In recent political and constitutional history, scholars seldom specify how and why they use the concept of territory. In research on state formation processes and nation building, for instance, the term mostly designates an enclosed geographical area ruled by a central government. Inspired by ideas from political geographers, this book explores the layered and constantly changing meanings of territory in late medieval and early modern Europe before cartography and state formation turned boundaries and territories into more fixed (but still changeable) geographical entities. Its central thesis is that analysing the notion of territory in a premodern setting involves analysing territorial practices: practices that relate people and power to space(s). The book not only examines the construction and spatial structure of premodern territories but also explores their perception and representation through the use of a broad range of sources: from administrative texts to maps, from stained glass windows to chronicles.

Mario Damen is senior lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. He has published widely on the social and political history of the late medieval Low Countries and is the PI of the research project Imagining a territory. Constructions and representations of late medieval Brabant, financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Kim Overlaet worked from 2016 till 2019 as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam on the NWO project 'Imagining a territory'. She currently works as a research manager at the Department of History at Antwerp University.

(Mario Damen and Kim Overlaet), Constructing and Representing Territory in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. An Introduction
PART I THE MULTIPLICITY OF TERRITORY
1. (Duncan Hardy), Were there ‘Territories’ in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth to sixteenth Centuries?
2. (Luca Zenobi), Beyond the State: Community and Territory-Making in Late Medieval Italy
3. (Bram van den Hoven van Genderen), Clerical and Ecclesiastical Ideas of Territory in the Late Medieval Low Countries
4. (Jim van der Meulen), Marginal Might? The Role of Lordships in the Territorial Integrity of Guelders, c. 1325 - c. 1575
PART II THE CONSTRUCTION OF TERRITORY
5. (Arend Elias Oostindiër and Rombert Stapel), Demographic shifts and the politics of taxation in the making of fifteenth century Brabant
6. (Sander Govaerts), From Knights Errants to Disloyal Soldiers? The Criminalization of Foreign Military service in the Late Medieval Meuse and Rhine Regions, 1250-1550
7. (Neil Murphy), Conquest, Cartography and the Development of Linear Frontiers during Henry VIII’s Invasion of France in 1544-6
8. (Yannick De Meulder), From multiple residences to one capital? Court-itinerance during the reign of Margaret of Austria and Mary of Hungary in the Low Countries (c. 1507-1555)
PART III THE REPRESENTATION OF TERRITORY
9. (Mario Damen and Marcus Meer), Heraldry and Territory. Coats of Arms and the Representation and Construction of Authority in Space
10. (Bram Caers and Robert Stein), The Territorial Perception of the Duchy of Brabant in Historiography and Vernacular Literature in the Late Middle Ages
11. (Lisa Demets), Imagining Flanders. The (De)construction of a Regional Identity in Fifteenth Century Flanders
12. (Marianne Ritsema van Eck), Mapping Imagined Territory: Quaresmio’s Chorographia and Later Franciscan Holy Land Maps
(Mario Damen and Kim Overlaet), Constructing and Representing Territory in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. A Conclusion