Historical determinants of urban development 1900-SM-1-21

The lecture presents the basic issues related to the emergence and development of forms of urban life in Polish lands from the beginning of the 13th to the end of the 19th century. The characteristic features of urbanization processes in specific periods (Middle Ages, modernity, 19th century) will be discussed. In the first part of the semester, special attention will be devoted to the formation of municipal government and German law systems, the characteristic features of the medieval city culture and the shaping of urban spatial arrangement in the 13th-17th century. In the second part of the semester, changes in the urban landscape and urban culture of the Polish Lands will be discussed with the shaping of modern cities. The subject of the analysis will be various social and cultural phenomena occurring in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: infrastructure development, spatial development and its conditions, new urban buildings, as well as the creation of a big city community, their everyday culture and customs
The main goal of this course is to present the concepts and methodology of social, economic and cultural history of towns in Poland (the 13th -19th centuries). The course will be devoted to the basic problems: making of Polish towns and urban network, the ‘locatio”-movement, reception and development of urban law, self-government and town authorities, trade and merchants, urban literacy, role of religion in urban society. We will pay our attention to social and economic structure of Polish citizens as well. We will examine various aspects of burghers life: urban space, cloths, food as well as intellectual culture. The subjects of the study will be the development of urban mentality as well. Furthermore, this course will introduce in the methodology, particularly the recent questionnaire to the study of town in the Polish Lands 13th-19th centiries. Period on the one hand and present various sources of urban study: town books, charters as well as iconography and cartography on the other hand.