Heerlijke reacties in het graafschap Vlaanderen na de hoge middeleeuwen (circa 1350 – circa 1795)

Seigneurial reactions in the County of Flanders (ca. 1350 – ca. 1795)

‘The seigneurial reaction’ is a concept originally conceived as one of the major causes for the French Revolution: lords who fiercely reimposed long forgotten dues from the 1750s onward. Historians of old regime lordships throughout Western Europe however discern similar ‘seigneurial reactions’ as early as the fourteenth century. The county of Flanders saw such reactions by lords from 1350 onward. The incentive for such measures was however oftenmost not financial gain, but the protection or reinstatement of social status and symbolic capital.