Les apports de la longue durée pour l’étude du renouvellement des oligarchies municipales : la Loi de Bruxelles, du temps de Philippe le Bon à 1795

Abstract

Philippe Guignet, The Long-Term Contribution to the Study of the Renewal of Municipal Oligarchies. The Brussels Town Council from the Time of Philip the Good up to 1795. In this paper, Ph. Guignet develops a serial approach to the social history of institutions. He scans the recruitment of the first member of the town council in Brussels. His survey deals with the period between the 1421 status that created a power divided into lineages and crafts and the fall of the town council old model in 1795. Ph. Guignet focuses on each century, then on each quarter of a century to highlight the oligarchic fluctuations giving rhythm to the different steps of this recruitment. He also implements a battery of statistical indicators such as indicators of central tendencies, dispersion parameters, concentration ratios. The decline of recruitment on a narrower base of families is undoubtedly significant in the xviith century and even more in the last century of the Old Regime. The author witnesses in Brussels an evolution he had already detected in the past, namely in other towns such as Mons and Tournai. However, considering the rate of power concentrated in the hands of a few families reveals a reality that is only apparently paradoxical. In Brussels, there have never been as many different families inside the municipal government as in the xvth century. However, when considering the recruitment of representatives of lineages at the time of Philip the Good, Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy, we find a concentration of power held by the upper strata of the oligarchy. This concentration is as strong as in the three centuries of modern times and it may be even stronger. The political staff derived from the crafts is more numerous than the one coming from the lineages. However, the most notable oligarchic thrust must be seen among the dignitaries of corporations, especially in the xviiith century.