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Project

Spaces of politics: conflict and the city in the late medieval Low Countries

This dissertation studies the spatiality of citizens’ political practice in late medieval cities (1300-1500). It builds on research that has extended late medieval urban politics beyond the practice of government to encompass acts of protest and resistance and to include people who had no formal access to government. It builds, also, on theories that view space as a social product and, at times, even a social actor, that has a profound role in how people act and how processes occur at a given place in time. It takes the city fundamentally as a category of practice, grounded in materiality but shaped crucially by its experience and use. Taken together, it asks where, how and why politics was shaped when it moved outside the city hall, and what that might tell us about both the nature of politics and the function of space in the late medieval city. By looking at politics as practice, this thesis moves beyond the focus on symbolism in current scholarship. In taking on a structural approach to study conflict across multiple cities in the southern Low Countries, it proposes a comprehensive view of politics as part of urban daily life as an alternative to the dominant governmental understanding in research. The thesis considers political action, first, in a closed spatiality. It elucidates the relationship between legal constraints on political practice and the use of space by looking at the role of closed-off assemblies of citizens in conflicts and the way in which they were organized. Subsequent chapters find out to what extent considerations of secrecy or enclosure affected the political use of specific spaces in the city. They zoom in on religious spaces and the space of the home to show how citizens’ political practice was shaped by longstanding customs, legal considerations and the intersections of politics with home, religion and gender. The second part opens the view towards interactions in public to consider how hidden or closed-off practices were related to the better-known interactions with government. It puts forward a theory of resistant practice shaped by a context of constraints and possibilities. Small-scale and individual acts of resistance are studied to consider how citizens interacted with space and made it possible to utter protest in public. These findings are connected to the context of large-scale revolt by means of a microhistory of a specific revolt in Ghent in 1479. As such, it illuminates the dynamic and mobile spatiality that underpinned such large-scale conflicts and elucidates the connections between hidden and public political practices and the thin and porous lines between practices of protest and those of formalised political participation in the city. The thesis contends that not just protest but politics was shaped by customary practices, juridical contexts and, crucially, the space of the city. The argument is that political power, legitimacy and authority were spatially given, acknowledged, confirmed and denied. As the basis of authority underwent significant changes in the period under study, space became a crucial tool in conflict. This explains why governors regularly convened their citizens in large assemblies, despite the risk of conflict breaking out, and why citizens, time and again, used spaces that were not (or less) connected to the authority of governors for political meetings and discussion. Conflict came from the shifting nature of authority, the need for its constant reassertion, and the spatial continuity of contestation and consent. Its practice happened in, about, and with, space.

Date:1 Sep 2019 →  24 Jan 2024
Keywords:History
Disciplines:Medieval history
Project type:PhD project