The Craft Guilds are the City. Political Participation in Late Medieval Towns (Brabant and Liège, c. 1360-1500).

This dissertation studies civic political participation in late medieval towns, particularly in the duchy of Brabant and the prince-bishopric of Liège. Via a comparative analysis of three cities (Sint-Truiden, Maastricht and Leuven), this dissertation tackles four sets of research questions. First, which political structures facilitated civic participation in the political process? Which model of governance did these political structures shape, and how were citizens and civic organizations integrated in this model? Second, what was the profile of the political representatives of these civic organizations, and how great was their impact on urban governance? Which other members of the craft guilds were able to take part in politics, and which were not? Third, which channels did civic organizations use to interact with their authorities, and which participative and contentious practices did they deploy to exert additional pressure on the political process? Fourth, which political agendas did the craft guilds defend, and which discursive strategies did they use to convince the government to meet their demands?

The study found that during the time frame that it considered (i.e. 1360-1500), the craft guilds definitively secured their place as the official speaking tube of civic political interests. Thanks to several far-reaching rights of political representation, the craft guilds were able to weigh on the decision-making process in the council, and manifest themselves as privileged interlocutors of the urban government. Contrary to many other studies, this dissertation argues against the concept of ‘oligarchization’ as one of the central features of late medieval urban politics. Though the pool of officeholders became indeed slightly smaller in the course of the fifteenth century, the degree of office accumulation in the city remained generally low. Moreover, this dissertation unraveled that rather than elitist members of a distant ‘oligarchy’, the political representatives of the craft guilds were usually members of the urban middle class with extensive networks within their guilds.

In particular, this dissertation claims that the political process in late medieval towns was much more pluralistic than many older studies assumed, and that bottom-up political participation was inextricably bound up with the logic of urban politics. The extent and the methods with which the craft guilds participated in urban politics differed however from town to town. In Sint-Truiden, civic political engagement appears to have mainly materialized in informal contacts between the government and the citizens. In Maastricht, the craft guilds enjoyed far-reaching autonomy to regulate their own affairs. Political discussions between the government and the civic organizations took often place via public meetings. Finally, in Leuven, the craft guilds communicated their political wishes mostly by means of petitions.

The guilds’ political agenda comprised a highly diverse set of issues. However, labor associations requested only exceptionally fundamental political or juridical changes. In most cases, they asked for organization-specific changes, often with a rather socio-economic nature (e.g. labor relations or status-related matters). In this vein, the guilds’ political agenda often overlapped with the agenda of the guilds’ masters, who hoped to retain their influence within the organization. Though lower status guildsmen were, at times, doubtlessly able to negotiate a better position for themselves, the ‘official’ political process remained firmly controlled by the guild masters.