Towns on the Edge in Medieval Europe: The Social and Political Order of Peripheral Urban Communities from the Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries

This volume contains comparative research investigating the emergence and development of urban communities within northern European territories subjected to the processes of conquest, colonisation and expansion during the high and later Middle Ages. European history can be understood as a process whereby a European political, social and cultural ‘core’, on an axis from England to Italy, colonized a European ‘periphery’ by creating new towns and settlements. In northern Europe this periphery included Wales, Ireland and the shores of the Baltic Sea. This volume makes the case that these peripheral areas were not just urbanised and Europeanised, but, facing common challenges specific to life at the periphery, new towns there developed unique solutions giving rise to equally unique societies that are the historical antecedents of many current or re-emergent civic, regional and national identities in Europe today. Our hypothesis asserts that the relationship between the core and peripheries was based on the one hand, on the transfer of cultural models, but on the other hand on their constant modification. These processes led to the creation of new forms of urban life on the European peripheries, and subsequent processes of reception at a local or regional scale, embodying unique societies, not simply the replication of core urban forms and communities. In order to investigate effectively the social and political order within them, we have chosen three of the most important constituent themes: the formation of the urban community; the normalization of social life and social disciplining; and peace making and peace keeping