A provincial elite in early modern Tuscany

In this groundbreaking study of the interaction between familial strategies of Tuscan provincial families and the politics of the Florentine government, Giovanna Benadusi offers a new understanding of the social formation of the early modern state.

The development of the modern state is a central theme of Renaissance and early modern European historiography, and the Florentine state was one of the first to create new state institutions, challenge municipal powers, and develop a new centralized political system.

By incorporating into her account the families of shopkeepers, wool producers, landholders, notaries, and military officers who lived in the outlying town of Poppi, southeast of Florence, as integral contributors to state formation, Benadusi not only provides a vivid look at the ways power and resistance operated at the everyday level of social relations but also redefines the context and the participants in state formation.