Next November (11-13, 2021) we will host our closing international conference at the University of Bern. Towns were producers, organisers, and brokers of martial culture within the rapidly changing political world of late medieval Europe. Towns’ defences against and participation in local, regional and extra regional conflicts shaped military organisation and urban martial culture. This martial culture developed at the intersection of legal prerogatives, political requirements, physical skills, knowledge, and the evolving societal significance of the ownership and use of weapons.

Argument

Towns were producers, organisers, and brokers of martial culture within the rapidly changing political world of late medieval Europe. Towns’ defences against and participation in local, regional and extra regional conflicts shaped military organisation and urban martial culture. This martial culture developed at the intersection of legal prerogatives, political requirements, physical skills, knowledge, and the evolving societal significance of the ownership and use of weapons. Based on the preliminary findings of the research project “Martial Culture in Medieval Towns” (University of Bern, funded by SNF 2018-22), this conference aims to:

• Firmly establish martial culture as indispensable part of comparative urban (communal) history.
• Establish urban military history as part of general military history of the middle ages and early modern period (13th-16th), in an international perspective.
• Emphasize the crucial part towns played in late medieval /early modern developments of the (fiscal, military...) state.
• Establish venues for comparative history by connection regional studies within international historiography, general, urban, and military.

The conference will be organised in panels that will include following topics:

1. National historiographies in comparison
2. Military Organization: The town as hub of transregional martial culture
3. Martial experts: Production and circulation of martial knowledge
4. Weapons: Production, trade, and exchange
5. Martial urban space: Defending and safeguarding the town
6. Burghers and Fighters: Social mobility and urban martial culture

Submission guidelines

We welcome the submission of proposals for posters with 10min video presentations. These contributions are intended in digital format, adding to the presential papers during the conference. The accepted posters and videos will be published on the blog of the research project and stored in the academic public repository of the University of Bern (providing DoI), with links to the videos stored on Vimeo. Selected contributions will be displayed during the conference, and a media station will allow the conference participants to browse through the content.

Proposal should be sent to daniel.jaquet(at)hist.unibe.ch

until the 30th May 2021

with

• Name and affiliation
• Abstract of 450-500s (including space)
• One key image (attached with the email, .png, .jpeg, .tiff)
• Description of the connection of the poster to one of the subtopics of the conference, up to 1000s (bibliographical references excluded of the limit of signs)

Notification of acceptance will be sent on the 30th June 2021, along with the guidelines for the files (poster and video format1).

The submission of the files is due no later than the 30th September 2021.

Organisation committee

• Prof. Dr. Regula Schmid Keeling,
• Dr. Daniel Jaquet,
• Elena Magli 
• Mathijs Roelofsen