During the eighteenth century, the dominant rhetorical and explanatory power of civic humanism was gradually challenged by the rise of a new organising language in political economy. Political economic thought permitted radically different descriptions of what laudable private and public behaviour might be: it proposed that self-interest was often more beneficial to society at large than public-mindedness; that luxury had its uses and might not be a threat to liberty and political integrity; that landownership was no particular guarantee of virtue or disinterest; and that there was nothing inherently superior about frugality and self-sufficiency. These new ideas about civil society formed the intellectual basis of a large body of verse written during the long eighteenth century (at mid-century in particular), in which poets engaged enthusiastically with political economic arguments and defences of commercial activity, and celebrated the wealth and plenty of Britain as a modern trading nation. The work of my thesis is to examine a contradiction in the way in which these political economic ideas were handled. Forward-looking and confident poetry on public themes did not develop pioneering forms to suit the modernity of its outlook: instead, poets articulated such themes in verse by appropriating and reframing traditional genres, which in some cases involved engaging with inherited moral values and philosophical preferences entirely at odds with the intellectual material in hand. This inventive kind of generic revision is the central interest of the thesis. It aims to describe a number of problematic meeting points between new political economic thought and handed-down poetic formulae, and it will focus attention on some of the ways in which poets manipulated the forms and tropes they inherited in order to manage – and make the most of – the resulting contradictions.

The subject of this thesis is Jewish conversion to Christianity in medieval England. The majority of the material covered dates between 1066 and c.1290. The overall argument of the thesis contends that converts to Christianity in England remained essentially Jews. Following a discussion of the relevant secondary literature, which examines the existing discussion of converts and conversion, the principal arguments contained in the chapters of the thesis include the assertion that the increasing restrictiveness of the laws and rules regulating the Jewish community in England created a push factor towards conversion, and that converts to Christianity inhabited a legal grey area, neither under the jurisdiction of the Exchequer of the Jews, nor completely outside of it. Numerous questions are asked (and answered) about the variety of convert experience, in order to argue that there was a distinction between leaving Judaism and joining Christianity. Two convert biographies are presented. The first shows how the liminality that was a part of the conversion process affected the post-conversion life of a convert, and the second shows how a convert might successfully integrate into Christian society. The analysis of converts and conversion focusses on answering a number of questions. These relate to, among other things, pre-conversion relationships with royal family members, the reaction to corrody requests for converts, motives for conversion, forced or coerced conversions, the idea that a convert could be neither Christian nor Jew, converts re-joining Judaism, converts who carried the names of royal functionaries, the domus conversorum, convert instruction, and converting minors. The appendix to the thesis contains a complete catalogue of Jewish converts in medieval England. Among other things noted therein are inter-convert relationships, and extant source material. Each convert also has a biography.

Die Böhme Fettchemie ging aus der 1881 von Hermann Theodor Böhme errichteten „Drogen-, Farben- und chemische Produktehandlung“ hervor. Am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts als kleine Verkaufshandlung gegründet, etablierte es sich innerhalb von 50 Jahren zu einem weltbekannten Unternehmen zunächst im Bereich der Textilhilfsmittel. Doch auch im Bereich der Haushaltswaschmittel erreichte es in den 1930er Jahren ebenfalls einen großen Bekanntheitsgrad. Mit der Werbefigur Johanna, die das weltweit erste synthetische Waschmittel „Fewa“ anpries, war es der Firma gelungen, ein breites Publikum auf sich aufmerksam zu machen. Neben der Unternehmensgeschichte – von der Gründung bis in die Mitte der 1940er Jahre – gibt die Autorin Ivonne Reichmann mit dem vorliegenden Werk Auskunft über soziale und wirtschaftliche Aspekte der Böhme Fettchemie. Die einzelnen, chronologisch gegliederten Kapitel erschließen die bauliche Erweiterung, die Mitarbeiterstruktur, den Ausbau der Produktpalette sowie die weltweite Ausdehnung des Unternehmens. Deren Werbemaßnahmen spielen dabei ebenso eine Rolle wie die Übernahme durch den Henkel-Konzern in den 1930er Jahren. Mit dieser Studie wird eine Forschungslücke zum bisher wenig betrachteten Bereich der chemischen Industrie im südwestsächsischen Raum geschlossen.:1. Fragestellung und Methode 2. Voraussetzungen und Anfänge der Unternehmensgründung 3. Unternehmensentwicklung bis zum Ende der 1920er Jahre 4. Die turbulenten 1930er Jahre 5. Das Unternehmen während des Zweiten Weltkriegs 6. Nachkriegsjahre / Böhme Fettchemie emerged from a 'drugs, dyes and chemical products shop' established by Hermann Theodor Böhme in 1881. Founded at the end of the 19th century as a small sales business, it established itself within 50 years as a world-famous company, initially in the field of textile auxiliaries. But also in the field of household laundry detergents it achieved a high degree of recognition in the 1930s. With the advertising figure Johanna, who praised the world's first synthetic detergent 'Fewa', the company succeeded in attracting the attention of a wide audience. In addition to the company's history – from its foundation to the mid-1940s – the author Ivonne Reichmann provides information about the social and economic aspects of Böhme Fettchemie with this work. The individual, chronologically structured chapters reveal the structural expansion, the employee structure, the expansion of the product range as well as the worldwide expansion of the company. Their advertising measures play just as much a role as the takeover by the Henkel Group in the 1930s. This study closes a research gap to the hitherto little considered area of the chemical industry in southwest Saxony.:1. Fragestellung und Methode 2. Voraussetzungen und Anfänge der Unternehmensgründung 3. Unternehmensentwicklung bis zum Ende der 1920er Jahre 4. Die turbulenten 1930er Jahre 5. Das Unternehmen während des Zweiten Weltkriegs 6. Nachkriegsjahre

La tesi è stata intitolata “Change the System From Within”. La participatory democracy e le riforme istituzionali negli Stati Uniti degli anni Sessanta e si compone di cinque capitoli. Nel primo capitolo si riprende l’idea di participatory democracy emersa in seno alla New Left e ai movimenti sociali dei lunghi anni Sessanta. In questo contesto il concetto di participatory democracy assunse due principali accezioni: da una parte rappresentava la rivendicazione politica di un maggior coinvolgimento attivo della cittadinanza nelle politiche - locali, statali e federali - frutto della crisi di legittimità che la democrazia americana stava attraversando in quegli anni; dall’altra, il concetto venne adottato come principio organizzativo all’interno dei gruppi stessi di attivisti, con la funzione di prefigurare quelle riforme politico-istituzionali cui gli stessi militanti aspiravano. Dalla stessa temperie di contestazione sorse del resto anche la critica che alcuni studiosi mossero alla teoria liberale pluralista e alla sua esemplificazione nella coeva democrazia americana. Nel primo capitolo si mostra proprio come da quelle rielaborazioni critiche degli anni Sessanta emerse anche il primo modello di participatory democracy in seno alla teoria politica, sviluppato pienamente negli anni Settanta e Ottanta da Carole Pateman, Crawford B. Macpherson e Benjamin Barber. Questa parte del lavoro di tesi si propone quindi di accostare alle pratiche partecipative introdotte dai movimenti anche la ricostruzione dello sviluppo graduale di una teoria politica della participatory democracy. Tale riflessione è completata da un’analisi storica di ampio raggio, necessaria a meglio contestualizzare il fenomeno e ad includere le nuove richieste democratiche nell’ambito di una tradizione democratico-rappresentativa già dotata di istituti partecipativi di democrazia diretta. Chiarito il quadro storico-politico degli anni Sessanta, il secondo capitolo analizza la ricezione dell’idea di participatory democracy nelle politiche federali. A questo proposito si illustra come il principio di citizen participation fosse stato recepito già con la War on Poverty promossa da Lindon B. Johnson alla metà degli anni Sessanta e fu mantenuto, con esiti istituzionali differenti, almeno fino alla fine della presidenza Carter. Si dimostra inoltre che, malgrado il dettato legislativo federale fosse spesso approssimativo sulle modalità operative, quel principio ebbe in realtà un notevole impatto sulle relazioni intergovernative. Tale principio favorì ad esempio l’intraprendenza di molti amministratori locali nel promuovere il decentramento amministrativo e politico su base di quartiere. Nel terzo capitolo l’analisi affronta le principali trasformazioni in senso partecipativo avvenute nei sistemi di governo statali e locali negli anni Settanta, mettendole in relazione anche alle dinamiche intergovernative di più lungo periodo. Il capitolo è strutturato in modo tale da evidenziare il tendenziale recupero e rafforzamento di istituti già esistenti, come l’initiative, i public hearing e gli school district come strumenti di rivendicazione del community control in alcune città di grandi dimensioni. Mentre il secondo e terzo capitolo tendono a osservare le riforme istituzionali degli anni Settanta in senso partecipativo in seno al governo federale, statale e locale, i due successivi capitoli mirano ad osservare l’impatto della participatory democracy nel confronto tra attivismo militante e pratiche amministrative tradizionali degli anni Settanta. Il quarto capitolo è infatti dedicato all’ingresso della nuova generazione di politici progressisti nelle amministrazioni locali e statali fra la fine degli anni Sessanta e la prima metà degli anni Settanta. Per analizzarlo si è deciso di analizzare come principale caso di studio la Conference on Alternative State and Local Policy (CASLP), una organizzazione e forum nazionale che mirava proprio ad unire alle istanze dei progressisti una expertise di governo. Nell’ambito della CASLP, la cosiddetta Coalizione progressista di Berkeley, CA, fornì un caso esemplare di strategia di confronto con le istituzioni locali e per questo il capitolo le dedica una attenta disanima. La pluriennale esperienza di azione collettiva dei progressisti di Berkeley nell’arena istituzionale è infatti rilevante sia per l’innovazione nella strategia istituzionale, sia per attestare una evoluzione dell’idea di participatory democracy nel tempo. Il quinto capitolo ricostruisce ed analizza la carriera politica di Tom Hayden negli anni in cui passò dall’attivismo alla politica istituzionale, con la campagna elettorale per diventare Senatore della California in Congresso (1975-1976) e la successiva Campaign for Economic Democracy (1976-1982), confermando la spiccata propensione del leader all’innovazione istituzionale in senso partecipativo. In particolare, nella campagna elettorale per il Senato del Congresso del 1976 Hayden riuscì a implementare forme di decision-making partecipato in seno allo staff. Nella gestione del personale cercò inoltre di favorire l’empowerment di volontari e cittadini senza perdere di vista i requisiti essenziali per la sopravvivenza della campagna: fundraising e propaganda. In linea con la sua battaglia contro le distorsioni economiche del big business, scelse di non accettare fondi da corporation e banche e riuscì nell’intento di essere sostenuto per gran parte da small donors. Hayden dunque introdusse pratiche di participatory democracy in seno alla campagna elettorale e continuò a rivendicare la sua fiducia nella forza dei movimenti grass-roots. L’analisi storica, ad ogni modo, evidenzia anche le criticità che derivavano dall’uso di pratiche partecipative nella governance della campagna elettorale. Atttraverso l’analisi teorica e politico-istituzionale della democrazia partecipativa americana fra gli anni Sessanta e Settanta su vari livelli istituzionali (federale, statale e locale), questo progetto di ricerca tenta quindi di colmare un vuoto storiografico e, al tempo stesso intende contribuire alla definizione storico-istituzionale della participatory democracy in seno alla democrazia rappresentativa degli Stati Uniti. Infine, la presente ricerca mira a inserirsi nel dibattito pubblico contemporaneo sulla participatory democracy, offrendo una visione storico-istituzionale importante per meglio comprendere il fenomeno e che, finora, non ha ricevuto l’attenzione che meriterebbe. / Chapter 1 retrieves the idea of participatory democracy stemmed from the Long 1960s New Left and the following social movements. Indeed, the concept of participatory democracy mainly acquired two slightly different shapes in that historical framework. From one hand, it meant the broad political call for common citizens’ greater involvement in the policy-making - at the local, state and federal level. That request was in fact a reply to the ongoing crisis of the American democracy, in terms of political legitimacy and social representation of minorities and poor people. In the other hand, participatory democracy represented the organizing principle adopted by most of the grass-roots groups of that period, with a clear prefigurative function. Indeed, making the activist groups’ inner decision-making participatory was a way for the collectives to anticipate the institutional changes they aspired to. In the meantime, because of the same disaffection against the raising social and political inequalities, some political science scholars elaborated a critique to the pluralist version of the liberal democracy - then the most praised one, as well as credited as it was embodied in the American democracy. Those 1960s critiques were eventually used to conceive the first political theory of participatory democracy in the 1970s and 1980s, as Chapter 1 shows. The participatory democracy’s canon was in fact mostly developed by Carole Pateman, Crawford B. Macpherson and Benjamin Barber. Beside the intellectual history of participatory democracy from 1960s to 1980s, Chapter 1 allows to contextualize ideas and practices of common citizens’ participation into the wider history of the American Political Development. According to that, chapter 1 also provides a detailed analysis of the participatory political institutions that were traditionally part of the United States representative democracy. Chapter 2 verifies whether the 1960s idea of participatory democracy actually affected the federal public policies of the late 1960s and 1970s. Indeed the principle of “citizen participation” was introduced in some of the War on Poverty legislations, promoted by Lyndon B. Johnson since the mid-1960s. Although the heterogeneous institutional effects, that principle was maintained in some grant-in-aid projects until the end of the Carter administration, through the Nixon and Ford administrations. Therefore, the political meanings assumed by the idea of “citizen participation” and its institutional consequences from 1964 to 1980 are carefully analyzed in chapter 2. Moreover, chapter 2 shows that the principle of citizen participation had such a strong impact on the intergovernmental relations. It thus brought forward, for instance, the local public officers’ entrepreneurship towards the local devolution, shifting the administrative and political power base from the center to the neighborhood. Chapter 3 deals with the 1970s main institutional reforms aimed at introducing the common citizens’ participation in the government decision-making at the state and local levels. Those reforms are deeply related to some long-lasting intergovernmental dynamics and this relationship is also argued. The same chapter’s lay-out is vowed to underline the 1970s general trend of retrieval and enhancing of traditional institutions, such as the initiative (direct democracy), the public hearings and the school districts. The school board was indeed reevaluated and reshaped as a means of community control in the biggest cities. As chapters 2 and 3 aim at exploring the implementation of participatory reforms in the federal, state and local level of government, chapters 4 and 5 aim at inquiring the participatory democracy’s impact on the 1970s boundary of polity - the space where activism meets political institutions. Chapter 4 inquires the new generations of progressive politicians entering the local and state administrations from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. To frame that national phenomenon, the historical analysis use the Conference of Alternative States and Local Policies (CASLP) as a case study. CASLP was indeed a national organization born in 1975 to give voice to the progressive public officers around the country and allowed them sharing their government experiences for a more effective institutional impact. Inside CASLP, the progressive coalition of Berkeley, CA (called Berkeley Citizens’ Action, BCA) was especially spotted for its exemplary strategy to confront local political institutions. The 1970s BCA’s political actions are thus specifically analyzed. In fact, the institutional approach of the Berkeley progressive coalition resulted to be innovative in terms of strategy as well as successful in introducing new forms of participatory democracy into the local government, assessing the 1970s evolution of the participatory democracy political theory and practices. Chapter 5 retraces the political career of the former New Left leader Tom Hayden during the years of turning from activism to institutional politics. Especially, the analysis focuses on the 1975-1976 U.S. Senate Campaign and the following Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), a coalition project and organization led by Hayden with the goal of mobilizing activists and public officers around the issues of economic justice, environmental and economic public policies (1976-1982). That period - just before Hayden was elected representative at the California Legislature in 1982 - is thus analyzed as a testing ground to verify his long-lasting commitment towards participatory democracy. The historical and political analysis, based on original archival findings, confirms Hayden’s inclination for institutional innovation in the participatory realm. In particular, during the 1975-1976 electoral campaign for the U.S. Senate in California Hayden introduced participatory forms of decision-making involving staff people, volunteers and supporting grass-roots groups. Moreover, that campaign’s staff and people management was conceived in order to directly empower citizens and volunteers, without losing track of the campaigning basic requirements (e. g. fundraising and propaganda). As he stood against big business and economic inequalities, he chose to reject fundings from corporations and banks. Therefore his electoral campaign was mostly sustained by small donors. Hayden successfully made the campaigning more open, accountable and participatory and kept on sponsoring his trust in community organizing and grass-roots social movements even in his following political endeavour, CED. Eventually, the investigation casts lights on the strengths, as well as the critical issues, produced by the Hayden’s participatory governance of campaigning. By the means of analysing the intellectual history and the institutional implementation of participatory democracy during late 1960s-1970s United States, this research project firstly aims at making up the lack of historiography about the topic. In the second stance, grounding the institutional and political history of participatory democracy in the United States representative democracy - where the concept was born - this research project intends to provide a first genealogy of the participatory democracy’s institutional implementation. In this sense, the research projects wants also to contribute to the contemporary debate on the participatory democracy. It is indeed a compelling and popular issue in many worldwide political arenas, but it is still rarely defined by its historical and institutional terms.

This thesis questions a series of assumptions concerning the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century modernization of European spaces. Current scholarship tends to concur with essayistic texts and images by contemporary intellectuals that technological and organizational developments increased the freedom of movement of those living in western-European societies, while at the same time alienating them from each other and from their environment. I assess this claim with the help of Dutch travel egodocuments such as travel diaries and letters. After a prosopographical investigation of all available northern-Netherlandish travel egodocuments created between 1500 and 1915, a selection of these documents is examined in greater detail. In these documents, travellers regarded the possession of identity documents, a correct appearance, and a fitting social identity along with their personal contacts, physical capabilities, and the weather as the most important factors influencing whether they managed to gain access to places. A discussion of these factors demonstrates that no linear increase, nor a decrease, occurred in the spatial power felt by travellers. The exclusion many travellers continued to experience was often overdetermined. The largest groups affected by this were women and less educated families. Yet travellers could also play out different access factors against each other. By paying attention to how practices matched hopes and expectations, it is possible to discover how gravely social inequities were really felt by travellers. Perhaps surprisingly, all social groups desired to visit the same types of places. Their main difference concerned the atmosphere of the places where the different groups felt at home. To a large degree this matched travellers' unequal opportunities. Therefore, although opportunities remained strongly unequal throughout the period, this was not always experienced as a problem. Also, in cases where it was, many travellers knew strategies to work around the obstacles created for them.

Social theorists have long argued that literacy is one of the principal causes and hallmark features of complex society. However, the relationship between literacy and social complexity remains poorly understood because the relevant data have not been assembled in a way that would allow competing hypotheses to be adjudicated. The project set out in this thesis provides a novel account of the multiple origins of literate behaviour around the globe, the principal mechanisms of its cultural transmission, and its relationship with the cultural evolution of large-group human cooperation and complex forms of socio-political organisation. A multi-method large-scale cross-cultural approach provided the data necessary to achieve these objectives. Evidence from the societies within which literate behaviour first emerged, and from a representative sample of ethnographically-attested societies worldwide (n=74), indicates that literate behaviour emerged through the routinization of rituals and pre-literate sign systems, eventually spreading more widely through classical religions. Cross-cultural evidence also suggests that literacy assumed a wide variety of forms and socio-political functions, particularly in large, complex groups, extending evolved psychological mechanisms for cooperation, which include reciprocity, reputation formation and maintenance systems, social norms and norm enforcement systems, and group identification. Finally, the results of a cross-cultural historical survey of first-generation states (n=10) reveal that simple models assuming single cause-and-effect relationships between literacy and complex forms of socio-political organisation must be rejected. Instead, literacy and first-generation state-level polities appear to have interacted in a complex positive feedback loop. This thesis contributes to the wider goal of transforming social and cultural anthropology into a cumulative and rapid-discovery science.

A critical investigation of the public/private distinction as it has been conceived in Anglo-American political thinking in the second half of the 20th century. A broadly held consensus has developed amongst many theorists that public/private does not refer to any single determinate distinction or relationship but rather to an often ambiguous range of related but analytically distinct conceptual oppositions. The argument of this thesis is that if we approach public/private in the search for analytic or conceptual clarity then this consensus is correct. Against this I propose that a number of the most dominant invocations of the distinction can be understood to express public/private as an irreducibly political dialectic that mediates the relationship between the subjective and objective side of social and political life. By locating these conceptually diverse invocations within a broader and more determinate framework of the historical development and contestation of the boundaries which establish the conditions for subjectivity, as the assertion of political agency, on the one hand, and which demarcate, police and defend these particular boundaries, as part of the objectively given character of social life and institutional organisation, on the other hand, then a more determinate character to public/private can be recognized. I then seek to explore the capacity of this model to capture and explain the peculiar post-war problematisation of public/private amongst a number of new left thinkers in Britain and America.

Castration has a long temporal and geographical span. Its origins are unclear, but likely lie in the Ancient Near East around the time of the Secondary Products Revolution and the increase in social complexity of proto-urban societies. Due to the unique social and gender roles created by castrates’ ambiguous sexual state, human castrates were used heavily in strongly hierarchical social structures such as imperial and religious institutions, and were often close to the ruler of an imperial society. This privileged position, though often occupied by slaves, gave castrates enormous power to affect governmental decisions. This often aroused the jealousy and hatred of intact elite males, who were not afforded as open access to the ruler and virulently condemned castrates in historical documents. These attitudes were passed down to the scholars and doctors who began to study castration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, affecting the manner in which castration was studied. Osteometric and anthropometric examinations of castrates were carried out during this period, but the two World Wars and a shift in focus meant that castrate bodies were not studied for nearly eighty years. Recent interest in gender and sexuality in the past has revived interest in castration as a topic, but few studies of castrate remains have occurred. As large numbers of castrates are referenced in historical documents, the lack of castrate skeletons may be due to a lack of recognition of the physical effects of castration on the skeleton. The synthesis and generation of methods for more accurate identification of castrate skeletons was undertaken and the results are presented here to improve the ability to identify castrate skeletons within the archaeological record.

Cette étude s’attache à comprendre ce qu’est un habitat seigneurial secondaire en Hainaut à la fin du Moyen Age et aux Temps Modernes. La disparition de la plupart des résidences de la haute noblesse en Hainaut, nous a amenée à nous pencher sur l’étude des habitats de la petite noblesse, dont le manque de reconnaissance, entrainant la démolition ou les transformations irréversibles de ces habitats, rend ces édifices sujets à l’oubli. Ajoutons à cela que, victimes d’une tradition castrale héritée du 19e siècle, archéologues et historiens de l’art ont bien souvent eu leur attention d’abord attirée par les grands châteaux et donc la haute noblesse, laissant de côté toute une tranche de la population noble et de leurs possessions. Notre étude a comme objectif majeur de comprendre comment ces habitats ont fonctionné comme structures de vie, mais aussi comme des architectures à travers lesquelles et par lesquelles les habitants pouvaient exprimer leurs identités. Dans cette optique, après avoir considéré les différents types architecturaux (types de plans, types de corps de logis, types de tours), suivant une typo-chronologie, nous considérons les matériaux utilisés et la distribution intérieure de ces édifices. <p>Ce sont ensuite les entourages de l’habitat en tant qu’espace construit, leur situation dans le paysage, et par rapport au relief, à l’hydrographie, aux villages, aux terres de cultures, et aux réseaux de communication, qui occupent une grande partie de l’étude. Les liens avec leurs habitants, ces membres de la « petite noblesse » sont ensuite considérés. Leurs fonctions, leurs origines et leurs zones de déplacements sont abordés, afin de mieux percevoir le rôle et la détermination de ce groupe social, qui s’avère être en rupture avec la haute noblesse. L’opposition traditionnelle entre villes et campagnes est dépassée, de même que la question des maisons principales et secondaires, au profit d’une approche plus fluide, favorisant une interaction entre villes et campagnes, et considérant les mouvements de population émergeant de l’un ou l’autre milieu. <p>La partie interprétative suit ensuite, permettant d’aboutir à une caractérisation de ce type d’habitat. Le but est notamment de mettre en lumière la relation entre les aspects défensifs et résidentiels des édifices. Pour ce faire, les éléments de défense active et passive sont examinés, ainsi que le degré d’efficacité de ces structures. <p>La suite de cette partie a pour but de replacer les habitats de la petite noblesse dans le contexte des types architecturaux des campagnes, de la haute noblesse et des villes du Hainaut et des anciens Pays-Bas, afin de mieux dégager les liens ou les ruptures entre les différents groupes sociaux et architecturaux. Les rapports avec les habitats ruraux sont établis en ce qui concerne les diverses composantes que sont les douves, les pont-levis, les orifices de tir, les espaces verts et les aménagements hydrographiques d’agrément, la basse-cour, les tours, les typologies des plans et de maisons, les matériaux et leur qualité de mise en œuvre, les intérieurs, les ouvertures et les styles, les armoiries et les millésimes. La catégorie intermédiaire que sont les habitats des élites rurales, est également abordée, puisqu’elle développe des types architecturaux ambigus et se rapprochant davantage des habitats de la petite noblesse que des autres ruraux. Cette catégorie est examinée d’un point de vue architectural et social./This research is aiming at understanding what is a gentry’s settlement in the County of Hainault at the end of the Middle Ages and during the Modern Times. The disappearance of most of the castles of the high nobility in Hainault, led us to study the gentry’s settlement. The lack of recognition of this kind of building is often leading to their destruction and irreversible transformations. There is also the fact that the archaeologists and art historians often inherited from the 19th century tradition, whose attention was mostly attracted by the main castles and the high nobility, forgetting by the same occasion a side of the nobility –the gentry- and his settlement.<p>The main objective of this research is to understand how these settlements were linked with their inhabitants, expressing their identities, ways of living and behaviours. In this framework, we first analyse the architectural typologies (plans, residential buildings, towers) in connection with the chronology, the materials, and the inner organisation of these buildings.<p>Afterwards, we consider the surroundings of the buildings, the location in the landscape, the relief, hydrography, the village, the lands, the communication net. The lesser nobility is also studied, through its functions, origins, movement areas, in order to have a better understanding of the role and definition of this social group which is distinctly separated from the high nobility. The traditional opposition between cities and countryside, and between the main and secondary housing, is overstepped, in order to reach a more flexible approach. We therefore consider the topic through an interaction between cities and countryside, and their inhabitants.<p>The rest of the research is dedicated to the interpretations, in order to draw the characterists of the gentry’s settlement. First, the relationships between the defensive and residential aspects are considered. The active and passive defensive elements are studied, as well as the efficiency of these structures.<p>Secondly, we replace the gentry’s settlement in the context of the other architectural types of the countryside, high nobility and cities of the county of Hainaut and the Southern Low Countries, in order to have a better understanding of the links and breaks between the different social and architectural groups. The link with the rural settlement is established concerning the following elements :drawbridges, moats, arrow slits, green spaces and water structures, farms, towers, plans and houses typologies, materials and their quality, interiors, openings and styles, coats of arms. The intermediate category of the settlement of the rural elites is also considered, as the architectural types are close to the gentry’s settlement. This category is examined on an architectural and social point of view.<p>The link with the settlement of the cities and the high nobility is also studied, allowing to see a lack of link between the different categories at least until the end of the 17th century. <p>In the last chapters, the gentry’s settlement of Hainault is replaced in the context of the Southern Low Countries, through a comparative approach. We also consider the link with this kind of settlement and the tradition and the modernity, as well as the link with the social status of their inhabitants and builders.<p>The conclusion is the occasion to remind all the characteristics of the gentry’s settlement in Hainault, and the evolution of the architectural types through the centuries. Some comparisons with the same kind of settlement in surroundings countries are also established, opening new research perspectives. In the epilogue, we consider the buildings on a conservation, restoration and preservation point of view. The state of the art of the legislative situation is given, and prescriptions for a better future conservation are drawn, in order to avoid a disappearance of the architectural information, together with an important part of the history.<p><p> / Doctorat en Histoire, art et archéologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished