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Project

Contention. Urban petitions and communal politics in late medieval Europe

This project offers an innovative perspective on medieval insurgency. Instead of considering protestors as rebels inclined to violence, as scholarship has often done in the past, this project sees them as creative voices calling for change and good governance from the authorities. For far too long the history of protest in preindustrial Europe and the Middle East has been a violent narrative that dismissed the collective actions of citizens as harmful to political progress. Departing from the focus on aggression, this project investigates to which extent the beliefs and thoughts of citizens are responsible for political change. Therefore, the ideas motivating commoners’ claims and desires (their 'contentious thought'), including the decisions they made when they gained power ('communal politics'), are the focus of this study.
Date:1 Oct 2019 →  30 Sep 2023
Keywords:urban history, social history, political history, Middle Ages
Disciplines:Medieval history