City rights in the Netherlands

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City rights are a medieval phenomenon in the history of the Low Countries. City rights, which were granted by a liegelord, usually a count, duke or similar member of high nobillity, gave settlements certain privileges that settlements without city rights did not have.

To stimulate the establishment of cities, landlords started to grant privileges to settlements around the year A.D. 1000. The total package of these privileges are the city rights. City rights turned settlements into interesting locations for merchants. This resulted in economic growth of the cities. The liegelord took profit from this economic growth by means of taxes. City rights were also often granted in exhange for additional support to the cities liege. This support often consisted of additional taxes, sorely needed for the costly medieval wars. Originally the liegelord remained in charge of the composition of local government, he continued to exercise some political influence. However as city rights accumulated, and the power of cities grew, several cities managed to acquire a reasonable amount of autonomy over the years (especially after the privilege to construct and defend city walls was granted). Some cities even managed to develop into city states. The growing ecnomomical and military power concentrating in the cities lead to a very powerful class of well to do merchants and traders, in turn allowing the Netherlands to become the first modern republic in the 16th century.

A settlement is (often proudly) called a city in the Netherlands when it has received city rights somewhere in its history. The actual number of inhabitants has no relevance on this, so there is a reasonable number of very small cities in the Netherlands.

The first community in the Netherlands to receive city rights was Deventer in 956. Though it can be argued that Nijmegen already received city rights during the Roman Empire. With the end of the middle ages, the number of city rights granted dramatically dropped with a short lived romantic revival in the early 19th century, when several important settlements (predominantly the Hague) wanted the right to call themselves city, rather than town. The last community in the Netherlands to receive city rights was Winschoten in 1825.

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