Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 7 The city: new fraternities of patriarchs
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nevertheless the English urban rentier and business circles fused with the squirearchy very
easily, with only a little help from the patrimonial ruler. I will therefore first discuss the
position of the English cities, the burghers of which were the first ones to form a national
burgher estate.
12. England: unmilitary cities and the development of a national burgher estate.
Weber's analysis of the developments in England after the Norman conquest
92
seems to
contradict his argument on 'the occidental city', since the English cities gained their
autonomous position not through the force of their weapons, but by means of their money.
The English city was no autonomous 'commune', no territorial corporation; legislature and
administration of justice remained in the hands of the prince. Neither did the English citizens
fight the nobility for the domination of the city and its surrounding country: their relationship
with it was peaceful.
Yet Weber, in his conceptualization of the cities, makes no exception for England. In his view
the demilitarization of the burgher estate in England simply started much earlier than on the
continent. The military ascendancy of the English Crown, which shaped urban development,
also grew gradually, and was even not yet total after the Norman conquest. The early
demilitarization of the cities was caused by specific circumstances: by 'the unification of the
kingdom, the decline of threats from the outside, and the rise of the great feudal barons.'
The English cities, when they lost their dominance over the countryside, oriented themselves
to economic activities instead. In most of them the 'coniurationes' developed into
monopolistic guilds. These guilds could maintain their freedoms by bargaining with the king,
who was dependent on their wealth. The king therefore had to support the mercantile
patriciate, which did not need any armed craft guilds and had nothing to fear from them.
Thus no city democracy arose in England. The cities remained oriented to a central feudal
administration, trying to acquire as many rights and privileges as possible, and to support
and expand their monopolies. The kings in their turn tried to rule through a central
parliament, supporting the monopoly position of the oligarchies of notables vis-a-vis the non-
privileged strata.
93
Because the creation of law remained in the hands of the king and of the royal courts, the
English cities indeed were little more than economic corporations.
94
The English cities thus
returned into the patrimonial folds earlier than the continental cities, where at this time
revolutionary democracies arose.
The result of these developments is that the English cities did not form separate, armed
burgher estates, who fought nobility and princes in order to advance their own military and
economic interests, but that all cities together, in the status union of the commoners in
parliament, looked after their common interests, which transcended those of exploiting the
profits of the local monopolies: they thus formed the first 'interlocal, national bourgeoisie.'
95
92
ES p. 1276 ff., WG p. 762 ff.
93
ES p. 1280, WG p. 764
94
'The transition was fluid from the privileged "company" to a city guild and from there to the incorporated city.
The special legal status of the English burghers thus was composed of a bundle of privileges obtained within the
partly feudal, partly patrimonial overall association of the kingdom; it did not derive from membership in an
autonomous association which had organized its own system of political domination'. ES p. 1279, WG p. 763.
95
ES p. 1280, WG p. 765.
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