BOOK: Mario DAMEN, Jelle HAEMERS, and Alastair J. MANN (eds.), Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe, (c. 1200-c. 1690) (Leiden-New York: Brill, 2018). ISBN 9789004352414, €143.00

(Source: Brill)

Brill has published a new book containing many contributions on political representation in medieval and early modern Europe.  

ABOUT THE BOOK

Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200 - c. 1690), a scholarly collection on representation in medieval and early modern Europe, opens up the field of institutional and parliamentary history to new paradigms of representation across a wide geography and chronology – as testified by the volume’s studies on assemblies ranging from Burgundy and Brabant to Ireland and Italy. The focus is on three areas: institutional developments of representative institutions in Western Europe; the composition of these institutions concerning interest groups and individual participants; and the ideological environment of representatives in time and space. By analysing the balance between bottom-up and top-down approaches to the functioning of institutions of representation; by studying the actors behind the representative institutions linking prosopographical research with changes in political dialogue; and by exploring the ideological world of representation, this volume makes a key contribution to the historiography of pre-modern government and political culture. 

Contributors are María Asenjo-González, Wim Blockmans, Mario Damen, Coleman A. Dennehy, Jan Dumolyn, Marco Gentile, David Grummitt, Peter Hoppenbrouwers, Alastair J. Mann, Tim Neu, Ida Nijenhuis, Michael Penman, Graeme Small, Robert Stein and Marie Van Eeckenrode.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Dr Mario Damen is Senior Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. He is especially interested in social, political and cultural history of the late medieval Low Countries and the princes, nobles and administrative elites of the Burgundian and Habsburg composite state. His publications includePrelaten, edelen en steden. De samenstelling van de Staten van Brabant in de vijftiende eeuw (2016) and ‘The knighthood in and around fifteenth century Brussels’, Journal of Medieval History 43, (2017). 

Dr Jelle Haemers is Senior Lecturer at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). Apart from urban history his research interests encompass social and political conflicts in the late medieval town, notably in the Low Countries (1100-1550). Among others he published For the Common Good. State Power and Urban Revolts in the Reign of Mary of Burgundy, 1477-1482(2009). 

Dr Alastair Mann is Senior Lecturer at Stirling University, Scotland. He researches parliamentary history, the Restoration, and book history. He is co-editor of The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707 (2008-) and author of the biography James VII: duke and king of Scots (2014). 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Contributors and Editors 

An Introduction: Political Representation Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200–c. 1650)
  Mario Damen, Jelle Haemers and Alastair J. Mann

Part 1: Top-down or Bottom-up? Princes, Communities and Representation

1 Assemblies of Estates and Parliamentarism in Late Medieval Europe
  Peter Hoppenbrouwers
2 Political Representation and the Fiscal State in Late Medieval and Early Modern Castile
  María Asenjo-González
3 Forms of Political Representation in Late Medieval Northern Italy: Merits and Shortcomings of the City-State Paradigm (14th–early 16th Century)
  Marco Gentile
4 Representation in Later Medieval and Early Modern Ireland
  Coleman A. Dennehy
5 Speaking in the Name of: Collective Action, Claim-making, and the Development of Pre-modern Representative Institutions
  Tim Neu

Part 2: Prelates, Nobles and Patricians: The Composition of the Representative Institutions

6 “The King wishes and commands?” Reassessing Representative Assembly in Scotland, c.1286–1329
  Michael Penman
7 Officers of State and Representation in the Pre-modern Scottish Parliament
  Alastair J. Mann
8 The Nobility in the Estates of the Late Medieval Duchy of Brabant
  Mario Damen
9 Representation by Numbers: How Attendance and Experience Helped Holland to Control the Dutch States General (1626–1630)
  Ida Nijenhuis

Part 3: Controlling the State: Ideas and Discourses

10 The Antwerp Clerk Jan van Boendale and the Creation of a Brabantine Ideology
  Robert Stein
11 Rituals of Unanimity and Balance: Deliberation in 15th- to 16th-century Hainaut: A Fool’s Game?
  Marie Van Eeckenrode
12 Speech Acts and Political Communication in the Estates-General of Valois and Habsburg Burgundy c. 1370–1530: Towards a Shared Political Language
 Jan Dumolyn and Graeme Small
13Parliament, War and the “Public Sphere” in Late Medieval England: The Experience of Lancastrian Kent
 David Grummitt
14Who has a Say? The Conditions for the Emergence and Maintenance of Political Participation in Europe before 1800
 Wim Blockmans
Conclusion: Reconsidering Political Representation in Europe, 1400–1700
Selective Bibliography
Index 

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