During the medieval times, was Merchant Republic better

>>2107968
Define good.

>>2107968
Define Merchant Republic.

>>2107968
Define medieval.

File: Master_of_mint.png (9KB, 64x64px) Image search: [Google]

9KB, 64x64px

This is one of those

>Is it /his/ or is it /gsg/?

threads.

>>2107968
Define feudalism.

>>2107968
Feudalism gets you good levy sizes but merchant republics make ridiculous amounts of gold. The problem with merchant republics though is the funky inheritance and unpredictable elections. The best approach is to create a vassal merchant republic to feed you taxes.

>>2107968
Why have Jews gotten such a bad reputation when the most important and successful merchants during the middle ages, e.g. the Medici, Fuggers, Hanseatic League, etc. where all Christians?

Merchant Republics and Feudal States happen out of the given circumstances and conditions of the populace. Republics happened in Merchant states as you had a cosmopolitan condensed areas that experienced consistent outside exposure, that gave rise to an educated and somewhat aware bourgeois class that is rowdy and important enough to demand democratic representation from the aristocratic class. Feudal societies happen, and tend to be more pure to being feudal, in the more rural and scarcely populated commerce areas there are that are less welcoming to traders, that are not as open to outsiders out of fear of the corruption of the peasants--which is somewhat self-occurring paradox that keeps them being feudal (them being feudal makes it unwelcoming to traders to get invested there, the lack of traders and outside investors make them more reliant on keeping a more controlled underclass and planned economy, the maintaining a discipline underclass and planned economy makes them skeptical and unfriendly to outsiders).
Just look at Ancient Greece for example--the most purest forms of democracy occurred in condense and highly populated cities (like Athens, Syracuse, Argos) with a strong intellectual class. Oligarchies occurred in lesser populated and thereby lesser intellectual States but were still reliant on outside trade and kept a chattel slaves as an underclass (such as Corinth, Thebes, Rhodos). Feudal States occurred in States that controlled large rural territory outside of a centralized cities with a little intellectual class and outside interference (such as Thessaly, Sparta, and Crete).

>>2108414
Because Jews weren't merchant but moneylenders.

>>2107968
It was better for merchants than for the large landowners, sure.

this>>2108721
tl;dr more middle class = more political representation

if their rights aren't protected they will take their custom to Genoa