Repúblicas en armas: huestes urbanas y ritual político en los siglos XVI y XVII.

Abstract

  Military organisations in urban and frontier societies along the Spanish Monarchy were a very distinct political force that has not yet been sufficiently studied. It is only through the analysis of political practices that we can understand (despite the evolution of the rhetoric of jurists under the king’s service) that urban corporations had an important capacity of organisation and negotiation with royal power. Ritual and festive representations of these corporations were the explicit affirmation of the survival of certain privileges (collective and individual) that were part of a complex political culture. The same political culture, though uneven and sometimes confusing, was part of most regions of the Spanish Monarchy. The aim of this article is to try to analyse some Iberian, Flemish and American examples, in order to sort out the characteristics of this political culture, its extension, reproduction and evolution throughout the Spanish Empire.