New history of Leiden presented to the mayor: ‘Always been an incredibly diverse city’
Professor Ariadne Schmidt and Associate Professor Arie van Steensel (University of Groningen) have produced A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Leiden, the first English-language history of Leiden. Mayor Peter Heijkoop received the first copy.
‘Shortly after my appointment as professor of Leiden city history, a student said to me: we already know everything there is to know about Leiden’s history, don’t we?’ says Schmidt. ‘The beauty of history, of course, is that new social developments constantly raise new questions.’
Current debate as a basis
A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Leiden therefore addresses 21st-century topics such as energy transitions, the labour market for women and newcomers to the city. All authors were also challenged to approach their subject through the lens of diversity and inequality in order to reconstruct the different experiences of city dwellers with the city.
Van Steensel: ‘We asked all our researchers to start from a current debate, with Leiden serving as a laboratory. Because the book is in English, our researchers can use this case study to engage in debate not only with their Dutch colleagues, but with researchers from all over the world. What is remarkable about this is that the first chapter was written jointly by a historian, an architectural historian and archaeologists. This interdisciplinary approach allows us to combine recent archaeological finds, made during the construction of car parks, for example, with historical findings for the first time.’
A diverse city with wonderful archives
According to the researchers, Leiden's rich history makes it an ideal case study. Schmidt: ‘Leiden is incredibly well suited to a study of diversity and inequality. For a long time, it was the second city of the Republic, where the textile industry brought both wealth and poverty. Combined with the presence of the university, this led to a very diverse population in the city, which we can also map out well because Leiden had wonderful archives, from censuses to guild archives.’
Partly thanks to these excellent archives, the authors are able to zoom in on the experiences of the city's inhabitants. “Previously, when writing about ‘poor relief’, for example, the emphasis was usually on the forms of support that were available,” explains Van Steensel. ‘For us, it's more about the question of who benefited from this care and who did not. It made quite a difference whether you were a textile entrepreneur or a poor maid. We have tried to reveal the breadth of urban life, while at the same time showing how all these people together managed to make the city work.’
The role of Leiden's city council is particularly striking in this regard. Van Steensel: 'From the late Middle Ages onwards, the council took on a strong coordinating role and, more than in other cities, became involved in all kinds of aspects of urban life, from healthcare to the economy. In her chapter on firefighting, for example, Janna Coomans shows that the regulations for this were drawn up by the council.' Schmidt: ‘You can also see this when the textile industry picked up after the Relief of Leiden. The city council responded by making it relatively easy for new workers to settle here.’