| Summary: | <p>This thesis examines urban political culture and geopolitical developments in later thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Italy by investigating the relationship between history-writing and other forms of ‘political communication’: the processes by which political information, values and practices were transmitted, preserved and perpetuated. The period saw the political reshaping of the peninsula. Descendants of Charles of Anjou (d. 1285), supported by the Papacy, fought with both the Catalan-Aragonese and claimants to the Holy Roman Empire for supremacy in Sicily and the Italian peninsula, while strife in the city-communes was articulated through ‘Guelf’ and ‘Ghibelline’ identities constructed around this broader conflict. To negotiate these struggles, contemporaries produced and stored in increasing quantities different forms of written communication, e.g., letters, political sermons and collections of treaties and charters. This thesis shows how we can understand these political developments and the communications around them through the concurrent boom in urban history-writing.</p>
<p>The study examines four works of history-writing produced in three cities, which engaged with Italian and Mediterranean politics in distinct ways. Genoa had a political and commercial presence across the Mediterranean, and a regional hinterland; Asti controlled a large territory in Piedmont and was a major player in northern Italian politics; Palermo was at the centre of struggles between the Angevins and the Catalan-Aragonese for Italian (and Mediterranean) supremacy. This thesis demonstrates that history-writing was produced by urban political elites to work with other forms of political communication to define and attribute meaning to a city’s political relationships in response to local concerns. Simultaneously, it shows how the reception of political information in urban centres both influenced local politics and was crucial in the geopolitical shaping of Italy and the Mediterranean region as a whole. In doing so, it demonstrates the potential of using political communication as a framework for understanding Italian politics.</p>
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