3.3 The Rise and Progress of Towns and Cities
The establishment of cities and towns date to before the existence of the Roman empire. It is supposed that individuals found it preferable, for the sake of defense, to build their homes in close proximity and often erect a wall or other barriers for their defense. Thus situated in close proximity, it is expected that townsmen engaged in trade among themselves and developed specializations in labor that were seen as advantageous to the nobility, who generally saw fit to preserve certain towns to have the benefits of their product.
While some towns were looted by the nobility, and their citizens subjected to rule as harsh as inflicted upon the residents of the rural countryside, it is evident that since a fairly early time that residents of towns were given certain privileges by their lord over their own persons and property, and that the nobility who found themselves in needs of the conveniences and luxuries that could only be obtained from specialized workers were inclined to trade with townsmen, rather than to merely take from them. The nobleman who destroyed a town found himself without any means to obtain goods beyond the raw materials grown on his own estate.
In addition to basic property rights, towns were generally self-governed, by magistrates and a town council that settled disputes and set the laws to which residents were subject. Taxes were generally in a fixed sum and regular intervals, collected from the town as a whole, though the government of the town determined how to apportion this expense among its citizens. The inhabits of a town were also required to provide for their own defense, the establishment of a town often being initiated by this motive, and maintained of their own guard and civilian militia.
It was not uncommon for lords to "despise" townsmen and vice-versa, the lords being covetous of the wealth of the townsmen, and desiring to plunder them at any occasion, and the townsmen wishing to maintain the independence that enabled them to have prosperity worth plundering. It is thus that towns sought the support of higher ranks of nobility and, through tribute paid to the higher noblemen, gained their support against the lesser lords. In effect, the town became a separate estate, governed by its own people, with the support of the higher authority. Accounts are given in England, France, and Germany of townsmen receiving direct support and patronage from the king.
As such, "order and good government, along with liberty and security" were established in towns and cities at the same time those who occupied the country were exposed to violence and oppression of their lords. Thus liberated from interference in the act of production, and having certainty that they would receive the benefit of their own labor, men became more industrious.
The gravitation of men from country to town was likened to escaping from slavery. It was not uncommon for farmers to accumulate, in secret, some stock of goods to serve as their stake in establishing themselves in a town, and common law that if a country peasant could conceal himself in a town for a year, he became a citizen of the town and free of his previous lord's command forever. It is by providing sanctuary that many towns grew into cities of considerable size.
It is necessarily true, as previously discussed, that the town must ultimately derive their subsistence and the raw materials of manufacture from the country - but not necessarily the country adjacent to the town. This is the reason most towns and cities were formed either along the sea-cost or the banks of a navigable river. And it is not uncommon, in such situations, for a city to grow to great wealth and splendor while the neighboring countryside was mired in "poverty and wretchedness."
The cities of Italy were among the first in Europe to be raised to a considerable degree of opulence. Aside of having access to the produce of a vast number of counties, by way of the Mediterranean, these towns were often the commissaries of the armies who fought in the crusades which greatly contributed to their wealth.
As the centers of commerce, towns became the source of luxury items in their localities. The lords of local estate would trade quantities of the rude produce of their own lands, extorted from the countrymen, for the luxury goods available in town, either from local manufacture or brought from further locations. This was the beginning of international commerce, though in small scale and of luxury goods.
The wiser of the local lords also sought to establish manufacturing in their own localities, whether for local consumption or trade, and thus arose the disparity of nations: countries that established local manufacture became wealthier than countries that did not In most instances, manufacturing arose of the need to provide items to the local market, and only when they became capable of exceeding local demand did they seek to trade their surplus to more remote customers. In other instances, manufactures were created entirely for the purpose of export. In the latter instance, a manufacturing operation contributed to the wealth of its operator, with little impact on the community. In the former case, the wealth of the operator was also improved, but to the improvement of the surrounding territory, a phenomenon to be considered in greater detail in the following chapter.