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Around the middle of the fourteenth century, Emperor Charles IV developed broad views on the economic possibilities of his huge territorial possessions. His Hausmacht extended from Luxemburg to Bohemia. So he launched the idea of an alternative trade route between Venice and Bruges, between the Adriatic and the North Sea. With a clear intention to stimulate trade in his territories, he tried to persuade the Venetians to leave the dangerous and lengthy sea route around Italy and Iberia and over the risky Bay of Biscay. Instead of the dangers of pirates and storms, he offered the security of his imperial roads and waterways through his capital Prague, along the Elbe to Hamburg and from there on the regular sea route to Bruges. The Venetians did not directly reject the idea: the supply of metals from Bohemia and Southern Germany was of real importance to them and for such high-value products, as well as for wool, linen, and cloth, transport by land was not too disadvantageous. However, the Emperor did not fully realize the distance from Hamburg to Bruges and seemed all too optimistic about the security of the roads and the weight of tolls within his Empire. Venetians continued to send their galleys through the straits of Gibraltar)This curious project illustrates the tensions between trade and territory, cities and monarchs. The latter regularly strived for total control of a territory from their administrative center. The former reckoned with profits, did not take care about borders, and preferred easy communication lines along coasts and rivers, z After the series of national case studies in this volume, to which I am very much indebted, I try to draw some comparative lines, linking the functions of cities within economic systems to their powers within states. I concentrate on roughly the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, during which important shifts of the economic cores occurred, while the process of state formation accelerated Theory and Society 18: 733-755, 1989. 9 1989 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

The rapid growth of cities from the eleventh to the thirteenth century raises the question of how a sense of community was created among inhabitants who were migrants from disparate backgrounds. Before urban institutions and legislation emerged, informal social structures based on trust networks appear to have fostered socialization and an adaptation to new ways of life. Travelling merchants created various kinds of associations which were at the origins of the sworn communes. The merchants' guilds also strove to protect citizens on their travels. The growth of the cities led to the need to institutionalize these functions.The strong urban growth of cities in western Europe between approximately 1000 and 1300 C.E. resulted from important migrations. These were movements primarily from the countryside into nearby new population concentrations, but probably also from regions further away. Historians have paid little attention to the process of social integration which must have taken place in these rapidly growing urban communities. However, the lifestyle experienced by those in small rural communities, where various types of domain laws bonded serfs, differed fundamentally from that in the new havens of freedom.The character of urban economic activity made people less dependent on natural conditions and more on social constraints, as will be explored below. People coming from various backgrounds had to adapt to new types of work and community life. Habitation was more dense, the size of the community larger and levels of social interaction much higher although less personal. Social positions and relations were rather fluid; new roles and behavioural standards had to be developed. Given the variety of social origins of the new town dwellers, and the rapid changes consequent upon the continuing expansion, the early cities must have been melting pots in which the limits of the newly acquired freedom were probed through processes of adaptation and conflict. New social structures emerged with new laws, new institutions and a new sense of community. As historians, we are best informed about the steps by which new relations became formalized. I would like to draw attention to the phase before institutionalization and legislation, during which more informal social structures must have prepared the paths towards new urban ways of life. In the very first stage, 'a particularized trust in persons of known attributes or affiliations' needed to be created, before the urban elites and the community as a whole could expect to be * This article is a revised version of the plenary lecture delivered at