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It is not difficult, however, to recognize that it [the Ghent revolt of 1449–53] was also a crisis in the eternal conflict between the past and the future; and even if the heroism of the Ghentenars commands respect, the cause for which they fought cannot be justified when one looks without prejudice at the conditions at whose cost political progress was achieved in the fifteenth century. (Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, 2:362) lthough Henri Pirenne (1862–1935) showed sympathy for the Ghent rebels who took up arms in 1449 against their prince, the Burgundian duke Philip the Good, his final verdict is clear. The inhabitants of Ghent took arms to defend their corporate liberties against a future which they could not prevent, and their revolt was therefore useless, even self-destructive. The Burgundian dynasty (from Philip the Bold until Charles the Bold, 1384–1477) was the dominant political power in the Low Countries. Enemies such as the French king could not prevent the dukes from constructing an independent political union in “the sensitive point of Europe,” as Pirenne called the regions where Romance and Germanic culture meet.1 It also followed for Pirenne that the subjects of the Burgundian dukes who fought to maintain privileges and political autonomy were destined to lose, for no rebel could overcome the centralizing efforts of the dukes of Burgundy. Pirenne saw the emergence of the so-called central state as an inevitable and linear process. By assuming this teleological vision of the history of his beloved country, Pirenne both legitimized the origins of the Belgian state and A Victorious State and Defeated Rebels? Historians’Views of Violence and Urban Revolts in Medieval Flanders Jelle Haemers A 97 1 This is a point of view he shared with Johan Huizinga; see Lyon,“Henri Pirenne and Johan Huizinga ”; Boone, “L’automne du Moyen Âge”; Tollebeek, “At the Crossroads.” condemned the revolts of cities that strove for autonomy. In Pirenne’s view these revolts were ghosts of the past, without a future. The inhabitants of these cities (such as Ghent) were brave citizens (they still were “Belgians,”of course),but their revolts were a regrettable waste of men, money, and means, for they were fighting a losing battle. In his brilliant essay on medieval constitutionalism Bryce Lyon commented that historians always evaluate medieval politics “on lessons of their own national history.”2 This is certainly true of Henri Pirenne, whose publications influenced Bryce Lyon profoundly. In his biography of the Belgian master Lyon stated emphatically that Pirenne was a child of a “European age when nationalism was most rampant.”3 In writing Histoire de Belgique Pirenne clearly wanted to legitimize the Belgian state’s existence.4 He sought elements in the history of the Low Countries that would justify his contention that the existence of Belgium was a logical outcome of history. This point of view did not hinder Pirenne from conducting excellent research on medieval cities, but his writings not only legitimized the existence of Belgium they were also very biased toward urban rebellions (although Pirenne claimed that they were not). Pirenne’s view of the medieval state and its formation process was strongly influenced by his opinions about the state in which he lived. Pirenne, of course, is not the only historian whom we can accuse of prejudices or rationalization after the fact. As Bryce Lyon suggested, many historians view the political events of the Middle Ages through the prism of the concerns and lessons of their own histories. In this article I argue that historians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who studied the political history of the Low Countries in general, and the urban revolts in the county of Flanders in particular, were strongly influenced by their views of state structure at that time. The personal political opinions of historians about the states in which they lived have always affected their evaluations of the state formation and urban revolts of the past. In this article I am undertaking an in-depth study of the historiography of the Ghent revolt of 1449–53.5 In this revolt social networks of members of the craft guilds in the town took up arms against fellow citizens who tried to concentrate political power in their own hands. The craft group wanted to protect their corporate privileges, while the town elite increasingly tried to limit the political participation of the craft guilds in civic affairs. In fifteenth-century Ghent 2 Lyon, “Medieval Constitutionalism,” p. 158. 3 Lyon...

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