2 Comments

I enjoyed this. The HRE doesn't receive many apologias. I can't pretend to be an expert on it, but I recall noticing a long time ago that despite its alleged utter dysfunction, it was at least functional at resisting external aggression for a very long time. I guess the Reformation would be when that started to fall apart, but even then, it's noteworthy that France wasn't ever really able to dominate or peel away parts of Germany until Napoleon and his Confederation of the Rhine.

My sense of the power politics of the HRE -- without knowing if the details affirm this -- is that the Emperors would naturally be incentivized to encourage the establishment of Free Imperial Cities. Even if he didn't have much control over them, neither did his most powerful feudal vassals, and the natural antagonism between those two groups would help him to secure his own hold on power by playing them against each other.

Expand full comment
author

Thanks for the comment.

I am not sure that I a really writing an apologia for the HRE. I am mainly pointing out that it accidentally had a positive impact on human progress.

Yes, I think that the Reformation and the following Thirty Years War destroyed any possibility of economic growth in what is now Germany for quite some time. Perhaps if it had not happened, the Free Imperial Cities could have grown into full-fledged Commercial societies as similar cities did in Northern Italy and the Low Countries.

And I will discuss the Free Imperial Cities in a future article.

Expand full comment