The Absolutist State, not the merchant town, created the modern bourgeoisie

Evidence

The city, the point of departure for the earlier bourgeoisies and their networks of long-distance trade and productive organization, proved to be incapable of sustaining the economic recovery of those bourgeoisies situated where the merchant town had reached its highest development: northern Italy, western Germany, the Netherlands, and the Baltic. The Absolutist State, under the hegemony of western European aristocracies, brought forth a new bourgeoisie. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 177

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s interest in the institutional conditions that birth a class — the state, not prior economic forms, is the incubator. — connects to: Sixteenth-century bourgeoisies were not lineal descendants of medieval ones; Capitalism’s form was determined by preexisting feudal civilization; Merchant bourgeois wealth, not the poor, first eroded aristocratic dress codes. (+2 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 177

Broader Connections

• Capitalism’s form was determined by preexisting feudal civilization #expands (0.60)