Power in the metropolis: the impact of economic and demographic growth on the Antwerp City Council (1400–1550) (original) (raw)
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The journal of European economic history, 2022
This book encompasses work from Hugo Soly’s entire career. Even more than that. The major gain is his inductive method and actor’s perspective on capitalism that automatically follows from using the definition of capital as a process. By doing so, he has successfully introduced the “new history of capitalism” on the European mainland of the early modern period. And in doing so he gives the so-missed human face to macro stories such as the “invisible hand.”
City government and public services in Antwerp, 1500-1800
2007
The government of pre-modern European cities had a broad range of functions, which it fulfilled in a relatively autonomous way. They had to provide jurisdiction, regulations of economic life, administration maintain the public order and to organize the public space, that is the streets, squares bridges and public buildings. By and by it increasingly provided services to the urban community, including the provision of economic infrastructure, poor relief, teaching, and health services. The city was, however not the exclusive provider of such services. Many remained in private hands or were managed by ecclesiastic organisations, craft guilds or fraternities. Hence, poor relief was generally in the hand of ecclesiastic organisations, while craft guilds provided social security for their members and their families. The city government regularly sustained these associations by means of subsidies, and provided regulations, without however mingeling with the actual work of the providers. T...
This article uses space syntax analysis to explore the relationship between the spatial configuration of the city of Antwerp and the organisation of its trades and occupations in the early 19th century. A cadastral map from 1835 and a commercial almanac for 1838 were used to map the occupations held by the inhabitants of some 10,667 plots. Antwerp maintained a medieval spatial configuration at this time, with a strong ‘background network’ of distributed streets and continuous public spaces that privileged movement and encounter. However a ‘foreground network’ of streets was still found to be more accessible to global through movement. The spatial analysis of economic activity found a low level of clustering of different trades and occupations in particular parts of the city. Economic activities were rather broadly distributed throughout the background network of the street system. However, some trades and occupations took advantage of the foreground network of accessible streets more than others, and this was found to be statistically significant. Those occupations with high accessibility at all scales included retailers, wholesalers and artisans. While retailers would have prioritised access to passing trade, the latter two groups may have valued the circulation of goods, products and knowledge as much as the circulation of people.
Patricians, Knights, or Nobles? Historiography and Social Status in Late Medieval Antwerp.
2014
This article explores the significance of writing history for a late medieval Antwerp patrician family. In recent historiography, these families (in this case Van Halmale) have not received the attention they deserve, in part because their social status is difficult to pin down. Although members of the family Van Halmale had knightly titles and performed deeds of arms on the battlefield and during tournaments, their noble status was not undisputed. Both a chronicle and a tournament diary written by different members of the Van Halmale family reflect the aspirations of a dominant social category in the late medieval towns of Brabant, Flanders, and Holland. Their writings reflect how these men perceived themselves and how they wanted their contemporaries and peers to perceive them. In that sense the writing of history was indeed a means for nobles (and would-be-nobles) to justify (or to claim) their privileged position. Their works helped them to express their identity as powerful aldermen, firmly rooted in an urban environment but with open minds for the world of princes and (inter)national politics.