A Provincial Elite in Early Modern Tuscany: Family and Power in the Creation of the State

Abstract

This study of the formation of the early modern state in Florence shows how local families and central rulers redefined concepts of power and domination which conditioned political evolution along social and gender lines. The Florentine state was one of the first to create new state institutions, challenge municipal powers, and develop a new centralized political system. By incorporating the families of shopkeepers, wool producers, landholders, notaries, and military officers living in the outlying town of Poppi, southwest of Florence, as integral contributors to state formation, the author provides a vivid look at the ways power and resistance operated at the everyday level of social relations, and attempts to redefine the context and the participants in state formation.