Citizens without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World, c.1000–1789
Cambridge University Press, 8/16/2018
EAN 9781107504158, ISBN10: 1107504155
Paperback, 442 pages, 22.3 x 15.2 x 2 cm
Language: English
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.
Introduction
worlds of citizenship
Part I. Dimensions of Citizenship in European Towns
1. Formal citizenship
2. Urban governance
citizens and their authorities
3. Economic citizenship through the guilds
4. Welfare and the civic community
5. Citizens, soldiers, and civic militias
Part II. Cities and States, Or
The Varieties of European Citizenship
Introduction to Part II
6. Italian city-states and their citizens
7. The Dutch Republic
the federalisation of citizenship
8. Citizenship in England
from the Reformation to the Glorious Revolution
9. Cities and states in Continental Europe
Part III. Citizenship Outside Europe
Introduction to Part III
10. Original citizenship in China and the Middle East
11. Recreating European citizenship in the Americas
Conclusions
citizenship before and beyond the French Revolution.