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Becoming early modern in the late medieval Low Countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2011

Martha Howell  and
Marc Boone
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Abstract

The history of cities in the Low Countries at the end of Middle Ages is commonly presented as one of discontinuity in which old textile centres collapsed, and were replaced by new centres such as Antwerp, Leiden, Lille and Amsterdam which were in fundamental respects entirely unlike their medieval predecessors. This conventional interpretation is challenged with reference to Ghent and Douai. Neither suffered devastating economic decline, social trauma or political upheaval in the period, and both enjoyed a degree of relative economic success. Contradictions are also identified, especially the way that economic flexibility was associated with an intensification of social conservatism. This process not only helped produce a characteristically ‘early modern’ social order but also decisively linked the ‘medieval’ with the ‘early modern’ in these two cities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , December 1996 , pp. 300 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank Robert Duplessis, Maryanne Kowaleski and Walter Prevenier for their comments on earlier versions of this article. Our thanks as well to the editors and readers at Urban History and to Brian Hollen and Katie Beltramo for their editorial help.

References

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2 Pirenne's views on the collapse of the medieval commune are best summarized in H. Pirenne, ‘Les périodes de l'histoire sociale du capitalisme’, Bulletin de l'Académie Royale de Belgique, Classe des lettres (1914) [in English as ‘Stages in the social history of capitalism’, American Historical Review, XIX, 34 (1914), 494–515Google Scholar]. Also see his Early Democracies in the Low Countries (rpt. New York, 1971)Google Scholar, for an elaboration of this thesis. Illustrations of the Pirennean influence on more recent interpretations are offered in Boone, M., ‘Les métiers dans les villes flamandes au bas moyen âge (XlVe-XVI siècles): images normatives, réalités socio-politiques et économiques’, in Lambrechts, P. and Sosson, J.-P. (eds), Les métiers au moyen âge. Aspects économiques et sociaux (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1994), 1–5Google Scholar.

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9 Black, A., Guilds and Civil Society in European Political Thought from the Twelfth Century to the Present (Ithaca, 1984)Google Scholar provides a dear statement of the constitutional principles which underlay the medieval commune. For recent historical work pursuing this line, see, for example, Rotz, R.A., ‘“Social struggles” or price of power? German urban uprisings in the late Middle Ages’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History, 76 (1985), 64–95Google Scholar; H. Schilling, ‘Civic republicanism in late medieval and early modern German cities’, in idem, Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society. Essays in German and Dutch History (Leiden, 1992). For the Low Countries: Boone, M. and Prak, M., ‘Rulers, patricians and burghers: the great and little traditions of urban revolt in the Low Countries’, in Davids, K. and Lucassen, J., A Miracle Mirrored. The Dutch Republic in European Perspective (Cambridge, 1995), 99–134Google Scholar.

10 This list is taken from Benedict's, P. introduction to Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France (London, 1992)Google Scholar.

11 For a recent survey presenting the standard view, see Huppert, G., After the Black Death (Bloomington, 1986)Google Scholar or idem, Les Bourgeois Gentilhommes (Chicago, 1977).

12 For this general history, see Prevenier, W. and Blockmans, W., The Burgundian Netherlands (Antwerp, 1983)Google Scholar; Rouche, M. (ed.), Histoire de Douai (Histoire des villes du Nord/Pas-de-Calais, ed. Hilaire, Y.-M.) (Dunkirk, 1985)Google Scholar.

13 Most of the records have been published in Espinas, G. and Pirenne, H., Recueil des documents relatifs à l'histoire de l‘industrie drapière en Flandre: des origines à l'époque bourguignonne, 4 vols (Brussels, 1906)Google Scholar.

14 For this interpretation, see the classic studies by Espinas, G., La vie urbaine de Douai au moyen âge, 4 vols (Paris, 1913)Google Scholar and Les origines du capitalisme, 4 vols (Paris and Lille, 1933–1949Google Scholar).

15 For the quotation from Espinas, see Espinas, , La vie urbaine de Douai, II, 668Google Scholar. For a recent commentary which accepts the outlines of Espinas's arguments, see Sivery, G., ‘Capitaux et Industrie textile au Moyen Age dans les régions septentrionales’, Revue du Nord, LXIX, 275 (1987)Google Scholar. For criticisms of Espinas's interpretations about the social organization of Douai's industry, see Dérville, A., ‘L'héritage des draperies médiévales’, Revue du Nord, LXIX, 275 (1987)Google Scholar and ‘Les draperies flamandes et artésiennes vers 1250,1350’, ibid., LIV, 215 (1972); for recent research on the early fourteenth century which demonstrates the viability of the drapery at that time, see Dhérent, C., ‘L'assise sur le commerce des draps a Douai en 1304’, Revue du Nord, LXV, 257 (1983)Google Scholar, her Histoire sociale de la bourgeoisie de Douai de 1280 à 1350 (Paris, 1981)Google Scholar, and her ‘Abondance et crises. Douai ville frontiére, 1200–1375’ (Université de Paris I thèse de doctorat nouveau régime, 1993)Google Scholar.

16 Archives municipales de Douai (hereafter AMD; all Douaisien manuscript citations hereafter are from this archive).

17 Summaries of this material have been published elsewhere; see Howell, M., ‘Weathering crisis, managing change: the emergence of a new socioeconomic order in Douai at the end of the Middle Ages’, in Boone, M. and Prevenier, W. (eds), Drapery Production in the Late Medieval Low Countries: Markets and Strategies for Survival (14th-16th Centuries) (Leuven and Apeldoorn, 1993)Google Scholar and Howell, , ‘Fixing movables’, Past and Present, 150 (February 1996), 3–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Most marriages of artisanal families involved the exchange of movables such as clothing, furnishings and tools, the approximate cash value of which was often stated; in addition, many brides and grooms brought coin itself. But it was not uncommon for artisans to bring houses and other real estate to the marriage. For additional details, see M. Howell, Marriage Stakes in Urban Cultures of the Late Medieval North (forthcoming).

19 For the citizenship registers, see Minet, M., ‘Les inscriptions du registre aux bourgeois de Douai au XV siècle, 1399–1506’ (Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve Mémoire, 1973)Google Scholar. On average, about 28 new citizens registered each year; 25 per cent were identified as textile workers (a growing percentage of them in newer branches such as linen or saye manufacture) and at least another 30 per cent were ordinary artisans.

20 Abraham-Thisse, S., ‘Achats et consommation de draps de laine par l'hôtel de Bourgogne, 1370–1380’, in Contamine, P., Dutour, T. and Schnerb, B. (eds), Commerce, Finances et Société (Xle-XVle siecles): Recueil de travaux d'histoire médiévale offert à M. le professeur Henri Dubois, (Paris, 1993), 27–70Google Scholar.

21 Munro, ‘Anglo-Flemish competition’, 44–51.

22 See, for the relevant legislation, AMD, BB1, f. 24 verso, 15 April 1467 and f. 38, 21 July 1473.

23 For Ypres, see Mus, O., ‘Pieter Lansaem, promotor van de nieuwe draperie te Ieper in de tweede helft van de 15de eeuw’, Handelingen van het genootschap voor geschiedenis, gesticht onder de benaming ‘Société d'emulation’ te Brugge, 130 (1993), esp. 70–2, 80Google Scholar. Over the second half of the fifteenth century, almost 75 per cent of Ypres' cloth production was ‘new drapery’ made of Spanish wool. For St Omer, see Sortor, ‘Saint-Omer and its textile trades’, 1475–99.

24 Clauzel, D. and Calonne, S., ‘Artisanat rural et marché urbain: la draperie à Lille et dans ses campagnes a la fin du moyen âge’, Revue du Nord, LXXII (1990), 531–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lille's prominence in this market may help explain why Douai was never able to capitalize on the position it had begun to establish in light cloth production early in the sixteenth century; Douai's small producers of sayes, changéants and velveteens could not compete for raw materials and markets against the better-positioned Lillois, once demand took off after about 1550.

25 To judge from the sources Ghent has left about activity in its property markets, Ghent's textile artisans were as prosperous as Douai's. The deeds recording house and rent sales in Ghent between 1483 and 1503 (in which 2,653 professional identifications were traced) are populated by artisans of all types, with textile artisans representing around 10 per cent of them. See the statistics in Boone, M., Dumon, M. and Reusens, B., Immobiliënmarkt, fiscaliteit en sociale ongelijkheid te Gent, 1483–1503 (Standen en Landen, LXXVIII) (Kortrijk, 1981), 203–14Google Scholar. More generally, see Uytven, R. Van, ‘Politiek en economie: de crisis der late XVe eeuw in de Nederlanden’, Revue beige de Philologie et d'Histoire, 53 (1975), 1097–149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 This position has been clearly formulated by Munro, J.H. in ‘Industrial protectionism in medieval Flanders: urban or national?’, in Miskimin, H.A., Herlihy, D. and Udovitch, A.L. (eds), The Medieval City (London and New Haven, 1977), 249–53Google Scholar; also see Van der Wee, ‘Industrial dynamics’, 323-7. Recently Munro argued for a more nuanced point of view: ‘Anglo-Flemish competition’, 42.

27 For an account of this moment, see Van der Wee, ‘Structural changes’, 211.

28 Chorley, P., ‘The cloth exports of Flanders and northern France during the thirteenth century: a luxury trade?’, Economic History Review, 40 (1987), 349–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Munro, ‘Industrial transformations’, 110–49.

29 Mus cites a 1456 text which lists the major Flemish buyers of Spanish wool, Ghent in the first place: ‘Pieter Lansaem’, 80.

30 Boone, M., ‘Nieuwe teksten over de Gentse draperie: wolaanvoer, productiewijze en controlepraktijken (ca. 1456–1468)’, Bulletin de la commission royale d'histoire, CLIV (1988), 16–17Google Scholar.

31 For the traditional argument about the weavers' refusal to experiment with new production, see Nicholas, D., The Metamorphosis of a Medieval City. Ghent in the Age of the Arteveldes, 1302–1390 (Leiden, 1987), 143, 154Google Scholar.

32 For a discussion of Ghent's entry into new kinds of textile production, see M. Boone, ‘L'industrie textile à Gand au bas moyen âge ou les resurrections successives d'uné activité réputée moribonde’, in Boone and Prevenier, Drapery Production in the Late Medieval Low Countries, 38–50.

33 Boone, M., ‘Les toiles de lin des Pays-Bas bourguignons sur le marché anglais (fin du 14e-16e siècles)’, in Actes du 35e Rencontres du Centre Européen d'Etudes Bourguignonnes (Oxford 1994) ‘L'Angleterre et les pays bourguignons: relations et comparisons (XlVe-XVIe siècles)’, (Neuchâtel, 1995), 61–81Google Scholar.

34 Verhulst, A. and Gysseling, M., Le compte général de 1187, connu sous le nom de ‘Gros Brief’ et les institutions financières du comté de Flandre au Xlle siècle (Brussels, 1962), 84–5, 143, 156Google Scholar.

35 A remarkable similarity with Dordrecht, the most important staple in medieval Holland; there the staple right was significantly expanded in 1351. Bos-Rops, J.A.M.Y., Graven op zoek naar geld. De inkomsten van de graven van Holland en Zeeland, 1389–1433 (Hilversum, 1993), 32Google Scholar.

36 Bigwood, G., ‘Gand et la circulation des grains en Flandres, du XFVe au XVIIIe siècle’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, IV (1906), 426–7Google Scholar. Recently, the origins have been backdated to 1323: Nicholas, The Metamorphosis, 241–2 and idem, Medieval Flanders, 218. In the latter publication, Nicholas argues for a twelfth-century origin. He based his argument on the charter from 1323, apparently believing that it was unknown to scholars; in fact it was published a century ago, in De Potter, F., Gent, van de oudsten tijd tot heden. Geschiedkundige beschrijving der stad, part 7 (Ghent, 1883–1903), 140–1Google Scholar; also see Bigwood, ‘Gand et la circulation’, 426. The staple right itself gradually developed between 1337 and 1366. See M.-J. Tits-Dieuaide, ‘Le grain et le pain dans l'administrarion des villes de Brabant et de Flandre au moyen-âge’, in Actes du lle colloque international ‘L'initiative publique des communes en Belgique. Fondements historiques (Ancien Régime), Spa, 1–4 sept. 1982 (s.l., 1984) (Credit communal de Belgique, collection histoire, série in 8, no. 65), 485.

37 On Douai's staple, see Espinas, , La vie urbaine, II, 210–12Google Scholar; M. Mestayer in Rouche, Histoire de Douai, 76 and idem, ‘Le marché au blé de Douai au XVe siècle: réglementation, fonctionnement et entraves’, in Publications du Centre Européen d'Etudes Bourguignonnes 14e-16e siecle, no. 27. Rencontres de Douai (25-28 sept. 1986): aspects de la vie économique des pays bourguignons (1384–1559): depression ou prospérité?’, 47. Most of the older texts were published in Espinas, , La vie urbaine, III, nos 300, 496Google Scholar. For the debate concerning the staple's date of origin, see Derville, A., ‘Le grenier des Pays-Bas médiévaux’, Revue du Nord, LXIX (1987), 273–4Google Scholar. The crucial 1392 text is published in Barrier, J. and Van Nieuwenhuysen, A. (eds), Ordonnances de Philippe le Hardi, de Marguerite de Male et de Jean sans Peur 1381–1419 (Brussels, 1965), I, doc. no. 328,529–31Google Scholar, and in Espinas, , La vie urbaine, IV, 668–79Google Scholar (with more recent addenda). Mestayer still dates it 1373, thus ignoring the recent edition: ‘Le marche au ble’, 48.

38 Cited by Espinas, G., Les finances de la commune de Douai. Des origines au XVe siècle (Paris, 1902), 244–5Google Scholar.

39 Gentenaars and Douaisiens did better even than Brugeois. Using a method of calculating real grain prices based on masons' wages, Jean-Pierre Sosson has calculated that only four times during the 138 years between 1362 and 1500 did outlays for grain necessary to feed a family of four exceed the capacity of a master mason in Bruges to pay: in 1437–38, 1438–39, 1481–82, 1482–83. In Douai, this threshold was broken only twice, in 1438–39 and 1481–82; in Ghent, it was never crossed. See Sosson, J.-P., ‘Corporation et pauperisme aux XlVe et XVe siècles. Le salariat du bâtiment en Flandre et en Brabant, et notamment à Bruges’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 92 (1979), 558–62Google Scholar; the methodology was developed in Fourastié, J. and Grandamy, R., ‘Remarques sur les prix salariaux des céréales et la productivité du travail agricole en Europe du XVe au XXe siècle’, Troisième conférence internationale d'histoire économique, Munchen 1965 (Paris and The Hague, 1968), 647–56Google Scholar. In Bruges the magistrates bought grain during years of high prices to make it available for the population at manageable prices: Bruges Municipal Archives account 1432–1433, ff. 86v-87r ‘ghemeene uitgaven’. Ghent seems to have avoided such purchases altogether. Douaisien magistrates did frequently store grain against shortages, at least from the late fifteenth century when the good records begin, but the costs of doing so would likely have been lower in this city than in Bruges.

40 Marriage contracts provide interesting evidence of this pattern of development. In contracts dated 1375–77 (AMD, ff. 586/214–305) only one out of 48 principal actors (for whom the occupation or social position was named) was a ‘marchand’. In 1393–94 we find one ‘marchand de ble’ out of 28 named occupations (ff. 596/1887–1994); in 1421–27, we have two ‘marchands de drap’, one ‘marchand de grain’, and two merely ‘marchands’ out of 39 principal actors (ff. 609/1770–1832). As we move later in time, the percentage of ‘marchands’ and ‘marchands de blé’ (or ‘de grain’) increases. In 1521–23, four ‘marchands’ and one ‘marchand de grain’ for 35 known actors (ff. 649/5126–5176). In 1551–70 there were two ‘marchands de drap’, one ‘marchand de grain’ and nine ‘marchands’ out of 55 principal actors (ff. 655/5543–5586). Contracts dated 1557 named 28 occupations or social positions, of which eleven were ‘marchands’ and one was a ‘marchand de drap' (ff. 914).

41 Boatmen occasionally appear as principal actors in Douai's marriage documents, wills and contrats divers. It is no accident that the boatmen were the best organized of Douaisien crafts, although they never achieved corporative status. See Espinas, , La vie urbaine, II, 583–628, esp. 596–8Google Scholar.

42 The shippers of Ghent also had strong connections to members of the ducal staff, which enhanced their political influence in the city. On the Ghent guild, see Corryn, F., ‘Het schippersambacht te Gent (1302–1492)’, Handelingen der Maatschappij van Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, I (1944), 165–204Google Scholar. The Ghent boatmen were the only guild with a guaranteed yearly representation into each of the two benches of aldermen. Boone, M., Gent en de Bourgondische hertogen, ca 1384 - ca. 1453. Een sociaal-politieke studie van een staatsvormingsproces (Brussels, 1990), 47Google Scholar.

43 See note 12 for the literature on this political history.

44 Van Nieuwenhuysen, A., Les finances du due de Bourgogne Philippe le Hardi (1384–1404). Economic et politique (Brussels, 1984), 277Google Scholar. Excise taxes were by far the most important source of urban revenues (along with sales of rents). Van Nieuwenhuysen reports that when Douai became Burgundian, the Duke considered this proportion ‘normal’ for cities of Artois and Walloon Flanders because the principle had already been well established in the previous era of French rule. The ‘Flemish’ cities of Flanders, as beneficiaries of a stronger tradition of independence, paid much less. Ghent, to cite the extreme case, paid only 360 livres parisis de Flandre at the turn of the fifteenth century (compared to Douai's 4,891 livres parisis de Flandre), less than Bruges, Ypres, Antwerp, and less even than Dixmude, Nieuwport, and Poperinghe as well.

45 See Chevalier, B., ‘L'Etat et les bonnes villes en France au temps de leur accord parfait (1450–1550)’, in Bulst, N. and Genet, J.-P. (eds), La ville, la bourgeoisie et la genèse de l'Etat moderne (Xlle-XVIIIe siècles (Actes du colloque de Bielefeld (29 nov.-l déc. 1985) (Paris, 1988), 71–85Google Scholar, for an analysis of this French pattern of municipal-royal relations.

46 Derville, A., ‘Les échevins de Douai (1228–1527)’, in La Sociabilité urbaine en Europe du Nord-Ouest du XlVe au XVIIIe siècle (Mémoires de la Société centrale d'Agriculture, Sciences et Arts du Department du Nord), 5th ser., VIII (1984), 39–48Google Scholar.

47 This material is summarized in Howell, ‘Weathering crisis' and detailed in idem, Marriage Stakes.

48 By then, artisans were quickly disappearing from these records, and it is loss of their numbers which helps skew these statistics. But more was going on as well: in the sixteenth century, there were, in absolute terms as well, more rich people writing marriage contracts, and more of them were members of a growing rentier class. See Howell, ‘Weathering crisis’, for details.

49 The pattern anticipates the profile which would characterize seventeenth-century Douai. See A. Lottin, ‘Grand siecle ou siecle d'airain?’, in Rouche, Histoire de Douai, ch. IX, esp. 119.

50 For the rest, we do not have enough information to know, although the evidence from marriage contracts suggests an extraordinarily high degree of trade endogamy and inheritance among artisans, who, let us recall, had no guilds or official protection: see Howell, Marriage Stakes. Also see idem, ‘Achieving the guild effect without guilds: crafts and craftsmen in late medieval Douai’, in Lambrechts and Sosson, Les métiers au moyen âge, 109–28. Data suitable for statistically meaningful comparison with the Douaisien are difficult to obtain, but there is little doubt that the rate of trade endogamy in Douai was comparatively high. One of the few similarly designed studies of marriage contracts is James Farr's study of Dijon, which showed that in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Dijon, rates were much lower, on average less than 20 per cent, compared to the 50 per cent which can be derived from samples of Douaisien documents. Only the butchers achieved rates higher than 50 per cent, a difference which can be explained because butchers in Dijon, like those in Douai and many other places, presumably enjoyed special inheritance rights to the meat stalls. See Farr, J.R., Hands of Honor: Artisans and their World in Dijon, 1550–1650 (Ithaca, 1988), 136–8Google Scholar.

51 See Espinas, , la vie urbaine, II, 598–605Google Scholar, and Howell, ‘Achieving the guild effect without guilds’. The butchers are the exception here, for family members had inheritance rights to the stalls where all meat had to be sold. See Hans van Werveke, ‘Ambachten en erflijkheid’, Mededeelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamsche Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schoone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren en der Moreele en Staatkundige Wetenschappen IV, No. 1 (Brussels, 1942), who traces the growing importance of inheritance rights in the organized crafts in Flanders and throughout the North; in all the cases he cites, the protections were legislated by corporate guilds or municipal authorities. The Ghent butchers offer one of the more striking examples: their hereditary rights to the trade were confirmed by counts of Flanders and dukes of Burgundy: Boone, Gent en de Bourgondische hertogen, 79.

52 See in particular Jacob, R., Les époux, le seigneur et la cité. Coutumes et pratiques matrimoniales des bourgeois et paysans de France du Nord au moyen âge (Brussels, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Daneel, M., Weduwen en wezen in het laatmiddeleeuwse Gent (Leuven and Apeldoom, 1995), 80–97,349–82Google Scholar.

54 For the Concessio Carolina, in the context of the preceding treaties between Ghent and the central government, see Blockmans, W.P., ‘Breuk of continuiteit? De Vlaamse privilegiën van 1477 in het licht van het staatsvormingsproces’, Anciens Pays et Assemblées d'Etats, LXXXX (1985), 122–5Google Scholar. On the Ghent rebellion of 1540 and the following repression, see Decavele, J. (ed.), Keizer tussen stropdragers. Karel V 1500–1558 (Leuven, 1990), 121–90Google Scholar.

55 On the guilds, see Boone, Gent en de Bourgondische hertogen, 58–93.

56 Of the twenty-six offices of aldermen open each year, six went to the bourgeoisie. The members of drapery and of small guilds each obtained ten offices. Concerning the ten schepenen (aldermen) for the (smaller) guilds, a fixed annual representation of two shippers, one butcher, one baker, one brewer and a single representative per year for a group of six crafts from the building industry, and a similar consortium of crafts involved in leather processing, was foreseen. On this see Boone, Gent en de Bourgondische hertogen, 71–93.

57 As abundantly argued by Nicholas, , The Metamorphosis, 250, 291–3Google Scholar.

58 See Boone, ‘Les métiers dans les villes flamandes’, 6–15. In general, see Sosson, J.-P., ‘Die Körperschaften in den Niederlanden und Nordfrankreich: neue Forschungsperspectiven’, Quellen und Darstellungen in Hansischen Geschichte, 29, new ser. (1984), 79–90Google Scholar.

59 For the details of this history, see Boone, Gent en de Bourgondische hertogen, 90–3.

60 Some recent Marxist contributions to the debate - best formulated by Robert Brenner in an exchange launched in Past & Present, 70 (February 1976), 30–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar - have explicitly relegated cities to the sidelines. For important Marxist literature treating the town-countryside relationship in this era, see, however, the Dobb-Sweezy debate and the more recent contribution by John Merrington, both in Hilton, R.H. (ed.), The Transition to Capitalism (London, 1978)Google Scholar. For a critical assessment of Marxist literature on the transition, see Ashton, T.H. and Philpin, C.H.E. (eds), The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 See Epstein, S.R., ‘Cities, regions and the late medieval crises: Sicily and Tuscany compared’, Past and Present, 130 (1991), 10–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar and his ‘Town and country: economy and institutions in late medieval Italy’, Economic History Review, XLVI, 3 (1993), 453–77Google Scholar. A more specific application of this point of view by the same author is his ‘Manifatture tessili e strutture politico-istituzionali nella Lombardia tardo-medievale. Ipotesi di ricerca’, Studi di storia medioevale e di diplomatica, 14 (1992), 55–89Google Scholar.

62 For a fuller discussion of central place theory, see Hohenberg and Lees, The Making of Urban Europe, 58–9, 69–71. If applied to medieval Flanders, the theory would have to be complemented by gateway-theory: in the eastern part of the country, Ghent served as ‘central place’ while Bruges offered a ‘gateway’ to international trade. See Prevenier, W., Sosson, J.-P. and Boone, M., ‘Le réseau urbain en Flandre (XIIIe-XIXe siècle): composantes et dynamique’, in Actes du 15e Colloque International, Le réseau urbain en Belgique dans une perspective historique (1350–1850). Une approche statistique et dynamique Spa, 4–6 sept. 1990 (Credit communal, collection histoire, serie in 8,86) (Brussels, 1992), 162–71Google Scholar.

63 For a similar argument, see Lees, L.H., ‘The challenge of political change: urban history in the 1990s’, Urban History, 21 (1994), 16–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Also see Epstein, , ‘Regional fairs, institutional innovation, and economic growth in late medieval Europe’, Economic History Review, XLVII (1994), 459–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 See Lottin, in Histoire de Douai, ch. VIII and IX, for this history.