City rights are a medieval phenomenon in the history of the Low Countries. A liegelord, usually a count, duke or similar member of high nobility, granted a settlement he owned certain town privileges that settlements without city rights did not have.
In Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, a settlement is, often proudly, called a city when it was granted (or collected) a complete package of city rights at one time of its history. As the current number of inhabitants has no relevance on this, there are very small cities. The smallest one is Staverden in the Netherlands, with 40 inhabitants. In Belgium, Durbuy is the smallest city, whilst the smallest in Luxembourg is Vianden.
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Forced by financial problems, feudal landlords offered for sale privileges to settlements around the year A.D. 1000. The total package of these privileges are the city rights.
Selling a privilege was both a positive and a negative development for the feudal lords. The positive side was the (non-recurrent) revenue. The negative was the loss of power. Over time, the landlords sold more and more privileges. This resulted in a shift of power within the counties and duchies in the Low Countries from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, starting in Flanders. Some cities even managed to develop into city-states. The growing economical and military power concentrating in the cities led to a very powerful class of well-to-do merchants and traders.[1]
Privileges
Freedoms
Governance
One of the last towns that became a city in Belgium was Genk.
Note several of the following were first granted city rights during the medieval period.
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The first community in the Netherlands to receive city rights was Deventer in 956. It can be argued that some cities have older rights such as Nijmegen that may already have received city rights during the Roman Empire. Another case is Voorburg, which is built on the site of the Roman settlement Forum Hadriani and was granted city rights in about 151. Forum Hadriani was abandoned however in the late third century, thus the current settlement is not considered an uninterrupted continuation of the Roman city. With the end of the Middle Ages, the number of city rights granted dropped dramatically. The strong role of merchants and traders allowed the Netherlands to become the first modern republic in the 16th century. When several important settlements (predominantly The Hague) wanted the right to call themselves cities, rather than towns, the old custom knew a short-lived Romantic revival in the early 19th century. The last community in the Netherlands to receive city rights was Delfshaven in 1825.
The institution of city rights came gradually to its end with the development and centralization of a national government. In the Netherlands the last city to receive real city rights (as defined above) was Willemstad in 1586. During the Dutch Republic period, only Blokzijl gained city rights (in 1672). After the Batavian revolution in 1795, municipalities were styled after the French model and city rights were abolished by law. Although partially restored after 1813, cities would not fully regain the authorities they previously had: law making and judiciary had become part of the state. After the Constitution of 1848 and the Municipal Law of 1851, the difference between cities, towns, and villages was permanently erased.
The city rights which were granted at the beginning of the 19th century (the last one to Delfshaven in 1825) cannot be compared to the rights bestowed in the Middle Ages and are only symbolic in nature. Cities such as The Hague and Assen fall into this category which received their rights during the French period.