Wiping out the dynasties?

Faeelin

Banned
Okay, here's a somewhat silly idea I've had.

OTL, Italy was led by a series of city states because it had commercial benefits to strengthen its merchant class. It also was unique in that its nobles had all, ah, died out. This left the growing cities to take the reigns of Italy.

Italy is probably very unique, due to its commercial strength. But is there anywhere else we can wipe out enough nobles and strengthen cities to t he point where the cities are in charge?

One place, oddly, might be France. Its nobility was _really_ hit hard by a few battles in the 100 years war.
 
How about Hansa? They might have a decent chance of something similar happening. Or what about replacement of nobolity? Instead of king-given noble status, highly succesfull merchants and resource owners become the new nobility. Think of it as executive board members of top 500 corporations became American nobility through accumulation of wealth, except it happened in Western Europe.
 

Faeelin

Banned
Namor said:
How about Hansa? They might have a decent chance of something similar happening. Or what about replacement of nobolity? Instead of king-given noble status, highly succesfull merchants and resource owners become the new nobility. Think of it as executive board members of top 500 corporations became American nobility through accumulation of wealth, except it happened in Western Europe.

It did happen there, actually.
 
Maybe in the "Low Countries". IIRC, a lot of the towns and cities there did have a considerable degree of self-government, but they never became independent states like the cities of Italy because there was still a pretty strong class of land-holding nobles.
 

Susano

Banned
Maybe the rhineland. Most principalities became so small over time that it is ridicolous, while there are some strong cities.
EXACTLY the same with Swabia...
 

Faeelin

Banned
Yes, the low countries and rhineland are also likely; the low countries were the center for much of europe's cloth in the middle ages, and were as rich, or richer than, Italy.
 
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