Location, Location, Location: Explaining the Vicissitudes of Early Modern Andernach

This paper explores the early modern history of the small city of Andernach located on the topographical “middle Rhine” in the territory of Electoral Cologne.  The paper explains the city’s turbulent history as an interactive product of three factors: the city’s relatively small size, its unique geographic location, and its situation in one of the Old Reich’s medium-small ecclesiastical territories. The city’s small population and advantageous commercial location provided an obvious starting point for relative prosperity derived from river tolls and trade, particularly the assembly of large rafts of timber exports.  But an equally important factor in shaping the lives of Andernachers was the city’s inclusion in the “softly governed” Electorate of Cologne (Johann Thelen, 1784). As a weak state with only rudimentary administration in comparison to some neighboring territories, Electoral Cologne allowed Andernach to retain a surprising share of its commercial revenues, including a generous portion of the river tolls paid in gold.  Conversely, this weak state could not protect its small city from foreign, chiefly French, incursions that brought repeated extractions, quartering, and other “burdens.”  The mixed blessing of residing in Electoral Cologne has generally not been understood as an essential element in shaping the city’s fortunes. This history is well documented in the city’s archives.

I  use Andernach to make the more general argument about including the nature of the governing polity as a crucial factor in explaining local histories, particularly in the German lands where emerging territorial states varied greatly in character. Countering an historiographic trend that sees these small cities as “below the radar” of state administrations and disconnected from them, I argue that state (in)actions are an  important force that played a direct role in shaping the lives of urban communes.