I have complained about it before but I heard on of the guests from guerrilla history on the deprogram make this argument and it made me want to gouge my eyes out. This kind of trans historical argumentation is both stupid and unmarxist, just stop! Sorry I felt the need to vent.
These states were not imperialist and they weren’t settler colonies. This framing doesn’t make any fucking sense when transfered to a medieval context. Like the best you could say is that the Italian city states represented an early firm of merchant capital, but even then that is an incredibly complex phenomenon that has only a tenuous connection to modern capitalism. Calling these city states early capitalism is just a fancy way of saying “lol u hate capitalism yet you exchange good or service! Curious!”
Seriously just stop. I don’t know why this set me off but it was like a week ago and I am still mad about it.
There is a pretty big difference between “a horribly destructive warlord sets up shop in a fortified port city and terrorizes the region for tribute while operating slave mines and plantations, and develops the concept of racism to excuse their behavior to the Pope” and “wave after wave of settlers land and systematically drive off or kill everyone in the region and then repeat this over and over until they’ve conquered and ethnically cleansed the entire continent explicitly in the name of racism,” if only in understanding who was doing what and what the results were.
Like you can look at this happening right now: how different the conditions are between subjugated periphery states that are exploited for resources and brutally kept under the imperial hegemon’s thumb, vs the active ethnic cleansing and landgrabs in occupied Palestine.