AHC: Flip Italy's political patterns - A south full of city states, a united northern kingdom

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
In OTL, southern Italy (often paired with Sicily) was a united kingdom for 731 years (1130-1861) with 1, clear urban center standing above the rest, Naples. (A historical atlas of mine shows Naples as larger than any of the northern Italian cities, and larger than most northern European cities, through the 1500s).

Meanwhile, central Italy was occupied by the Papal States, and northern Italy was divided into multiple independent city states or regional domains.

The challenge is to reverse this:

With any PoD after 650 CE (after all the Lombard victories against the Byzantines), have southern Italy be split among multiple city-states (some Republican) and other small domains for centuries on end (at least 731 years).

So, for example, Amalfi, Pescara, Trani, Bari, Brindisi, Taranto, Crotoni, Reggio, Messina (in Sicily), Siracusa (in Sicily), Palermo (in Sicily), Tropea, Salerno, Naples, Gaeta, Benevento and Melfi [or substitute some other southern Italian towns/cities of your liking], are not under a common monarchy but instead are separate, and competing, Republics, Dukedoms and Dictatorships with proudly distinctive civic identities and traditions.

---At the same time, with any PoD after 650 CE, get all of the northern Italy, north of Rome (and other Papal States) to be united under a single kingdom for at least a 731 year run. So, northern Italy has a single capital, (for example, Bologna, Florence, Pisa, Livorno, Leghorn, Pavia, Turin, Milan, Venice, Verona, Ravenna - I do not care which), and all the other famous cities of the region are simply subordinate provincial towns.


How's this for a PoD:

Could we get something started along these lines by having Norman adventurers seize and consolidate a state encompassing Italy north of the Papal states, breaking it from the HRE, but having Norman "northern Italy" be hemmed in from further expansion southward by its own overextension, Papal resistance and the Norman northern Italian state having to fight for its life against HRE attempts to reconquer it?

Meanwhile, south of the Papal States, without an enterprising Norman conquest, southern Italy remains divided into small duchies and city-states like Amalfi. Maybe Sicily remains Arab-ruled longer without the Normans, or if certain southern cities like Amalfi, Naples, Taranto start gaining naval/commercial power like the Venetians, Pisans and Genoans of OTL, they can recover Sicily piecemeal, establishing their own colonies on the island?
 
You can accomplish this in the short term by preserving the medieval kingdom of Italy (somehow) and averting the Norman invasion, but in the long term I'm not sure southern Italy is very fruitful soil for civic independence. Unlike northern Italy, which has the expansive and fertile basins of the Po and Arno rivers, the interior of southern Italy is mountainous and has few navigable rivers of much worth. Southern Italy is also not a crossroads of any inland trade routes, which is what places like Milan thrived on. This leaves maritime communes as your only likely options for civic independence, but southern Italy has only a handful of truly good natural harbors, and they are largely confined to the Tyrrhenian coast. I can see Naples going this route, maybe even someplace like Gaeta given the right political circumstances, but a whole southern Italy of city-states? I just can't see it.
 
Well, you technically could have Naples, Amalfi, and Syracuse maybe Lecce,Bari,Palermo, and Benevento, at least as notable southern cities go. How they become republics is the big question.
 
Amalfi is probably doomed. It has no natural harbor, which is pretty important for a merchant city. Paradoxically, its terrible land probably helped it reach the heights it did - when you can hardly grow anything on your land, it makes sense to make your living on the sea, and when your land is incredibly rugged it's relatively easy to sustain your independence (particularly when your enemies are rather unimpressive, like the Lombard principalities). As soon as serious competition began to arise, however, Amalfi faded, because it simply didn't have the harbor, the resources, the people, or the land to compete.
 
In a way Naples and Gaeta are certainly possible candidates, even better than Amalfi. Palermo or Syracuse in Sicily, even Marsala with a bit of stretch, or Messina. The problem in Sicily is that the island was under the Byzantines before being conquered by Muslims. Neither of these domination were a fertile ground for the birth of free communes. On the mainland, Amalfi got his freedom more by happenstance than by design, and it did not last very long, mainly for the reasons outlined by Carp but also for the lack of suitable defenses landward (in different ways, Venice Genoa and Pisa had very good natural defenses. Ancona had a good try for a time, but was handicapped by lack of natural defenses and usually had to compromise with land powers). Naples had the population, and the harbor, but once again its natural defenses were not strong enough. Gaeta was too small. The ports in Puglia were in similar conditions, and the Byzantine presence for a long time played a role too (followed by the string of Norman successes which imposed a centralised power in the region). IMHO a lasting Norman kingdom in southern Italy (no marriage to the Hohenstaufen, no foreign invasions) would be likely to result in improved traffics and most likely royal charters would be granted: no free commune, though, nor obviously a good position for traffics toward Europe.

In the Northern and Central Italy (the papacy control over Umbria,Marche and Romagna was most of the time purely nominal. Even Latium itself was usually under the control of the noble families) it would be interesting to see what might happen if the kingdom of Italy endures: my guess is that the cities would start receiving royal charters pretty soon, since it would be in the king's interest to get a share of the traffic revenues and avoid the control of major nobles over rich and populous cities. No communes here too, although Venice might be the exception to the rule given its very defensible position.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
You can accomplish this in the short term by preserving the medieval kingdom of Italy (somehow)

By this you mean the Carolingian successor state, right? Not an earlier Lombard Kingdom.

Well how would one go about keeping it a single kingdom? Would it be everything north and east of the PAtrimony of St Pete/Latium/Lazio ?
 
Top