Maarten Prak: Modern democracy was a step back from the situation found in many medieval and early-modern towns

This is an interview with Maarten Prak, Professor of Social and Economic History at the Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University, Netherlands, hosted by Karen Culver. They discuss Maarten’s book Citizens without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World c. 1000-1789 Maarten discusses how urban citizenship functioned in medieval and early modern Europe.  He argues that urban citizenship in the period was much deeper and wider than many people assume as it includes people who participated in all the activities related to being a citizen plus those with formal citizenship status. He also demonstrates how this definition of citizen impacts urban and national governance in the period before 1789.