At the same time, the most remarkable achievements occurred in the center of the Mediterranean basin, mainly among the Italian cities of Florence, Siena, Genoa, Modena, Lucca, Milan, Padua and Venice. Here there was no single nation-state or despotic dominion, but something very different in structure and spirit. The sovereign cities of northern Italy, in rivalry with one another, invented a new institution which they named lo stato. We know it as the modern secular state. They also created the idea of a modern state system in which a political equilibrium was maintained by a balance of power,
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