact that in their realms sovereignty continued to be vested exclusively on the monarch. 

 In other states the transfer of sovereignty was carried out step by step, gradually, through the progressive submission of the king to the assembly of states, as it as it happened in England where in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries the Parliament became the protagonist of politics establishing  what ended up being called the parliamentary regime. And this is why already in the 19th century Queen Victoria (1837-1901) accepted that she reigned but did not govern.

Queen Victoria in 1890

  Finally the transfer of the titularity of sovereign powers from the kings to the nation was performed through the violent movements of the last decades of the 18th century, in what historiography has called the “Enlightened revolutions”. The first one happened in North America, when the British colons rebelled in 1776 against their sovereign, George III of England and created a new Nation, independent from the Crown. The second took place in the heart of Europe, in the Kingdom of France, from 1789 to 1799, and its consequences were far more transcendent, as the French Revolution changed forever the course of European history. 

In the course of 19th century the Nation State model resulting from these revolutions would spread out all sooner or later, from 1830 to 1905, to the whole European Continent, as we will see in Teaching Guide 7. And from there it would expand to the whole world in the 20th century. 

The Failure of Assembly-based Government: retrieving the Monarchical principle  

 In the French Revolution, as in the American, assembly-based, legislative government triumphed over monarchical power and this led to a system in which power was vested not on a monarch but in an assembly. But assembly government was not a useful tool as it led to anarchy. This is why in the US and in France Assembly type of government ended up being replaced by a return to the monarchical principle. 

George Washington (1789-1797),

 the first US President 

 In the US through the approval of a stronger union with a Federal Constitution of 1787, that brought a strong executive through the Presidential system. One man was elected but powerful for 4 years. In France it was less democratic as the strong government came after a military coup and the appearance of the extraordinary figure of Napoleon who immediately established a considerable authoritarian regime that would create such a solid state that their bases remain in France’s 5th Republic. 

Napoleon, 

the first Emperor of the French (1804-1815)

2. How to study Teaching Guide 6:

a) Read the corresponding text to T.G. 6 in the “Aula Virtual”. 

b) Familiarize yourself with the following basic Chronology of the period: 

CHRONOLOGY  

Dante: the White Guelf

1321 Death of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) (The Divine Comedy 1304-1321. De Monarchia 1310-1313)

1453,  29 of May The Ottoman Turks take Constantinople.

1469-1492   Lorenzo de' Medici "The Magnificent" heads the Republic of Florence

1492, 12 of October  Christopher Columbus discovers America. 

1474-1504 Reign of the Catholic Kings: Isabella and Ferdinand

XVIth Century

1509-1547 Reign of Henry VIII of England

1527 Death of Niccolò Machiavelli  (1469-1527) (The Prince 1532)

1532 Publication of The Prince by Macchiavelli

1556-1598   Reign of Philip II of Spain. 

1558 Death of Charles V (1519-1558) the last Great Holy Roman emperor 

1559 Peace of Cateau Cambressis. Begins the European hegemony of the Spanish Crown. 

1572,   23-24 August, Saint Bartholomew’s night. Massive killing of Protestants in Paris. 

1576 Publication of The Six Books of the Republic (Commonwealth), by Jean Bodin. 

XVIIth century

1603 Death of Elisabeth I of England (1558-1603)

1624-1642  Richelieu main minister of Louis XIII of France

1648 Peace of Westphalia

1649,   30 January: Execution of Charles I of England. 

1651 Publication of The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees. Begins European hegemony of France. 

1596 Death of Jean Bodin (1530-1596) (The Six Books of the Republic 1576)

1649, 30 January Beheading of Charles I of England

1661 Louis XIV (1643-1715), comes out of age at 22. 

1679 Death of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) (Leviathan, 1651)

1690 Publication of John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government.

XVIIIth century

John Locke in his last years

1704 Death of John Locke (1632-1704) (Two Treatises of Government, 1690).

1713   Treaties of Utrecht. Begins the European hegemony of England. 

1739 Composition of the Anti-Machiavel by Frederick II The Great (1740-1786).  

1721-1742  Robert Walpole as the first British Prime Minister

1748 Publication of the "The Spirit of the Laws", by Montesquieu (1689-1755).

1762 Publication of On the Social Contract by J. J. Rousseau (1712-1778)

1776    4 of July: US Declaration of Independence

1778 Death of Voltaire (1694-1778)

1783    The United States become an independent republic. 

1784 Death of Denis Diderot (1713-1784) (Jacques the Fatalist and his Master, 1796)

1789 -1797    George Washington's Presidency

1790 14 of July        Paris: Festival of the Federation (Fête de la Fédération)

1799, 9 November Napoleon in power (18 Brumaire’s coup)

 

Napoleon during the 18 Brumaire coup 

by François Bouchot (1840)

c) Complete in your Class notebook the following exercises:  

CONCEPTS:

Roi legislateur. Legibus solutus. European University Institute. Guelfs. Ghibellines. Podestà. Legist. Officials. Guillaume de Nogaret. Baldus of Ubaldis. City republics. Municipal privileges. Fueros. Statuti. Contrade. Capitani del popolo. Dante Alighieri. Niccolò Machiavelli. House of Medici. The Prince. Jean Bodin. Sovereignty. Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Huguenots. Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan. Social Pact. Fürstenstaat. Peace of Westphalia. National monarchies. Philosophes. Commonwealth (Locke). Rule of Law (Montesquieu). Social Contract (Rousseau). Gettysburg Address (Lincoln). Parliamentary regime. Robert Walpole. Enlightened revolutions. Congress (American Revolution). Articles of Confederation. Ancien Régime. Third Estate. Tennis Court Oath. National Assembly. Constituent Aseembly. Convention. Thermidorian Reaction. Directory. Celebration of the Federation (Fête de la Fédération). Jacobins. Sans culottes. Robespierre. Left and Right. Federal Constitution. Presidential system. Plebiscite. Republican monarchy. 

A "Sans culotte" 

belonging to the most radical group 

of the French Revolution 

QUESTIONS:

Concrete questions

The symbol of Louis XIV: the Sun King, 

Height of French Absolutism

1. Where does come from the expression “Absolutism?

2. What was Louis XIV conception of the state? Did he ever say that he was the state?

3. Is monarchy at the origin of the state as model of political and legal organization?

4. What was the political organization of Northern Italy in 1500?

5. Why did the Italians invent the figure of the “podestà”?

6. How did the legists help Northern Italian cities to develop self-government?

7. Did Medieval cities had constitutions?

8. What was the political position that Dante expresses in his book “De Monarchia” concerning the rule of Florence?

9. Why Dante’s Divine Comedy is important for Italian History?

10. According to Machiavelli what justifies the legitimacy of a prince for remaining in power?  

11. Why Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes defend the absolute power of kings? 

12. What are the differences between Classic Absolutism (Hochabsolutismus) and Enlightened Absolutism? 

13. Why is the Peace of Westphalia essential in European Constitutional History?

14. Why some historians consider Joan of Arc as a protonationalist figure?

15. In which sense is used the word “nation” when we speak of a “Nation-state”?

16. What was the essential contribution of the “philosophes” to the definition of the word “nation”? Why it brought politically the nation-state model?

17. How and why Robert Walpole became the first Prime Minister in British political history?

18. Which were the legal instruments that American colons used to rebel against the British Monarchy?

19. When and how did the French General Estates were transformed in National Assembly? What was the role played in this transformation by the Tiers État?

20. What do the French celebrate in their national holyday the 14th of July?

21. What is the origin of the political meaning of the words left and right?

22. Why did the Americans replace the Articles of Confederation by a Federal Constitution in 1787?

23. How did the French overcome the inconveniences of the Assembly Government imposed during the French Revolution?

General questions

Robert Walpole (1721-1742): 

the first British Prime Minister

1. Why did the state model appear in Italy?

2. What do they have in common the political ideas of Machiavelli, Bodin and Hobbes?

3. Could we speak of nationalism in the Era of Classic Absolutism in Spain, France or England? Justify your answer with arguments.

4. What is the difference between the state and the nation-state? Why the latter reinforces the former?

5. How and why did the British ended up putting limits to the royal prerogative? Think of how works the Parliamentary Regime?

6.  What lasting effects had the French Revolution in terms of European Constitutional History?

7. Why the Assembly type of government imposed by the American and French Revolutions did not work and how Americans and French put a remedy to it?

A view of Florence from Fiesole

FROM KINGS TO MONARCHS: THE RESURGENCE OF PUBLIC POWER IN LATE MEDIEVAL EUROPE

  

 1. Introduction 

One of the reasons why the Germanic Kings wielded less power than the Roman emperors was because the old hierarchical relationship which singled out the emperor as the representative of public authority was replaced, in the case of the Germanic kingdoms, by a series of interpersonal, private accords between the king and his most important subjects: the heads of clans or lineages (sippe), which could challenge the crown, as royal succession was based on election rather than on hereditary principle. The Germanic kings, thus, struggled to be considered superiors in the way the Roman emperor had been because they had to grapple with the nobles of their kingdoms, to whom they often entrusted territorial government. This important transformation led to a specific form of social organization that historians have called feudalism, which from the perspective of European-Western constitutional history has been described as a type of government in which political power was a private prerogative and asset wielded by a whole series of local lords. 

1. The Early Middle Ages and the curious consequences of Feudalism in Western Constitutional History

 As F.L. Ganshoff, the main authority on the topic, indicates the word “feudalism” (Feudalismus, Lehnwesen, féodalité, feudalismo) has two essential meanings. In a social and political sense, feudalism is a form of society characterized by the development –carried to an extreme- of the element of personal dependence in society, with a specialized military class occupying the upper echelons of the social scale; an extreme subdivisions of rights pertaining to land ownership; a graded system of rights over land, created by this subdivision and generally corresponding to degrees of personal dependence; and, finally, a distribution of political authority amongst a hierarchy of persons exercising in their own interest powers normally attributed to the state and which are often derived from its disintegration or weakness.

  However, feudalism has also a “legal meaning”, as it may be regarded as a body of institutions creating and regulating the obligations of obedience and service (especially military) between a free man (vassal) and his superior (lord), by which the latter undertakes obligations of protection and maintenance regarding his vassal. The obligation of maintenance usually, entailed the granting to his vassal of a unit of land known as a “fief”.

  These two meanings of the word “feudalism” are not, of course, unrelated to each other, but rather closely intertwined. When we speak of feudal society, the fief –which is related to both meanings- was the most important element in the graded system of rights over land upon which this type of society was based.

  In our Western legal tradition “feudalism” has a pejorative connotation that goes back to the French Revolution, when it was generally associated, in a categorical and imprecise way, with the abuses of the Ancien Régime. This vision, which is in large measure justified because of the disintegration of a powerful, central authority and its replacement by a multitude of personal agreements that consolidated a structurally unequal society, is today not entirely justified, as feudalism brought had also some positive aspects, at least from today’s perspective.  And that is that under “feudal pacts” kings entered contractual relationships of a bilateral and reciprocal nature with their subjects, through which both parties took on obligations and were granted rights. To make it simple as a result of the feudal pacts established with their vassals, feudal kings hold not an absolute power but had to negotiate with their subject the important matters affecting the realm. And this idea of “pactism” leads directly to the concept of the “Social pact” formulated by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke or Jean Jacques Rousseau, meaning that political and legal power lies on a voluntary agreement between the king and its subjects, of accepting royal authority on contractual bases, that actually are defined in the Western “Constitutions”, a term already invented by the Roman emperors after Vespasian (remember Teaching Guide 2).  From the theory of the Social Pact, the idea of the Rule of Law derives, meaning that political power is bound to respect the constitution and the underlying Legal system.

John Locke (1632-1704)

 To make it short: without feudalism we would not have modern representative democracy.  I am sure you have never thought of that.

  Having said that Feudalism in the first centuries of the European Middle Ages had terrible consequences as it prevented to create powerful kingdoms and favoured a constant state of war among feudal lords. This is why Europeans ended up developing a political system based on the growing power of kings.

 

2. Late medieval monarchy and the origin of the Western state

The considerable surge in economic activity due to the multiplication of trade links (Commercial Revolution), and the rising cultural level coinciding with the emergence of the first European universities (Bologna, La Sorbonne, Oxford and Cambridge, Salamanca), were to transform European society in the Late Middle Ages. The rigid tripartite structure into which feudal society was organized, featuring a landed nobility, peasants, and the clergy, was to fundamentally shift as a result of commercial expansion, the growth of cities, and the emergence of a new social class: the bourgeoisie, which would amass considerable wealth and gradually upset traditional relationships of power. 

Bourgeois couple at home (19th century) 

In the final medieval centuries, the confrontation between popes and emperors would enable a set of strong monarchs to assert the independence of their kingdoms from the papacy and the Holy German Roman Empire, above all, in chronological order, in the kingdoms of Castile, France and England. Actual European states as Italy or Germany would not become independent until the 19^th century because they were integrated in the Holy Roman Empire. 

The Castilian, French and English kings of the Late Middle Ages, had little in common with the German “royalty” which arose after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, because the very nature of the royal institution underwent three major transformations: the “kings” had become “monarchs;” their crowns came to be inherited (hereditary principle); and kings no longer ruled over a certain “nation” or “people,” but rather over entire territories.   

Edward III of England

3. From kings to monarchs

 Kings in the Late Middle Ages were to recover much of the power they had lost in the early medieval period, both externally, by gaining independence from emperors and popes, and internally, where they gained ground against their great vassals, the feudal barons.  By becoming the undisputed holders of power, kings evolved into monarchs – a concept much more akin to the imperial Roman conception of political rule.

 a) From suzerainty to sovereignty

 The political consolidation of the monarchs of the Late Middle Ages (in contrast to the kings of the Early Middle Ages) was possible, firstly, because royal status came to be hierarchically posited, at least in theory, above all feudal bonds, through the concept of “suzerainty”. Which predated the legal term “sovereignty,” coined by “legists” (lawyers) of Louis IX (1226-1270), better known as St. Louis. Inspired by the Roman concept of imperium, these jurists contended that the King of France prevailed over all lords simply because he was a “sovereign.”

"Accolade" by Edmund Blair Leighton (1901)

 b) The consolidation of the hereditary principle as the basis of royal legitimacy

 But that wasn’t all. The late medieval monarchs were able to consolidate their power largely because their legitimacy was based on the hereditary principle, which stood in stark contrast to the system employed under the Roman Empire, in which the emperor appointed his successor by “adoption” – a procedure which frequently sparked struggles for power. The elective procedure of designation that prevailed in the time of the Germanic kingdoms, generated also great political instability, as this principle gave rise to warfare between noble clans.

Louis XIV in his deathbed with future Louis XV, 

his great grandson and heir

 But when it became clear that the legitimate heir of the king was the only one to have the right to reign, conflicts over royal succession calmed considerably down. The royal institution, thus, came to guarantee stability of power, averting the chaos and anarchy born of the perpetual state of war between lords which characterized and marred the feudal era. 

  The hereditary kingship brought legal rules that established which was the legal order of succession to be followed (Fundamental Laws of the Realm), who was the first in line (the prince: from “princeps” –remember Augustus) and ensure the continuity of the monarchy when the king died. Ensuring the transition from one reign to the following when the new king was a minor through the institution of regency. 

The Prince of Sleeping Beauty (1959)

3. A territorial monarchy.

 The Late Medieval monarchs not only managed to become “sovereigns,” staking their legitimacy upon the hereditary principle, but also exerted their power over whole territories.  So, for instance, the King of the Franks became the King of France with Philip II Augustus (1180-1223). In the Late medieval period appeared “Territorial monarchies”.

 The Territorial monarchy became an Administrative Monarchy, as the king could administrate directly the whole territory of the realm through royal agents (officials) which enabled him to collect taxes, and maintain a permanent army, that led them to absorb the greatest amounts of territory possible into their domains. The result was that the king became the head of an extremely powerful kingdom. Which was the case with three strong medieval monarchies: Castile, France and England, that became the protagonists of the history of the last medieval centuries (12^th to 15^th centuries).

 4. A powerful King-Judge and his new legal aristocracy

  The late medieval kings consolidated their power initially through the judicial courts, as everyone accepted the idea that as representatives of God on earth, they were the supreme judges, and their mission was to reestablish the order of the Creation, that was reflected in immemorial customs. The kings ended up having the monopoly of the Administration of Justice, much longer before they could create law through legislation. 

 And this was possible because from the European universities, since the end of the 12^th century graduated a whole bunch of Lawyers that initially became the “Officials” of the kings and ended up becoming a new ruling class as a New European legal aristocracy: the Nobles of the Robe. Kings called on jurists to place them in key positions in their kingdoms because they considered them powerful instruments for the reinforcement of their power, as the Law that these jurists had studied in universities across Europe convinced the authorities for whom they worked ―emperors, popes or kings― that they were heirs to the legendary Roman emperor; and not just any emperor, but the great Justinian, who had deemed himself the master and lord of everything, including, of course, the legal realm. 

Members of the "Noblesse de robe"

5. The triumph of Late Medieval Monarchies over Christian universalism 

 The last consequence of the rising of these strong monarchies was that their kings, if initially generally endorsed the ideal of political universalism and, as such, were at least theoretically beholden to the pope and the emperor, when they became powerful enough they reacted against the idea that they were under the authority of emperors and popes and defended their absolute independence within their respective realms. 

 First because the royal legists, the king’s officials, convinced the kings that they were emperors on their realms. And second because the popes lost prestige and power and by the end of the 15^th century, they were powerless against kings. After the Sack of Rome by the Imperial troops of Charles the Vth in 1527, popes would never get involved again in European politics. 

Sack of Rome (1527)

6. Kingship in the Era of Absolutism 

The fact that kings reacted against the idea that they were under the authority of emperors and popes and defended their absolute independence within their respective realms, explain why these great Late Medieval European Monarchies ended up being the base of the state model of organization that would appear in the beginning of the 16^th century with thinkers like Machiavelli, Bodin or Hobbes. 

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)

In fact, “Modern” Kings became much more powerful than their late medieval predecessors in the course of the 16^th and 17^th centuries as they would be considered “Absolute” Monarchs, with almost all power of the land and the people of the realm. A strong power that was pretty useful in the 18^th century, when as “Enlightened” kings tha remained absolute monarchs tried to reform their realms adapting to the new ideas of the “Philosophes”, in an Era with brilliant  monarchs like Catherine the Great of Russia (1762-1796), Joseph II of Austria (1765-1790), Charles III of Spain (1759-1788), Frederick  II The Great of Prussia (1740-1786) or Joseph I of Portugal (1750-1777), with his prime minister the Marquis of Pombal. We will see all that in Teaching Guide number 6.  

Portrait of the Marquis of Pombal (1766)

By Michel Van Loo

7. The survival of monarchies in the XXIst century 

 After the Enlightened revolutions of the 18^th century things changed and the kings progressively saw their power limited. Like happened for instance in the United Kingdom because Parliament became the great protagonist of political end legal history, leading to a parliamentary regime in which government depended not on the free will of a monarch but on which party won the legislative elections. This is why under Queen Victoria (1837-1901), whose reign represents the height of the British Empire, the motto of the monarchy was: the king reigns but does not rule. Government was in the hands of the Prime minister elected by the majority of the parliament. 

Queen Victoria (1837-1901)

 Some monarchies ended up disappearing. Like happened for instance in France, one of the most solid ones, that disappeared first with the beheading of Louis XVI (21 January 1793) and Marie Antoinette (16 October 1793). The monarchy was reinstalled after Napoleon’s fall by Louis XVIII and Charles X, both brothers of Louis XVI. Monarchy was adapted to the Parliamentary regime under the reign of Louis Philippe of Orleans (1830-1848), and disappeared completely with the Wallon’s amendment the 30 January 1875, by one single vote, on the issue of the national flag. Since that date France is a Republic? Or is it a Republican Monarchy, in the line of Napoleon I and Napoleon III after the De Gaulle’s reform of 1962 enabling the direct election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage that, in my opinion, has transformed the French 5^th Republic in a sort of a Republican Monarchy; following, in a way, the example of the US Presidential Regime.  The Presidents of the French and US Republics have far more power than European kings and queens. Though elected they are real monarchs. 

Charles de Gaulle (1959-1969)

 first president of the 5th French Republic

 The interesting point is that in Europe we still have several monarchies. The oldest European king is the British monarch who is not only the king of the UK, but also the head of state in most of the Commonwealth countries, like Canada or Australia, for instance. England in its history has only been a Republic under the Cromwell dictatorship established by the Lord Protector (1653-1658). 

 Spain is also a very old monarchy, but its rule was interrupted several times. This is why, for instance, Spanish monarchy had to be reinstituted after the Spanish War of Independence against Napoleon (1808-1814), the 1868 Revolution against Elisabeth II (1868-1874), and finally the II Spanish Republic (1931-1936), the Civil War (1936-1939), Franco’s Dictatorship (1939-1975) and the Transition to Democracy (1975-1978). An extremely interesting process from the legal perspective that I will be willing to explain in class. 

Anne Leibovitz, portraits fo the Spanish Royal Couple

Besides these two mentioned countries other European states have kings and queens as head of states like:  Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark or Luxembourg.  

The question then is why monarchies survived in these highly developed European countries. Isn’t monarchy an anachronism? 

 In my opinion it is not, and the first reason for that is that European monarchies get on well with democratic regimes, which is absolutely not the case of weird “Hereditary Republics” like North Korea. Let’s discuss in class why monarchy is still a useful institution. Starting first with the precision that 21^st century European kings are not monarchs but kings, with not real political power. Let’s find out why those powerless queens and kings are still today heads of their respective states. 

Of course, Royals must observe good conduct. Otherwise, they should disappear. We will also see in class how some scandals have affected the stability of European monarchies and have threatened their survival as an institution. Like Lady Di’s case in England, Sarah Ferguson, Meghan Markle, Prince Andrew and its relationship with Epstein, the Emerit king of Spain Juan Carlos, or the Norwegian princess Mette Marit.....  

Lady Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997)

2. How to study Teaching Guide 5:

 

a) Read the corresponding text in the “Aula Virtual”. 

b) Familiarize yourself with the basic Chronology of the period: 

 

CHRONOLOGY

 

XI Century

 

1066     Battle of Hastings. William the Conqueror defeats and kills Harold the last Anglo-Saxon king.

1085     Conquest of Toledo –the old capital of the Visigothic Kingdom- from the Muslims by Alphonse VI of Castile and Leon. 

1088     Foundation of Bolonia University, the oldest in Europe.

1099     Death of Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar “The Cid” in Valencia.

XII Century

1137 Union of Aragon and Catalonia (Barbastro Capitulations) as a result of the marriage between                 Ramon Berenguer IV count of Barcelona and Petronila, queen of Aragon. 

1154-1189       Reign of Henry II of England.  Creator of the legal system of “Common Law” through the creation of royal courts and important legislative reforms. (Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164). 

1170                Henry II of England orders the assassination of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, for opposing royal power.    

1180-1223 Philip II Auguste of France. The first “King of France”

 1188     Cortes of Leon. First Assembly of Estates in Western Europe where the king convenes the representatives of the cities with the nobles and the bishops.

XIIIth Century

1212    Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Consolidation of Christian Supremacy in Medieval Spain. 

1215    Nobles impose on John Lackland Magna Charta. 

1230    Fernando III definitively unites the kingdoms of Castile and Leon, and creates the most                     powerful realm in the Spain of the Reconquest. 

1252-1284    Reign of Alfonso X, the Wise, of Castile.

1272-1307      Reign of Edward I of England, who strengthens royal power by relying on the cities                         as allies against the great nobility. 

1276     James I of Aragon dies and integrates the kingdom of Valencia in the Union of Aragon and                 Catalonia. Appears the Crown of Aragon (Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia).

 1285-1314 Philip IV of France “The Fair” 

XIVth century

 

1302                First meeting of the French Estates General (États Généraux), convened by Philip IV,             who asks for aid from nobles, bishops and cities representatives to fight against the pope Boniface           VIII.  

 1303     Anagni Slap. Boniface VIII is incarcerated by order of Philip IV of France. That will lead to the         Avignon Papacy (1309 to 1376).

1314     18 March         Jacques de Mollay the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, extremely      wealthy religious order dissolved by the king Philip the IV, who will die 9 months later. His three male sons will die without descendance: Louis X in 1316, Philip V in 1322 and Charles IV in 1328 (Accursed kings). End of the Capetian dinasty and beginning of the Valois. Dynastic cause of the beginning of the Hundred Year’s War as the king of England was a direct descendant of the Capetians through his mother, but in France women could not transmit rights to the Crown (Salic Law). 

1337    Beginning of the Hundred Year’s War (Until 1453) between the kings of England and the Kings of France. 

1348          Adoption of the Ordinance of Alcalá in Castile (Ordenamiento de Alcalá), Alphonse XI consolidates Kings authority in Castile. Royal Law prevails over local traditional customs.     

 

XVth century

1415      Azincourt Battle. Decesive victory of the English against the French.

1431      30 May 19-year-old Joan of Arc I is burned at the stake by the English. In 1428 she had conquered Orleans from the English Army, and she enabled the crowning of Charles VII in Reims despite English occupation on 17 July 1429.

1453     End of the Hundred Year’s War (beginning in 1337). French victory consolidates the                             position of French Kings. And English defeat consolidates preeminence of the English                             Parliament (House of Commons and House of Lords) over the English Kings.

1461     Death of Charles VII of France (king since 1422) who won the Hundred Year’s War and consolidated the strength of the French Monarchy.

1479     Union of Castile and Aragon under the Catholic Kings. Spain’s birth certificate. They laid the foundations of the Spanish State.

1485     End of the War of the Roses (since 1455). The conflict was fought between the supporters of the House of Lancaster (emblem a red rose) and those of the House of York (emblem a white rose), rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet. Henry VII, who descended from the Lancaster, rises to the English throne, the first monarch of the Tudor Dynasty. English nobility was so weakened as a result of the War that the Tudors could impose a century of royal absolutism in England with strong monarchs as Henry VIII and his daughter Elisabeth I.

1492     1^st January Conquest of the city of Granada by the Catholic Kings.  End of the Spanish Reconquest, after almost 800 years (Since 711).

            12 October: Christopher Columbus discovers America.

1494     Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), the kings of Castile and Portugal agree on the limits of their conquests Worldwide, independently of the Pope. They divide the world in two parts (Line of Tordesillas).

 

c) Complete in your Class notebook the following exercises:  

CONCEPTS:

Feudalism. Fief. Feudal pact. Vassal. Ancien Régime. Pactism. Social pact. Constitution. Rule of Law. Kings vs monarchs. Suzerainty vs sovereignty. Coronation. Anointing. Royal Touch. Thaumaturgic Kings. Fundamental Laws. Order of succession. Hereditary principle. Regency. Prince. Curia regis (court). Exchequer. Officials. Royal Courts of Justice. Common Law (England) vs Ius Commune (Continental Europe). Legists. Nobles of the robe. Assembly of States. Anagni Slap. Alexandrine bulls. Treaty of Tordesillas. Parliamentary regime. Wallon’s Amendment (1875). Hereditary Republic.

 

QUESTIONS:

Concrete questions

1. Why did Italy and Germany not become strong kingdoms in the Middle Ages? Compare the situation of both territories with what happened with kingdoms like Castile, France or England.

2. Explain the sense of the sentence “Rex est imperator in regno suo”. Who invented it?

3. Why the ceremony of royal coronation began and why it became crucial for stability of monarchies?

4. How did initially the kings of the Capetian dynasty in France ensure the instantaneous succession in the throne after the king’s death, prior to the consolidation of the hereditary principle?

5. Why were important in every kingdom the fundamental laws that organised royal succession? Think of the advantages of the principle of hereditary succession of the crown and why it was important to ensure the legality of royal succession.

6. Why there are monarchies still in Europe? Think of what the advantages are of having a king instead of a president of a republic.

7. What is the etymological sense of the word “prince”?

8. Who was the first French king that was referred to as “King of France? What is the sense of this terminology?

9. What were the consequences of the fact that late medieval kings could collect taxes from their subjects? In which way it consolidated the power of the kings? Think of why it helped the French monarchy to win the Hundred Year’s war against the English?

10. Why universities, and more concretely the Faculties of Law, were so important for changing not only the European Legal systems but the political organization of the late medieval kingdoms?  

11. Why the study of Roman Law helped consolidating the power of late medieval kings? Think of what the political background in the time that was formed the Compilation of Justinian.

12. Why Philip IV the Fair of France convened for the first time in 1302 the French General Estates (États Généraux)? What was his political purpose?

13. With which legal argument extracted from the Corpus Iuris Civilis of Justinian did the Legists of the late medieval kings justify that the kings were not submitted to the Emperor?

14. With which legal argument did the Legists of the late medieval kings justify that the kings were not submitted to the Pope?

15. How did the kings of Portugal get rid of the submission to the pope? Remember that Philip IV of France would do the same later.

16. Why did the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) prove that Castilian and Portuguese kings had become independent from the popes?

17. Why the absolutism of 18^th century enlightened European monarchs was beneficial for their kingdoms?

18. Why 21^st century monarchs have in reality become kings again?

General questions

1. Which are the two meanings of the word “feudalism”: from the social-political perspective and from the legal perspective.

2. Why today “feudalism” has not the entirely pejorative connotation it used to have, from the perspective of Western constitutional history.

3. What are the more important changes that the Commercial Revolution brings to late medieval European societies? Compare it with the old social structure from the Feudal era.  

4. Which are the specific titles granted to crown princes in England, France, Crown of Aragon, Castile and Leon and Navarre?

5. Why did the late medieval kings used initially the Administration of Justice to consolidate their power?  How did they do that?

6. Explain the essential difference between the English Common Law and the Continental “Ius Commune”? Think of how both legal systems appear.

7. Mention the reasons that explain that an anachronic institution like monarchy is still in use in some European nation-states in the 21^st century?