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The composition of the political elites in sixteenth-century Ghent, one of the political and economic centres of the county of Flanders, changed from a relatively open elite group that included representatives from the craft guilds into a compact, aristocratic class. This article analyses the reasons for this transformation. First, the number of office-holders in the city council declined and power was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a smaller political elite because of interventions in the urban political framework by the Habsburg authorities in the wake of a fiscal rebellion (1537–40) and a Calvinist takeover of power (1578–84). Secondly, the once dominant position of the craft guilds on Ghent's two benches of aldermen was weakened by institutional reforms, a Catholic backlash against Calvinism and an economic recession. Thirdly, the growing wealth gap between rulers and the ruled, coupled with an influx of noblemen into Ghent City Council, gave urban politics a more aristocratic character. Consequently, a series of interconnected changes gave rise to a trend towards oligarchy and aristocracy on the city's benches of aldermen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comparative analysis of four large towns in the Southern Low Countries between c. 1350 and c. 1550. Combining the data on Ghent, Bruges and Antwerp – each of which is discussed in greater detail in the articles in this special section – with recent research on Bruges, the authors argue against the historiographical trend in which the political history of late medieval towns is supposedly dominated by a trend towards oligarchy. Rather than a closure of the ruling class, the four towns show a high turnover in the social composition of the political elite, and a consistent trend towards aristocracy, in which an increasingly large number of aldermen enjoyed noble status. The intensity of these trends differed from town to town, and was tied to different institutional configurations as well as different economic and political developments in each of the four towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on studies on political elites of Antwerp and Ghent in Belgium between 1400-1600. Various topics discussed include social dissatisfaction among elites, difference between elite and political elite, their economic growth and economic structure of urban politics.

The article discusses various articles published in the journal "Stadsgeschiedenis" in Belgian and other Dutch historical magazines in 2015. Topics discussed include the industrialization of the flax industry in South West Flanders; city-countryside relations; and legislative deliberations on marine insurance institutions in Antwerp, Belgium.

The article presents a review of several articles, including one article by Peter Stabel on the working hours in the textile industry of medieval Flanders and Artois, France during the 13th and 14th centuries, one article by Martin Müller on the development of criminal law practice in medieval Haarlem, the Netherlands, during 1245-1500, and one article by K.J. Verweel on public bathhouses in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.