American Economic Review Vol. 112 No. 10 2022
How Merchant Towns Shaped Parliaments: From the Norman Conquest of England to the Great Reform Act
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 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.
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.20200885
- Volume
- 112
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 3441-3487
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref