Legal historians have analysed the characteristics of merchant guilds and nationes (i.e., associations of foreign merchants), as well as the political clout of merchants, including foreign ones. However, how the legal status of citizens related to the merchant class and how its contents were influenced by trade remains largely unclear.

Interest in citizenship has never been higher. But what does it mean to be a citizen in a modern, complex community? Richard Bellamy approaches the subject of citizenship from a political perspective and, in clear and accessible language, addresses the complexities behind this highly topical issue.

Were legal systems in the Roman empire conducive to economic growth and development? Were legal rules and procedure changed in response to economic needs? This book offers detailed studies to provide some answers to these basic questions.

This book offers a study of so-called ‘Maritime Averages’, a variety of risk management instruments used in maritime trade, in the Low Countries, showing how Averages played a major role in the institutional development of the Low Countries.

Citizenship as Foundation of Rights explores the nature and meaning of American citizenship and the rights flowing from citizenship in the context of current debates around politics, including immigration. The book explains the sources of citizenship rights in the Constitution and focuses on three key citizenship rights - the right to vote, the right to employment, and the right to travel in the US. It explains why those rights are fundamental and how national identification systems and ID requirements to vote, work and travel undermine the fundamental citizen rights. Richard Sobel analyzes how protecting citizens' rights preserves them for future generations of citizens and aspiring citizens here. No other book offers such a clarification of fundamental citizen rights and explains how ID schemes contradict and undermine the constitutional rights of American citizenship.

Sexual citizenship has become a key concept in the social sciences. It describes the rights and responsibilities of citizens in sexual and intimate life, including debates over equal marriage and women's human rights, as well as shaping thinking about citizenship more generally. But what does it mean in a continually changing political landscape of gender and sexuality? In this timely intervention, Diane Richardson examines the normative underpinnings and varied critiques of sexual citizenship, asking what they mean for its future conceptual and empirical development, as well as for political activism. Clearly written, the book shows how the field of sexuality and citizenship connects to a range of important areas of debate including understandings of nationalism, identity, neoliberalism, equality, governmentality, individualization, colonialism, human rights, globalization and economic justice. Ultimately this book calls for a critical rethink of sexual citizenship. Illustrating her argument with examples drawn from across the globe, Richardson contends that this is essential if scholars want to understand the sexual politics that made the field of sexuality and citizenship studies what it is today, and to enable future analyses of the sexual inequalities that continue to mark the global order.

This innovative volume explores ways in which the idea of citizenship can be seen as a unifying concept in understanding contemporary social change and social problems. The book outlines traditional linkages between citizenship and public participation, national identity and social welfare, and shows the relevance of citizenship for a range of rising issues extending from global change through gender to the environment. The areas investigated include: the challenge of internationalization to the nation state and to national identities; the contested nature of citizenship in relation to poverty, work and welfare; the implications of gender inequality; and the potential for new conceptions of citizenship in response to cultural and political change.