Duchess Joanna (1355-1406) and the idea of a Brabant’s Nation. An historical representation or an historiographical construction?

Rutsaert, Camille
(2023) Community, Identity, Individuals: Shaping the (Political) Nation in Premodern Europe (400-1800) — Location: Vienne (3.May.2023)

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Abstract
Nation, as a concept unifying people or territories, has always needed an external reference to exist. Whether a culture, a past event or an ancestral character, a shared identity element is necessary to bring people together under one banner. The question therefore sits in the possibility to identify said element. In the case of my research on Joanna of Brabant, duchess between 1355 and 1406, I wonder if she might have been such a figure for her territories. As the personal link between the very different Brabant, Limbourg and the Outre-Meuse lands might she have been, back then, a character of national unity? Or maybe, later in the Low Countries’ – or even in Belgian – history, was she used as a national character? Presented by historians such as Henri Pirenne, as the last member of “the most ancient national dynasty of the Low Countries”, responsible for the Joyous Entry of 1356 which was for Brabant, until the end of the Ancien Régime the “solid base of the national constitution”, we may wonder what part national historiography made her play. Through a two-part analysis – during Joanna’s life and in posteriority –, I propose to follow the dialogue between the duchess, her reign and the notion of nation in the Brabant duchy from the end of the fourteenth century until recent historiography. (Citation: PIRENNE Henri, Jeanne de Brabant, in ACADÉMIE ROYALE DES SCIENCES, DES LETTRES ET DES BEAUX-ARTS DE BELGIQUE, Biographie nationale, t. 10, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 1888-1889, col. 454-463, here col. 455 et 462.)
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Rutsaert, C. (2023). Duchess Joanna (1355-1406) and the idea of a Brabant’s Nation. An historical representation or an historiographical construction? Community, Identity, Individuals: Shaping the (Political) Nation in Premodern Europe (400-1800), Vienne.