A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Leiden - (Brill's Companions to European History) (Hardcover)

About the Book

This volume charts the key moments and developments in Leiden's premodern history (1200-1800), revealing how the city's diverse population experienced and shaped socio-economic and cultural events and processes, and how city-dwellers coped with structural political, economic, and social inequalities.

Book Synopsis

As a place of production, knowledge, and creativity, Leiden attracted people from near and far in the premodern era (c. 1200-1800). The result was a diverse population in a rapidly growing city. The contributions to this volume, written by specialists, trace key moments and developments in Leiden's history. The authors show how different groups of city dwellers experienced and shaped socio-economic and cultural events and processes. Through its thematic focus and engagement with current debates in urban history, this volume reveals how the inhabitants of a premodern European city produced and negotiated political, socio-economic, and spatial inequalities.

Contributors are: Chrystel Brandenburgh, Roos van Oosten, Edwin Orsel, Ed van der Vlist, Janna Coomans, Wout Saelens, Arie van Steensel, Maarten Prak, Jori Zijlmans, Henk Looijesteijn, Evelien Walhout, Jaco Zuijderduijn, Ariadne Schmidt, Manon van de Heijden, Elizabeth den Hartog, Christine Kooi, Alisa van de Haar, Johannes Müller, and Ronald Sluijter.

About the Author

Arie van Steensel is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Social and Economic History at the University of Groningen. He specialises in the medieval and early modern history of western Europe and has a special interest in the urban history of Italy, England, and the Low Countries. Currently, he is the secretary of the European Association for Urban History.

Ariadne Schmidt is Professor of the History of Urban Culture, in particular of Leiden, at Leiden University. She specialises in urban history, the history of work, and gender and family history. Her publications include Prosecuting Women: A Comparative Perspective on Crime and Gender before the Dutch Criminal Courts (Brill, 2020).