Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200 - c. 1690)

Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200 - c. 1690), a scholarly collection on representation in medieval and early modern Europe, opens up the field of institutional and parliamentary history to new paradigms of representation across a wide geography and chronology – as testified by the volume's studies on assemblies ranging from Burgundy and Brabant to Ireland and Italy. The focus is on three areas: institutional developments of representative institutions in Western Europe; the composition of these institutions concerning interest groups and individual participants; and the ideological environment of representatives in time and space. By analysing the balance between bottom-up and top-down approaches to the functioning of institutions of representation; by studying the actors behind the representative institutions linking prosopographical research with changes in political dialogue; and by exploring the ideological world of representation, this volume makes a key contribution to the historiography of pre-modern government and political culture. Contributors are María Asenjo-González, Wim Blockmans, Mario Damen, Coleman A. Dennehy, Jan Dumolyn, Marco Gentile, David Grummitt, Peter Hoppenbrouwers, Alastair J. Mann, Tim Neu, Ida Nijenhuis, Michael Penman, Graeme Small, Robert Stein and Marie Van Eeckenrode. See inside the book. Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200–c. 1690) 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgements 10 List of Illustrations 12 Contributors and Editors 13 An Introduction: Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200–c. 1690) 16 Part 1: Top-down or Bottom-up? Princes, Communities and Representation 32 1 Assemblies of Estates and Parliamentarism in Late Medieval Europe 34 2 Political Representation and the Fiscal State in Late Medieval and Early Modern Castile 69 3 Forms of Political Representation in Late Medieval Northern Italy: Merits and Shortcomings of the City-State Paradigm (14th–early 16th Century) 84 4 Representation in Later Medieval and Early Modern Ireland 100 5 Speaking in the Name of: Collective Action, Claim-making, and the Development of Pre-modern Representative Institutions 121 Part 2: Prelates, Nobles and Patricians: The Composition of the Representative Institutions 138 6 “The King wishes and commands?” Reassessing Political Assembly in Scotland, c.1286–1329 140 7 Officers of State and Representation in the Pre-modern Scottish Parliament 157 8 The Nobility in the Estates of the Late Medieval Duchy of Brabant 176 9 Representation by Numbers: How Attendance and Experience Helped Holland to Control the Dutch States General (1626–1630) 197 Part 3: Controlling the State: Ideas and Discourses 218 10 The Antwerp Clerk Jan van Boendale and the Creation of a Brabantine Ideology 220 11 Rituals of Unanimity and Balance: Deliberation in 15th- to 16thcentury Hainaut: A Fool’s Game? 240 12 Speech Acts and Political Communication in the Estates General of Valois and Habsburg Burgundy c. 1370–1530: Towards a Shared Political Language 255 13 Parliament, War and the “Public Sphere” in Late Medieval England: The Experience of Lancastrian Kent 282 14 Who Has a Say? The Conditions for the Emergence and Maintenance of Political Participation in Europe before 1800 300 Conclusion: Reconsidering Political Representation in Europe, 1400–1700 324 Selective Bibliography 334 Index 336 This scholarly collection on representation in medieval and early modern Europe opens up the field of institutional and parliamentary history to new paradigms of representation across a wide geography and chronology - as testified by the volume's studies on assemblies ranging from Burgundy and Brabant to Ireland and Italy. The focus is on three areas: institutional developments of representative institutions in Western Europe; the composition of these institutions concerning interest groups and individual participants; and the ideological environment of representatives in time and space. By analysing the balance between bottom-up and top-down approaches to the functioning of institutions of representation; by studying the actors behind the representative institutions linking prosopographical research with changes in political dialogue; and by exploring the ideological world of representation, this volume makes an key contribution to the historiography of pre-modern government and political culture.0