Urban protest in thirteenth-century north-western Europe: a comparative approach

ABSTRACT The historiography of urban revolts in north-western Europe is abundant, yet events of thirteenth-century urban protest are mostly neglected. They are usually only mentioned briefly as forerunners of later, better documented events. Sources for thirteenth-century events of urban protest are scarce, but not absent. This article gives an overview from the first industrial action in Brabant, Flanders and northern France between 1220 and 1250, to the factional struggles between urban elites, in which craftsmen took sides, in the towns of England and the Holy Roman Empire in the 1250s and 1260s, and back to Flanders and northern France as the epicentre of violent revolts in 1275–85. These events reveal the way artisans entered the political stage, they underline regional differences and common features, and they uncover the interplay between changes in urban society and overall development in north-western Europe in this crucial period of profound transition.