Download or read book Medieval Bruges written by Andrew Brown and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 796 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bruges was undoubtedly one of the most important cities in medieval Europe. Bringing together specialists from both archaeology and history, this 'total' history presents an integrated view of the city's history from its very beginnings, tracing its astonishing expansion through to its subsequent decline in the sixteenth century. The authors' analysis of its commercial growth, industrial production, socio-political changes, and cultural creativity is grounded in an understanding of the city's structure, its landscape and its built environment. More than just a biography of a city, this book places Bruges within a wider network of urban and rural development and its history in a comparative framework, thereby offering new insights into the nature of a metropolis.

Download or read book States of Credit written by David Stasavage and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: States of Credit provides the first comprehensive look at the joint development of representative assemblies and public borrowing in Europe during the medieval and early modern eras. In this pioneering book, David Stasavage argues that unique advances in political representation allowed certain European states to gain early and advantageous access to credit, but the emergence of an active form of political representation itself depended on two underlying factors: compact geography and a strong mercantile presence. Stasavage shows that active representative assemblies were more likely to be sustained in geographically small polities. These assemblies, dominated by mercantile groups that lent to governments, were in turn more likely to preserve access to credit. Given these conditions, smaller European city-states, such as Genoa and Cologne, had an advantage over larger territorial states, including France and Castile, because mercantile elites structured political institutions in order to effectively monitor public credit. While creditor oversight of public funds became an asset for city-states in need of finance, Stasavage suggests that the long-run implications were more ambiguous. City-states with the best access to credit often had the most closed and oligarchic systems of representation, hindering their ability to accept new economic innovations. This eventually transformed certain city-states from economic dynamos into rentier republics. Exploring the links between representation and debt in medieval and early modern Europe, States of Credit contributes to broad debates about state formation and Europe's economic rise.

Download or read book Dynastic Identity in Early Modern Europe written by Liesbeth Geevers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristocratic dynasties have long been regarded as fundamental to the development of early modern society and government. Yet recent work by political historians has increasingly questioned the dominant role of ruling families in state formation, underlining instead the continued importance and independence of individuals. In order to take a fresh look at the subject, this volume provides a broad discussion on the formation of dynastic identities in relationship to the lineage’s own history, other families within the social elite, and the ruling dynasty. Individual chapters consider the dynastic identity of a wide range of European aristocratic families including the CroÃs, Arenbergs and Nassaus from the Netherlands; the Guises-Lorraine of France; the Sandoval-Lerma in Spain; the Farnese in Italy; together with other lineages from Ireland, Sweden and the Austrian Habsburg monarchy. Tied in with this broad international focus, the volume addressed a variety of related themes, including the expression of ambitions and aspirations through family history; the social and cultural means employed to enhance status; the legal, religious and political attitude toward sovereigns; the role of women in the formation and reproduction of (composite) dynastic identities; and the transition of aristocratic dynasties to royal dynasties. In so doing the collection provides a platform for looking again at dynastic identity in early modern Europe, and reveals how it was a compound of political, religious, social, cultural, historical and individual attitudes.

Download or read book Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent written by S. Hutton and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-04-11 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to the widespread view that women exercised economic autonomy only in widowhood, Hutton argues that marital status was not the chief determinant of women's economic activities in the mid-fourteenth century and that women managed their own wealth to a far greater extent than previously recognized.

Download or read book The European Guilds written by Sheilagh Ogilvie and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Guilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always attracted debate and controversy. They were sometimes viewed as efficient institutions that guaranteed quality and skills. But they also excluded competitors, manipulated markets, and blocked innovations. Did the benefits of guilds outweigh their costs? Analyzing thousands of guilds that dominated European economies from 1000 to 1880, The European Guilds uses vivid examples and clear economic reasoning to answer that question. Sheilagh Ogilvie's book features the voices of honorable guild masters, underpaid journeymen, exploited apprentices, shady officials, and outraged customers, and follows the stories of the "vile encroachers"--Women, migrants, Jews, gypsies, bastards, and many others--desperate to work but hunted down by the guilds as illicit competitors. She investigates the benefits of guilds but also shines a light on their dark side. Guilds sometimes provided important services, but they also manipulated markets to profit their members. They regulated quality but prevented poor consumers from buying goods cheaply. They fostered work skills but denied apprenticeships to outsiders. They transmitted useful techniques but blocked innovations that posed a threat. Guilds existed widely not because they corrected market failures or served the common good but because they benefited two powerful groups--guild members and political elites."--Rabat de la jaquette.

Download or read book Community Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries written by Janna Coomans and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By exploring the uniquely dense urban network of the Low Countries, Janna Coomans debunks the myth of medieval cities as apathetic towards filth and disease. Based on new archival research and adopting a bio-political and spatial-material approach, Coomans traces how cities developed a broad range of practices to protect themselves and fight disease. Urban societies negotiated challenges to their collective health in the face of social, political and environmental change, transforming ideas on civic duties and the common good. Tasks were divided among different groups, including town governments, neighbours and guilds, and affected a wide range of areas, from water, fire and food, to pigs, prostitutes and plague. By studying these efforts in the round, Coomans offers new comparative insights and bolsters our understanding of the importance of population health and the physical world - infrastructures, flora and fauna - in governing medieval cities.

Download or read book Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages written by Carolyn Muessig and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-10-16 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages deals with medieval notions of heaven in theological and mystical writings, in visions of the Otherworld, and in medieval art, poetry and music. It considers the influence of such notions in the secular literature of some of the greatest writers of the period including Chrétien de Troyes and Chaucer. The coherence and beauty of these notions make heaven one of the most impressive medieval ‘cathedrals of the mind’. With contributions from experts such as A.C. Spearing, Peter Meredith, Peter Dronke and Robin Kirkpatrick, this collection is essential reading for all those interested in medieval religion and culture.

Download or read book Warfare in Medieval Brabant 1356 1406 written by Sergio Boffa and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2004 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the causes, combatants and course of events in the successive conflicts which troubled the duchy for half a century. The medieval duchy of Brabant was one of the most powerful principalities of the Low Countries. During the second half of the fourteenth century, it underwent a particularly dramatic period in its history: the House of Leuven wason the point of disappearance, the duchy was coveted by Philip the Bold of Burgundy, who was already dreaming of extending the "Burgundian Empire" and, by a network of alliances, Brabant was drawn into the Hundred Years' War. Theauthor reviews the successive conflicts which troubled the duchy between 1356 and 1406; the different authorities which influenced the course of military operations (the duchess and the duke, their officers, and the Estates of Brabant); describes the combatants, in particular the nobility and the urban militias; considers the practical aspects of warfare; and analyses the military obligations and contracts which bound the men at arms to the duke. SERGIO BOFFA is currently researching in the department of Maps and Plans, Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, Brussels.

Download or read book Manors and Markets written by Bas van Bavel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Low Countries -- an area roughly embracing the present-day Netherlands and Belgium -- formed a patchwork of varied economic and social development in the Middle Ages, with some regions displaying a remarkable dynamism. Manors and Markets charts the history of these vibrant economies and societies, and contrasts them with alternative paths of development, from the early medieval period to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Providing a concise overview of social and economic changes over more than a thousand years, Bas van Bavel assesses the impact of the social and institutional organization that saw the Low Countries become the most urbanized and densely populated part of Europe by the end of the Middle Ages. By delving into the early and high medieval history of society, van Bavel uncovers the foundations of the flourishing of the medieval Flemish towns and the forces that propelled Holland towards its Golden Age. Exploring the Low Countries at a regional level, van Bavel highlights the importance of localized structures for determining the nature of social transitions and economic growth. He assesses the role of manorial organization, the emergence of markets, the rise of towns, the quest for self-determination by ordinary people, and the sharp regional differences in development that can be observed in the very long run. In doing so, the book offers a significant contribution to the debate about the causes of economic and social change, both past and present.

Download or read book Single Life and the City 1200 1900 written by Isabelle Devos and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-07-23 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By taking on a long-term perspective, a large geographical scope and moving beyond the homogeneous treatment of single people, this book fleshes out the particularities of urban singles and allows for a better understanding of the attitudes and values underlying this lifestyle in the European past.

Download or read book Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the city as a central entity did not simply disappear with the Fall of the Roman Empire, the development of urban space at least since the twelfth century played a major role in the history of medieval and early modern mentality within a social-economic and religious framework. Whereas some poets projected urban space as a new utopia, others simply reflected the new significance of the urban environment as a stage where their characters operate very successfully. As today, the premodern city was the locus where different social groups and classes got together, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in hostile terms. The historical development of the relationship between Christians and Jews, for instance, was deeply determined by the living conditions within a city. By the late Middle Ages, nobility and bourgeoisie began to intermingle within the urban space, which set the stage for dramatic and far-reaching changes in the social and economic make-up of society. Legal-historical aspects also find as much consideration as practical questions concerning water supply and sewer systems. Moreover, the early modern city within the Ottoman and Middle Eastern world likewise finds consideration. Finally, as some contributors observe, the urban space provided considerable opportunities for women to carve out a niche for themselves in economic terms.

Download or read book The Voice of the People written by Wim Blockmans and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-01-31 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two centuries, Europe has developed various forms of political representation from which democratic parliamentary systems gradually emerged. This book unravels the conditions, scale and impact under which political participation of common burghers and peasants emerged. Political participation in Europe before the Revolutions moved away from the traditional focus on ‘Three Estates’ which has often blurred the interpretation of popular participation’s role in societies. This book instead examines Europe’s key political variants such as high levels of commercialization and urbanization, combined with a balance of powers between competing categories of actors in society controlling relatively independent resources which lead to political participation forming across the continent. Instead of starting from any ideal type of political participation, this book focuses on the variation through time and space, its composition and activity, helps to explain the functions particular institutional settings fulfilled. The time frame 1100–1800 sheds light on the long-term evolutions such as institutional inertia and processes of oligarchizing. To reveal a correlation of economic and demographical growth with the claim of rising social classes to voice their interests. It also points to the opposite tendency: the formation of fiscalmilitary monarchical states. This book is essential reading for those interested in the formation of Europe’s political structures and students of premodern political history.

Download or read book The Rise and Decline of an Iberian Bourgeoisie written by Jeff Fynn-Paul and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the first long-term studies of the Catalonian city of Manresa during the late medieval crisis.

Download or read book Cities of Strangers written by Miri Rubin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-19 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how medieval towns and cities received newcomers, and the process by which these 'strangers' became 'neighbours' between 1000 and 1500.

Download or read book Cities of Ladies written by Walter Simons and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title In the early thirteenth century, semireligious communities of women began to form in the cities and towns of the Low Countries. These beguines, as the women came to be known, led lives of contemplation and prayer and earned their livings as laborers or teachers. In Cities of Ladies, the first history of the beguines to appear in English in fifty years, Walter Simons traces the transformation of informal clusters of single women to large beguinages. These veritable single-sex cities offered lower- and middle-class women an alternative to both marriage and convent life. While the region's expanding urban economies initially valued the communities for their cheap labor supply, severe economic crises by the fourteenth century restricted women's opportunities for work. Church authorities had also grown less tolerant of religious experimentation, hailing as subversive some aspects of beguine mysticism. To Simons, however, such accusations of heresy against the beguines were largely generated from a profound anxiety about their intellectual ambitions and their claims to a chaste life outside the cloister. Under ecclesiastical and economic pressure, beguine communities dwindled in size and influence, surviving only by adopting a posture of restraint and submission to church authorities.

Download or read book Charters Cartularies and Archives written by Commission internationale de diplomatique and published by PIMS. This book was released on 2002 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinguished international group of diplomatists address thirteen cases of transmission and preservation of medieval documents. A recurrent theme in this volume is the actual preservation of individual original charters, but the content of originals was transmitted in other ways as well. Several chapters discuss questions relating to recopied originals, cartularies, and a range of other archival practices for retaining documents during the Middle Ages. Many of the authors focus on how documents were organized in archives and in cartularies during the period. Others discuss the notions of "original document" and "copy"--Both their relationship to each other and to the legal validity of the document in question.

Download or read book Court and civic society in the Burgundian Low Countries c 1420 1530 written by Andrew Brown and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the spectacles and ceremonies of society in the Low Countries. It is the first ever attempt to unite and translate some of the key texts which informed Johan Huizinga's famous study of the Burgundian court in The Waning of the Middle Ages, a work which has never gone out of print.