Heirs, kinship ties and urban associations. City dwellers and their networks in 15th and 16th century Mechelen.

This research proposal aims at analyzing the way in which and the reasons why town dwellers in 15th and 16th century Mechelen bequeathed to their extended family, and how this correlated with simultaneously adhering to diverse formal and informal urban associations. This will be traced primarily in wills by means of a systematic and diachronic discourse analysis of specific patterns of identification in will preambles, and the motivations that lay behind the division of the heritage, which will be combined with a quantitative approach. Assemblingthe legacies to urban groups and kin in grids and tables will enable us to analyse their relative proportion in the long run.To present a more nuanced image of pre-modern urban society than traditional history permits, we will combine this line of research with an in-depth study of the social profiles of the testators. The already advanced state of data collection on associational life in Mechelen makes it feasible to postulate how legacies to the extended family in wills correspond with the testators¿ membership in particular urban groups, as well as with their gender and wealth. Hence, this proposal fits in a broader field of research on civil society and urbanassociational life, linking this with research on kinship and family life.

Keywords:CITY HISTORY, 15TH-16TH CENTURY

Disciplines:Economic history, History