Publications

Discussions on the nature and evolution of pre-modern European polities are as old as history itself as an academic discipline. When the scholarly enquiry into the past found a home in universities, first in the German-speaking world with the efflorescence of Historismus in the early nineteenth century and soon after in other parts of the world, historians were first and foremost preoccupied with tracing the genealogies of their own political ...

La société urbaine se vit comme une communauté unie et solidaire, elle est néanmoins fortement fracturée. Dès le xiie siècle, les grands marchands y concentrent l’essentiel du pouvoir et de la richesse. Au début du xive siècle, les artisans, regroupés en corporations, luttent pour conquérir des droits politiques et réussissent, pour la plupart, à former une sorte de classe moyenne dont l’importance sociale, politique et culturelle constituera la ...

This article explores the social history of the political elites of Mechelen, a town that evolved from a seigneurial enclave within the duchy of Brabant to the de facto capital of the Burgundian-Habsburg Low Countries between the 1470s and 1530. Proceeding from a quantitative analysis of lists of aldermen, fiscal registers and epitaphs, the article argues that the short-lived functioning of Mechelen as a capital city had great impact on its ...