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Making space for resistance: the spatiality of popular protest in the late medieval Southern Low Countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2021

Hannah Serneels Open the ORCID record for Hannah Serneels [Opens in a new window]
Hannah Serneels*
Affiliation:
Blijde-Inkomststraat 21 – box 3307, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
*
*Corresponding author. Email: hannah.serneels@kuleuven.be
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Abstract

Using several cities in the late medieval Southern Low Countries as a case-study, this article deals with the relation between urban space and different forms of political protest. Urban commoners were aware of the powerful symbolism of certain places in the late medieval city and used that to their advantage during large-scale revolts. Yet the use of space was not limited to the dramatic occupations during these revolts. This article uncovers a wide range of strategies and tactics that common people used to act within given spaces to make their resistance possible. A spatial analysis of several instances of large- and smaller-scale resistance shows that space was intrinsically connected with how and when any form of resistance developed in late medieval cities. As such, the article aims to contribute to the literature on the importance of space in late medieval urban politics, in which attention to smaller-scale practices has been very limited.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , November 2022 , pp. 709 - 724
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Jelle Haemers for his invaluable advice and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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