How Merchant Towns Shaped Parliaments: From the Norman Conquest of England to the Great Reform Act
Angelucci, C; Meraglia, S; Voigtländer, N
Date: 1 October 2022
Article
Journal
American Economic Review
Publisher
American Economic Association
Publisher DOI
Abstract
We study the emergence of urban self-governance in the late medieval period. We focus on England after the Norman Conquest of 1066, building a novel comprehensive dataset of 554 medieval towns. During the Commercial Revolution (twelfth to thirteenth centuries), many merchant towns obtained Farm Grants: the right of self-governed tax ...
We study the emergence of urban self-governance in the late medieval period. We focus on England after the Norman Conquest of 1066, building a novel comprehensive dataset of 554 medieval towns. During the Commercial Revolution (twelfth to thirteenth centuries), many merchant towns obtained Farm Grants: the right of self-governed tax collection and law enforcement. Self-governance, in turn, was a stepping stone for parliamentary representation: Farm Grant towns were much more likely to be summoned directly to the medieval English Parliament than otherwise similar towns. We also show that self-governed towns strengthened the role of Parliament and shaped national institutions over the subsequent centuries.
Economics
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
Item views 0
Full item downloads 0