Cities and Solidarities Urban Communities in Pre-Modern Europe [Hardcover]

Cities and Solidaritiescharts the ways in which the study of individuals and places can revitalise our understanding of urban communities as dynamic interconnections of solidarities in medieval and early modern Europe.

This volume sheds new light on the socio-economic conditions, the formal and informal institutions, and the strategies of individual town dwellers that explain the similarities and differences in the organisation and functioning of urban communities in pre-modern Europe. It considers how communities within cities and towns are constructed and reconstructed, how interactions amongst members of differing groups created social and economic institutions, and how urban communities reflected a sense of social cohesion. In answering these questions, the contributions combine theoretical frameworks with new digital methodologies in order to provoke further discussion into the fundamental nature of urban society in this key period of change.

The essays in this collection demonstrate the complexities of urban societies in pre-modern Europe, and will make fascinating reading for students and scholars of medieval and early modern urban history.

Contents

List of figures and tables

Preface

List of contributors

1. Cities and Solidarities. Urban Communities in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Justin Colson and Arie van Steensel

2. Making the citizen, building the citizenry. Family and citizenship in fifteenth-century Barcelona

Carolina Obradors-Suazo

3. Gladmans procession and communal identity in Norwich, 1425-1452

Derek M. Crosby

4. Mapping urban communities. A comparative topography of neighbourhoods in Bologna and Strasbourg lÃV