In 1853 Augustin Thierry emphasized in his Essai sur l’histoire de la formation et des progrès du Tiers État that: “the series of municipal revolutions which occurred during the twelfth century offers a certain parallel to the movement which has today propagated constitutional government in many countries…” At a conference held in Luxembourg in 2009, the International Commission for the History of Towns (ICHT) came back to the question whether the administrative autonomy of towns existed throughout Europe and without interruption from the Middle Ages to the era of bourgeois democracy. Has the self-government of towns by their citizens been established everywhere and in all types of towns, or only in certain dominant urban centres, such as the towns within the Empire, cathedral towns, or the Italian city-republics? Do Max Weber’s criteria exclude many smaller towns as shown by research results in recent decades? Due to the international and interdisciplinary character of the ICHT, the 16 papers of the proceedings, partly in English, partly in French, benefit from a two-level approach including geographical comparison as much as chronological differentiation.

Informations pratiques :
Michel Pauly et Alexander Lee (dir.), Urban Liberties and Citizenship from the Middle Ages up to now / Libertés et citoyenneté urbaines du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Luxembourg, Trèves-Luxembourg, CLUDEM, 2015 (Beiträge zur Landes- und Kulturgeschichte, 9). 284 p. ISBN 978-3-933701-50-3. Prix : 42.00€.

Source : CLUDEM