The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe PDF
Preview The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe
The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe For more than Wfty years, since the works on the rise of cities in north-westEuropeby FernandVercauteren,Franc¸ois-LouisGanshof andHansVanWervekewerepublished,nosynthesiswhichsystemati- cally examines the growth and development of cities in north-west Europe has been written. Adriaan Verhulst takes as his subject the historyofurbansettlementsandtownsintheregionbetweentherivers SommeandMeusefromthelateRomanperiod(fourthcentury)tothe endofthetwelfthcentury.ThisregioncomprisesFlandersandLie`ge, twoofthemosturbanizedareasnotonlyinthesouthernNetherlands butinnorth-westEuropeasawholeuntilthetwelfthcentury.Fifteen townsarestudiedinall,andProfessorVerhulstprovidesrichdetailsof theimpactofpolitical,militaryandecclesiasticalaswellassocialand economicfactors on the developing towns, as they were transformed from regional markets to centres of industry and international com- merce. adriaanverhulstisProfessorEmeritusattheUniversityofGhent. Hehaswrittenmanybooks,includingRuralandUrbanAspectsofEarly MedievalNorthwestEurope(1992),andhascontributedarticlestojour- nals such as the Journal of Medieval History, Past and Present and the EconomicHistoryReview. Themesin InternationalUrban History SeriesEditors PETERCLARK DAVIDREEDER TheCentreforUrbanHistory,UniversityofLeicester Thisseriesexaminesfromaninternationalperspectivekeythemesinthehistoric developmentof cities and societies. The series is principally, although not ex- clusively, concerned with the European city, with an emphasis on the early modernandmodernperiods,anditwillconsiderurbansystems,structuresand processes. Individual volumes will bring together and present in an accessible formthebestworkofthewidevarietyofscholarsfromdiVerentdisciplinesand nationscurrentlyengagedinresearchonurbanhistory.Theseriesispublishedby CambridgeUniversityPressandEditionsdelaMaisondesSciencesdel’Homme inassociationwiththeCentreforUrbanHistory,UniversityofLeicester.The Wrstvolumesintheseriesincludecollectionsofcommissionedpiecesorganized aroundcertainkey themesthat lendthemselvesto comparativeanalysis.They haveasubstantiveintroductionbythevolumeeditor/s,makingexplicitlinkages betweenindividualessaysandsettingouttheoverallsigniWcanceandcontextof thework.ThemesinInternationalUrbanHistorywillinterestscholarsandstudents in a variety of sub-disciplines within social and economic history, geography, sociologyandurbanplanning.Itridesonthewaveofimportantandexcitingnew developmentsin the study of cities and their history, and reXects the growing internationalizationoftheareaofstudy. Titlesalreadypublished 1 EditedbyRonaldK.GoodenowandWilliamE.MarsdenTheCityandEduca- tioninFourNations 2 BernardLepetitThePre-industrialUrbanSystem:France1740–1840 3 EditedbyPeterClarkSmallTownsinEarlyModernEurope 4 AdriaanVerhulstTheRiseofCitiesinNorth-WestEurope The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe Adriaan Verhulst Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (VIRTUAL PUBLISHING) FOR AND ON BEHALF OF THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia http://www.cambridge.org and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75270 Paris Cedex 06 © Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Cambridge University Press 1999 This edition © Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing) 2003 First published in printed format 1999 A catalogue record for the original printed book is available from the British Library and from the Library of Congress Original ISBN 0 521 46491 9 hardback Original ISBN 0 521 46909 0 paperback ISBN 0 511 01906 8 virtual (netLibrary Edition) Contents List of maps page vi Editor’s preface vii Preface ix 1 The transformationof the Roman towns 1 2 The nadir of urban life (sixth–seventh centuries) 24 3 New urban beginningsand the Vikingraids (eighth–ninth centuries) 44 4 The urbanizationof the highMiddle Ages(tenth–eleventh centuries) 68 5 Industrialization,commercialexpansionand emancipation (eleventh–twelfth centuries) 119 6 Conclusion 149 Bibliography 157 Index 171 v Maps 1 Cities and townsbetween the Somme andthe Meuse/Rhinedelta up to the twelfth century xii–xiii 2 Maastricht 4 3 Huy 6 4 Lie`ge 71 5 Ghent 76 6 Arras 80–1 7 Tournai 85 8 Cambrai 87 9 Bruges 89 10 Saint-Omer 93 11 Douai 96 12 Antwerp 99 13 Valenciennes 103 14 Lille 105 15 Ypres 109 vi Editor’s preface WrittenbyoneofthemostdistinguishedhistoriansofmedievalEurope, this volume is important for four reasons. First, it brings together and presentsinacoherent,wide-rangingargumentagreatdealoftherecent research on the southern Netherlands by French, Dutch, Belgian and Germanscholars;someofthisworkhasbeenhiddeninlocalorregional publications.Secondly, the book mobilizes the discoveries and insights notjustofadiversityofhistorians(political,religiousandagrarianaswell asurban),butofarchaeologistsandnumismatists.Thisgivesamethod- ologicalrichnesstothestudyandputsitattheforefrontofwritinginthe Weld.Thirdly,ProfessorVerhulstoVersapowerfulcritiqueofmuchofthe earlierwritingontheriseofEuropeancitiesinthehighMiddleAges.In particular,theinXuentialviewsofHenriPirenne,apreviousprofessorat Ghent,areWnallygivenadecentfuneral.RatherthanbeingtheXagshipof Europeanlong-distancetrade,asPirenneargued,themajortownsofthe southernLowCountrieshadamuchmorecomplexevolution.Enjoying onlylimitedcontinuityfromtheRomanera,theirupsurgefromtheninth centuryowedmuchtothepatronageofincreasinglybuoyantabbeysand churches.Inthenextcenturytherewasthefurtherstimulusprovidedby the backing of the Count of Flanders and by the breakdown of the manorialsystem.Growingregionalmarketactivityandthedriftofindus- trialcraftstotownsprovidedaspringboardforthesurgeoflong-distance trade. Thefourthreasonfortheimportanceofthisbookisthatitfocuseson oneofthetwomostdevelopedandsuccessfulurbannetworksinmedieval Europe–alongwiththatofnorthernItaly.Thoughmoreexplicitcom- parisonwiththeMediterraneanurbansystemmighthavebeenventured, we get a clear sense of that complex interaction of political, locational, agrarianandotherfactorswhichcontributedtothevirtualinventionofa new urban world in the southern Low Countries, one which, unlike in Italy, owed little to the infrastructure and urban design (if more to the urbanconcepts)oftheRomanpast.Itwasadynamicurbansystemthat vii viii Editor’spreface despiteregionalshiftsofpower(fromFlanderstoBrabant)provedamaz- inglyresilient, not only throughthe upheavals of the late Middle Ages, but over subsequentcenturies. Peter Clark Preface Thisbookwaspromptedbythepublicationin1991ofTownsintheViking Age by Helen Clarke and Bjo¨rn Ambrosiani. The fact that that book scarcelymentionsthetownsinthesouthernLowCountriesandischro- nologicallyrestrictedtotheVikingAge–howeverbroadlybased,fromthe seventhtotheninthcenturies–ledto therealizationthat,apartfroma number of valuable contributions in the old (1950) and new (1981/2) Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, there is no recent work which providesaclearviewoftheurbanhistoryofthesouthernLowCountries from the late Roman period to the Wrst burgeoningof the towns in the twelfthcentury. Thoughtheystillhavethecapacitytofascinate,theworksofPirennein thisareaareoutdated,asistheworkofEdithEnnen,Fru¨hgeschichteder europa¨ischenStadt(1953),whichdealswiththesouthernLowCountries atsome considerablelength.Sincethen,and especiallysincethemajor overviewintheformofanarticlebyFranzPetri,DieAnfa¨ngedesmittelal- terlichenSta¨dtewesensindenNiederlandenunddemangrenzendenFrankreich (1958),muchresearchhasbeencarriedoutintotheurbanhistoryofthe wholeofthesouthernNetherlandsandintothe emergenceand earliest history of many individual towns in this area. I recently compiled and reprintedacollectionof themostimportantofthesestudiesinAnfa¨nge des Sta¨dtewesens an Schelde, Maas und Rhein bis zum Jahre 1000, which appearedin the series Sta¨dteforschung,vol. A/40, produced by the In- stitutfu¨rvergleichendeSta¨dtegeschichteinMu¨nster(1996).Itcanserve asasortofreaderfortheworkunderconsiderationhere.However,this bookisbasednotpurelyonthestudiesdatingfrom1958–86whichwere reprintedintheabove-mentionedcompilation,butalsoandinparticular on studies which have since been published by myself and others, his- torians and archaeologists, about the history of numerous individual townsorgroupsoftownsbetweenthelateRomanperiodandtheendof thetwelfth century. Geographically,IhavechosentheareabetweentheRiverSommeand the River Meuse as a framework because this area comprises both the
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