Citizens without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World, c. 1000-1789

Description

Citizenship is at the heart of our contemporary world but it is a particular vision of national citizenship forged in the French Revolution. In "Citizens without Nations", Maarten Prak recovers the much longer tradition of urban citizenship across the medieval and early modern world. Ranging from Europe and the American colonies to China and the Middle East, he reveals how the role of 'ordinary people' in urban politics has been systematically underestimated and how civic institutions such as neighbourhood associations, craft guilds, confraternities and civic militias helped shape local and state politics. By destroying this local form of citizenship, the French Revolution initially made Europe less, rather than more democratic. Understanding citizenship's longer-term history allows us to change the way we conceive of its future, rethink what it is that makes some societies more successful than others, and whether there are fundamental differences between European and non-European societies. List of Maps ix Acknowledgements x Introduction: Worlds of Citizenship 1 Part I. Dimensions of Citizenship in European Towns 25 1. Formal Citizenship 27 2. Urban Governance: Citizens and Their Authorities 50 3. Economic Citizenship through the Guilds 83 4. Welfare and the Civic Community 116 5. Citizens, Soldiers and Civic Militias 140 Part II. Cities and States, or the Varieties of European Citizenship 161 6. Italian City-States and Their Citizens 163 7. The Dutch Republic: The Federalisation of Citizenship 183 8. Citizenship in England: From the Reformation to the Glorious Revolution 205 9. Cities and States in Continental Europe 226 Part III. Citizenship outside Europe 249 10. Original Citizenship in China and the Middle East 251 11. Recreating European Citizenship in the Americas 274 Conclusions: Citizenship before and beyond the French Revolution 296 Notes 307 Bibliography 340 Index 411