Been reading on the Roman Republic again. I am always impressed with how (relatively) impressive the Roman Popular Assembly system was. There were all sorts of issues with the assemblies and the Roman political system generally from the POV of a 21st century liberal democracy (the tribal divisions, voting order, and whole “built on the backs of slaves and violent conquest” thing). But for the last century BC it’s pretty impressive that you have a representative body with genuine power (the ability to appoint representives with real power, tribunes, and pass laws directly) that was extremely large. At height of it’s size after the social war it must have numbered in the 100,000s, far larger than just a city’s governing council (ok, soon after the whole system collapsed under Sulla, then Caesar et al)
So after the last roman popular assembly* when was the next time there was a representative “democratic” body of that size and power? You had city governments like Venice but AFAIK nothing with that many voters until maybe the late medeival English parliment? Or Swiss? Dutch?
follow up question, when was the last popular assembly that actually voted on something? Unlike the Senate thet weren’t kept around, even in form only, during the principate, and they were restricted early on by Sulla.
The 1188 Parliament of León is considered the first “modern” Parliament; between the fall of the Roman Empire and that one there were three kinds of institutions that were kind of a bridge between both kinds of institutions. That was the first instance of the Cortes de León to include representatives from all social classes in a preexisting periodic meeting, and covering not just a city but a whole kingdom.
One of those institutions is what you mention, City governing bodies. Another is Germanic-style Parliaments (lit. “calls to speak”) which went beyond the daily “individuals can speak with the King” situation: the King would call for a large meeting of the realm’s people (not limited to those of the upper classes, or even by amount or people called) but it was on a very irregular schedule and with rules that changed from call to call as the supporting society evolved. And the third was the Curia Regis, the Royal Council of advisors taken from the aristocracy and the Church. Of course and as any time we talk about legal issues, which one was or were in place varied by location and period.
A reason to call Parliaments was precisely in order to pass laws the King could not, not by himself. We tend to think of Medieval Kings as being a lot more absolutist than they generally could afford to.
Not heard of that, yeah it could be the answer to the OP.
But (assuming they were elected) how big was the electorate for those middle class representatives in the Cortes? I can’t see the urban middle class in 12th century Spain being that large, so I’d say it was most likely still much smaller than the largest popular assemblies in the Roman republic.
The electorate for the modern Althing might not be as large as the electorate of the largest Roman Popular Assembly (Iceland only has a total population of 330k), let alone the 1st millennia Althing.
There were other Things throughout Scandinavia and other Germanic areas. Probably none were ever as big as the Roman assembly because the population densities during the time they had them were so low. But probably bigger than Iceland’s thoughout much of Iceland’s history.
Yeah by where was that point where they did reach the size of the old Roman Popular Assemblies? Presumably some of these assemblies in Northern Europe had grown to 100s thousands by the time of the industrial revolution, or shortly afterwards. But was there really nothing else in the intervening millennia?
(Apologies for zombie thread, but I got to thinking about this again, and decided to bump )
Without looking anything up, I’d be surprised if any of the non-Icelandic Things survived to the 18th century, or even the 15th century. There was way too much other history going on. Iceland is isolated enough to avoid all that history.
A quick google says you appear to be correct, e.g. the oldest German parliament is the Bavarian one and that was abolished in the 1500s (though its not clear from that if it was even a popular assembly at that point, or just a group of nobles like the Senate) and only revived in 1818.
The English house of commons is probably the best bet, the latest date is around the time of reform act 1832 which (according to Wikipedia) increased the electorate from 400k to 650k. Either figure would have the Roman Assemblies beat, though possibly 400k would have been in the same ballpark, after the Social Wars we know the Popular Assemblies numbered in the 100s of thousands (though at that point were so large as to be completely unmanagable given the communications technology of the time, that being one of the reasons they were abolished)
That’s still almost two millennia after the last Roman Popular Assembly, where there there was nothing like them anywhere in the world. Which is pretty amazing to me (especially given the reverence Roman culture was given in Europe in those intervening years)
England, 5th century AD, according to a documentary I saw:
Man: I told you! We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune! We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week– Arthur: (uninterested) Yes… Man: But all the decisions of that officer 'ave to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting– Arthur: (perturbed) Yes I see! Man: By a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs– Arthur: (mad) Be quiet! Man: But by a two-thirds majority, in the case of more major–
I doubt that. Women and slaves were excluded from civic rights, so the popular assembly really just included adult free men. Eligibility probably numbered into the hundreds of thousands after the right of citizenship was extended beyond the city of Rome itself to various other towns throughout Italy, but remember that it wasn’ until well into the imperial period that every freeman throughout the empire held Roman citizenship. And even those that were eligible did not necessariy all attend; especially those away from Rome would usually not make the effort of travelling to Rome for several days for the assembly, and then back again. Actual attendance numbers at the assemblies were thus far below the figures of those that were eligible to participate.
A quick Google search that I did came up with a website (in German) saying that those Swiss cantons which still use popular assemblies as legislative bodies have about ten percent of eligible voters actually participating. And that’s in modern days, with easy travel and in a canton much, much smaller than Italy.
Citizenship was extended to the rest of Italy at the end of the social war, so there would have been a period where those male, free citizens would have numbered in the 100s of thousands (albeit a fairly brief one as soon after that you get the dictatorship of Sulla).
Are you interested in the numbers of actual participants in popular assemblies, or the number of citizens that a representative assembly represented? I thought the former, but then you are reference to the English/British House of Commons, which sounds like the latter.
At least this we can answer with certainty. Currently, two Swiss cantons (the states that make up the Swiss federal system) use popular assemblies as legislative bodies.
The size of the electorate, which may or may not be related to the actual number of people who need to turn up and make decisions (the Roman Popular Assemblies had some representative aspects but was much more direct than modern democracies)
It’s that size that sets them apart, this wasn’t a handful of urban elite voting for the city leaders, this was all the free males in Italy.
I meant the actual Roman Popular Assemblies. As they weren’t continued into the imperial period, even in name only like the Senate, there is an exact date (at some point in the last century of the republic) , where we can say “the last Roman Popular assembly happened on 5th of March in X BC, and nothing like it happened for over a thousand years”
I think you have an overly glorified picture of the Roman popular assemblies. They existed, and they were formally the highest governmental body. But the decision-making rules of the (uncodified) constitution of the Roman republic ensured that the influence of ruling elites was strong in practice (for Cicero, in De re publica, this was a feature, not a bug, of the Roman constitution - an oligarchic element to moderate the democratic one). For instance, the popular assemblies existed in three different compositions, and the most important one was the comitia centuriata where citizens did not vote as individuals but as members of a class (a century). They were allocated to a century on the basis of the taxes they were paying, and each century had one vote. But the top-ranked centuries had much fewer members than the lower ones, ensuring a disproportionately strong influence for the wealthy. There were 193 centuries, and voting started at the top (in terms of tax revenue). Once a majority of 97 centuries was reached, the subsequent centuries didn’t even bother to vote anymore. Since the top taxpayers had dozens of centuries allocated to them, whereas the poor were concentrated into a small number of centuries, it was far from what we would call a democracy with one-person-one-vote today. A poor citizen who was a member of a low century would have little incentive to even show up for the assembly because the likelihood of his century even voting was so small.
Not at all, of course the popular assemblies were not anything like a modern liberal democracy, and the system was setup in the such a way as to counteract their power. Remember though Cicero was writing after the reign of Sulla, who had severely curtailed them (rightly in his opinion, as a firm Optimate). But despite that they did have real actual power (especially before the Sullan reforms and after they were rolled back). So in the late Roman Republic the Popular Assemblies were a representative body with real governmental power (not absolute power, but real power nonetheless they weren’t purely for show) that had an electorate of all the non-enslaved males in Italy (numbering in the 100s of thousands). Once they were gone there was nothing like them in Europe (possibly in the world?) for the next 1500+ years.
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