Anglo-American Conference of Historians 2009: Cities
Institute of Historical Research, 2 - 3 July 2009
Surviving the others. Formalisation of social ties, social integration and peace in the urban environment
Organizer and chair: Guido Alfani (Bocconi University, Milan)
Cities
have always been the place where differences were bound to meet and
compromises had to be reached. People coming from different places and
environments, having different social ranks, different needs and
ambitions lived in close proximity to each other and thus had to accept
(to a degree at least) the others.
The session will be focussed on the means that permitted to this
“social miracle” to come true, even in societies and cultures that
recognized violence as an acceptable, if not legitimate, means of
solving contrasts. Such means include both social institutions allowing
to formalize and to “ritually protect” relationships (marriage
alliance, godparenthood, etc.) and juridical instruments, such as the
contracts of peace, that permitted to end blood feuds and other forms
of violent contrast.
The session will analyse the phenomenon of “surviving the others” from different perspectives, such as the shaping of social networks to provide protection to individuals; integration of migrants into the city; social conflict and composition of diverging interests of different social groups. It will compare how different areas of Europe (Italy, France, England) in different periods (from the late Middle Ages to the 19th Century) managed to solve a problem that, while ever changing in its manifestations, still characterizes urban environments worldwide.
Abstracts
The system of bonds and the social stability of the eighteenth-century English provincial towns
François-Joseph Ruggiu (University of Paris-Sorbonne)
For a long time, the history of the English towns during the 18th-century was devoted to the study of their social divisions and of the conflicts they experienced. They were seen as the place of a growing polarization between the elites, on one hand, and the urban proletariat, on the other hand. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the middling sorts have received more and more consideration from historians and from these work emerges progressively a new picture of the social relations especially in the county towns. Old urban institutions, like the freemanship, continued well into the eighteenth-century to play a major role in order to stabilize the social urban body; they create a network of very diverse links, like the involvement in the local and municipal institutions, or the participation to the benefits of the public properties, which connected a citizen to each other. The system of bonds was one of these links. Under some circumstances, for example, in order to buy the right to be a freeman, or in order to receive a loan from a corporation, or in order to be bail out from custody in the case of a misdemeanour, an inhabitant had to produce one, two or more bondsmen. The charges of being a bondsman were real; he engaged his time and his money to guarantee the good behaviour of a kin, of a neighbour, of a fellow member of a guilds or of an acquaintance. This paper propose to investigate this particular kind of urban relation in Canterbury, a middle-sized provincial town, which was the capital of East Kent and which enjoys a real prosperity during the eighteenth-century even if it stayed besides the great movements of industrialization at the end of the period. It will try to show that the relation through a bond was not a transient one, that the persons involved were often linked by other means and, finally, that a small cluster of persons were often chosen as bondsmen, playing a very important role in order to mediate between citizens and authorities.
Conflictual
cities versus peaceful countries? The dynamics of property conflicts in
Milan and its Contado during the Ancien Régime
Michela Barbot (Bocconi University, Milan)
This paper aims to inquire the social effects of the emergence of a new legal system (the private property institution) in Milan and its country between 16th and 18th century. I will analyze about 350 property conflicts, their composition and the juridical means of making peace. In particular, I will focus on the capabilities of these contrasts (and their legal solutions) to define social identities and promote a new way to think of citizenship and individuals’ protection. Through a close comparison between urban and rural space, I will try to explore the influence of the new private property system on the dynamics of migrants’ integration, social inclusion, stability and peace.
Integration of migrants in nineteenth-century Paris: networks and strategies of marriage witnessing and godparenthood
Vincent Gourdon (CNRS and Centre Roland Mousnier, Paris)
In the 19th-century, Paris welcomed hundreds of thousands of migrants, coming from the French provinces but also from foreign countries (particularly Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and Italy). Using two main sources, baptism books (catholic and protestant ones) and civil wedding registers, and returning to the existing historical literature, I will focus on the way migrants have integrated themselves into Parisian society, by creating formalized relationships (godparenthood, wedding witnesses) with others. Can we observe some specific strategies (community integration versus openness; kin-oriented choices or neighbourhood/work preferences, etc. ) or some diachronic evolutions in this society which is concerned by the industrial revolution, the urban revolution (Haussmanisation), the secularization process and political mobilization among the ‘classes populaires’?
