Shifting power relations in seigneuries of the southern Low Countries (Hainaut, twelfth–fifteenth century)

Abstract Based on seigneurial legislation from the French-speaking principality of Hainaut in the southern Low Countries, this article discerns long-term shifts in the position of different types of officials involved in the local government of lordships. During the twelfth- to early fourteenth-century period of demographic and economic growth, and again as a result of the shortage of labour in relation to land after the Black Death, seigneurial subjects managed to obtain different forms of self-organization. Overall, a bifurcation can be observed between village officials who were and remained servants of the lord and those controlled increasingly by the community. At the same time, a development towards village elites dominating local government is likely to have limited the agency of a major part of the rural population. This study also reveals remarkable parallels between villages and towns concerning the organization and ideological justification of local government.