This collection invites readers to expand the category of urban historiography and examine the textual remains we have in new ways. It argues that late medieval urban historiography has remained in the mold created by nineteenth-century editors of urban chronicles, particularly those of German towns, that emphasize a unitary urban consciousness and the backing of town councils. Defined in this way, the category neither captures the diversity of urban history writing in the period nor encompasses historiographic production from other European regions. By focusing on the Low Countries, with some attention to Swiss, German, and English town writing, the authors of this volume make a persuasive case for a reexamination of a genre and provide innovative methodological tools with which to do so.

Dumolyn and Van Bruaene set up the stakes in the introduction, noting that the expansion of the genre would have an impact not only on what constituted history writing and who produced it for what audience, but also how one defines the urban. Three sections follow that question previous typologies, embed history writing in particular social and political contexts, and, following methods pioneered in book studies, examine the materiality of the writings themselves. The attention to the composite construction of what has come down to us as history is one of the more interesting lines of investigation this work reveals.

Part 1 focuses on both the production of texts and the reasons they have been either labeled as real histories or neglected. Tomaszewski demonstrates the way that the compilers of the Chroniken der deutschen Städte ignored what was not exclusively about local urban affairs and sought to shape chronicles to adhere to a particular model of urban self-consciousness and unity. Serif's essay carefully traces the uses made of a fourteenth-century Strasbourg chronicle that was copied, excerpted, and placed with other texts in other cities, thus showing the diffusion of these texts, but also that urban production did not solely entail urban concerns. De Vries compares custumals, annotated mayoral lists, and commonplace books in English and Flemish towns, revealing, she argues, a sense of historical consciousness and purpose. Trio's work turns to authorship, noting that while three chronicles of Ypres were attributed to particular individuals, they likely drew on earlier memoriergisters. By not attributing a singular purpose to these writings, one can see better why people recorded events and whom they addressed.

Part 2 outlines the ways in which the many conflicts experienced in the Low Countries during the later Middle Ages—wars with France, revolts against the Habsburgs, local political tensions—prompted and shaped history writing in its cities. Crombie emphasizes the choices made by Tournaisian Jehan Nicolay in his calendar of 1477, a tumultuous year when the city was caught up in Franco-Burgundian fighting. Van Gassen unpacks the Diary of Ghent, demonstrating that at least one of the sections was not designed as a history at all, but rather comprised a dossier intended for diplomatic negotiations and was later compiled with other texts. Caers and Demets compare chronicles from Bruges and Mechelen, noting the differences between the writings from these cities—the former with anti-Habsburg leanings and the latter housing the Habsburg high court—but sharing awareness of regional as well as urban concerns.

Part 3 makes a claim for historical writing in nontraditional places. To Meer, heraldic symbols served more than identifying ownership; the use of the city's coat of arms in various episodes of Augsburg's history in the Cronographia Augustensium shaped both perceptions of the past and supported present claims of power, while the family coats of arms in the Gossembrot Armorial, some of them long extinct, staked out a claim for the eternal and transcendent value of city elites. Bakker finds evidence of the careful positioning of Kampen's town council during the wars between Guelders and the Burgundians in sixteenth-century chronicles, while Vermeersch turns to a printed almanac made in Ghent in 1583 during its bid to be a Calvinist republic, demonstrating that the biblical and profane events included not only spoke to a wider cause but also situated its composition in a local urban milieu.

Overall, these essays’ careful investigation of extant remains and the context of historical production and distribution provides a rich idea of authors’ narrative choices and subsequent, often unintended, uses of their work. What history itself meant to these medieval authors and audiences, however, is not directly addressed. We learn what impelled those who recorded the events of their lifetimes or wrote universal histories in these Northern cities, but how they imagined change over time and what governed those changes remains fragmentary and elusive. It is to be hoped that the foundation laid here can be expanded to other places and other urban groups, but also address more directly the nature of historical thinking in the period.