FEUDAL POWER AND THE EMANCIPATION OF THE MERCHANT IN FLANDERS AS DRIVING FORCE FOR THE URBAN REVOLUT
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-12-01

The development of feudal power in the post-Carolingian world had a lasting impact on the medieval landscape, not only in establishishing estates and manors but also by emancipating the already existing merchant class, at least in Flanders between the second half of the 9th and the 13th century. Already Verhulst, followed by Loveluck and Tys noticed how the urban revolution in Europe only initiated properly after the feudal investment in portus towns after the era of the Carolingian emporia (for instance in Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, Lille and other towns). Today, a new assessment of the reproduction strategy of the important 10th to 12th century counts of Flanders, raises the hypothesis that by investing in infrastructure for trade, the feudal lord did indeed draw the card of commercialism to strengthen his princely position. This goes quite direct against Pirennes idea of the importance of the liberal merchant overpowering the conservative feudal lords. One could even say that the counts of Flanders valued the dynamic social and economical power of early-medieval assembly and that by reoganising assembly in the feudal age, they turned this into their own profit, thus giving the final stimulus towards the rise of the succesfull towns of late-medieval Flanders.


Author(s): Tys, Dries (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)